“Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.”Chance the Gardner
The above quotation is from a film, called Being There, written by Jerzy Kosinsky. He was a Polish Jew, a child living through the holocaust. I am guessing living through that kind of experience, leaves you marked forever. I think when he wrote that novel, he was dealing with the absolute absurdity of our political system. At least it works for me.
Chance is a gardener at the White House, who seems to have an unusual relationship with the President and his wife. I picked the story, because it starts my story about the complete insanity of the entire world, not only our country.
I will be polite and say Chance was a very simple man. He would say the most inane things imaginable and they got twisted into genius, a glowing tribute to the vapidity of his time. People were desperate to find meaning and this gardener became some kind of seer, revered for his “insight”.
OK, if I were you, right around now I’d be asking myself, “Why the fuck is this guy wasting my time with the aforementioned movie synopsis.” Well, I am glad you asked. Something is missing from our lives, brutally vanquished by some seriously ugly vitriol.
It’s funny, I always look for quotes, literary crutches, compensating for my limited talent. I’ve got several coming up later. I immediately thought of the very popular quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Have fun looking it up and you will find that it’s origin is anything, but clear. I was thrilled, because I want to make it OUR quote for this story.
I am pretty much as cynical as you can get, when it comes to our plight as humans and the plight of the exquisite world we are visiting. In the late ’60’s, this country was in deep shit. The Vietnam War had shredded any hope of civility in this country. All of a sudden, this famous scion of a fabled family, who got sloppy seconds with Marilyn Monroe, decided to run for president. I don’t give a shit about his history. I encourage all of you to check out this guy and how he carried himself during his short lived campaign.
One of his quotes immediately came to mind, “Some men see what is and ask “Why?”. I see what might be and ask, “Why Not?” Where are those goddamn voices today? The tongues of optimism have been ripped from our throats. I love what George Carlin had to say about this, “Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.”
My friends, I am terribly guilty of promulgating a kind of pragmatism, because I think I am so smart. I say things like “All you have to do is look at our behavior over the millennia and why expect anything different?” I am sure I will keep doing it in future stories, but not in this one, not this time.
I don’t know why, but just a second ago, I looked up the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, in my lame attempt to make a point. There is no way I am the only person who is glad to be alive. but no one is talking about it, singing about it, writing about it, or painting about it. Does anyone give a shit that our time here is a gift? It is so easy to allow what is going on around us to kidnap the best in us. I also understand it is really easy to type out those words, but a whole different deal to live them.
I will not be spiritually bankrupted by these times. I have one more quote and then I swear I am done. I wish I could have spent some time with Thich Nhat Hanh, just like I think about sitting with the Buddha and shooting the shit. Here is one of the many things he had to say about being alive, “We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.”
Who knows? Maybe there will be a spiritual epidemic, not to be confused with religion, demonized by our white Christian males. The guys, who “discovered” America and want to maintain ownership. Religions are totally cool, unless they profess to be the only one. This epidemic can’t manifest as a wave. It has to start as a ripple, which is what got me going on all this in the first place. It is you and I and people all over the world. Passivity is personified by the corpse, a body that has ceased to exist.
I am going to go out on a limb and assume if you are reading or listening to this, you are alive. We have allowed our Qi to be stolen by those consumed by anger and fear and stupidity. Just like those ladies in the orchestra at Auschwitz, there is a life force in each of us that is inseparable from us, as long as we are breathing.
In the midst of thinking about this story, I realized that I have always been preoccupied with my Zen sit ending, rather than not wanting it to end. After nearly 35 years of this daily practice, why would I want to leave that feeling on the cushion, so I can hurry back to the daily discord of life?
Trust me, I am no Pollyanna, not by a long shot. Here is a bit of optimism, at least from my perspective. Since 2019, there have been more college-educated women in the work force than men. We are one of the few countries in the world that has never had a female head of state. The most powerful country in the world would rather elect a tyrannically, criminal male. On the other side, women are continuing to grow more comfortable being in charge and getting better at handling it, while so many little boys are upset about it.
Let me get back to the cushion business for a moment. Impossibility and impotence are cousins of the same malaise, that has clothed most of mankind forever. Like Chance the gardener, the coat of many colors can be sewn by the hearts of goodness. Who knows what would have happened to the dinosaurs if a renegade asteroid didn’t crush their future?
I don’t want us to be like the dinosaur, allowing the world to happen to us. The odds kind of suck, if our history is the yardstick. We are heading for a metaphorical asteroid, birthed by the absence of hope and possibility. I know it seems kind of stupid for me to be writing this, because who cares about what I have to say? What the fuck do I know?
I know that, “In the garden, growth has its season.”
LISTEN TO IT HERE:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1292459/episodes/16235573-help-wanted-a-messiah