fi f te e n .

THE ILLUSION OF GRACE

T O U N R AV E L T H E M Y T H O F P E R S O N A
AND DIG UP SOME OF ITS INHERENT PROBLEMS

I ‘ve unhooked from the play of events through concen-

trated effort, but I did not expect this. I had no idea what
liberation meant, how it felt — and now the daunting task of
illustrating it. There’s a constant hustle to this work.
The train blasts through the tunnel. I can tell we’re deep
because the pressure changes. Not to worry, the engineers put
a lot of time into this. We drift under the bay to Embarcadero
with mechanical ease, the train spacious, carpeted. Christmas
Eve, the subway nearly empty. I send the day alone, with the
camera, the same process as writing, though much less heat.
My nose takes me to Haight Street, down another node of des-
peration, more colorful than Skid Row but the same malaise.
There are a lot of homeless in San Francisco, a lot of them
in pretty good shape, a lot of good old–fashioned drunks and
the more common drug addicts. The camera has me trigger
happy. Whenever something moves I want to pull focus, dial
in the light. When I write I’m in a tunnel, tuned to the shit
frequency waiting for the signal to continue. It doesn’t work if
the hopper’s empty. I have to continually fill it, with anything,
life. When the reserve runs low, when there’s not enough heat
to catalyze it, there’s no use picking up the pen.
I’ve know a few men, great for their own reasons — one
a Zen master, one a public figure — through the entire arc of
their lives. I was fortunate to witness the devolution of their
psyches. The old man is nothing like the one in his prime. Vi-
tality is lost long before the road ends, and what is left is only a
husk. The personality is organic. Like a fruit, it has its moment
of perfection and quietly rots.
The season, the tide; the land glowers with a whole range
of emanations, now all kindness and harmony, street thugs
and criminals. I can’t count how many I’ve encountered lately.
Not that I seek them out, but that’s where the beauty is, for
me. I’m forever driven to the abandoned areas in cities that
are large enough, old enough that the built up core, what was
once manufacturing or some other waning industry, collapses,
leaving a hollowed–out desperation that gets repurposed as an
art district. Whatever founders made the metropolis have long
gone, and with them the dreams that held their companies
there, disintegrated into the empty bones of days past, gone
to more profitable spaces. The Blade Runner effect. It’s not
only how you build complexity in an urban environment, but
in people as well. The broken soul is the poet, show me one
who is not.
But downtown is not a place to dwell. There is no place.
The curtain falls and the rats and vagrants emerge, the true
dharma of the street revealed: booming voices with their
pleas, bizarre statements, threats cascading like the notes of a
minor key, all of them out of tune. The thundering bass is the
city bus, the violin the wail of the siren and honking horns of
those in a hurry to leave the show early. Unlike the wilderness,
you have to enjoy it at a fast pace, or risk becoming part of the
production, this modern relapse.
Where do you go? We all have our archetypes, themes. I
always go to the sordid places, by instinct. Kye Soen brings
me to Macy’s, where I’m left to pace the floor under the halo-
gens, through clouds of heavy perfume; the steely chatter of
gazelles as they leap from aisle to aisle, the clatter of hooves
and hangers.
In UC Berkeley housing, I take several blocks looking for a
café, the second time I’ve done this, in different directions. No
luck. The place is run by savages! You can get a good coffee
here, but only on a particular street that branches off from an-
other in a direction I wouldn’t normally go. My own instincts
here prevent me from this simple convenience. I come back
with a dry mouth, bleary eyes.
***
Security checkpoint. Since I’m not a criminal I eventually
pass through, sit in an overly–heated chair behind the A–line.
Again I’m struck by the different strain of citizens here than
the bus depot, like two separate streams that run oblivious to
each other. In the seat next to mine a blackberry left behind.
A few minutes later a woman comes to collect it, who was
surprised that it was still there. If it had been a bus, the thing
would’ve sprang into someone’s pocket instantaneously, who
would then boast to everyone about the prize they’d found.
It’s a privilege to know both, to encounter these alternating
currents with hardly a thought to my own welfare, or how I’m
being perceived, but I’m not immune to their pressings: the
noise and dust and turmoil.
You don’t think of the risk until the 737 guns it at the end
of a mile of asphalt. How long it takes before the beast is air-
borne! The back of the cabin is full of fumes. Blasted back into
my seat, we drill straight across the bay into the God–fearing
blackness of our inevitable end, then the thing rolls its belly
and I can see nothing but cabin lights reflected on the glass.
The jets vibrate through the floor, driving us to what incred-
ible height, velocity only the captain knows. There were dips,
shimmies, sideways lurches, drops, but the beast was remark-
ably stable.
The madness waited on the ground at LAX. Though only
7PM, the info desk was shut down, and no one on the floor
knew how to catch the 232 down PCH except a maintenance
guy in a yellow vest who had me going down a bus lane to save
time. I eventually staggered to the other side of the airport
dragging my luggage, where I was informed there was no 232.
I had to pack it down to area 6 to catch the shuttle to lot C. I
stood under a sign that posted which shuttles were arriving.
Unfortunately, it was dead wrong. Whenever a C bus was due,
it was simply wiped from the board, or steamed past on the
other side of the street. I asked several bus drivers about it,
who assured me I was standing in the right place. Los Angeles
is a dirtbag city if you’re on foot.
It’s hard to detune, the long fit of activity a blur of some
kind of shut–down mode that travelling seems to induce. I can’t
recall much of it. I remember saying goodbye to Kye Soen. It
wasn’t like a Zen master disappearing silently by night, but a
complicated shaking of limbs, promises and last minute de-
tails. I was happy to be away from all the uncomfortable things
she secretly carries, secret to her anyway. We exist together
for a short time, move together, but how different our worlds!
Outwardly it seems we are the same, the illusion of grace.
There’s nothing complicated about transcending the self.
It’s old technology, well proven. No one can do it because
there’s no reason to take apart what has been so carefully
wound, like a tourniquet. Only someone who’s untied the
knots, and does so continuously, would be aware of this. When
I’m around her, most people, I sense all the suffering tightly
bound to her, to them, and it pains me. Here is the face of
the devil, the real one. I’ve weathered through so many years
beside nearly catastrophic failures, and with all my insight and
lifelong devotion to dharma I haven’t been able to staunch the
flow. They’re coming apart before my eyes, the illusion of self
broken into myriad aspects, which they count and worry over
as if they were their own children. Surviving your own igno-
rance, suffering through it, is remarkable in a way, but why not
strive to become liberated from it? Not only I, but everyone
you meet will thank you, throw flowers at your feet.
***
My mother has a pond on the back of her land, which is
never full enough, according to her. As the water evaporates
through the summer, her worries increase to a frenzy. It’s a
great concern for her. As for me, it never occurred to me to
judge the pond. It seems to operate correctly, within the laws
of nature. I spoke to her about it.
“The pond has its own way. It’s OK for it to be low.”
I don’t know if this had any effect, but I assume that it
didn’t. It’s rare that a mind realizes its weaknesses, its hin-
drances, and corrects its behavior, especially for the older ones
whose habits are so deeply ingrained.
What is it about our world that it must be painted over in
vivid colors, when truth alone, in its bare essence, is limitless
and profound? It’s not art that is at fault. The artist isn’t try-
ing to exist in some heightened state. Art is observation, com-
munication, wisdom. It’s the schoolyard dream that dooms
us all, the longing to be something we are not — to the ex-
tent, the degree. If we could lean, instead, toward the pursuit
of knowledge, understanding — toward a greater harmony,
a deeper continuity between the thought and intent and the
play of things… which is why I stay out of relationships, why,
I’m sure, all saints are singular. Because everyone is so compli-
cated, so many things needed to keep their illusions aloft — a
colossal waste of time and energy. It‘s like taking daVinci and
putting him to work in the sewer.
The more I see the beauty of existence, the less inclined
I am to filter it through whatever colored glass. It has to be
authentic or it infuriates us, whether we give voice to it or not.
A great friend of mine, the very elegant and well–spoken Nick
Perl, just posted this on facebook:
 NP: WARNING WARNING!!! New Agers are serial killers
waiting to happen. Do not trust anyone that is manically happy on
wheatgrass and Reiki, they can snap at any moment and go on a kill-
ing spree…. seriously. Repression anyone?
A few responses:
* I have meet some angry “new–age–peace–love–pink–cloud–
around–the–head” … scaaaarry!!!
* I thought new age was dead? I’m not up on all the fairies and
what not.
* I call them “uptight liberals” — I love Berkeley but it’s full of
‘em — why I had to cut.
Today we hate everyone, especially the good guys, because
it’s all fake. Layers after layers of deceit we hide even from our-
selves, but to anyone who cares to look at it plainly, who isn’t
following the program, it’s blatantly obvious.