You're not supposed to use cell phones during sesshin. And you're not supposed to write. However, I don't specifically recall any rule forbidding the combination of the two. In any event, what's the point in having a rule that can't be broken?
I'm reminiscing of things which didn't happen as I stare at the wall. That is not good practice either:-)
The 1960s
My uncle coming back from Vietnam. He brings with him combat footage showing American bombers dropping bombs that look like lima beans into the jungle. The jungle goes up in flames on impact. This supposedly is the same uncle who could babysit me when others couldn't. I think his strategy was to watch TV and drink beer oblivious to the destruction that I was creating around him. Eventually, I would wind down. My parents would come home with me sleeping on the floor in front of him.
That same uncle recently had a Whipple procedure.
I was notoriously bad to other babysitters. The babysitter from across the street was in a wheelchair. I would use this to my advantage, playing hide and seek in places she could not seek. It was not fair. But four year olds are amoral. I don't care what you say. Its the truth, Ruth.
The woman in the wheelchair made great fried salami sandwiches. When you are young and they don't tell you the ingredients many foods are palatable. Like my grandmother's blood sausage. No need to go through the list of entrails in that delicacy:-)
Like bad food, TV while you are young is also exciting. The woman in the wheelchair watched soap operas and game shows. The Days of our Lives, like sands through the hour glass, those were the days of other peoples lives. The Hollywood Squares. 10,000 Dollar Pyramid. The Match Game. The Newlywed Game. That explains much in my formative development.
Then of course my dad was a high school football coach. Which meant he chaperoned dances. I recall the strobe lights. I remember the darkened basketball court with the streamers, the wild lights and Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love." There probably were also a multitude of various smells present which didn't mean anything to me at the time.
But it wasn't just the high school dances with the cool music. It was the older cousins from Utah who took me for a ride in a pickup and insisted that I listen to Deep Purple on their eight track stereo. And the other cousins in Salt Lake City who had a tree house replete with black lights and Three Dog Night posters adorning the wall. Speaking of Three Dog Night, I remember watching a Three Dog Night concert movie located in the same theater which was simultaneously playing "2001: A Space Odyssey." I don't think that either movie resonated with the parents. Maybe we left early.
In retrospect, the scene where the ape throws up the rotating bone symbolizing the first tool used to kill segwaying into the space station (also rotating in the same manner as the bone) has to be one of the most intense moments of movie history. But all that came later. Maybe one day Siri will disobey me like Hal. I'm sorry Michael, I can't help you with that. This marina is near you.
I remember watching the movie "Patton" in a movie theater. I remember asking my parents if the Americans won the war. They told me the Germans were winning the war initially, but the Americans eventually were victorious. I later learned that this was a good thing--despite my German grandmother's blood sausage.
I remember watching "Midnight Cowboy" in a drive-in theater with my parents. I sure as hell didn't understand what was going on at the time. I can only imagine that my parents must have been squirming during some of the scenes. But no problem, Dad, I didn't understand anything that was going on at the time. I wasn't hip to prostitution or oral sex. In fact, I probably wouldn't have been hip to most things going on in that movie until my late 30s. We must have watched that movie in my parents' VW bus which lacked air-conditioning. I think the AMC Gremlin came later.
I remember visiting other relatives in Kansas City in that bus. In K.C. my relatives were watching TV and a band called the "Grateful Dead" was playing. (This was probably during the 1970s). I remember thinking how strange that name was. Death seemed the worst thing imaginable at the time. The juxtaposition of the word "dead" with "grateful" just didn't make sense. It still doesn't. I think it was explained to me that the people in this band did drugs which explained the death connection. Drugs scared the hell out of me back then--and still does. I remember my parents showing me the anti-drug promos: people jumping out of buildings on acid. Art Linkletter's daughter killing herself while she was high.
Despite the ubiquitous anti-drug messages, there were alot of drug references around, had a I looked. I remember the kids TV show HR Puffinstuff,. "HR Puffinstuff--who is your friend when things get rough?" The land where Mr. Puffinstuff lived had all kinds of surrealistic creatures and mushroom shaped houses as I recall. And of course, Peter Paul and Mary's "Puff the Magic Dragon." Who was befriended by Little Jackie "Paper." Even my parents listened to that album.
Vietnam, drugs and death. I remember my father befriending a young catholic priest at the time. (My dad taught at a catholic high school). I remember that young priest buying me a model submarine. Years later, I learned that that priest had been somewhat influential nationally in anti-war activities connected to the Persian Gulf conflicts. When I graduated from a Catholic college in the 1980s that priest was at the graduation (he taught at the university) and I reminded him of the submarine gift many years ago. He did not remember it. Indeed, he was shocked by the idea that he would have given some young impressionable mind a gift symbolizing warfare. He remarked (sarcastically that he hoped it didn't influence my decision to go into ROTC. All I can say now is that it did not. It was the video of lima bean shaped bombs dropped in the jungle which tipped the scales:-) Some people have no sense of humor. He probably would fight me to prevent me from fighting with other people. You know the type.
All I can say is that it's freaking hot out.
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