Dear Nick,
As I work my way back to you, I figured I’d send you some thoughts from the road, before I return to face the insanity of the Great Eve.
As usual, I feel bad that I’m not there to help everyone with preparation. Although I understand your insistence on me traveling all year to integrate the route into my implicit circuitry, it doesn’t make things any easier with the boys back home. It’s hard to feel like I’m part of the team. Since I’m gone all year, I still end up the outsider. I see the way they look at me. I feel their hesitation when I come around. It’s as if I’ve never moved on from that odd little kid at the back of the classroom, his nose freaking everyone out. You know it’s a struggle for me, that I suffer with it. I guess that’s why you’re the monk and I’m the flying caribou. I’m reminded of the words you so often mumble: “These incarnations are our vehicles to explore the school of life, and we might as well take the curriculum.” Sometimes I wish my curriculum wasn’t so isolating. But now here is where you tell me, “Well, you can wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which fills up faster.”
I think you use that one too much, especially with me. I have hooves, you asshole. Lmao. ; )
I’ll move on from my whining (but isn’t that what gurus are for?). I’m sure you are anxious to hear about this year’s route. First, I’ll let you know straight away that I’ve shaved some time in northern Siberia, Miami, southern Tuvalu, eastern Cyprus and Chicago. While astral projection continues to be our safest and fastest method of travel, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to track down those with the practiced ability. Often, I’m making the decision to go with the youth, as so many adults are too busy ‘adulting.’ Unfortunately, much of this is being passed on – most of it unintentionally – to their children. I am astounded at how many things kids “have to do” in a day. Where do they fit in being a kid? Nevertheless, as this is part of my job, I am finding the dreamers. The trips have been exhilarating, confusing, joyous and sometimes frustrating (I know that is on me). With these young dreamers, you just never know where you’ll end up. Last week Alexei (you’ll remember him from last year and his letter concerning quantum mechanics and farming) took me to a deep memory of him walking with his mother where the Great Steppe meets the forest. We ran back and forth between the two seas, one of grass, one of tree. He laughed as I ate grass and I laughed as he insisted on walking upright. “This was her favorite place,” he said. He looked toward the sunlight, his smile still a smile but somehow changed, somehow reversed without moving, a smile alive but without its former self. He continued, “I know that I will see her again one day. For this, I will always do good.” I love traveling with Alexei. He travels so adeptly, so creatively and fully. But he travels only with emotion. We will be taking a chance on him.
Joey from Queens took us to the moon. Not just any part of the moon. Joey decided it would be a hoot to drop us on the darkside. I have to admit now that it was pretty funny, us appearing in the black and the cold of all colds. At the moment, I was less than happy. My nose did its thing when I’m upset and it scared Joey. I could barely make out his eyes and the terror in them, right before my nose tried laser beaming itself into another existence. The darkside didn’t know what hit it. You may have heard the reports later that day. I’m pretty sure CNN attributed it to solar flares and FOX NEWS said something convincing about the Obama administration. All idiots. Either way, once we got back I calmed Joey down with an apology and five jokes about you and elves. He refuses to believe that you punched one once (I think it was Duanne?) and that we had to restrain you. I told him even monks lose their crap sometimes.
They are ready and eager in Kathmandu. Since partnering with the great teachers in the 1950’s during the population growth spike, we’ve obviously benefited from their halftime recharge every Great Eve. I still get goosebumps before and after entering the spacious consciousness of these compassionate bodhisattvas. The Apollo 13 crew enjoyed a far out ride when they used the moon as a slingshot, but I’m willing to bet this kind of thruster-whip-assist might blow their space boots off. We are a lucky bunch to have these sages of spirit, these colossi of clarity, these magicians of meditation. This year I volunteered my services as test pilot for a new thruster mechanism that they’ve been playing with. Without going too deeply into it, it involves a profound and altogether strange understanding of the mundane. I’ve never tried to contemplate something with such ‘middle’ to it, something with such simplicity, peace and breath. Bottom line: it works. Those gorgeous goof balls shot me through, back and around the Himalayas in three seconds. I was the fire of the rocket on the ant’s ass. How quickly we may progress when the weight of category, hatred, greed and ignorance are eliminated.
At your urging, I met with the psychologist you recommended. I had to work hard to let go of my judgements and suspicions toward the field, with its medications and clinical definitions of mental states. Going into the meeting, I continued to grip my preconceptions. But then Dr. Gopnik walked in, all starry-eyed and eager. Full of life. The good Dr. G – or, Alison as she insists – quickly put me at ease. She wasn’t shy about scratching under my chin, along my sides and that remote area on top of my butt (how often I only want humans to do just that and nothing else).
“Does it bother you if I define you as a construction of my mind?” she said.
“Maybe,” I offered. I will admit that I offered this with correlational smirks and batty-eye-blinks. “Your honest question should have been: 'does it bother you that I define you as unreal?'”
“I wouldn’t have guessed that you’d be a smart ass,” she said.
“Better than a dumb ass?” I felt dizzy with dopamine. Her scratching was remarkable. “It is so interesting that humans must see something in order to designate it as real. What if I told you that a thought is as real as your thumb? Certainly, they exist on different spectrum points, but you get the idea.”
Alison moved close and bent down, put her big lips close to my ear. I could feel her breath move through my ear fur as she whispered, “I’d say that is quite a dangerous thought.“
At that point my nose perked up and it took all of my composure to keep the dimmer switch on low. I stammered something about babies and enlightenment. This toggled her interest but did not rattle the dexterity and focus of her fingers on my coat.
“Well, I do think babies are akin to some of our most brilliant scientists,” she said. “Scientists madly in love and swimming in the ethereal elixir of constant discovery.”
“Do you suppose that as babies, we know that suffering is on its way?” I asked with my eyes closed, picturing Alison and I on a beach. A small swimsuit. No rules. Many hours together.
“Well, since we are in dream here and my answers probably will not be recorded…” she whispered while twirling her fingers around my antlers. “…I think we come into this world crying because we perceive that we were just pulled out of the bliss of everything-ness. What a neat trick to kickstart our path. I’m pretty sure babies are quickly aware that suffering is here and here to stay.” With that she slapped my ass and gave me the most exquisite wink. "Hee yah, ey bucko?"
Alison and I are going to see each other again, very soon. It might work. I’m at my best with the long distance thing. Much more simple.
I finally put together that roundtable I’ve been discussing for decades. We ended up at one of your favorites, Grumpy’s, in northeast Minneapolis, MN, over the course of three evenings. Michelle Obama, Tom Robbins, Thich Nhat Hanh, Krista Tippett and David Eagleman. We all drank too much the first night. I think everyone needed a night of letting it all hang out. Once Michelle finally turned off her phone (Barack kept calling to talk about nothing), she was able to have a good time. She kept beating Tom in arm wrestling. Thich kept beating Krista in soft-word wrestling. I had no idea that Thich could break dance! David had a few too many shots and wouldn’t shut up about the brain’s job of simulating the future. He kept shouting “It’s all a god damn illusion!” No one could convince him that we were indeed aware that the neural networks involved in short- and long-term decision-making are fundamentally separate. I caught Krista trying to sneak in a recorder seven different times. “Shhhhhhh,” she whispered into her glass of tequila. “Don’t tell anyone. I have sooooo many good questions. Pleaaaaaassseee. Ruuuuuudddyyyyyyy.”
While night one was arguably the most important, nights two and three were more productive. Being as I was with some of the most prolific producers of this time period, we set out to harvest thought as food, conversation as the nexus of nourishment. Using you and the culture that has grown around you as our kick off point, we discussed wisdom, belief and perception. We contemplated materialism and hope. We were not afraid to fall into rabbit holes together and play in the weeds. I’ll give you a rundown:
Highlights of The Harvest
- In our inaugural Staring Contest No Smiling Tournament, Michelle came out champion. Her and David wore themselves ragged in the championship match, (talking, blinking, singing, etc is allowed, while smiling and looking away is not) as David sang her a song about her ‘mean girl’ youth and Michelle countered with a ‘look-i’m-you-doing-your-nerdy-scientist-dance’ routine. Michelle’s dance, a kind of awkward flapping centered around pulling her pants up above her belly button (how is that always funny?), finally broke David. He smiled, authentically, for the first time since 1989 when, at the age of 18, he first heard Cher’s hit, If I Could Turn Back Time.
- (Krista) “Nicholas is everywhere. Pervasive wisdom would have us assume that a person does not exist unless we can see, touch, feel and hear his body. Perhaps this is a dangerous assumption.”
- (Tom) “Pervasive wisdom would have us assume that a person does not exist unless they agree with us.”
- (Thich) “We must not close our hearts to those who choose to believe differently. Nicholas, whether he lives at the North pole, or in our hearts, or in an alley – he lives to serve the child in us all. He reminds us that we were all children once, that we heard each other’s cry and by instinct we came to each other. We did not subject ourselves to the illusion of difference. We only saw ourselves.”
- (Michelle) “I think the thing I love most about Nicholas is that he often defies category and transcends any kind of label. People from all walks of life write letters to Santa.”
- (David) “Perhaps the trick in all of this is to become Santa. Nicholas exists in the way that a practice of meditation exists. We can decide to take time out of our day to practice. Practice breathing. Practice unveiling. Practice compassion and giving and sharing.”
- (Tom) “Kids are scientists constantly experimenting. We need to give them less toys and more tools. Give them the tools and experience to work through failure and heartbreak. Only then will they learn the tools of compassion and love.”
- (Michelle) “Every year at Christmas, right at the height of all the love and warmth I feel when we are together, I hope that we can remember to carry that thread through the rest of the year. How is it that most of us don’t?”
- (Krista) “All over the world there is a moment in most families where the seven or eight or nine year old comes to ask mom or dad, ‘Is Santa real?’ It is a question of collective immensity and a type of earthly intimacy. In this question asked by so many, in the simple processing power of so much identical data whirling and wondering, perhaps there is a by product that is an answer? If that much consciousness upon an idea does not confirm the very idea’s realness, then what does?”
- (Tom) “I swear, if people don’t stop giving each other mountains of shit, those shit mountains are going to get big enough that they’ll become too big for their own good. We’ll grow a Shit Mountain Planet, protruding from the surface of Earth like an unwanted second head. Eventually, this mountain, this cosmic zit of dramatic proportions, will pop it’s top. The ensuing explosion will tear a hole in the fabric of space-time, rendering us all, officially, fucked. To the Great Big Black Hole in the sky we will go – and-a-Ho-Ho-Ho. Here’s your bottle of Jim Crow.”
- (Thich) “I’m a pretty good dancer. If Tom and David would like, I will show you. I don’t want them to be sad.”
- (David) “Thich is a supreme badass.”
- (Tom) “Thich, your moves complete me.”
My next stop is coming up and I have to sign off. I hitched a ride with a trucker on his way to the Black Hills of South Dakota. The Lakota call this place the “womb of the universe.” I can dig that. There is certainly an energy here, one I feel as we approach. An island on the plains, an uproot of earth amid a sea of prairie. I’m thinking this may be one of our last stops. The boys and I can graze upon the grasslands biome and leave some natural fertilizer behind. As you know, I’m all about giving back.
See you soon, old-man-dreamer-monk-monkey. Be good, or be good at it.
- R