Another day, where I do what I can to balance thought and deed. The boy has a friend over for another sleepover, and earlier today I shot some golf with my brother. I found out my mom got herself a tattoo a couple of weeks ago, while on vacation, which is quite the comical surprise. This is the same woman who became physical ill and vomited when my brother told her that he’d had his ear pierced, many years ago.
This morning I sorted through stacks of work files, cleansing the records while listening to the movie My Dinner With Andre. Have you seen that one? Of course you have. How could you have missed it? It’s old, I know. 1986, I think, but still pertinent in so many ways.
I’ve been kicking around a part of the dialogue in my head, where Wally and Andre are discussing what it takes today to reach people. The basic premise is that people have become numb, or are even asleep to the world around them, and that it seems to take more and more to startle them into any sort of reaction these days. Victims of an ever-escalating sensationalism, I guess. I would tend to agree. I stole a few lines, typing as fast as I could to try and keep up. I’m sure I’ve missed a word, here and there.
Andre:
Okay, yes. We are bored. We’re all bored now. But has it ever occurred to you, Wally, that the process that creates this boredom that we see in the world now, may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing, created by a world totalitarian government based on money, and that all of this is much more dangerous then one thinks? And it’s not just a question of individual survival, Wally, but that somebody that is bored is asleep, and someone who is asleep will not say, No.See, I keep meeting these people. Just a few days ago, I met this man who I greatly admire, he’s a Swedish physicist, Gustave B-, and he told me that he no longer watches television, he doesn’t read newspapers, and he doesn’t read magazines. He’s completely cut them out of his life because he really does feel that we’re living in some sort of Orwellian nightmare now, and that everything that you hear now, contributes to turning you into a robot.
And when I was in Finhorn, I met this extraordinary English tree expert, who had devoted his life to saving trees. Just got back from Washington, lobbying to save the redwoods. 84 years old, and he always travels with a backpack because he never knows where he’s going to be tomorrow. When I met him in Finhorn, he said to me, “Where are you from?” and I said, “New York.”
He said, “Ahhh, New York, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave but never do?” And I said, “Oh yes.”
And he said, “Why don’t you think they don’t leave?”
I gave him different banal theories. He said, “No, I don’t think it is that way at all.” He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they’ve built. They’ve built their own prison, so they exist in this state of schizophrenia, where they are both guards and prisoners, and as a result, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison that they’ve made, or to even see it as a prison.”
And then he went into his pocket and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said, “This is a pine tree.” He put it in my hand, and he said, “Escape, before it’s too late.”
I think I’m trying to balance this whole idea of living (or should I say, existing?) with the concept of creativity. Both seem all-consuming. I know I struggle constantly with the two, trying to keep both alive and thriving, when most of the time, something nagging in my head tells me that in reality, only one can live.
Try balancing this with daily life, relationships, and kids, and, at least to me, the concept of living creatively outside the box of normal existence seems almost impossible. Something always has to give. For instance, just a moment ago I had almost cracked the secret of existence, when I was pulled away to solve another of the boys’ important debates.
“You will too die trying to find a piece of hay in a stack of needles!”
“You would not! Even if it poked out your eyes!”
“Yes you could!”
“No you couldn’t!”
“What if the needles poked out your heart?”
“Needles wouldn’t do that?”
“But what if they did?”
“But they wouldn’t!”
The argument would no doubt go on forever if it weren’t for me, a pizza, and my pizza cutter. I slice up the pizza, intentionally uneven.
“Here, figure this one out,” I tell them, pointing to the pizza.
Disagreements over food seldom last long because hunger is such an excellent mediator. Nothing cries out peace like hot pizza pie.
“Hey, that’s my piece!”
“No, it’s not. I called it.”
“No, I called it.”
“No, I called it.”
Do you think a stack of needles would poke out a grown man’s ears? No, don’t answer that. We might start arguing. It’s too risky.