Contemplify NonRequired Reading List for June 17, 2021
June NonRequired Reading List
Hey there Contemplative,
Charlie Chaplin captured the flag of my attention as a boy. His Little Tramp persona is what did me in--the duck walk, bowler hat, narrow mustache, and cane. A bunch of daffy shticks that accented the physicality of his cerebral comedy. So winsome were his antics, I pinned a poster of Mr. Chaplin to my bedroom wall (an oddball move, I admit). When I showed my daughter a clip from Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) last week she fell into a flurry of giggle fits. It was the iconic scene when Chaplin is working on the factory line. In the clip he is frantically tightening bolts on the widgets moving across the factory conveyor belt before getting sucked into the gears of the machine himself.
Charlie Chaplin’s film pecked at the American post-Depression mechanical system. It was designed with a disordered priority set--efficiency of production at the cost of human alienation and dignity. Chaplin released Modern Times nearly a century ago and I think he raised a pertinent question that holds up in our own fleeting modern times: what machine does your life support?
I ask this question in the spirit of agnostic neutrality. Your response to this question draws from the unique embodied life that you shimmy within each day. I cast my side-eye at machines that devalue life (both human and non-human communities) by coldly evaluating their monetary usefulness while extracting their energy as quickly as possible without care or forethought for the well-being of the local flora and fauna in the near and long term. I am not throwing stones at a big, bad, ambiguous metaphor (just run-on sentences). Rather than fetching the bolt cutters I oil the gears of this machine^. Each time I engage in an economic exchange that fuels one of these death machines, it winks at me. It brings me no pleasure to recognize that I am the Little Tramp in such moments. A mechanic at large for the hidden machine at hand. Am I innocent because I am forgetful about my complicity in my daily dalliances with the machine age? I think not, it is a reality of incarnate life in modern times.
The machine age pleasures itself by creating a mania by presenting dozing dualities. Consumption and hunger. Rest and speed. Lust and purity. Justice and entertainment. Machine propaganda comes in all stripes, creeds, waist sizes, and political rants. It is a shapeshifting machine. I have my preferences, but what is a contemplative of the tall trees to do? Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa offers this, “The idea is not to regard the spiritual path as something very luxurious and pleasurable but to see it as just facing the facts of life.”** Duly noted, Trungpa, and much obliged.
I see machines aplenty that run on the fumes of disordered agendas. Pillaging people, land, time, and resources for its own inane continuation. The telltale signs of machine impact, whether it is funded by Rich Uncle Pennybags or serving drunken ideologies, is that it splits embodied lives into inner and outer to avoid facing the facts of life^^.
An awakened life ain’t easy. It is neither for nor against the grain. It is the grain itself.
^While I am also busy being a part of the Body of Christ, methinks I’m a patella or perhaps a heart valve. Wait, no, both of those can be replaced by a machine. Dammit.
*Trungpa, Chogyam. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism. Shambhala, 2002. Page 104.
^^Not to be confused with the unremarkable NBC TV show The Facts of Life which went on for eight glorious seasons in the 1980s.
June NonRequired Reading List
Anna Hubbard: Out of the Shadows by Mia Cunningham (Get it the Public Library or Bookshop)
Anna and Harlan Hubbard are heroes of mine. Countercultural and creative, the Hubbards flipped the bird (metaphorically, they would never do such an improper thing) to modern society and went driftless. When they were in their forties they got married, built a shantyboat, and planned a life downstream. They ended up living on their handcrafted river vessel for years. Harlan charted their stories in journals, books, paintings, and woodcuts. He reveled in the simple, yet difficult, artistic life. Anna learned to share in Harlan’s vision. After a few years, they sold their shantyboat and set-up shop at Payne Hollow on a piece of land on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. The Hubbards lived a Thoreauvian life. It was Harlan’s creative output that garnered public attention. I read Harlan Hubbard’s books with easy pleasure and wonder, and was left clueless about Anna’s perspective on their life. Mia Cunningham, the author of Anna Hubbard: Out of the Shadows, was a family friend of the Hubbards. Anna doted on Mia when she was a child. She corresponded with Anna for years and would spend weeks out at Payne Hollow in the summer as a child. She was the perfect candidate to write the biography of Anna Hubbard.
Cunningham reveals Anna to be a fiercely independent person in the costume and manner of a stereotypical Dutch housewife of the times. Anna’s mission was to encourage Harlan’s creative vision and way of life. She bemoaned her own supposed lack of creativity. She could not see the artistic power in her piano playing, the harvesting and cooking with the food at hand (grown or slaughtered) over a fire, the exercise of the household arts on the shantyboat, or her astute ear for the cadence of the written word. Anna lived an untamed poetic life in partnership with Harlan, but the largesse of her practices were beyond the boundaries of what she defined as “creative”. Mia Cunningham offers readers the gift of Anna Hubbard’s roundly creative life.
Anna Hubbard: Out of the Shadows is for the reader who seeks a story of a remarkable river woman who turned her back on high society. The Hubbards have an irreligious Desert Father and Desert Mother quality to them. Thousands visited them seeking a word of salvation or a gleaning from their simple way of life.
“An Unbroken Grace” by Fred Bahnson (Notre Dame Magazine)
Elder wisdom hangs like an aromatic hint on a person, invisible and potent. Instead of cut grass or sweat it is the fragrance of forbearance and humility. When this scent reaches a seeker’s nose, like a bloodhound, they scout out the elder. Writer Fred Bahnson pays such homage to the elder wisdom of Barry Lopez in his essay “An Unbroken Grace.”
The name Barry Lopez has been invoked in nearly every episode of Contemplify this year. I have pondered that. After reading “An Unbroken Grace” the rationale behind the recurrence of Lopez’s presence in my thought life took a step forward. It was the underbrush of his character, the disciplined pursuit of wholemaking through storytelling while embodying a believable life within constraint, that stalked my thoughts. The quality of character that possessed Barry Lopez was stitched into each sentence he wrote,
“While traveling in Alaska’s Brooks Range, he stopped to bow before the nest of a horned lark. “In such a simple bow from the waist,” Barry wrote, “you are able to stake your life, again, in what you dream.”
A lifetime of holy attention was expressed in that bow. Lopez guilelessly shared this unforced expression to his readers. Bahnson honors Lopez in mimetic replication, the entire piece is a gentle bow to Lopez. Bahnson writes, “that gesture of adoration — the deeply human urge to genuflect before the world’s mystery — threads through Barry’s life and work.” From this posture of humility one can put their hand on the exposed roots that bend towards sources known and unknown. The known are the marks of a monastic rhapsody in Barry Lopez; commitment to stability of place (Finn Rock, OR), community (human and non-human alike, his generosity among artists and roadkill alike was second to none), and vocation (service through writing). The unknowns are the noetic yet unpronounceable intimacies he carried out in his commitment, communities, and vocation. Barry Lopez walked a footpath in service to mystery and made no bones about being one small creature among many.
“An Unbroken Grace” is for the reader who appreciates being reminded of the glory of being human in all of its mucked up histories, bright connections, and potentiality to be of service to the world as it is.
The Essential Dogen: Writing of the Great Zen Master edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt
(Get it the Public Library or Bookshop)
A few years back I burned interstate rubber on my way up to Santa Fe from my home in Albuquerque. I was running late. My goals were to pick up a used toddler bed and to sit with Sensei Kazuaki Tanhashi (editor of The Essential Dogen). The light pleasantries exchanged in the purchase of the bed were extraordinary in their ordinariness. I remember feeling the embrace of this stranger’s home when I stepped through their threshold. Forgetting my second task momentarily, I paid for the bed and zipped my way towards the Zen monastery. Two minutes late. The doors to the Zendo were closed, and I was invited to snake around back so I could enter without disturbing the timely. I remember feeling the embrace of the Zendo when I stepped through its threshold. Forgetting my completed first task entirely, I sat down and joined the practice. I do not recall the dharma talk Sensei Kazuaki Tanhashi offered that evening, but a few lines from Zen Master Dōgen were pressed upon my flesh. And so began my conversation with Zen Master Dōgen.
I stand on the shoulders of Christian mystics in faith and practice. When I get drowsy, I rest my head on the shoulders of Zen teachers. In Zen, the teachers get a kick out of jolting me awake. They offer tools of transformational technology that upend and reseat colorful theists, agnostics, carnivores, and whiny atheists. The seekers of wisdom always wipe their feet at Dōgen’s welcome mat before knocking.
“Dōgen’s teaching: We practice because we do not yet know who or what we are. But as a result of many causes, including the suffering we experience and the longing engendered by that suffering, we aspire to know. That aspiration leads many people to begin the practice of zazen. Dōgen expressed this beautifully when he said, “Wisdom is seeking wisdom.” Perhaps we might paraphrase and say that wholeness is seeking wholeness, self is seeking self.” (p.22)
The Essential Dogen spins round like a heralded album that surpasses its fame each time it is played. Heard again for the first time, it makes me dance after dragging my feet through a dogged day. The sensory overload of digital interactions becomes a tasteless cocktail. When I am digitally overserved, I read a snippet of Dōgen to sober up.
“Continuous practice that actualizes itself is no other than your continuous practice right now. The now of this practice is not originally possessed by the self. The now of this practice does not come and go, enter and depart. The word “now” does not exist before continuous practice. The moment when it is actualized is called “now.” This being so, your continuous practice of this day is a seed of all buddhas and the practice of all buddhas. All buddhas are actualized and sustained by your continuous practice.” (p.160)
The Essential Dogen is for readers who hear a contemplative tune in the reflection of the moon.
Talking to Mountains by Scott Ballew (Stream or purchase at leisurerodeo.com)
“If this road goes on forever, I’ll just get out here and walk.” This is a good song lyric. I like a song that is economical with words. In this one line I receive a visualization of meaning. A landscape is painted before me. A conveyor belt of conformity on the road of mundane eternality. The countenance of narrator’s character is exhibited by their departure to go their own way at their own pace. And I think it is funny. The man who held the pen to paper to write that lyric is Scott Ballew.
Scott Ballew is a humorous, reflective, and soulful bloke. As a singer, he delivers unvarnished honesty with a wink. Wry humor on the edge is what I yearn for as a listener. I seek out songs that will lead me up goat trails that hug the mountains. Narrow paths present vistas true to God’s design if you risk the teetering precipice of life and death.
No one sings like Scott Ballew because he is not trying to sound like anyone else. Talking to Mountains has hints of his influences (Terry Allen in particular) because Ballew has digested their art, not copied their blueprint. Originality is simply being the vanguard of an artistic lineage. That is an important mark of the artists I seek out. I found this to be true when I had the distinct pleasure of talking to Scott Ballew on Contemplify.
Talking to Mountains is for listeners who smile at a sad yarn and a wise turn of the tongue. Usually all in one stanza. The entire album is full of such stanzas. Scott Ballew is an artist reflecting on the world before him and the past behind.
Contemplify Update
The four most recent episodes on Contemplify…
Scott Ballew on Talking to Mountains & the Sublimity of Sad Songs
Tending to the Spiritual Interior of Language with Lia Purpura
These episodes are available from Contemplify through these fine outlets: iTunes, Stitcher, Podbean, or Overcast
Arts & Articles
“How Privilege and Capital Warped a Movement” (NYT): A fruitful examination of what happens to a movement when capitalism and privilege join in. The polished posturing of such barnacles within said movement bypass structural change. Pair this with Wendell Berry’s classic essay, “In Distrust of Movements” (not what you think).
Unknowing by Brie Stoner (Podcast): My dear friend Brie Stoner is starting a podcast. Her perspective is embodied, fresh, and creative. Brie turns her gaze to the possible peeking out on the horizon of becoming. I am doing a little jig out of excitement for the work she is up to.
“In the Ancient Tradition” by David Budbill (Contemplify Musings): Forever I have loved the poem ‘Dilemma‘ by David Budbill. It took decades too long to check out his book of poetry, Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse. A sublime book on being on the contemplative path while facing all of the usual demons of power, prestige, and possession.
May the loveblind machines peter out.
Dock your shantyboat ashore and peel
potatoes for supper.
Find the embrace of an elder, and live in
the hope that their scent will stick.
Call this your daily practice.
And if this road goes on forever,
Why don’t you get out here and walk?
Bowing to the river until I fall in,
Paul
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P.P.S. The postings to kindle the examined life in a quarantined world have been tossed in a box labeled "Quarantined Qontemplative" and placed in the shed out back. It has been replaced by a new offering (but very similar essence) labeled "Musings" on a jerrycan out at the Contemplify basecamp.