KMS Blog

HAPPY TIME TEA
A children's story for adults

 

 [illustration by Annie Waldusky ©2009] 

 Happy Time Tea is the story of Azaria Byron, a precocious and eccentric young lady who moves to Boulder, CO with her family.  Her father takes a job with Happy Time Tea Company, whose teas are renown for the restorative  and healing elements.  But Zari soon finds that Boulder is a little too bright and too happy, and that there is a dark secret hiding behind the factory walls.  A mysterious stranger named Prometheus appears to Zari and exorts her to look deeper into the town and into the company.  This is the story of what she finds.

 

[working draft, unedited]

 

There are few things in life better than a nice coming-of-age story.  An engaging central character, a hard lesson learned, and a happy ending to wrap it all up.  Stories where we find wonderful parents, well behaved children, and a challenge that keeps you turning the pages until it is solved in a satisfactory manner.  This is not one of those stories.  Here you will find betrayal, danger, manipulation, death, abandonment, and other sordid events.   

The next thing you might be wondering is just who I am.  How, after all, did I come into possession of so much detailed information?   I would, of course, love to tell you all these things, but this story is unfolding as we speak, and danger and darkness still lurk for those who are too close to exposing things to the light.   So who I am must remain a mystery.  I will tell you that I was born long ago, educated in a world free of cellular phones, global positioning systems, airbags, computers, or many other things people now take for granted.  I am considered a Luddite of sorts — the word Luddite means “someone who dislikes technology”.  It was what the followers of a fellow named Ned Ludd called themselves — Luddites.  Mr. Ludd was a 19^th Century British rebel who opposed, violently, a new machine that was being used in textiles.  Textiles are used to make fabrics, like the shirt you are wearing, your pants, your socks, your blankets, and the fabric that covers your furniture

The machine that Ned Ludd opposed was called a “Stocking Frame”, and it automated some of the more tedious elements of textile production.   Before the Stocking Frame was invented, textiles had been done entirely by hand, and textile mill owners had to employ many hundreds of workers to do even simple chores.  The Stocking Frame automated some of these tasks, so that factory owners could fire a good percentage of their workers and pocket the extra money or expand their business without hiring extra manpower.  The problem, you see, was that England in the early 1800’s was a pretty dark and dangerous place, and if you didn’t have a job, you could easily starve to death right under the noses of the police and government and family and friends.  Or you and your family would have to move into dreaded workhouses, where wives and husbands and children were separated, and hard labor was forced on everyone in exchange for food.  It was like going to prison to avoid starvation.  There was no such thing as unemployment or welfare or job training, and so losing your job could very well mean losing your life.  So Mr. Ned Ludd decided that he had to prevent the loss of his and other jobs, and so he and his followers smashed the Stocking Frame machines into pieces.  They did this at first in a disorganized fashion, but Mr. Ludd was very persuasive and passionate, and he soon had organized a large group of rebels who systematically broke into textile mills to smash Stock Frames.  His followers became know as Luddites, and the term eventually evolved to describe any “hater” of technology.  As you can imagine, the owners of the textile mills didn’t much like this, and so they convinced the members of the British Parliament to pass, in 1812, a law called the “Frame Breaking Act”.  This law made it a capital crime — punishable by death — to break these machines.   And indeed, 17 men were tried and executed in 1813 under this law.

Lord Byron, the famous English poet who was friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Shelly, William Wordsworth, and other luminary creative minds, was one of the very few prominent people to publically oppose the “Frame Breaking Act”.  He spoke publically against it, and  wrote about the immorality of the law — that a human life and property should not be put on the same playing field. 

Lord Byron’s great great granddaughter is a girl named Azaria Byron, who happens to be the central character in this story.  Although only just entering her teens, Azaria is what we would call precocious — brilliant, and far ahead of those her age in ability and wisdom.  But like her great great grandfather, Azaria too is an eccentric by temperament, by genes or environment who can say.  Lord Byon’s eccentricity was the key to his brilliance, but it also was the key to his death at the still youthful age of 36.  You could argue he died of boredom, for his phenomenal intellect grew bored with poetry, with scandal, with English society, with learning other languages, and so he sought out a war being fought in Greece to occupy himself.  Despite having no military training of any kind, he became an adept leader, and when he died of sepsis he became a Greek national hero. 

Our story begins in Philadelphia, a grand old American city with a colorful past, whose streets can take one back to simpler but darker times.  People from this city tend to be a bit darker in temperament themselves, and certainly darker then their West Coast brethren, or those from smaller, more modern cities. 

Azaria Byron was born in Philadelphia 13 years before this story begins, the sole child of her parents.  Her mother was a stay-at-home mom, and her father a mid-level manager for a company that manufactured electronics.  They never yelled at Azaria or each other, or raised their voices, or were ever cruel to her.  At worst they made the mistake of so many modern parents, which was simply that they were absorbed completely their own lives.  Perhaps this caused their daughter to be more introverted than most, perhaps that is a coincidence, but either way Azaria lived her life without friends or activities outside of her own mind. 

Azaria, known to everyone as Zari, learned to take excellent care of herself.  She made do with her friendship with her cat, Tuesday.  Zari was what people considered an “odd” child — she read strange books, wore strange clothes, thought about strange things, and spent her time in strange places.  She was almost always alone, but she didn’t know the feeling of loneliness.  To her, it was just the way she was, the way life was, and she would be puzzled if you told her you were worried about her being lonely. 

“But I like being alone,” I can imagine her telling you, cocking one of her eyebrows. 

Zari was always thinking thoughts deemed “too serious for a girl her age” and asking questions “too serious for her age”, according to her teachers.  Her choice of books more than once led to phone calls home to her parents, for Zari liked to read books on life and death, the occult, esoteric philosophies, and other strange and sordid topics.  In Zari’s eleventh year her parents, concerned that she was suffering from some unknown ailment, took to a specialist.  This man, who was sallow-skinned and bearded and wore heavy glasses that distorted his eyes, gave Zari a battery of tests.  All that was determined definitely was that she extraordinarily bright.

“Your daughter,” the doctor told her concerned parents, Ken and Barbara, “Is fine as far as I can tell.  No issues such as clinical depression or anxiety.”  He scratched at his beard, and his large, sad eyes went back and forth between them behind their glass ovals.  “She has unusual beliefs for a girl her age,” he admitted. 

Zari was in the next room, but had her ear placed up against the door, and was able to make out most of the muffled words that filtered through. 

“And no friends,” her mother interjected, hands fretting in her lap. 

“She has anti-social tendencies, yes, but Azaria seems to be making the most of them with her esoteric interests.”  The doctor sighed when he looked at the concerned face of Zari’s mother.  Himself someone who long struggled to fit in, he was sympathetic to the little girl in dark clothing.  “There is nothing wrong with being eccentric,” he informed the parents.  “Or in being shy around people, so long as it doesn’t interfere with confidence, self-esteem, or personal growth.  Azaria seems to be very self-confident, just in a way that doesn’t line up well with what we are told expect to children.  But her self-image is very strong, and very healthy.”

“So she’s okay?” her father, Ken, asked nervously, slightly confused by what seemed like contradictory talk. 

“Yes, Mr. Byron,” the sallow-skinned doctor answered.  “In fact, Azaria is likely to have a far more interesting life than most people, although she may experience hardships unique to someone with her disposition.”   

“What does that mean?” her mother asked.

“Just that the usual high school dramas are not likely to be things that Azaria will worry about.  She may very well be dealing with issues then that most of us do not face until we are nearing middle age.” 

Mrs. Byron frowned and shook her head, Mr. Byron smiled slightly, and Zari, in the next room, sat back down on a couch, her gaze on the far wall.  

 

 

“Mommm, I’m home,” Zari called out on the fateful day that would change her life forever.  She had just burst in from school, and shook off the December cold with a shudder.  Her 13^th birthday had just passed, and although her mother struggled to understand her, they got along well enough.  Barbara was, after all, an ex-cheerleader who had gone through middle school and high school in a swirl of feverish popularity, and her most enduring trials were in how to mange the demands on her time and attention by dozens adoring boys (and teachers) and jealous girls. 

Zari threw her coat in the closet floor, ignoring the wide choice of hangers, and bounded into the kitchen.  She was dressed in a way particular to Philadelphia in the winter, and to her somewhat dark personality.  She wore a dark dress, a deep purple, with stocking sleeves that reached down from her elbows to her wrists.  Black socks were pulled up her legs to her thighs, and black boots climbed halfway to her knees.  Zari had dark hair, cut into bangs at the front and bound in two ponytails in the rear.  Her eyes were over-sized in a face that tapered down to a soft chin and small lips, and were the most striking shade of green.  Freckles dotted her pale skin, and she had defined cheekbones that stood, aloof, from the rest of her features. 

The kitchen was empty, so she darted up the stairs to her bedroom, finding Tuesday sitting comfortably on her windowsill.  The cat gave out a small meow when she saw her owner, and Zari picked the cat up in her arms, turning her over to rub her belly.  They had brought the cat home two years before, and named her after the day she had been rescued from the shelter. 

“Hi,” Zari said, sitting down with Tuesday in her lap.  “Good to see you!”  She leaned in closer to the cat, whispering conspiratorially, “Ug.  Dull day at school.  Mr. Foxx gave the most boring lecture today!  I thought I was going to fall asleep at my desk.  Seriously.”

Tuesday meowed sympathetically.  She, like Zari, had huge green eyes, and gray-and-black fur that spiraled across her face.  She liked to twitch her prominent whiskers when spoken to.

“You’re telling me,” Zari responded, “And then that boy I told you about, Bobby, well, he called me a weirdo today after math class, just like he did last week.  And Julia and Teresa both laughed.”  Zari grew more still, and Tuesday turned over, then stood up on her lap and licked her face with her thick tongue.  Zari giggled.

“Ew!  Tuesday!  Stop that!”  She giggled again.  “But then in science class we learned about Newton’s Laws, which we already knew, of course, but then how Albert Einstein’s theory changed all of that.  It was really cool!”  She thought for a moment.  “So I was thinking about what to do for my big science project that this year, but nothing has come to me.  Maybe I’ll do something on Relativity. What we learned today was so cool!  Did you know that Einstein discovered that time is actually relative?  That it isn’t set, and that time changes in relationship to gravity and to speed?  How crazy is that?”

Tuesday meowed. 

“I know!” Zari gushed.   

Zari’s room was, like her dress, a deep purple.  There were no posters of boys, or of famous girls, or of TV shows, or movies.  Her mother had twice bought her posters of popular girls, and both times Zari had put them up for a week before quietly taking them down again, and both of those girls sat in the back of her closet, their teen beauty and angst rolled up onto itself.   But Zari did have posters: there was a one of Oscar Wilde reclining in a way that suggested he was about to deliver some kind of devastating quip, and of Ralph Waldo Emerson looking serious and scholarly, and of Virginia Wolfe looking pensive and preoccupied.  

“Goodness,” her mother commented once, ‘It’s just that they’re all so ugly, Zari.  Except your father’s great grandfather.”

There was also a portrait of her great great grandfather, Lord Byron, looking devilish and handsome. 

 

A few hours after Zari returned from school, her father came home.  He had been out of work for some time, and so his days were usually spent hunting some kind of job.  Over the few months he had been out of work, his search had moved from professional jobs to any kind of job, and she knew he had been applying to jobs far below his skill and pay level.  The family dinner, usually served at precisely 6pm, had been pushed back without explanation.  Zari, now barefooted, tromped about the house, playing hide-and-seek with Tuesday, and singing her herself. 

“Hey dad,” she called, “You wanna play a game of chess?”

Her father sighed from the next room.  “Not now, kiddo.  Today’s been a wild day-o.”  Her father’s voice was gentle and melodic, and he was, when in good moods, prone to singing to himself, and Zari would sometimes join in. 

Zari ran through the kitchen, her feet sticking to the linoleum and letting her take the corners at a harrowing speed.  She saw that her parents were huddled together at the kitchen table, deep in conspiratorial talk.  She was mildly suspicious that something was afoot, but decided to keep running through the kitchen.  On her fourth pass, her mother stopped her.

“Zari!  Can’t you see your father and I are talking?  Honestly!  And what are you doing barefooted in the middle of the winter?  You’ll catch cold.”  Her mother paused.  “And darling, if you’re going to go to the trouble to paint your toes, must you paint them black?  I bought you all those nice, soft colors.” 

Zari shrugged her shoulder, squeezed her toes dramatically, and then smiled when her father winked at her. 

“Wait upstairs, will you, kiddo?” her father asked asked.  “Your mom and I need to talk a bit.” 

Zari stood for a moment, hands on her hips, but then her mother added a forceful, “Now, Zari!”  Her mother had blonde hair, shoulder length that turned up at the ends.  Her face was an oval, and her eyes a soft blue.  Her lips were always painted a deep red, and her fingernails always matched her lips.  Her mother had a slight pear shape to her figure, bowing out as she reached her hips.  Zari went upstairs and pulled on one stocking, leaving the other leg bare. 

“What do you think, Tuesday?” Zari asked her cat.  “Mom and dad whispering to each other, dinner’s late, and I’m not allowed downstairs.”  The cat made a growling sound.  “Right,” Zari said, nodding her head, her a little color coming to her pale face.  “Suspicious.” 

 

 “Zaarrri,” her mother called, at quarter-past-seven, up the stairs.

“Finally!” Zari said, patting her rumbling stomach.  She took the stairs two at time down to the landing, then rounded a corner and went into the kitchen. Her mother was working over several simmering pots, and the kitchen smelled very good. 

“Hey mom,” Zari said, plunking down into a chair.  “Where’s dad?”

“He’s outside talking on the phone.” 

Zari raised an eyebrow at this.  It was freezing outside, and her father hated the cold.  Her suspicions deepened.  She spotted her father out on the back deck, smoking a cigarette and pacing back and forth, talking into his cell phone.  His face looked drawn and pale, and he looked somehow both worried and excited at the same time.  Since he lost his job, money had become a big topic in the house.  Dinners were often ground beef or chicken legs – no more pork or steak or fish or white meat.  “Zari –” her mother turned and then paused, seeing that her daughter had on one stocking.  “Young lady – go and put on another sock.  Now.”

“Aww…” Zari protested, “Mom!”

“Don’t mom me.  Go.” 

Zari took that stairs two at a time again, spun into her room, and hopping on one leg pulled on a bright red stocking.  With one leg black and one red she then skidded back down the stairs and into the kitchen. 

Zari sat down, and looked again at her father’s drawn but excited face out on the deck. 

“What’s for dinner?” she asked.

“Your favorite – roast turkey.”

“Yay!” Zari exclaimed, but then immediately narrowed her eyes.  “Wait a minute, mom – just what’s going on?”

“Oh Zari,” her mother said dismissively.  “Can you stop asking questions?  Nothing is going on except dinner.”  

Her father finally came in from the cold, shuddering.  The plates, laden with food, were put out on the table.   

“Hey kiddo,” her father said.  He sat down and eagerly attacked his plate.  Zari noticed her parents exchange some kind of look, and she put her fork down forcefully.

“Okay mom and dad,” she said.  “Out with it.  What’s going on?”

“What do you mean, kiddo?” her father said.

“Dad, you look like you’re hiding something!”

“What?” he chortled,

“Oh Zari,” her mother said, “You’re imagining things.” 

Zari folded her arms across her chest. 

“Barbara,” her father said, “This little kiddo is just too bright to keep secrets from.”

“Ken!” her mother exclaimed.  “We agreed not to tell her until we were sure.”

“Tell me what!” Zari nearly shouted. 

 “Well,” her father began, “Honey, you know I lost my job. “  Her father was a lean man with a disorganized pile of brown hair that always made him look like he had just gotten out of bed.  He had a prominent Adam’s apple that stuck out in the middle of his thin neck, and his nose and chin that jutted away from the rest of his features.  His shoulders were often bunched up around his ears, and his head sometimes seemed to float out in front of the rest of his body.  Lankly legs often looked like they were hopelessly tangled around each other under a table, and sometimes Zari expected him to go tumbling when stranding suddenly.  

Zari looked at him suspiciously. “We have to move into a hotel room,” she guessed. 

Her father shook his head.

“You’re selling the house,” she guessed again, this time more depressingly. 

Another head shake. 

“We’re moving into a shelter.”  Her third guess. 

“Zari!” her mother interrupted, “Don’t be dramatic!”  

“Mom has to join a circus to support the family,” she said. 

“Oh, ha-ha,” her mother said. 

“I found another job,” her father smiled.   

“You did?” Zari said, “Really?  That’s great, dad!”  But then she noticed again the excitement, nervousness, and apologetic energy of her father.  Her eyes narrowed: “But?”

Her father exchanged a look with her mother.

Zari’s stomach sank.  “There’s a but, isn’t there?”

“But,” her father added, sighing, “Yes, Zari.  I found a job, a great job that pays much more than the last one.  So we don’t have to worry about money anymore.  But,” he said, nodding at her.  “But we’ll need to move.”

“Move,” Zari said at last, “Out of this house?  Out of Philly?  Move where?  Why?”

“We can’t live without my income,” her father said.  “And the economy is pretty bad.  But I found a job in Boulder, Colorado.”

Zari looked around.  “Colorado?  The state?” 

“Yes.”

“But that’s 2,000 miles from here!  What about this house?  And my friends?  And school?  And Tuesday?”

“Slow down, kiddo,” her father said, patting her leg.  “It’s a nice town.  Very pretty.  Perfect weather.  Nice people.  Lots of things to do.  And the new company is putting us up in a house, a really nice house, including with furniture.  Bigger and nicer than this house.” 

“But I like this house,” Zari protested. 

Her father nodded sympathetically.  “I know, kiddo.  Me too.  It’s been a good house.”

“This house is small,” her mother countered.  “The new one is bigger and nicer, Zari.  Three full rooms instead of two.  A real yard.  And not a row home.  An actual home with a driveway and garage and everything.” 

Zari ignored her mother.  “So this is my last year in Philadelphia?”  Her parents again exchanged a look. Zari folded her arms across her chest again, and her knees — one red, one black, came together under the table.  “Now what?”  

“Now,” her father offered hopefully, “We have an adventure ahead of us.”

Zari didn’t take the bait.  She scowled at him.  

“We have a lot of exploring to do when we get to Boulder.  Trips to take, trails to hike, and places to visit.” 

“Oh, Ken,” her mother said.  She turned her Zari.  “Zari, we need to move in two weeks.  We’re going to rent our house here, not sell it, so we can always come home.  And we’ll move our furniture into storage so we can come back home easily if we want.“

Zari stared from her mother to her father, speechless. 

“I know, kiddo,” her father said.  “It’s really short notice.  But we were running out of money, and we didn’t have any choice.  I’m sorry,” he said.  “I wish we could have waited out the school year.” 

“Two weeks?” Zari cried at last.  “Two weeks?  Right in the middle of the school year?  But everyone will already have friends!” 

“Oh honey,” her mother said comfortingly, “You really don’t have any friends anyway.  Maybe in Boulder you’ll find kids more like you…”  Her father kicked her under the table.

“Ow,” she exclaimed.  “Ken!”

Zari stood up.  “I want to go upstairs.”

“Young lady,” her mother said, “Don’t get mad at me for being honest.  Honey, maybe in Boulder you can make more of an effort to fit in?  You know, maybe try out for cheerleading or something?”

“I am not going to stand on the sidelines and cheer boys while they play sports,” Zari stated.  “Let them cheer for me.”

Her father laughed, but her mother glowered.  

“Oh Zari.  Don’t be so dramatic.  Cheerleading is a wonderful way to get to know a lot of people.  It worked very well for me.  Besides, there are boys that are involved in cheerleading.” 

“Okay,” her father said.  “Time-out!  Honey, let her go upstairs if she wants.  It’s a big shock.  Zari, I only found out yesterday, and I spent all day today seeing if we had some other choice.”  He reached out and took her hand for a moment.  “If we had any other choice I would have taken it.  I know how hard it is to move in the middle of year.”    

 Zari let her father’s hand drop.  “But can’t you move out by yourself for six months and get set up, and then mom and I can follow you?”  She looked at her mother, and then reconsidered.  “Or you and mom move out, and I’ll just stay with friends until the year finishes out?  Me and Tuesday?  That way I can finish the year and have time to say goodbye to my friends, and then start next year with other new kids.” 

“Oh Zari,” her mother said, “That would be nice.  But that just won’t work.” 

“Why?”

“It just won’t,” her mother frowned.  “Don’t be difficult and start asking a thousand questions!”

###

 

 

Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi sits across from me, on a rainy morning in Massachusetts, a black hood draped over his head.  We are on the porch of an old lake home, overlooking a small stand of trees and then, through an opening in the underbrush, water.  We are both holding steaming cups of coffee, and even though it is late June our hands huddle around our cups for warmth. 

Jun Po’s eyes, intensely blue, stare past me at the distant memories I know he was summoning, watching them take shape in his mind.  We sit together, my digital recorder at the ready, notebook open with pen in hand; we wait together in a measured silence as he searches for a place to begin.

Dennis Kelly is tall and muscular with broad shoulders and a natural athleticism that defies his age, but his mass is now subdued, thoughtful, turned in on itself. When he places his coffee cup on the table, I notice the hands of a laborer; broad and ropy muscles cover large bones.  There are pleats in his cheeks, and deep lines etched into the skin around his mouth.  The scars from his radiation treatments a few years before can be seen running across his neck, as if he’s an old cowboy who somehow escaped the hangman’s noose.  His is a face accustomed to wearing serious expressions, and seems most at home with slightly narrowed eyes and downturned lips, despite the fact I know he is prone to sudden laughter and frequent smiles.  His eyes are intelligent and measure and hold no fear or hesitation.  Like the water outside the window they are clear, deep, still.   The dark hood comes away from his face, exposing large ears and a large nose and a large chin that, taken together, create a rugged handsomeness that harkens back to some Dust Bowl farmer deeply in touch with the wisdom of his land.

His 67 years show on his face, but the decades of daily yoga practice are hinted at in the deep masculinity and strength that emanates from his body.   This is the first day of two weeks we are to spend together, two weeks in which he will go over the events of his extraordinary life in extraordinary detail, being candid to the point of making me occasionally squirm in my chair.  I will come to understand that any discomfort is mine alone to bear, for he long ago made peace with the monsters and angels that gave him form and purpose.    

When he finally speaks, his voice is a grumble, coming from somewhere deep in his belly, as if the story of his life will emanate from that space. “Okay,” he says, his eyes briefly engaging mine before they find some undefined point in the ether behind me, “The first thing I remember.  Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Had to be forty-five or six.  Father was just back from the War.  Nasty alcoholic.  I was lying in a pool of my own piss, my little fat baby boy hands stuck out in front of me.  In the next room, there’s an explosion of violence.  Screams and yelling, and I’m just trying to get away from it, and have backed myself under a bed.  I stare out between my hands and my piss, trying to make sense of just what the fuck is going on in the next room, and then,” he snaps he fingers, “And then I’m gone, out of the body, out of that place, in the most serene stillness you can imagine…”  His words are calm, and sometimes border on the lyrical.  They are driven by the intensity that is this man, but there is little other emotion to animate them.

I will eventually become used to this; Jun Po’s descriptions of his life are at times unbearably sad and poignant, but he never once falters in his story, never dabs a tear from the corner of his eye, never has a quivering voice, and never once expresses much beyond a stoic wonder and a wry sense of humor and irony.  Far from being repressed or detached from his emotions, I realize as our days together go past that he has already spent more than two decades of his life deconstructing them; many of these stories, once problematic, have become old friends full of their own hard wisdom.  He welcomes them as such, mostly without valuation, although in a few areas he is harsh — almost cruel — in his assessment of himself.  

His life has been almost unimaginably full; a world traveler, seeker of wisdom, ascetic, holder of vast wealth and power, lover of women, homeless mendicant, wanderer, fearless warrior, father and husband, spiritual adept, yogi, federal prisoner, family deserter, hedonist, Zen master. There are a dozen men that sit down with me every morning, but they are all held by this man who has become Jun Po Roshi.

At the end of our time together, I spend a long day reviewing my notes, and I realize something profound: I have been handed a story far richer and more incredible then I could have ever imagined.  For this I am, and will always be, deeply grateful.  

###

 

 

 

  

 

I’m about to put all my chips on my own version of the Roulette wheel.   For those of you familiar with the game of Roulette, it’s pretty simple.  The wheel has 36 numbers, alternating red and black in color.  The simplest way to play is to bet either “red” or “black”, meaning if the wheel is spun, the ball dropped, and it comes to rest on the color you’ve picked, you double your earnings.  50/50 shot.   If it lands on the color you didn’t chose, you lose everything.

 

The Set-Up
Those of you who know me know that I took a huge gamble with my 20’s and 30’s — I sacrificed much of what people consider necessary or normal in life to follow my artistic dreams.  I did, it is worth noting, have a fantastic and loving 12 years with one woman, and she made the process a lot easier with her love and support.  Our relationship ended, but I continued on the path I had begun to see if I could not only create a complete collection of short stories, but also to get them published.  

The odds of getting published are astronomically small, especially for a work of literary fiction (genre fiction, like Romance, stands a much better chance because of a larger, more dedicated, and less fickle audience).  Short story collections are notorious poor sellers, even for big name guys like Stephen King.  So I was aiming for a pinhole on a dartboard.  The path was not an easy one — 300 rejection letters have a way of undermining one’s confidence, sometimes in the extreme.  But in December of 2007, I finally got published by O-Books.  I had achieved the very thing I had been seeking my entire adult life, but I had no money and no jobs, little support from those closest to me, and no idea what to do next.  In what was a very telling moment, the fact of my publication was not celebrated in the least.  No champagne.  No extravagant dinner out, or even modest dinner out.  No bragging to friends and neighbors.  I just kept my nose down, and kept plugging forward the way I always had, as if nothing had changed.  But everything had changed; I just didn’t know it yet.  About two months after I was published a mentor noted, with a bit of shock, that I hadn’t celebrated, so I did finally go out to do so.  It felt strained and heavy, an almost joyless event of which I have little memory.  

The truth was that the struggle to get published had nearly sucked the life out of me.  It had taken its toll so that I was more identified with the struggle then with the act of creation itself.  How strange!  I was more identified with the “struggling” part of “struggling artist” then with the “artist” part.  What, or who, was I without the struggle?  I wasn’t entirely sure.  

Ironically, it was those few months after I got published that were some of the darkest of my life.  I was being encouraged by some of those around me to settle down and take a full-time job to take a break from my self-imposed stress, and rest in the security of a weekly paycheck.  There was little encouragement to keep pushing boundaries and limits, or to see the light that lay just beyond my identification with the struggle.  For my part, all I knew to do was what I always had done.  My partner at the time saw the toll the work had taken and assumed that the wisest course of action was to step away from it and embrace something more stable, perhaps a 9-5 job and a more settled life. There was wisdom there, for sure, for I did need to lay down the struggle to move forward.  But I feared that stepping into a full-time job would be a retreat into security, and a movement away from growth.   I knew all too well that safety and security have their place in our lives, but they also have their price.   To break into something difficult and challenging requires that you forgo safety and security, and step into the world of uncertainty even if, or sometimes especially if, no one else believes you can do it.  It is the ultimate leap of faith.  After all, if you do not have faith in yourself, who else will?    So I worked through my over-identification with the struggle, went back to freelancing with newfound vigor, and slowly pulled myself out of the darkness and into the light.  I emerged alone, but emerge I did.   

Fast-forward about a year.  The opening of the summer finds me more positive and optimistic then I’ve been in years, and I genuinely look forward to each and every day, and to my immediate future.  I am now surrounded by the right kinds of people, who see who I am and what I’m capable of, and also know how to push, pull, prod, and encourage me to move further down the path I started so many years ago.  To move further into my fear, not away from it.  

The Status of the Roulette Table
Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi, the 83rd Patriarch of the Rinzai Zen school, has hired me to write his official biography, and is flying me to Massachusetts on June 17 for two weeks.  I will fictionalize his life, keeping the stories all 100% true to what he tells me, but adding in the luscious detail of a storyteller.  Jun Po has been kind enough to advance me a significant sum (for me at least), knowing (as I do) that the book will be a bestseller (his life is like a combination of Hunter S. Thomson and Ram Daas, with a touch of Jim, Morrison and Adi Da thrown in for good measure).  His story is amazing, and the book will capture it in language that can honor the beauty, complexity, and uniqueness of Jun Po’s story.  His advance will fund me until October of 2009, but not beyond.  At that point, I will have to return to the grind of freelance business writing, or step up to the gambling table.  

The Bet
I have a house in Philadelphia, my last concrete investment and the last piece of physical security that I have in the world.  I could take Jun Po’s advance, which will fund me until roughly October 1st, and then go back to freelance writing to make ends meet, as I have done for the last decade, and then wait the 18-24 months for royalties to start coming in from our book.  I could then take that money, and really sink myself into completing the 4 major works of fiction I have rattling around in my head.  That would be the safest, most secure, and most rational route, and would give me some options if anything goes wrong.  But it means delaying, once again, my own work while I eek out a living.  It means hanging my own future on the outcome of a book that is not certain.  It means playing it safe until I can find the time to write, full-time, my own material, cramming a few hours here and there into odd corners of the week around freelance interviews, deadlines, and stress about money.  

Or…or I could turn my back to security and safely, up the ante, and bet everything on myself.  

All Chips In
My house is going on the market July 15th.  Once it sells, I will take the profit and use that money to fund me after I finish with Jun Po’s book.  I have a group of intensive friends who are willing to hold my feet to the fire, and I’m convinced that I can complete at least 2 of my 4 ideas in the 9 months I’ve allotted.  So basically, from July of this year until July of next (2010), I will be doing nothing but writing professionally.  And once that money is gone, I will have nothing — no savings, no investments, no property.  Only a dog, a really cool 1972 BMW motorcycle, my used and worn 88 Jeep Wrangler, and a few odds and ends.   If I “hit” on this, I will make back my gamble with a wonderful windfall.  If I miss my mark, and I can’t sell or even complete any of my own works, then I’ll know that I chose the wrong path for myself, and be able to start something utterly new while still in my 30’s.  In short, I’m all chips in.  

Stay tuned.  The next 12 months will be interesting ones.  

 

Why does believing you are a spiritual person not really amount to much of anything at all?  

There’s an interesting phenomena here in Boulder.  A lot of people one meets profess to being “spiritual” in some way or another, by which they usually mean: “I believe in being good to the environment, being socially responsible, being a good partner and parent, living as sustainably as possible, and being respectful of others’ view.  I also believe in (insert one of the following): god, energy, a greater power, a divine presence, an essence, Gaia, etc.” These sorts of "spiritual" beliefs are an excellent repudiation of believing in a single god for a single people (see the Middle East for how the one god thing is working out). Many people here, as in other places, have rejected religion as too narrow, rejected mainstream Western culture as too shallow and short-sighted, and rejected atheism or agnostism as too cold, impractical, and out-of-touch with the connection they feel. 
(Image above is of Jun Po Roshi -- think this guy gets easily rattled?) 

Another  way of saying it is that spiritual beliefs are an evolution from a dominant culturally-created and believed-in god to one that is more personal, independent, specific to the individual, inclusive, and tolerant of other gods, beliefs, and ideas. In this sense, these beliefs are positive and beneficial, and do indeed foster more toleration and open-mindedness. 

However, these spiritual beliefs are, still, just beliefs, no more or less substantial than the ones they are repudiating.  (Ever see people with “religious beliefs” and people with “spiritual beliefs” shout at one another across picket lines, as if shouting their beliefs will somehow get them into the skulls of the others?)  The bottom line is that these kinds of beliefs are often associated with some kind of minimally-spiritual practice like yoga (at least as it is practiced here in the West where it's almost entirely about the body).  And then there are littlte micro communities where people get together and affirm their mutual beliefs.  The problem is this: believing you are “spiritual” doesn’t really mean anything except you carry a certain set of beliefs. 

The problem with beliefs is that they tend to crumble and fall apart under strain — they are, after all, merely concepts and ideas held together by the mind.  In my own experience, I have frequently seen so-called “spiritual” people, who want a “spiritual relationship”, resort to all manner of base and petty actions, reactions, retaliations, distortions, and selfish need.   Why is this? 
To create real change, lasting change, one needs a true spiritual practice and not just beliefs.  A practice is just that — the practice of actually being that which you claim to be!  Practice transcends belief entirely.  

Think of it with this analogy: a man watches lots of Kung Fu movies, thinks about Kung Fu, talks to his friends about Kung Fu, owns Kung Fu posters and T-shirts, and hangs out with a Kung Fu community.  He thinks about Kung Fu all the time.  Yet when a street mugger attacks him, he is left utterly defenseless because he has no practice.  All he has is his concepts and his beliefs, and nothing more.  So he gets his ass kicked.  A Kung Fu practice, on the other hand, where one trains the body and the mind through endless repetition and training, results in the ability to defend oneself against real world aggression — often by not having to ever engage a potential combatant, because the latter senses the confidence and presence of the practitioner.   

A spiritual practice is no different.  Because one trains the mind on a meditation cushion, under the watchful eye of a master of some sort (you can no more teach yourself spiritual insight than you can teach yourself Kung Fu) the mind grows and evolves.  Your mind, like the martial artist’s body, becomes more resilient to challenge, more able to hold space in conflict, more able to see perspectives even in heated disagreement, more able to be truly compassionate not just in words and beliefs, but in actions.  It allows for you to actually be the things you believe when it matters most — in conflict, in heated exchanges, in the face of national disasters, when one’s own life gets turned topsy-turvy through childbirth, marriage and divorce, disease, old age, suffering, and death.  Beliefs are cold comfort in the most challenging times, because they’re just ideas, just concepts.  But a spiritual practice leads to the kinds of experience and insight that ground the practitioner into a deeper truth, a deeper reality, a deeper version of their own true face. 

So if you want peace and happiness, or a loving and spiritual relationship with a partner, or a meaningful and rewarding relationship with your children and friends, develop something stronger than beliefs to support those desires.  A spiritual practice trains the emotional body to withstand and respond to the very worse things that life will, inevitably and to every single person, throw.  

Get out of your mind, and get onto a cushion.  Stop believing you’re a spiritual person because you stand around and talk about it, go to yoga once a week, and recyle your bottles.  Start believing you’re a spiritual person because that’s your experience, your truth -- yes, but more than that, your insight has been forged in the fire of meditation, tested under the careful gaze of a spiritual master, and put into practice in the most difficult and challenging areas of your life.   

Then you have so much more than belief.  You have a practice, and life itself becomes your teacher, your friend, your best insight into your true nature.  

Sometimes I create parts of stories that simply don't fit.  Here's something pulled recently when I was editing...

 

Until he had been dropped off at the school, Darnell had never in his life been out of Philadelphia except for occasional field trips and other day excursions to the shore.  At fourteen years of age the night sky for him was one of little wonder; a washed out version of its daytime self where a half-dozen stars, easily overlooked, twinkled meekly through the canopy of light. Now in the seclusion of a small Vermont village and far from the comforting lights of the city, he felt just how vast the world could actually be.  On his first day, Darnell had gone through Mount Claire’s orientation, been assigned a room, and settled in.  But he had little in common with the other students and so decided to wander outside to be alone.  He pushed through the front door of the dormitory, which led to a small concrete pad.  The door closed and Darnell stood overlooking the gentle curve of a valley whose shadows rose, uninterrupted, to meet the shadows of the sky.  Behind him a single bulb burned, while just beyond its reach darkness pressed in, as if all the night were gathered there.  Over his head two thousand stars twisted and boiled, set afire in the stillness of the New England night.  They were violent, active things whose motion broke their colors into a thousand writhing fractals overhead.  Darnell turned back towards the embrace of the light bulb, and quickly rushed back inside. 

 

Too excited to sleep – it seemed impossible, especially as a middle-aged man whose existence had grown as regular and reliable as a Sunday sermon.  Early in life, as one flies through their twenties and thirties, life is defined by a frantic change; friendships dissolve around marriages, whole new families are born and grow, and vocation is marked by an upward advance and ambition.  As the forties give way to the fifties, though, one begins to dread change, for more often than not it means something tragic, unexpected; the death of a parent or friend, cancer, the loss of employment, the decline of the body, or the uncertainty that waits beyond the few remaining breaths of an exhausted marriage.  Middle age, as Will experienced it, was defined by a methodical, stubborn steadiness.   And yet after four months of traveling to New York City every week, like some kind of beatnik, his methodical patterns, those familiar thoughts and daily routines and beliefs, had all been quietly exposed.  Will had became aware, slowly at first, then more rapidly, of just how much his life had slipped into unconscious routine, and once exposed to a critical eye, he found the revelation as startling as it was invigorating, and began to peel away the layers of his languorous existence to see what lay beneath.  For the first time in as long as he could remember he was awaking excited to start his day and moving with a new energy, and a new appreciation, of just how incredible life could be.  He felt driven by passion even when doing simple tasks, and strong emotions – often contradictory – ran through his mind at the most inopportune times.  It seemed like he had somehow mostly slept through the last decade of his life without even realizing it.  

So from time to time I'll put poems I'm working on here.  I'm honstly not much of a poet, but it provides a good emotinal outlet for me, and is less involved than an entire story.  Feel free to comment or post suggestions....

 

"Seen"
It seems, love, I have disappointed you --
that you expected more of me, again,
to be strong, even if I must pretend 
there was nothing to what you put me through.
No need to explain, your friends all agreed,
my concerns were childish, a selfish path
when instead we should focus on your wrath,
and honor your experience, your need.
I wish you understood why i must leave
instead of turning, avoiding my eyes
whispering to friends I was full of lies
unable to see or hear why I grieve. 
(c) 2008 KMS

 

"Uncertainty on the Edge of Doubt"
What I once thought was hard fact
were only chalk line hypotheses
impermanent remedies
blown away by a breeze.

Once we were open to the other
but your past was concealed
and it’s cold where I used to feel -
perhaps it's time to travel on

I'll write stories from the edge
so look for yourself in pages
where no longer constrained by cages
we’ll achieve what might have been.
(c) 2008 KMS 

An interesting year, to say the least.  The hard work and sacrifice that go into creating art is an intense experience.  To those of us on the outside of this process, it can look romantic, even a wonderful expression of something that so many of us attempt at some point in our lives. We say, "Wow, that's great!  It must really be rewarding..."  And it is, for certain.  But the view from within can be far more complicated and harsh, and the psychological maneuvering necessary to stubbornly pursue your artistic dreams, at the expense of other more practical realities, can create a casualty list of its own.  It can certainly create its own demons.  The photos here, taken this past summer ('08) are of the nearly 300 rejection letters I masochistically  kept before I finally got published. 

But having gotten published, after over a decade of trying and many hundreds of rejection letters, has been an experience that is difficult to describe.  It has freed up a defiant part of me, a defiant part that was largely the part of myself from which motivation sprung.  Now I have a publisher, and anything I write can at least get into print, for the first time in my life.  And that prospect is, strangely, terrifying.  So the work I am doing now is letting go of this bare-knuckled and intensive “writer” who was willing to sacrifice so much to get published — letting that part of myself go, and finding a more mature way to express it.

If nothing else, it should make a good story :-)