wayne pease smokysun's heaven

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

now i see myself as other people see me

and it's not pretty! yes, the cataract operation on my left eye worked. i'm blown away by the clarity and brightness of colors. and since my right eye in the former state, i can compare. wow, i'd been seeing the world in soft focus, and this included my own physiognomy. no wonder i never felt old (oscar wilde says we never do). and deepak ch9opra says we grow old like catching a disease from all the people around us. shocking, to see myself looking like all the old geezers at the coffee shop.

what do i do now? nothing like exercise can exorcise the signs of age: the stringy neck, the half-sunken cheeks, the thin lips. can i live with this new image? no, i can't afford plastic surgery, and folks who go that route always look artificial, their smiles pasted onto a manikin. accepting my ancient face in the mirror doesn't seem like the way to go, despite every guru i've ever listened to.

true, i thought maybe by this time i'd be happy to be seen as wise. i spouted wisdom in my twenties. i remember a guy at the youth-hostel on the island of skye, who after listening to me, said, "o no, not another one." i guess in those days long ago when the young read books we had something we wanted to say. in a recent survey of millennials, 75% said they wanted to be rich, and 50% said they wanted to be famous.

i suspect the bus-stations in new york deposit many a fortune-seeker in the big city, ready to combat. alas, as one older wise-guy said, "the young always underestimate the competition." David Bowie, rock icon, died today. i see them lining up by his coffin, pleading for him to pass onto them his pizazz and charm. i've never been a fan, except i liked the daring of his makeup and costume. again, i've missed the passions of a whole other generation.

now that i look like a gnarled tree-trunk, i should be able to drop a few fruits of wisdom into the laps of the young. at the same time i think the time of humans on the earth short. i could say, "sing in the lifeboats", "dance first and get your graduate degree later," take a trip around the world while it's still possible. "do it while you can," declared my grandma on her 80th birthday." all these seem to me true.

alas, the wind blowing through these vine leaves on my head echo old stories, tunes no one has time to listen to. maybe fame and fortune reasonable goals. in my end is your beginning.

Friday, January 8, 2016

how travel puts the imagination in peril

ugh, my body's fighting off a bug. eye-surgery coming up monday, i can't afford to be sick. no coughing permitted, no sudden sneezing, nothing abrupt - the list long as my arm. three types of drops two or four times a day, one for a month. everybody tells me the operation a snap, ten minutes at most. all the prep and post what worries me. i'm not good at following directions.

to top it off, my imagination restricted to the present, a tough customer without booze, drugs, or train-travel. in former days i could pull out a whole box of russian literature (in translation) and float off to love among the peasants, cruelty in the upper classes, the religious vitriol of tolstoy and the sad scenes of checkov. i pounded across the steps with the red army and died of a white army bullet, still miraculously alive in my chair.

or, india, the tales of tagore, the ramayana, the mahabarata, hindu dances, Buddhist rituals. a life full of music and color and the smell of incense, no garbage allowed. aye, and there's the rub. the trash in the streets of kathmandu, the plastic bags littering the highways and alleys. the crush of rickshaw riders trying to get my business, a beggar boy crying at the car window. what happened to the romance?

even in japan they have something called snapping, where a store owner goes for your jugular when you've touched a painting or bowl or locked yourself in the restroom. the japanese smile turns demonic, the gestures and emotion cold, not like in the fairytales and haiku. the reality overwhelms the literary, the pages lay in ashes.

my imagination, too. here at home i could imagine a russia soaked in soul and poetry, i dreamed up an india of jewels and naked courtesans. japan had the restraint of a wooden doll. all gone, all of it. evidently i can't imagine what is in front of me, the moment brutal, the ticket torn in half. i can only imagine what i haven't seen.

and everybody i know wants to go on the road, experience the highs of primitive civilizations, voodoo ceremonies, ancient gods, go skinny-dipping in the sacred pools of bali. to bad, too bad, they will experience an ecstatic experience of loss and gain barking dogs, terribly deformed beggars with the rich stepping over them. for someone raised on children's books the result can be a loss of hope, as well as an acquisition of knowledge, how people really live.

of course, you may say that's what you want. good luck to you. i've found it cheaper and more rewarding to line my bedroom with cork like proust. reviving and reliving all of history, soaking up the formulae of newton, and the pornography of henry miller. by all means resist anything real, if you would have a delightful life.