I’ve never driven to Pittsburgh by way of Cumberland before so I’ve never come up the Mason Dixon Highway, now aka the Flight 93 Memorial Highway. I listened for much of the drive to an old This American Life episode on my iPod, Hoaxing Ourselves and Others. It included an excerpt from Dani Shapiro’s memoir, which I am now keen to read.
It’s a dreary day, weather-wise, but I wanted sushi for lunch so I walked a little ways, settled in at the bar at Sushi Kim. The fortune cookie said: “Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”
The paradox was that I had been looking forward to that cookie, but the fortune made it impossible for me to stop thinking about my perceived experience of the cookie instead of the cookie itself.
Back in high school, our principal, Dr. Jenkins, taught a course in Japanese culture and literature. I remembered when he explained the Zen concept of really being in the moment. And, since then, I think I’ve been in the moment, oh, maybe five times.
Is that the curse of being a writer, or a human?
Why is there a fortune cookie at a sushi place?
Because it was a Korean sushi place? That’s my best guess.
I don’t know whether it’s so much a product of being a writer as it is the product of having words, and thus assigning anything we name to a category, thereby judging it and weighing it and missing the moment entirely.
Dogs live entirely in the moment (except maybe when they’re sitting in front of a kitchen counter where you’re making meatloaf), and I always think that’s because they don’t have names for things.
I think the answer to your question is yes. (Because I’m glib.)
But seriously, I think it’s yes to both, being human and being a writer. I see it in most everyone around me, and that’s where it would seem exponential for writers precisely because we’re observing everything, even our own lives. (I’m actually working on a project that deals with that a little bit, now that I think about it.)
So being glib made me think more about why I would say that, joke or not…it’s like a moebius strip of observations…
Two weeks ago the fellows and I ate lunch at a marvelous little hole-in-the-wall Korean place; I think I had something called BimBap (I know that the name of the dish reminded me of comic book sound effects) – beef strips and various greens atop a mound of rice, and with a marvelous helping of cooked cabbage and cucumbers.
Anyway – I think the words-and-analysis thing (as opposed to simply being in the moment) is universal.
The thing that makes writers accursed is that they (at some point) learn that they have the ability to distill the words down to a pungent base, and strike a (universal) chord – like a well-made helping of BimBap (or whatever that dish was!)
btw – the funniest (and most thought provoking!) thing in the Korean restaurant we visited was a hand written notice above the “Today’s Special” sign, which announced that they would no longer serve any Chinese dishes after April 15. We couldn’t decide if it was a political statement; and if so, how to take it!
I agree with Clair and David.
In order to achieve life in the moment, the average human has to almost step out of their own life. That is difficult for any average Josephine or Joe, but it must be damn near impossible for the writers.
Success for all of us would be living in the moment at least once a day. I can do it when I watch the Cardinal singing it’s heart out in the tree top as the last rays of the setting sun touch it. Or being with 40,000 others as we watch the walk off winning homer in the bottom of the ninth.
The moment is always there to embrace, but our ability to shed our daily cares and step away determines how tight the hug is.
I think. . .
Human, positively human.
I am a student of Buddhism* and living in a state of mindfulness is a very very difficult thing (at least for me). When I do try and meditate (focus on the monent), I practice by counting breaths. The idea is to count from one to ten and stay in the moment of the breathing and the counting without your mind wandering and then do it all over again. I can barely think of the number of times I have gotten past ‘two’. Switching the brain to not constantly think, worry, obsess, fantasize, etc., etc., is very hard. But it may be important to try now and then.
*-I say student because I took instruction in a Buddhist monastery about ten years ago and I think it takes about 20 or 30 years to “get” it. At least it will for me. And I have not yet been able to grasp the concept of reincarnation or the sound of one hand clapping. But I do grasp the concept of suffering as a fact of life and I find great comfort in that.
I gave this issue a lot of thought last week as I completed my security clearance paperwork, about which I wrote quite a bit yesterday vis a vis memory and third parties; alas, it did not post. At any rate, I�ll recap some of that, much less elegantly today, as pertains to this topic and see if it goes up.
Since I have been working in the non-cleared space for a couple of years, my previous info �expired,� and I had to do it again. In the interim, the form has changed, and they want even more dirt. Since this is a 30-section form, it is hard to imagine getting much more granular, but it is possible. And since I have actually had a life, mine completed form ended up being 110 pages long, because every time you say �yes,� you have to explain it, provide someone to verify who is not a someone you used elsewhere, and so on. One of the things that filling out security paperwork does is force you to closely examine your life in discrete measurable pieces. For Top Secret, the bulk of it goes back ten years, other than the things that go the length of the entire history of Ever. After the investigation begins, your life is just grist for the mill, and they actually chat up everyone you�ve listed, and then anyone or anything these folks are foolish enough to mention. Lawyers make good friends for this kind of thing, because they know enough to only answer precisely and exactly what is asked, and not to volunteer anything. Taciturn good; breezy, bad.
And so in walking barefoot through the glass of my own life, I discovered something I already knew but did not acknowledge. According to their measurable events, I have spent my whole life trying to get to some other place. Every thing I have ever done was a means to get to somewhere else; no single thing was to be enjoyed in and of itself. Other than some wonderful vacations (which, of course, had to be detailed and accounted for) and my brother�s wedding last year (another complication�he married a foreign national�and overseas, no less), according to that document, I have lived a life of stopgaps. What is not on it are some of the actually very pleasurable things I do that are entirely in the moment�rowing, kayaking, cycling, reading and writing�but those are not �important� in this scenario. So I have 100+ pages of crap that, ultimately, is not important to me whatsoever, yet �defines� me for their use, so I can be properly quantified, analysed,. Adjudicated.
I did not like my life as it looked on that form. As far as I am concerned, it is not the right yardstick. And for all of the verbiage, and all of the history and arcane data, the person who reads it will still, remarkably, really have no inkling at all as to who I am. I may as well as had a conversation with my Mother.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2006
Here is a quote from my other favorite writer:
“Writers live twice,” says Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones. “They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there’s another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives everything a second time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and detail.” (p. 48).
Your question brought her quote to mind.
Sushi Kim has expanded and added a second floor since I last got to eat there in the mid 90s. They’ve cleaned up really well. Health department regs no longer allow them to serve the Dol Sot Bi Bim Bap with an egg cracked into the <font color=”red”><b>hot</b></font> stoneware pot as it’s set on the table.
My sister was first taken there by a Korean friend. It turned out to be my brother’s favorite Pittsburgh restaurant.
btw – regarding the ‘Flight 93 Highway’; two summers ago the family and I travelled to Hershey PA on vacation – and on the return trip we jumped off the turnpike at Somerset, in search of the crash site.
At that time, there were no signs (if there were, I probably would have missed them anyway, but Pam would have spotted them!) and we stopped for directions at a gas station. The fellow had a stack of xeroxed, type-written instructions – which prompted me to comment that lots of people must track into his place and ask for directions to that site, which drew a chuckle from him.
We followed the directions out of Somerset and into the countryside until finally – we became lost. I remember it was beginning to get dark, and the air smelled like rain was coming. We were just on the point of scrubbing the mission when we came to a rural crossroads, and there was a sign that pointed the way to “Shanksville” – so we took it.
That town consisted of two churches and a closed down gas station, and a few houses – AND – the first blue PENDOT sign we saw, directing us to the Flight 93 memorial! (it conisted of an arrow and the distance) – and when we were back out into the country and cresting a ridge – there it was. Honestly, from the distance we then were, it looked like a roadside rummage sale. We could see construction machinery way off to the left (where the new memorial wwas to be built) and on the right there was a simple gravel pull-off area with maybe 3 or 4 other cars stopped – and way off to the right was a fenced area where a large American flag was displayed (presumeably the actual crash site).
When we stoppped and got out of the car, large warm rain drops had begun to fall – but this didn’t hurry the other visitors there, or us, as we viewed the make-shift roadside memorial, and the distant fenced in flag
Why is there a fortune cookie in a sushi restaurant??
Why is there one in a Chinese restaurant? It’s not Chinese. The fortune cookie was actually invented in Los Angeles in the last century. It was in a Chinese restaurant, though. I think the name is Paul’s it’s in downtown and was a favorite of Tom Lasorda.
They do seem to have spread around the world, Chinese or not.
don cannon