WW: Heaven on earth

(Lucky bastard.)

Street Level Zen: Stepmothers

Remember: This is a test you cannot pass.

This may be the best opening line ever. Not only is it memorable, it sums up the entire koan of step-parenthood, with Zen-worthy genius. Jōshū could have done no better. The fact that Beverly Rollwagen chose to open with the solution and then elaborate is further proof of her enlightenment.

How to Become a Stepmother, by Beverly Rollwagen, is the definitive guide to a delicate undertaking, in six brief quatrains.

Out of respect for the author's copyright I've linked to the full text on Garrison Keillor's site, rather than copying and pasting it here. Not only has my brother Garrison permission to post, but you can hear him read the poem aloud if you click on the audio link above the title. I heartily recommend it; Keillor is as good at reading poetry as Rollwagen is at writing it.

(On a purely frivolous note: if Zen had come to the West a thousand years ago, so that monks here took names in our own languages rather than Asian ones, Rollwagen could easily have been one of them. Check out this speculative Wikipædia entry from that parallel universe: "Road Across the Moors is a collection of koans from the fourteenth century, popularly attributed to Zen hermit Rollwagen of the Yorkshire lineage.")

An auspicious Mother's Day to Avalokiteshvara in all her disguises.

Deep bow.

WW: Baby seal on the beach

How Christian Is Your Cat?

Christopher Smart (1722 – 1771) is a bit of a cipher. A BritLit staple, he lived the sort of life usually associated with poets: haphazard, profligate, and well-disastered. Late in life he became a Christian mystic. From that point forward his work suggests a religious practice strongly analogous to modern eremitical monasticism: he continued to live in society, but fixated on the imprint of God in all things.

He was also locked up in a lunatic asylum, until influential friends got him sprung.

Was my brother Christopher mentally ill? Hermits have been so accused, under whatever Everyone Knows To Be True at the time, since the first of us declared. By reliable report, Smart exhibited a few classic symptoms of bipolar disorder, a condition highly correlated with religious calling. But he lacked others that are equally determinant.

I stand with Jesus on this one: if a guy's work is legit, so is he. And while Smart's devotional meditations do contain tics, they are coherent, technically masterful, and incisive. They're also funny, ironic, and self-mocking, attributes rarely encountered in psychotic rants.

Check out his analysis of the koan, "Is my cat saved?". (See below.) Smart wrote this in the asylum, with research assistance from his sole friend and companion, Jeoffry.

It's long. Read it anyway. See if you too are not hooked like a catfish by the third line.

Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, 4 (excerpt)

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his fore-paws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the fore-paws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For Sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For Seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For Eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For Ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For Tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider’d God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day’s work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he’s a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incompleat without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his fore-paws of any quadrupede.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord’s poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually – Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in compleat cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in musick.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master’s bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is affraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly,
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroaking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God’s light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadrupede.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the musick.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

(Ed. note: "creep" here means crawl.)

WW: Goldfinches

(Carduelis tristis.)

WW: Return of the Caspian terns

(Hydroprogne caspia.)

Good Movie: Jeremiah Johnson

I've seen this movie so many times I could play all the parts, in French, English, Crow, and Flathead. The first time, we both had recently been released. That was the early Seventies, during the golden age of the New Western, when the likes of Little Big Man and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid wrenched the franchise from the dime-store patriots. In its place we got a precarious, three-dimensional American West, where skin and hat colour meant nothing and no destiny was manifest. It's an evocative genre, and Jeremiah Johnson is one of its masterpieces. Today you can see it on barebones DVD, without any subtitles or supporting features, but the print isn't bad.

The title character, a traumatised war veteran, flees to a far corner of the Missouri Territory with the quaint notion that no white people means no people. A folk-style ballad, served up in bites, informs us that he was "bettin' on forgettin' all the troubles that he knew". As a Western kid, I've seen the type.

But the West was never free for the taking, and Johnson quickly learns its Three Noble Truths: outbacking is a lifetime apprenticeship; human problems exist wherever humans are; and the West is full of humans.

Specifically, it's full of its owners, the serious citizens of serious nations, complete with their own laws, languages, and lives. Such is director Sydney Pollack's grasp of this fact that not a single aboriginal is shown speaking English. (One Apsáalooke [Crow] chief apparently understands English, but refuses to speak it, according to Johnson's mentor Bear Claw, "just to aggravate me.") Instead, wonder of Hollywood wonders, you'll hear Apsáalooke, Séliš (Flathead), and Sao-kitapiiksi (Blackfoot) speaking their own tongues. The exception is one devoutly Christian Séliš chief, who speaks flawless French to a white man who can hardly mangle "bonjour".

None of this is subtitled, underscoring Johnson's status as a foreigner in a foreign land. Alienated from his own culture, he is immersed in several others he knows nothing about. And in this he is surprisingly successful, because despite his antisocial bent, he's truly not looking for trouble. But suffering is all around him, and as a decent man he quickly acquires all the attachments, and even the authority, he wants so desperately to escape.

True to his genre, Pollack tomahawks clichés right and left. A US cavalry officer, assigned a necessary, dangerous duty, seeks the path of least harm; one imagines Johnson was that kind of soldier. The aboriginals are sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and shrewd. And all the mountain men are crazy. Some criminally, some culturally, but all of them, down to our shell-shocked hero, have completely stripped their gears.

Pollack gets hermits. You don't choose this lifestyle. It's chosen for you.

The casting is a constant revelation. Robert Redford's circumspect, fight-or-flight silence is the spirit and image of Johnson. Will Geer's Depression-honed Bear Claw is utterly credible, while ebullient sociopath Del Gue ("with an E!") gives Stefan Gierasch a rare chance to flaunt his own under-appreciated gift. Most enigmatic is Delle Bolton. As the Séliš woman Swan, she incarnates her character's name, anchoring all her scenes despite the fact that she has no English lines. (And damn few Séliš).

The plot is only loosely based on actual events, but Pollack's obsession with historical accuracy gives it a ring of truth. The lore is authentic, as are the mishaps. Del tells Jeremiah the Séliš were converted by "the French", yet the chief's French is pointedly Canadian. Exact on both counts. And I don't want to spoil anything for first-time viewers, but there's an FAA navigational beacon on a Wyoming mountain called Crazy Woman. Details like these make Jeremiah Johnson one of the great movies.

In the end Johnson winds up in a place he never wanted to be, and I don't mean the Big Horn Mountains. He's no longer really white; he does what he does for aboriginal reasons, under aboriginal law. But he's not one of them, either. Perhaps he's a nation of one. Perhaps he's a deputy of Karma. Or maybe, as his enemies come to believe, he transcends humanity altogether.

Whatever the case, it's clear that the old saw is wrong. You can run from your problems. It's just that you'll be issued new ones when you get there.