November nuances

Several readers got nervous when they saw my post about the calendar turning to September, "nervous" not being entirely an accurate adjective, but suffice it to say that they were concerned, caring, considerate. They feared I might be on some sort of psychic shelf, a ledge, a place of morose departure. I assured them then that it was all about transition, turning the page, if not a chapter, or even a whole new book. So, since then, more days have tumbled by, more seconds ticked, and so on. If I say, I'm doing fine, will you doubt it, since men tend to assert that claim so readily despite the odds? Well, my doing fine is fine enough, embracing all of it: pain, change, renewal, reinvention, loss, gain, discovery, recovery, penury, luxury, song, silence. The leaves fall off the trees by the end of November, though at first many of those dappled delights cling on to the branch. But the bare branches have a stark beauty all their own. My friend the late Raymond Davidson, a New Yorker magazine artist, used to tell me he loved the simple line of those branches in preference to the picture-postcard leafy scenes. It's all all right. It's all there, all here.

Father Luke

More than once

in my life death

united me to someone or something otherwise not.

We started going to the Episcopal Church because they

(Ron and Betsy, his parents) had asked me to read a poem

for Nathaniel whom Beth had taken care of

who died in the NICU at 10 months

rare a poem about beacons something

about the light in his eyes.

And now through the threadbare thread of Raymond Davidson

there's Father Luke

and his delicious confessions.

Zen in the Art of Anything

Raymond Davidson also introduced me to Eugen Herrigel, who wrote Zen in the Art of Archery, which, I learned, predated the popular Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.

I remember copying quotations from Herrigel's little gem, and they helped me to get through stressful days soberly and sanely.

Some say Herrigel's stuff is more archery lesson than zen. I say, who cares?

One of the quotations, which I can't find precisely, went something like this: "You can't be a master archer if you worry too much where the arrow will go. You can be a master archer even if you miss the target every time."

I guess I'll have to go buy another copy of the book (can't find it) or rely on all of you to get the quote right.

Here are some Eugen Herrigel tidbits I've rounded up:


The more a human being feels himself a self, tries to intensify this self and reach a never-attainable perfection, the more drastically he steps out of the center of being.


The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede.

If everything depends on the archer's becoming purposeless and effacing himself in the event, then its outward realization must occur automatically, in no further need of the controlling or reflecting intelligence.

This state, in which nothing definite is thought, planned, striven for, desired or expected, which aims in no particular direction and yet knows itself capable alike of the possible and the impossible, so unswerving is its power - this state, which is at bottom purposeless and egoless, was called by the Masters truly "spiritual."



"Assuming that his talent can survive the increasing strain, there is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the pupil on his road to mastery. Not the danger of wasting himself in idle self-gratification - for the East has no aptitude for this cult of the ego - but rather of getting stuck in his achievement, which is confirmed by his success and magnified by his renown: in other words, of behaving as if the artistic existence were a form of life that bore witness to its own validity.
"The teacher foresees this danger. Carefully and with the adroitness of a psychopomp he seeks to head the pupil off in time and to detach him from himself. This he does by pointing out, casually and as though it were scarcely worth a mention in view of all that the pupil has already learned, that all right doing is accomplished only in a state of true selflessness, in which the doer cannot be present any longer as "himself". Only the spirit is present, a kind of awareness which shows no trace of egohood and for that reason ranges without limit through all distances and depths, with "eyes that hear and with ears that see."


When I asked the Master how we could get on without him on our return to Europe, he said: "Your question is already answered by the fact that I made you take a test. You have now reached a stage where teacher and pupil are no longer two persons, but one. You can separate from me any time you wish. Even if broad seas lie between us, I shall always be with you when you practice what you have learned. I need not ask you to keep up your regular practicing, not to discontinue it on any pretext whatsoever, and to let no day go by without your performing the ceremony, even without bow and arrow, or at least without having breathed properly. I need not ask you because I know that you can never give up this spiritual archery. Do not ever write to me about it, but send me photographs from time to time so that I can see how you draw the bow. Then I shall know everything I need to know.

Broad seas now separate Raymond and me, alas, but this quote gives me solace and connection. But I draw the bow as a novice.

Driving Directions

So one of the most memorable things Raymond Davidson taught me was "Yield and you need not break," the opening line of poem/prayer/meditation number 22 of "The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu" as translated by Witter Bynner. I still have the paperback copy I bought in the 1980s at the bookstore on 47th Street, in the Diamond District of Manhattan, the store in an area peopled by Hasidic men, a look Raymond loved. Later, years after I last saw him, one can see in the photos and drawings he sent back East, the long flowing beard of one of these Hasidics. What was that bookstore? It had a sign: "Where wise men fish." Is it still there? Help, someone. Raymond inscribed my copy of the book, saying, as if in a Zen koan, "I knew Witter Bynner in 1952, but I don't remember him" and that his brother knew Witter Bynner. Around that time, when Raymond was doing paintings of the Mets, he did one of Lao Tzu Number 22, handwritten, from this translation, illustrated, I recall, with stars and a young Dwight Gooden winding up to pitch. Who ultimately received the original of that painting? Of course, the reason I so loved "Yield and you need not break" was because it was a concept I practiced so poorly in my life. Maybe, just maybe, I'm a little better at it now. Maybe not. Who's keeping score, anyway? No one, I was told, a message rubbing against the grain of guilt so ingrained. "Yield and you need not break."

In Memoriam

. . . for Raymond Davidson,

who

meant

more

than

words

can

illustrate.