More Self Quarantine

Some do not understand

that we are perishing here.

Those that understand this

bring to rest their quarrels.    Buddha

  Day two of social distancing/quarantine.  As I sat at the window reading, a northern mockingbird hit the glass pretty hard. It flopped into the flowers and then hopped up to a branch on the nectarine tree. On the pane it left some grey feathers and a shit streak. I watched the bird stand motionless and wondered if I was going to have to put it out of its misery. An act I truly dreaded. The bird didn’t move for five minutes but held tightly to the limb. Then slowly it lifted each wing, stretching them out and seeing if they were broken. Again the mockingbird remained still for another five minutes staring straight ahead. I waited, not wanting to frighten or stress it out any more than it already was. I guessed its neck wasn’t broken because it moved its wings. And then another few minutes went by, the bird as still as a statue. A sparrow alights on a branch close to the wounded mockingbird which causes the stunned bird to turn its head for a better look. The sparrow hops from branch to branch and finally flits across the yard and disappears into the guava bush. The mockingbird shakes itself a few times as if catching its breath.  Satisfied, it flies off over the hedge. I’m relived that I do not have to go out and strangle the poor thing. A tragedy narrowly averted. 

 This morning, the fifth day of quarantine, I was looking for a quote from The Hero With A Thousand Faces and couldn’t find my old battered, highlighted, and underlined copy that I’ve carried around with me for thirty years. Longer actually. I wonder which little minx, or delightful muse, absconded with it. I have a pretty good idea. So it’s ok. Hopefully it will do her some good. I’ll text her tomorrow. 

   Patience is not one of my virtues so I went online to Chaucer’s Books and found they have a copy in stock. I can pick it up later. Curbside service. Now if I can only remember what the quote was about. Anxiety, I think. Or perhaps it was chaos. Oh wells!

  For an hour I tried to track the book with no success. Hmmmm…  The plot thickens. I’ve gifted this book (and The Joseph Campbell Companion) so many times. So it could be anywhere. Kinda..  But it’s not in this house, thats for sure. 

  One of the first, or maybe the first, book I ever read on my own and for pleasure was The Once and Future King by T.H. White. It was during the summer after sixth grade. The book was a graduation gift from my teacher that year, Ned Kerwood. I read it as a great adventure story. I was innocent of the legend and mythology behind the tale. After all, I was only eleven, about to turn twelve. Stories didn’t have to have morals or messages. But for a while I wanted to be a knight. King Arthur seemed so wise and so good. Romantic times. Little did I know.

  Later, Monty Python’s hilarious and brilliant look at medieval England also struck a chord with me.  Things may not always be what they seem. Those brave knights would never be the same in my mind. Then after reading Joseph Campbell I was directed toward the Wolfram Von Eschenbach version of the tale of Parzifal. Another world opened up for me in this epic poem. Of course, by using Campbell as a guide to help explain how the old and archaic verses can still shed light on how one lives life today. The most wonderful part of the story that has stayed with me for a long time now is how each knight starts off on his quest not by following a well worn trail but by forging a path of his own. (As they also do in The Holy Grail.) Such, Campbell reminds us, as it should be with each one’s life. If the path you’re on is too easy it’s probably someone else’s.  And lately, I’m feeling that my path is too comfortable.

  Thinking all these things I decided to watch some of The Power of Myth, those amazing interviews of Campbell by Bill Moyers. And then came the news that Jean Erdman Campbell, Joseph’s wife, had passed away at the age of 104.  Jean was an amazing talent as well, a modern dancer who influenced generations of artists. (In her obit I’m reminded that she went to Miss Hall’s.)

  I had the pleasure of meeting her, for a second, at a screening of The Hero’s Journey at The Pacifica Institute. In her eighties at the time, she was an erudite, elegant and beautiful woman. It was a thrill to listen to her stories. 

  So now I have to watch the interviews. 

  Well, I didn’t find the quote I was looking for in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, not yet anyway. But I did come close in Episode 6 of The Power of Myth. It’s the final interview and it was conducted just a few months before Campbell died.  He is as brilliant and humorous and enlightening as ever. At one point Bill Moyers assumes that Joseph is a man of, or a man with, faith. Joseph says that he is not.  Moyers is a bit taken aback. And Campbell says”No, I don’t have to have faith, I have experience.” 

“What kind of experience?” Moyers asks. 

Campbell replies, “I have the experience of the wonder of life.”

 And I said to myself, “There you have it!” **

 It’s an amazing exchange made all the more poignant knowing how close to the end of life Joseph Campbell was at the time. If you can’t be inspired by this great teaching perhaps you’re missing the point completely. 

 For some reason, and again here I’m thinking about Joseph Campbell, I am weathering this quarantine (day 60) and recession with a modicum of hope. This despite how horrible things are generally in the world right now.  During the Great Depression, or what we may now start calling the First Great Depression, Campbell lived in a cabin in rural and rustic Woodstock, NY. There were simply no jobs to be had. So he read and read and read. He was in a very bohemian community were everyone kept an eye on everyone else. And he had a dollar in his room. One dollar bill.  And he knew as long as he had that he was going to be ok.  He didn’t know how, he couldn’t see the future, but he had an inner strength, you might call it a belief in himself. And as he said in interviews, it wasn’t faith. 

  So here I am with a dollar (symbolic) on my desk and on day sixty of my social distancing I’m more and more confident that we, at least California, are taking the correct measures and precautions. However, I also know the craziness is far from over. 

What would I ask Richard Dawkins et al about Campbell?  I guess I would ask, wouldn’t the world be a much more spiritual place if instead of pastors and ayatollahs, reverends and gurus, preachers and yogis we had more professors like Campbell? Those teachers that pointed at the meanings of the scared stories rather than taking them literally and historically? Of course I know the answer. But I’ve always wondered why Campbell hasn’t come up in the lectures and discussions of Hitchens, Harris and the rest of the atheists. I’m pretty sure Campbell was an atheist. He certainly didn’t believe in a personal god. Perhaps his views don’t fit in with the notion that religion, as Hitchens said, poisons everything. But only because most people have never viewed their own beliefs as myths. All other religions are false except mine as is so proudly proclaimed by every major faith. Which makes it much easier for the poison to spread. 

** A sidebar — While going through an old journal from 1990 I found this quote on the last page.  “I have the experience of the wonder of life.” Which just goes to show you (or me) that I have been thinking and meditating on the same stuff for, at least, thirty years. It does not seem possible that I actually do have a consistent life view shaped by some genius thinkers that I have studied. (As an autodidact.)  Although, admittedly, there indeed seems to be evidence for a certain life philosophy that has been steadier than I may have acknowledged. I do think that some amount of growth has occurred since I wrote that old, and sometimes cringe worthy, journal. Even if it’s hard to measure. 

There is nothing more pathetic than caution

when headlong might save a life,

even, possibly, your own.    Mary Oliver

Closing Time Revisited

Oh, the night life, ain’t no good life,
But it’s my life, yes it is.        Willie Nelson


  Once the doors are locked and the neon is shut off I pour myself a drink. The craziness of the night is finally over and I need to catch my breath.  This time of night always comes and it is time to reflect and gather my wits. I put on the jazz iPod and just sit for a few minutes. Pharaoh Sanders plays then Keith Jarret then Charles Lloyd.  My mood elevates.  A few sips of fine whisky act as both a restorative and relaxant. Generally after eight hours of bar nonsense I need both. I leisurely clean up and stock for tomorrow.
  And then tonight I sit at table eight for a while and think back on all the bars I've closed up over the years. All the nights like this where I was alone after hours with my thoughts. I am by nature a night owl and it takes me a while to unwind after a hectic evening of noise and parties and the normal flow of a busy room.
  This place is easy, we close at eleven.  But over the years I've found myself sitting in dark rooms well after three am.  No more of that for me. Those old rock and roll clubs and giant ballrooms can be cold and lonely in the hours before sunrise. There was a place I worked that by the time the band broke down and the joint was cleaned up I would find myself walking out into the first hints of dawn on the eastern sky. Usually sweaty and smokey and perhaps a little drunk I would walk the few blocks to my house, ears ringing from the music, airing out my clothes as well as my brain. That life couldn't last me forever, I was becoming pasty and hollow-eyed and my friends were beginning to worry.

  There was another room on a lakeshore that was a beautiful place to sit late into the night and listen to the waves. With the doors locked but the windows facing the lake open I would unwind to the slow rhythm of the water. Looking across the lake I could see Mount Greylock, the highest point in the state, with its beacon glowing reassuringly.  The same Mount Greylock the great Herman Melville gazed at as he wrote Moby Dick from his study across town at Arrowhead. I usually sat alone but sometimes an alluring friend would join me whose charm and beauty made it hard to go home. We would end up watching the sun come up over the mirror like surface of Pontoosuc Lake, or in winter, over the ice. Some of those nights I hated to see end.

 The bar at the Dalton VFW was an old club that closed earlier, around midnight, and that room had a pool table. After wiping down the bar I would practice my game for an hour or two. Sometimes my friend from the lake stopped by and off we would go to catch last call somewhere.  But the time spent alone with the only noise being the clacking of pool balls can be as therapeutic as any session with a good therapist. Keeping your thoughts focused on angles and trajectories sharpens the wits and skills needed to navigate the normal daylight world of ordinary people. Which as a person of late night habits and routines I usually avoid unless absolutely necessary.  I got pretty good at the game and for a while could hold my own at tables around town. But once I went to work at the Encore Room my skills atrophied to the point where I couldn't string three wins together. You have to keep at it to stay competitive and I let my edge slip away. 

 Cattleman's was yet another fine bar to sit at after the gamblers and harmless reprobates left for the night to patronize the neighborhood taverns lower on State Street. I would often sit at the rail under a dim hanging lamp with a stack of Food and Wine magazines sipping whisky and, as they say, cooling my jets. Sometimes I would raid the walk-in cooler and make myself a late snack if my reading made me hungry. I also found this to be a good time to finish up paperwork and make schedules for the coming week. I could be rather productive after midnight when the only distractions were the humming of the ice machine and the clinking ice melting in my jar of amber liquid. 

  The Lounge in New Hope, PA had a patio that overlooked the pool and a long field that ended at a woodlot. At night the underwater lighting illuminated a small area surrounding the pool leaving the outline of the trees dark and mysterious. I spent the humid summer nights out on the deck looking out into the field. It was a summer of fireflies. Just after midnight they were as bright and as numerous as the stars. More so in fact because the thick sticky air made looking into the cosmos like looking through opaque glass. Hazy and unfocused were the heavens through that July and August that I made Bucks County my home. Change was on my mind as I relaxed in the night air hoping maybe a breeze would come up from the trees and cool my skin.  From that vantage point I formed my plan to move back to California, a decision I've never regretted.

  The Emerald Room was a wonderful place to relax late at night after the guest elevator was shut off.  On the top floor of the Berkshire Hilton Inn it was the highest spot in the city. And I had my choice of views depending on my temperament.  The windows that looked to the north across the city was the cosmopolitan view. At night the lights of Pittsfield were soft and romantic. The town was just dim enough that the faded grandeur of the old buildings hinted at their past elegance. I could imagine the glory days of the city before the big employer, General Electric, pulled out and left the town to begin its decent into a nebulous shadow-like apparition of its former bustling self. I'm told that now, years later, a comeback is taking place and the old downtown, North Street, is starting to come alive with new shops and galleries and theaters. There is hope in the air and a feeling that good days are fast approaching. Not an uncommon wish over the years by the optimistic boosters of my old hometown.
  The vista to the west was more rural and my preferred spot to relax, and I admit, sometimes nap for a few minutes. Big soft green couches faced the window and after a long day and while waiting for the bar downstairs to wrap it up for the night I'd pretend to finish up my paperwork but instead my eyes would take in the outline of the Taconic Range of rolling dark hills. On nights of a full moon the gentle light on the trees was mesmerizing. And at the height of Autumn when the harvest moon was fat in the sky the hills would glow through the night like polished copper. It was a timeless touch of wildness seen from the heart town. With most of the city asleep it was a sight that was mine alone and I enjoyed it selfishly, feeling lucky that I was on top of my world.
  Some nights the pull of the woods was too much and I would drive out to the State Forest and sit listening to the wind through the oaks and maples. In the darkness I was as far away from the bustling bar as I could get. It's been a life long challenge to balance these two worlds. One of good company with clever friends and fine wines, music and conversation, and long raucous dinners.  The other of solitude and time to contemplate what is really the good life and how to best live in accordance with my inner thoughts. I love both my cherished and crazy and brilliant friends and my times of semi-seclusion. I need both. Usually I don't take the time for myself until I'm close to the snapping point, run ragged by the distractions of work and a hectic social agenda. I have to force myself to checkout for a few days and not feel like I have to be at every party, because there is always a solid reason to go out and have "just the one." So I'll continue to struggle with the dilemma of how to best use my limited time so to get the most out of this short and wonderful and confusing life as I try to walk the line.

  I now turn the key at yet another bar. It’s a classy joint called The Pickle Room. It used to be Jimmy’s Oriental Garden, a famous Santa Barbara restaurant and watering hole until the owner retired. My friend Bob Lovejoy convinced the city to let him reopen the bar. The problem was that the building is a historic landmark and strict rules were in place to prevent damage to the property. Bob jumped through some hoops to get the OK to reopen. He lovingly cleaned the place up. It had been closed for seven years and needed some attention. Bob was a regular at Jimmy’s so this was more than him just wanting to own a bar. He wanted to recreate the feel of Jimmy’s in its heyday. Jimmy’s was known for decent food and an eclectic clientele of artists, working guys, neighbors and musicians. Drinks were classic and strong. One of the best bartenders to ever stir a martini in Santa Barbara, Willy Gilbert, stood behind the counter five nights a week. Bob brought him back and now I’m lucky enough to work with him.
  The Pickle is about the closest thing that Santa Barbara has to a speakeasy. It’s small, dark, has no windows, no phone and jazz is usually playing in the background. The booths and barstools are red and historic and antique Chinese lanterns hang from the ceiling. The lighting is warm and romantic.
 Sitting alone at the empty bar after everyone (almost) has left, the money counted and the whiskey stocked I’ll usually sit awhile as is my wont. I let Willy’s playlist entertain me. Sinatra, Billy Holiday, Dinah Washington and Nina Simone sing from the Sonos speakers and I find it impossible to go home just yet. If I’m not alone we will dance a slow song to Nina’s soulful voice lulling us into a comfortable haze of contentment.
  Sadly, Lovejoy passed away. It is taking the room a long time to recover from the loss. Gone is his great humor and wit. His legendary generosity. His unforgettable love of a bar full of friends.
  Now on those nights, as I finally turn off the music and the lights, I feel a great emptiness in that room that Bob so passionately brought back to life.
  Good bars come and go. Friends come and go. Some friends just drift off and find different parts of life they need to investigate. And then others leave suddenly and permanently leaving an ache that remains forever. Memories are everything and when a sufficient amount of time passes you are able to reflect on those good times that make life tolerable.

  Tonight, it is Sunday, I am sitting at the bar of a favorite Italian restaurant. For now I’m alone. I’ll be joined a little later for a nightcap and a jolt out of my melancholia. But until then it is pretty much the same story. Charles Brown is singling softly in the background. The lights are dimmed and I look out the windows at the rain. Everything outside is black and white. The pavement black, the buildings white, the sky black, the streetlights white. It’s not quite midnight.