I started looking for a quote, like I usually do and simply don’t have the patience and I’ll tell you why. I am home with Covid and why look for someone famous to describe what it’s like? It is so funny, I don’t know what you do during the day when you don’t feel well. I don’t read and it has always seemed weird to me to watch TV, or whatever we now call computer delivered entertainment.
So, here I am without a fucken thing to do or the energy to do it, whatever it is. I just put on my music, which hasn’t been on all day and decided I would write. I swear I have no idea what to say. For me, it is a great way to kill time and take my mind off how lousy I feel. I also understand this is not a great way to entice you to go beyond, even the word, “beyond.”
I know being sick is a lonely feeling. I fold into myself and do not feel at all social. Who wants to listen to a guy talk about how shitty he feels? Even worse, would be a Zen-inspired lecture on how making pain your friend gets you that much closer to your Buddha-nature. So, maybe we can both kill some time, while I dig around for something more to share.
For me, this is a two-day story, because I will be right here tomorrow. The latest protocols on Covid are that if you are temperature free for 24 hours and feeling like the worst is over, you can re-enter the universe, wearing a mask for five days. I am pretty sure tomorrow will be that trial and if I can keep writing tomorrow, I know I will be feeling better. In a way, I am using you and hope you don’t mind. If you are still reading this, you clearly have nothing better to do, for at least a few minutes.
While I haven’t been feeling very good recently, it seems the health of the world is deteriorating at a pretty rapid pace. My choice for president is a vibrant man or woman, who, while not perfect, has lived an exemplary life, with the inevitable apologies that come with being human. I want to see an example of what is possible in America, my America. Kings and tyrants are now above the law, because they have written the rules. Those white, slave owners in Philly were afraid this new system they were creating could fall victim to that depravity, the very reason for their self-imposed exile from their home country. Now, look what we’ve just done.
All over the world, anger seems to be the cure-all for what ails us, having nothing to do with the cause, or the symptom. No human beings don’t want to be born into a life of mistreatment. Over the millennia, we have learned nothing about how to treat each other. We are born with a spiritual Covid and there is nothing more contagious.
We give out prizes for people who do great things, because they are exceptions, a tiny minority, surrounded by the Covid Crowd. There have always been too many able to take advantage of this illness of ours and anyone thinking of a cure is killed or crucified.
I wonder who invented war and what the first one looked like and what was its cause? I am not talking about the grand version. Talking about the first time a group decided to attack another group. Hostility seems to involve so much less effort than equanimity. An external conflict is easier to manage than an internal one and maybe that’s why it is so popular. In general, we haven’t been real good at why we do things, just how we do it seems to be enough…………………………………………
Well, I made it through to the next day, which would be today. I want to tell how it started, because it was very different for me and it had something to do with how it ended last night. Before sleep, I watched Brawl in Cell Block 99. Its theme was violence and really ugly, graphic to the max. Needless to say, I had a rough night. I watched it, because I was in zombie land, flat as a pancake. I was feeling not feeling, like no one was home.
This morning, I did my sit and it was very unusual. I wanted to clear everything away, not only the movie, because the Covid malaise has a real sinister quality for me. My inhalations and exhalations were like waves, washing away any sandcastle thoughts, leaving just the sound of my breath, in and out. After so many years, my sit is who I am.
I got up from the cushion and I was Larry. I felt like yesterday was purged and while I am definitely not 100%, I am back from a really, shitty journey, some of it shared above. One of the many reasons for my extraordinary success as a writer is that I don’t edit. The stream of consciousness thing flows, changing direction, moment to moment, just like our minds. I have these unscripted conversations with you.
I read a great interview with Allen Ginsberg from 1995. For those of you who know him, nothing needs to be said. For those of you who don’t, he was part of the Beat Generation in the forties and fifties, a time of incredible, rule-breaking creativity. Zen was a potent ingredient in their lives. These were soul searching artists, who didn’t give a shit about convention. Yesterday, I wrote our preoccupation has always been how and not why, because that lives way inside each of us. These people shone the light inside and they were shameless and honest.
He said, “the world seems to be going towards chaos”. He referred to it as Darwinian, distancing itself from spirituality. We are not humane humans, not even close. Cut me some slack here, the picture is not totally black, but it is definitely a very, dark grey. I know there are wonderful people everywhere, who really care and sometimes sacrifice their lives for it. I have my heroes.
Right after reading Ginsberg, I came across a story about the earliest cave drawing to be found. The painting of a wild pig and three human-like figures is at least 51,200 years old, more than 5,000 years older than the previous oldest cave art. The discovery pushes back the time that modern humans first showed the capacity for creative thought.
So, for the last 50,000+ years, we’ve been developing a sense of ourselves. I know in earth time that’s nothing, but, to me, that’s a really long time to have been around, capable of a level of learning, not shared by any other species. There are discoveries virtually every day that rewrite our history, with different species of humans living at the same time. Ever hear of Denisovans?I’ll bet not. They are very close relatives. In the world of evolution, we are a phenomenon, endless accidents, culminating in a miracle.
Is today the best we can do with this unparalleled gift?
Why?
Oh, I am feeling much better. Thanks for asking.
Listen to me talk this story through my Covid nose:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1292459/episodes/15368846-the-covid-kid