“The real meaning of persona is a “mask”, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage ; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy.” Arthur Schopenhauer
I have thought about writing this story for months, but that hasn’t been the challenge. I have been living this out in mind as a story I want to tell. I have orchestrated circumstance to fit into this exact retelling, today’s Friday life launch.
I always joke about my Zen practice, making fun of it and myself in the process. I got to be honest with you, years of sitting and time engaged in naked thought about its primordial sensibility, has had a powerful impact on me.
Zen makes a big deal out of our impermanence, our mortality and it tries to give us some tools to embody the inescapable reality of time’s fragility and unpredictability. The older I have gotten, the better my understanding of the truth of our existence.
Everybody makes up their own rules and no one is right. Age wise, God willing, you better get to a point where you know what the fuck you are doing. Then, you have to remember, we are continually outgrowing ourselves from diapers to dentures.
Unless you are up around my age, I am not sure what I am about to share will make any sense to you and that’s just fine. I remember a few years ago, making a big deal of giving up smoking marijuana and/or the myriad, technological choices one has these days. It was doomed to fail and it did. I was focused on the show and never got passed opening night. Frankly it was dishonest, because I never bothered to mention I was back at it after not too long.
I keep blaming my trip to Alaska as the catalyst for change in my life. I know I wrote about feeling change was in the air, having no idea what was to come. Maybe, when I saw that first image of endless, snow capped mountains or the glacier ice floating in the Stikine River, I thought about how incredibly blessed I have been in my life. It caused me to step back and take a good look at myself.
I had a chance to experience some incredibly personal moments there, ones that caught me completely off guard. I realized I didn’t have endless time to get to some stuff that needed my attention. It felt incredibly liberating and not even remotely punitive. It is what set me off on the whole change is in the air diatribe. However, waiting for change to happen is not how it actually happens.
This idea of knowing something is coming and not knowing what it is, wore pretty fucken thin, pretty fucken quick. I decided to cut my hair off and I did. I kind of had it ass backwards. I thought I would experience some changes and then lop my hair off as a statement of my bravery.
Since June, ’66, I have been indulging in marijuana, even casually walking down Fifth Avenue, wearing a suit and smoking a joint. There has never been a time in my life, where I have said to myself, you really shouldn’t be high for this. In fact, the more ridiculous the possibility, the more likelihood of my indulgence.
Here is where it gets a little weird. I very quietly decided it was time to stop getting high. I took advantage of my writing when I wrote a whole piece of no longer wanting to be high, because God is never high, or some shit like that. It was cavalier, when actually giving up an addiction is a bitch.
I have orchestrated this serious life change to coincide with my writing schedule, which feels like trivializing something so important, but it’s not. I swear to God, I didn’t think I could even attempt to pull this off if it wasn’t a Sunday story. To me, it’s like I needed it, in order to do some important work.
I love symbology. It makes storytelling much smarter than it actually is. I orchestrated my pot to run out this morning. I walked to work, earbuds defying the physics of sound, doing the typical stoner, music from heaven, mindset. I knew it would be the last walk and I tried to take it in and burn it into my memory of “what it was like.”
For weeks leading up to this, I have been thinking about all the masks I wear, external and internal and how it bumps into my Zen discipline. Who is it that I want to look like and why? Of course, I want to look like myself, but who the fuck am I? For the most part, all of us are pretty self-conscious when it comes to this shit. External masks are easy to change, physical choices married to ego-image. For me, cutting my hair was a pretty big deal and I can’t begin to tell you how good it feels, on the inside.
I have been wrestling with my age for quite some time. After all these years, who the fuck am I? I think I have been hiding behind the smoke and it is time for me to stop. There is not an ounce of self-judgement on my part.
There is an elusive idea in Zen about your original face, your face before you had one. I am not stupid or self-absorbed enough to think you should care about any of this and that is not the point, anyway. It is what motivates me, but who knows what matters to you?
Who am I? Just to set your mind at ease, I have no fucken idea. I know I don’t want to look like someone else. I know that I have my own internal masks, just like all of you. I want God to see my face and I don’t want blood shot eyes, mumbling some fucken bullshit about how cool it is to see Her face, when I have been hiding mine behind the smoke.
The meaning of most everything changes with the passage of time, so does the internal language to define it. While all of this shit is a big deal to me, it might mean absolutely nothing to you.
When you get here, it will.