East Meets West (the back story)

Today I scheduled myself to write about Buddah and Jesus, or more broadly, Buddhism and Christianity. It's not an entirely recent collision in my life. Although I have been raised Christian in America, the East just seems to keep crossing the borders. It started with Mrs. Martin, my sixth grade English teacher at Kellogg Middle School in Idaho, who introduced me to both Shakespearean theatre and Zen poetry. Imagine instructing a group of 11 year olds to listen to the silence for ten minutes and then write about it; a remarkable woman to say the least. During that entire year, I would spend most lunch breaks sitting on the carpeted corner in her room writing haikus about the sound of the radiator and the buzzing of a fly. It wasn't the most popular year of my life, to say the least, but I learned to treasure stillness, a quality I found seriously lacking almost everywhere else. After Mrs. Martin, there was Alex Ruff, the first boy I fell in love with. I was fourteen, he was a self-professed Buddhist-Atheist-Anarchist. We would sit backstage during rehearsal for the spring play and he would describe in great philosophical detail his mix-tape ideology. As a three-month anniversary present, he gave me the book "Buddhism for Beginners" and a yin-yang necklace; I gave him a Bible.

After the particularly gnarly teenage heartbreak that was my breakup with Alex, I subconsciously broke up with Buddhism as well. Or so I thought. I discovered after months of near obsession with the Beat writers of the 1960s that they were heavily influenced by Eastern thought and practice; they were the Dharma-bums, as Kerouac put it. Turns out that most writers or artists who I am fascinated and inspired by have Eastern influence: Leonard Cohen spent almost 10 years in a Zen Buddhist centre, T.S. Eliot studied Hinduism and other eastern philosophies at great length, and Thomas Merton fully incorporated a study of eastern mysticism, especially Zen, into his Christian faith and prayer life.

Last fall, Elizabeth Hess introduced me to the Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way. It a collection of short chapters, or poems, that are central to Taoist thought. I used the book to explicate an Eliot poem, but as I studied it for my essay, the bits of Eastern wisdom that seemed so paradoxical at first read began to churn in my head at all times of the day. Ask anyone on England Semester: for about a month I was Taoist Girl. Every conversation, every class discussion, every church service, every walk outside--all I could do was find connections with Taoist thought and life. After returning from England Semester, I bought my own book of the Tao Te Ching as well as several other books on the subject to begin fleshing out my uneducated interest. I'll also be taking a class in the fall on Buddhism, but since it a Westmont Religious Studies class, it is about where Christianity and Buddhism meet and where they depart.

I've thought quite a bit on that point, both theoretically and personally. Personally, I'm hyper aware of the balance between my Christian faith and my Buddhist "studies." To clarify- whenever I pick up the i Ching to learn about Chinese divination and leave my Bible sitting on the shelf (or in my suitcase, rather), I feel somewhat conflicted. But on the other hand, I feel my own faith being strengthened and clarified by studying another. Buddhism, from what I have learned so far, does not contradict Christianity. Suzuki once said, "Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points." What is true in Buddhism is also true in Christianity, if not as central for most Christian's faith practices. Buddhism is about compassion, peace, surrendering ego and finding emptiness to be filled with God. What I have found most appealing is the Eastern embrace of paradox and "unknowing." Faith is not just a "right" doctrine and regular church attendance, it is a direct experience of God in our deepest self, whether found in a teaching, a walk outside, or a piece of art. In studying Buddhism, I also realize what is so profoundly different about Christianity. A knowable Savior, grace, and forgiveness. Words that get tossed around so often in sermons that we forget what they really mean. Without encountering other faiths, how do we know what we have?

Bishop Ambrose said in the fourth century that "all that is true, by whomever it has been said, is from the Holy Spirit". I've heard the same gist said by several Westmont professors: "All truth is God's truth." I encourage everyone to take a trip to the spirituality section at your local bookstore, step on to someone else's prayer mat, and empty yourself to find what is true.

To drive or not to drive; that is the question.

Hello, my name is Jessica Drake, and I do not have a drivers license. Upon hearing this news, if you did not already know it, you are likely experiencing one of several reactions. In the past four years that I have been eligible to have a license and have chosen not to get one, I've heard about every possible response. Most commonly, the reaction follows this pattern:

1. Raised eyebrows, indicating surprise and possible disbelief.

2. A question, choked out like a laugh that got stuck, "Are you serious?"

3. A quick social check, a straightening of posture, and a holding of breath in fear that they have offended me by not knowing about the disability I surely have to prevent me from this rite of passage.

4. Once assured that I am indeed fully functioning, the questions follow: "Don't you want to drive?" "Are you afraid?" "How do you get ANYWHERE?"

5. Then the declarative statement: "Driving is the best thing in the world once you get used to it."

6. The persuasive techniques: "Driving aimlessly really clears my head, it would be good for you." "Shouldn't you just get it, in case of an emergency?" "You should start practicing now, so you aren't a hazard when you do have to drive."

7. Finally, a look of either pity, frustration, or endearment that ends the conversation.

In response to that reoccurring encounter, I have a stockpile of explanations and excuses that I pull from depending on my conversation partner's socio-economic status, geographical location, age, politics, and hairstyle. The weather and my mood are also highly influential factors. Several of my favorite go-to reasons are as follows:

1. I've never really needed a car. Friends drove me where I needed to be in high school and no cars allowed the first two years on campus at Westmont.

2. A fit of anxiety overtakes me every time I enter a car from the left side.

3. I've saved a ton of money not paying for gas, insurance or car payments the last four years.

4. Save the earth, man, pollution is gross.

5. I'm planning on living in Europe anyway, no need for cars there.

6. Public transportation RULES!

7. The thought of being that crazy old lady in the corner house who has never driven a day in her life really appeals to me.

8. Being chauffeured makes me feel famous.

These have all surely factored in to my decision in some way or another, or at least I have realized them as benefits along the way. Honestly, I think I just missed that gene in every red-blooded American teenager that compels them to beg their parents to drive them to the DMV as a sixteenth birthday present. Really, it's not a gene at all, it's the craving for independence, and for most teenagers, that's a set of car keys. But while all my sophomore peers were climbing into the driver's seat of their mom's mini-van, I was boarding a plane to Germany for a month. I lived in a small Bavarian town where cars where not allowed in the city center and everyone was free to walk and bike along cobbled streets. Walking down a busy street, stopping to people watch or window-shop, or even strolling alone on a forest trail, that's what clears my head. It's an immediate sensory experience: the smells, the sounds of life happening, the cracks in the pavement. Following speed limit signs in an air-conditioned metal box on wheels is not as appealing to me.

So okay, I'm being idealistic and romantic here. Of course cars serve an important purpose, and of course we can not all live in walkable cities. I don't actually have a serious aversion to cars, in fact I've spent uncountable hours traveling in them, just always in the passenger side or backseat. I've seen most of this country fast-forward through a window thanks to touring with the Continentals and my family's crush on road trips (try Idaho to Kansas, through the Dakotas, that'll take the glamour out of driving). I've probably stopped at every rest stop between Seattle and San Diego. I really don't feel as if I've sacrificed any of my independence so far in life because I haven't spent more than 30 minutes of it behind the wheel of a car. In fact, if anything, I've had more freedom to experience more of the world. If you have never been on an Amtrak bus before, you are really missing out on some interesting people.

Now we come to the present. The kicker is, I want, no, I need to live off campus my senior year at Westmont. I'd like to stick around Santa Barbara in the summer too. Do I need to get my license to do this? The conflicting thing is, I've spent so long convincing people that I am a woman who does not need or want a license that it's like I'd be betraying myself to get one now. I'd be giving in. I've made it this far, how far can I go? Is it possible to live an independent life in America without a car? Am I revolutionary or just stubborn and afraid? Is one year of some inconvenience and shuttle-shame worth it? Worth what? What am I holding on to? What am I resisting? That is the question.

A Pledge

I, Jessica Drake, pledge to write one blog entry every day this week to compensate for my recent inactivity and to clarify my own thoughts on several major topics I've been chewing on all summer. To give my (few, but cherished) readers something to expect and to discipline myself, here are my chosen topics for each day of the week:

Sunday: To drive, or not to drive: that is the question.

Monday: Can Buddha and Jesus be friends?

Tuesday: He made the heavens and the earth: Creator God and the Zodiac.

Wednesday: The Beauty of Decay

Thursday: "Quod me nutrit me destruit"--my love-hate relationship with theatre.

Friday: Monastic Life and Me

Saturday: Enlightenment or Elitism?

Scribbles from Barcelona

After mayterm and before returning to the good ole US of A, I spent four days of surreal transition in Barcelona with Mr. John Jefferson. We drank a lot of bad cappucinos and a lot of great wine; we spent hours and hours with Picasso, Dali, and Van Dongen; we weaved through gothic streets in a constant state of lost; we stewed over Hopkins and the Beatniks; we ended the trip in complete poverty and spent our last pence on kebab. We also carried around paper--me, a journal; John, three carefully folded pages. My little scribbles ended up scattered through my journal, on napkins buried in the bottom of my backpack, or on torn scraps that were tucked into pages of my book. I've attempted to collect them and piece them together to shape into something worth posting soon while the trip is still recent, but most of them require a significant amount of editing or expounding. However, there is one small haiku that I am satisfied with. It was the first thing I wrote, on the train that we assumed would take us from the airport to the city center of Barcelona (lots of assuming in countries where you don't speak the language).

Charred-purple skies spread,

lit by low glowing lamp-stars.

Air: humid cigars.

Atlantis by W. H. Auden

Being set on the idea
Of getting to Atlantis,
You have discovered of course
Only the Ship of Fools is
Making the voyage this year,
As gales of abnormal force
Are predicted, and that you
Must therefore be ready to
Behave absurdly enough
To pass for one of The Boys,
At least appearing to love
Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.

Should storms, as may well happen,
Drive you to anchor a week
In some old harbour-city
Of Ionia, then speak
With her witty sholars, men
Who have proved there cannot be
Such a place as Atlantis:
Learn their logic, but notice
How its subtlety betrays
Their enormous simple grief;
Thus they shall teach you the ways
To doubt that you may believe.

If, later, you run aground
Among the headlands of Thrace,
Where with torches all night long
A naked barbaric race
Leaps frenziedly to the sound
Of conch and dissonant gong:
On that stony savage shore
Strip off your clothes and dance, for
Unless you are capable
Of forgetting completely
About Atlantis, you will
Never finish your journey.

Again, should you come to gay
Carthage or Corinth, take part
In their endless gaiety;
And if in some bar a tart,
As she strokes your hair, should say
"This is Atlantis, dearie,"
Listen with attentiveness
To her life-story: unless
You become acquainted now
With each refuge that tries to
Counterfeit Atlantis, how
Will you recognise the true?

Assuming you beach at last
Near Atlantis, and begin
That terrible trek inland
Through squalid woods and frozen
Thundras where all are soon lost;
If, forsaken then, you stand,
Dismissal everywhere,
Stone and now, silence and air,
O remember the great dead
And honour the fate you are,
Travelling and tormented,
Dialectic and bizarre.

Stagger onward rejoicing;
And even then if, perhaps
Having actually got
To the last col, you collapse
With all Atlantis shining
Below you yet you cannot
Descend, you should still be proud
Even to have been allowed
Just to peep at Atlantis
In a poetic vision:
Give thanks and lie down in peace,
Having seen your salvation.

All the little household gods
Have started crying, but say
Good-bye now, and put to sea.
Farewell, my dear, farewell: may
Hermes, master of the roads,
And the four dwarf Kabiri,
Protect and serve you always;
And may the Ancient of Days
Provide for all you must do
His invisible guidance,
Lifting up, dear, upon you
The light of His countenance.

Book Binge

We had a class at Trinity College this morning with Nick Johnson, an American who took off for Europe after college in the states to research German ensemble theatres in Berlin on a grant. From there, he got his PhD at Trinity, specializing in Samuel Beckett's prose work. Now he is teaching classes at Trinity and meanwhile is the artistic director of the up and coming Painted Filly Theatre (http://www.paintedfilly.com/). He also acts and directs. Yes, I was inspired and maybe fell a little bit in love. Nothing funny, it was just reassuring to hear someone describing my dreams as their reality.

Afterwards, I was feeling particularly hungry for some new art. As if the 20 plays I've seen in the last few weeks aren't enough, right? But art is paradoxical like that, the more you eat the hungrier you get. And each new flavor and texture is so delicious that you want to gorge yourself on it forever, until you are reminded that there are hundreds of others still to try.

So I stomped down the cobblestone streets of Dublin without a destination or a map or any real idea of where I was, which is always the best way to find what you want. For an appetizer, I found a little market with tables full of silver jewelry (I resisted buying another ring only because I have run out of fingers) and hand-bound leather journals (which I resisted only because of the two small crumpled bills in my wallet). There was a great vintage shop with pink walls and teal floors and beaded hangers with tempting frocks and jackets. Somehow I pried myself out of that store without a purchase as well. My thriftiness broke down at the sight of bookshelves with sale signs. For only four euro I bought a used copy of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis and the 50th issue of the Poetry Ireland Review from 1996.

At this point, I needed some real food if I was to continue aesthetically fasting, so I crashed at a table outside Metro Cafe. I expected good things based on the many smiling faces filling the tables (note: always pick restaurants based on the diners, rather than the menu) and was not disappointed. It was more like a community than a restaurant, almost everyone at the tables around me knew the staff and caught up about their hangovers and their families in between ordering. The guy who waited on me practically ordered for me, and jovially begged me to trust him that the penne pasta salad with pesto was the best thing I could possibly order that day in all of Dublin, besides a Guinness, of course. He was right. While eating, I people-watched and flipped through my new book of Irish poetry. One of my favorite finds so far is Peter McDonald. I'll share a little exerpt from his poem "Day-trip to Iceland" that I found particularly striking after the conversation this morning about the difference between America and Europe's cultural scenes.

Although we started in Belfast,

my people in the recent past

took their part in the general flight

to a fresh suburban satellite

where homes increase a hundredfold,

and few are more than ten years old,

where culture is a shopping mall

and there's no history at all

To sum up the rest of the day, I hit two more bookstores: Books Upstairs and Dubray Books. Dubray was first, a little more commercial but with a great poetry and drama selection. I bought Marina Carr's play "Woman and Scarecrow" because we had talked about her in class and if the Irish love her, I will probably love her too. Also, a collection of poetry by Leonard Cohen, "Book of Longing" because my Dad sent me his Live in London cd's and I've been crazy for his lyrics for the last two weeks. His writings, like his drawings that accompany his words on many of the pages, are rough and sensual with simple lines and smudged edges that touch something very human and very deep. When I read it, my chest tightens in that way when you try to hold back an excess of emotion in a public place.

Books Upstairs is dark and musty with lots of little neon orange sale stickers on covers. Basically, heaven. For cheap, cheap I bought "...She Also Wrote Plays: An International Guide to Women Playwrights from the 10th to the 21st Century" because, well, duh. And "The Beat Book: Writings from the Beat Generation" which is the best beat anthology I've found, with 18 authors. I leave you with one of my favorite excerpts from Kerouac's "On the Road":

"We seek to find new phrases; we try hard, we writhe and twist and blow; every now and then a clear harmonic cry gives new suggestions of a tune, a thought, that will someday be the only tune and thought in the world and which will raise men's souls to joy. We find it, we lose, we wrestle for it, we find it again, we laugh, we moan. Go moan for man. It's the pathos of people that gets us down, all the lovers in this dream."

Ireland Soundtrack