Mary Karr: "Surrender is hard for me. I'm a willful little beast"

The end-of-year holidays, as always, offer a variety of emotions; writing and teaching at Syracuse University, Mary Karr's novels and memoirs offer the chill of real failure and self-discovery of a "blackbelt sinner" with lacerating humor. Here is an excerpt from The Paris Review interview following the publication of her book, Lit (2009).

I got sober in 1989 — twenty years ago now. Only with prayer could I stop drinking for more than a day or two. Once I made three months clean, but it was a white-knuckled horror show. Call it self-hypnosis, prayer, whatever. To skeptics I say, Just try it. Pray every day for thirty days. See if your life gets better. If it doesn’t, tell me I’m an asshole. People tend to judge a faith’s value based on its dogma, which ignores religion in practice. It’s like believing if you watch enough porn or read enough gynecology books, you’ll know about pussy. For me, being a Catholic is a set of activities. Certain dogma seems nuts to me too. I’m not the Pope’s favorite Catholic. ...

When I feel God, it’s quiet. I can’t hear anything — it’s like balancing in air in some vast, windless space. If I’m trying to discern God’s will, I’ll feel a leaning sensation toward what I’m supposed to do. Like a dowser’s wand. It’s a solid tug. Even if that direction is scary for me—like refusing the first offers for Lit, or like the writing of it was. There’ll be quiet around it. This takes days, sometimes weeks. The trick is not to act until you have a solid leaning, and not to obsess until you get that—really give the problem up, in a way. You might say you leave it to your intuition. I say I leave it to the Holy Spirit. The God-centered choices tend to stay solidly quiet. I never regret or recant. ... but surrender is hard for me. I’m a willful little beast.

... You have constantly to question, Is this fair? No life is all bleak. Even in Primo Levi’s camp, there were small sources of hope: you got on the good work detail, or you got on the right soup line. That’s what’s so gorgeous about humanity. It doesn’t matter how bleak our daily lives are, we still fight for the light. I think that’s our divinity. We lean into love, even in the most hideous circumstances. We manage to hope.

(Photo by Marion Ettlinger, SFGate)

For Thanksgiving week: "The Door That Ends All Doors" (Thomas Merton)

Thomas Merton and novices (1960).
Left to right: Bro. Denis (Terence Phillips),
 Bro. Cuthbert (Rietdorf),

 Thomas Merton, and an unknown novice.

from "The Door That Ends All Doors"

(Thomas Merton) 

The three doors (they are one door).

1)  The door of emptiness.  Of no-where.  Of no place for a self, which cannot be entered by a self.  And therefore is of no use to someone who is going somewhere.  Is it a door at all?  The door of no-door.

2)  The door without sign, without indicator, without information.  Not particularized.  Hence no one can say of it "This is it!  This is the door."  It is not recognizable as a door.  It is not led up to by other things pointing to it:  "We are not it, but that is it--the door."  No signs saying "Exit."  No use looking for indications.  Any door with a sign on it, any door that proclaims itself to be a door, is not the door.  But do not look for a sign saying "Not-door."  Or even "No Exit."

3)  The door without wish.  The undesired.  The unplanned door.  The door never expected.  Never wanted.  Not desirable as door.  Not a joke, not a trap door.  Not select.  Not exclusive.  Not for few.  Not for many.  Not for.  Door without aim.  Door without end.  Does not respond to a key--so do not imagine you have a key.  Do not have your hopes on possession of the key.

There is no use asking for it.  Yet you must ask.  Who?  For what?  When you have asked for a list of all doors, this one is not on the list.  When you have asked for all the numbers of all the doors, this one is without a number.  Do not be deceived into thinking this door is merely hard to find and difficult to open.  When sought it fades.  Recedes.  Diminishes.  Is nothing.  There is no threshold.  No footing.  It is not empty space.  It is neither this world nor another.  It is not based on anything.  Because it has no foundation, it is the end of sorrow.  Nothing remains to be done.  Therefore there is no threshold, no step, no advance, no recession, no entry, no nonentry.  Such is the door that ends all doors;  the unbuilt, the impossible, the undestroyed, through which all fires go when they have "gone out."

from The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions, 1973).  Photo from the Merton Collection at Bellarmine University.

For Thanksgiving week: "Walking on My Grave" (Eugene C. Bianchi)

"Walking on My Grave"

(Eugene C. Bianchi)

Walking on my grave-to-be, I invite

Mr. D from the other side of the river.

You can’t be too pushy about this

lest you scare him off, expect big answers

to bigger questions when all he wants

is beer and pretzels and maybe a slow stroll

around the spiral labyrinth to sit by the capstone

of the small burial vault for animal cremains.

You might start with a joke about not letting

morticians have all the fun shooting up

my corpse with bad botox, proven not to last

with no money-back guarantee, amid all that

palaver about how fine they look in our coffin

(echoes of my nonna who couldn’t believe

how nicely people cleaned up for wakes).

It’s not death’s certainty but its uncertainties

that interest me and elude conscious mind

bogged down with tedious theories of afterlife,

instead of grasping it as an ungraspable whole,

the way an artist sees his nude by the window

full and stark for the quickest sketch of

her body’s vital thrust and mystic lore,

with details coming later or not at all.

So I slow Mr. D down with drink and snacks. 

Am I more fearful of dying than saner folk 

and need to allay my terror with garden games?

Maybe, maybe, but does it matter?

Only a dunce would not regret death’s losses,

those beautiful days and shining eyes and

friends who bring chicken soup when you

fall off your horse or divorce a second wife.

There’s lots of time for Mr. D to scare me

as I gasp for breath on a sweaty night

or in turbulence at thirty thousand feet

when I envy and dislike the calm pilot who says

that we didn’t really need that second engine.

No, plenty of time for such episodes and more.

I’d just like to approach him slow walking

`round and `round balancing our beers to ask

what he’s picked up along the way about the Big Ones:

God, Purpose, Loss, Suffering, bursts of unexpected Joy.

He’ll probably tell me to pour him another, no pretzels,

sit near the capstone, admire the ferns and cast iron plants,

shut my mind, let myself float on this sea of contradictions,

buoyed by the salty wisdom of ambiguity.

"Walking on My Grave" by Eugene C. Bianchi appears in the poet's new collection Ear To the Ground: Poems for the Long View. Bianchi was in the Jesuit order for twenty years, and is Professor of Religion Emeritus, at Emory University in Atlanta. His other poetry collections include Grief of Chickens, Washington Rhythms, and God Bored. He has published many books and articles in the areas of spirituality, creative aging, church reform and issues of culture and religion, as well as a memoir, Taking a Long Road Home (Wipf and Stock, 2011). He lives in Athens and maintains a blog about creative aging. 

For Thanksgiving week: "Smokey the Bear Sutra" (Gary Snyder)

Gary Snyder at home near Nevada City (photo by Dan Chung, Guardian UK, 2008)

SMOKEY THE BEAR SUTRA

BY GARY SNYDER

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings--even the grasses, to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

"In some future time, there will be a continent called America. It will have great centers of power called such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur, Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature."

"The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger: and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it."

And he showed himself in his true form of

SMOKEY THE BEAR

A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.

Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;

His left paw in the mudra of Comradely Display--indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that of deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;

Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys;

Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the west, symbolic of the forces that guard the wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the true path of man on Earth:

all true paths lead through mountains--

With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;

Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;

Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs, smashing the worms of capitalism and totalitarianism;

Indicating the task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes, master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.

Wrathful but calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him...

HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.

Thus his great Mantra:

Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana Sphataya hum traka ham mam

"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND BE THIS RAGING FURY BE DESTROYED"

And he will protect those who love the woods and rivers, Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:

And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL:

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.

Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.

Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
Will always have ripened blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.

AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT

...thus we have heard...

(may be reproduced free forever)

Robert Aitken, born June 19, 1917

“Our practice is not to clear up the mystery. It is to make the mystery clear.” 

 Robert Aitken

(June 19, 1917-August 5, 2010)

Naropa University archive is now online: a list with links, from The Allen Ginsberg Project

THE NAROPA UNIVERSITY DIGITAL ARCHIVE 

Great news! Naropa's extraordinary audio archive (hitherto hosted as part of the estimable Internet Archive) has now been upgraded, refurbished and newly-hosted by Naropa University - The JKS (Jack Kerouac School) audio collection (part of a wider collection held by the university) is now available and ready for on-line exploration and practical use here 

Close to 2,000 (1,925) recordings are now immediately accessible. (A further 1,500 - 1, 800 more have been digitalized and will subsequently be made available - and this is just the JKS component!).

As Naropa, on their web-site, declare:  

"The Naropa University Digital Archive is an ongoing project to preserve the institutional heritage of our university by making available all institutional audio and video files created from our inception in 1974 up through today. This collection will continue to grow as new recordings are created every year and will include audio and video from every program Naropa University offers."

An astonishing trove of material (we'll be drawing from it extensively in the months (years) ahead). We asked Archivist, Nicholas Weiss, and Archival Processor, Ani Thubten Palmo, to come up with a few (select) gems, half a dozen or so, just to give a taste. This is what they selected:

Allen Ginsberg and David Henderson - from the  Naropa Wednesday Night Poetry Series June 24, 1981 - here

Allen Ginsberg, Jim Nisbet and Peter Lamborne Wilson (with Introduction by Anne Waldman and Bobbie Louise Hawkins), June 18, 1996 - here

From The Jack Kerouac Conference: Kerouac in the 80's, June 1, 1982 - Timothy Leary (Introduced by Diane di Prima) here

Letters To The New Century - three talks (given in 2001) by the late great Anselm Hollo, here, here, and here

and, June 18, 2009 - the Summer Writing Program Faculty Reading (with Anselm Hollo, Junior Burke,Janine Pommy Vega, Samuel R Delany and A.B.Spellman  (with Introductions by Bobbie Louise Hawkins and Akilah Oliver) - here

Wonderful to be able to report this news. Happy hunting!

"I'd like to see it that way" (Norman Fischer)

"I'd like to see it that way"

(Norman Fischer)

A compendium of words was stored here

Just underneath the chimney

I'd like to see it that way

Fortune won't stand still for that

And pressure of the air flattens paper

I'd like to see it that way

One comes into the room groomed, a pleasure

There's a patch of glitter in the glamour

I'd like to see it that way

Each moment opens up sudden as an umbrella

On a day storms gather like wool

A way I'd really like to see it

So you can't assume a face again

Before the non-face puts in its appearance

Nor can you push at the door

expecting satisfaction on the other side

I'd like to see it that way

Many's the time and time for reflection

Truer than truth the subject's interconnections

I'd like to see it that way

I was born on a day absolutely unique in human history

Birds grasp their path in air

I'd like to see it that way

It's standard to pack half-a-dozen at a clip

Imagine the red thing yours alone at last

I'd like to see it that way

The image almost takes shape superimposed

As a mist on top of ordinary daily objects

I'd like to see it that way

Life goes on forever like a dusty road

Down which we peer as we drink a glass of water

I'd like to see it that way

We return again and again born into wombs

The shape of inverted ice cream cones

I'd like to see it that way

So I could relax, put on my enormous suit

And ring your doorbell holding my breath and flowers

I'd like to see it that way

In order to be able to end war but

Would war ever end or would my wanting

To end it ever end if nothing ever ended

I'd like to see it that way

Everything is standing up and falling down again

Constantly like hair in wind

I'd like to see it that way

For the good of the nation behind bars

For my own good bundled up into piles

I'd like to see it that way

I blow continuously on this thing the landscape

Crumples around me like a felt hat

I'd like to see it that way

But the problem is I put out my hand

And only clutch air wanting to understand

I'd like to see it some way

Any way as long as I could know it was there

And could pull back the covers at will

To reveal my heart's desire and measure it

I'd like to see it that way

"I'd like to see it that way" appeared in the 1989 collection Turn left in order to go right. Norman Fischer is a poet and Zen Buddhist priest, the founder and spiritual director of the Everyday Zen Foundation, an organization dedicated to adapting Zen Buddhist teachings to Western culture. He has often participated with beat generation poets, especially Phil Whalen, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure. His latest collections of poetry are Slowly But Dearly (2004), and I Was Blown Back (2005).

Read me! 180 suggestions from TED speakers

Ah, summer. The season of good intentions, precious free time washed away by busy vacations and cookouts, must-see blockbusters at the googolplex, trips to emergency rooms from pratfalls and bug bites and the certain, overwhelming realization that, really, it's too-darn-hot to think by July 4th. 

So summer is also the time when readers hope against hope to get to "a few books" this season. 

The good folks at TED have made the glorious agony of summer reading even more acute by asking their lecturers to suggest reading lists. From Jane Eyre to The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions, there are plenty of ideas here to make a porch-side stack to go on top of the books one has already promised repeatedly to read.

It's enough to make a reader lie down and take a long afternoon nap just to consider all of the books that will likely never be opened. Here, to take one example, is the list by TEDster Karen Wickre, the editorial director of Twitter, that illustrates the range of what I could be reading in the next few months ...  if I wasn't out buying ice cream, and more sunblock for those lazy afternoon dozes in the hammock. Still, a summer reading list is always a wonderful thing to contemplate: I see I've read at least some of these suggestions in summers past. There is always hope.

Karen Wickre is an an avid reader and supporter of TED. Her curation philosophy: “These six titles reflect my passions — graphic non-fiction, home and Buddhism, loosely defined. I hope you discover something that speaks to you in any one of them.”

River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West by Rebecca Solnit. “Such a terrific story: how Northern California became the nexus and nurturer of early technologies, outsized dreams and failures. Little has changed in 150 years.”

Are You My Mother? By Alison Bechdel. “The saga of Alison’s gnarly relationship with her complicated, mixed-signal-emitting mother. It’s rich in self-awareness, humor, and a hard-won understanding of how life works.”

Comfortable With Uncertainty by Pema Chodron. “I have my share of Buddhism for Westerners titles; the ones I return to are by Pema Chodron. The chapters are short readings that guide us through the various difficulties of being human in a modern world.”

Home: What It Means and Why It Matters by Mary Gordon. “A lovely exploration of what makes a space into home, and how acutely we feel longing for that ideal. As a nester of the first order, I love understanding the deeper impulses.”

Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? by Brian Fies. “A whimsical (and dark) graphical exploration of our old ideas of what the future could mean, and our grownup understanding of its limitations.”

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. “This cabinet of wonders offers a secret bookstore, Google, magical characters and digital natives interacting and exploring the pull of old and new. Sloan is deft and affectionate.”

Gary Snyder, born May 8 1930

Gary Snyder at home near Nevada City (photo by Dan Chung, Guardian UK, 2008)

SMOKEY THE BEAR SUTRA

BY GARY SNYDER

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings--even the grasses, to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

"In some future time, there will be a continent called America. It will have great centers of power called such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur, Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature."

"The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger: and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it."

And he showed himself in his true form of

SMOKEY THE BEAR

A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.

Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;

His left paw in the mudra of Comradely Display--indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that of deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;

Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys;

Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the west, symbolic of the forces that guard the wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the true path of man on Earth:

all true paths lead through mountains--

With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;

Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;

Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs, smashing the worms of capitalism and totalitarianism;

Indicating the task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes, master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.

Wrathful but calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him...

HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.

Thus his great Mantra:

Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana Sphataya hum traka ham mam

"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND BE THIS RAGING FURY BE DESTROYED"

And he will protect those who love the woods and rivers, Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:

And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL:

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.

Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.

Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
Will always have ripened blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.

AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT

...thus we have heard...

(may be reproduced free forever)