Daily Drama

Twenty-four hours can make a big difference sometimes.

Monday: Helene and I are getting ready to head back to Michigan for the holidays with my family. Although she still has a bad cough, her bronchial infection is much better. She can talk and has energy for the first time in almost two weeks. I find Oberon is being served at Moto right down the street from my house.

Tuesday: At 2:00am Helene has gone into anaphylactic shock. Her body is covered in hives that look like welts and her eyes are swollen shut. She takes copious amounts of Benadryl. We lay on our backs on the bed holding hands and just breath. In my mind I am calculating just how fast I can get her to the hospital if her breathing stops. I can feel the beginnings and endings of all things intertwined like our fingers. By 5:00am she is out of danger. Her breathing is regular, and she finally goes to sleep. At 7:00am I am on the phone with Northwest Airlines to see what I can do about rescheduling our flights. For two hours the call goes directly to a message that says that due to the bad weather they are too busy to take my call but are sorry for the inconvenience. I too am having issue with the weather. Outside it is cold, cloudy and rainy. At around 9:00am I finally get through and am told that if I do not get on the plane today I will have to pay a $150 dollar penalty and buy another ticket at current market value. This essentially means I will not be able to fly home for Christmas. They also tell me that my return flight will be canceled if I don't fly out today but that I can re-buy the flight for over $300 more than I paid for it in the first place. The call ends with the line, “Sorry for any inconvenience, happy holidays.” Indeed. After calling all my family to tell them the news, I collapse into bed next to my sick little Sabel cat. We wake around 7:00pm and watch A Christmas Carol (1984) with George C. Scott. Helene goes back to bed around 10:00pm and sleeps for fourteen hours.

Wednesday: The sunshine has returned. On a whim, I call Northwest Airlines to see if I can work anything out with them in terms of reschedule a flight. “Good news!” My operator replies, “You qualify for the Midwest Winter Weather Waiver. Your reschedule is covered without penalty or any other additional coasts to you. Merry Christmas, Mr. Hull.” Looks like I will be able to fly out on Friday to see my family for Christmas after all. Although still coughing, the swelling around Sabel cat’s eyes had gone down to a reasonable level. She is curled up on the couch watching old movies on TCM. Tristan texts me the message, “Write Forest Write!” I make a new ZenCowboy video and spend the afternoon writing as I listen to Butter by Hudson Mohawke.

Thursday: To be continued . . .

The Motherland

My world is collapsing in around me. On the eve of our deportment to the Great White North, Helene and I stop in for a quick dinner at my favorite local sushi spot, Moto. For some reason that I can no longer remember, we always sit at the bar. And just as I’m about to order my Spicy Asian Slaw with a Tootsie Roll, I see a familiar orange ball with a smiling sun on it at the top of a beer tap not five feet in front of me.

“Excuse me,” I say to the waitress, “what beer is that?”

“Oberon,” she replies.

“Bell’s Oberon!?!” I ask.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“From Kalamazoo?”

“Uh, . . . I don't know.”

“Bring me one. Now! Please.”

“Sure, no problem. You know you’re the second person today that’s freaked about us having this beer on tap.”

“How would you feel if you could get a pint of Kilt-Lifter in Tokyo?”

“Stoked.”

“Exactly. This is about the same thing for a beer-drinking guy from Michigan.”

“Cool, enjoy.”

The woman next to us is so intrigued she orders one too. We toast each other and then take our first drinks. It is at that moment, looking up at the sign above the bar that clearly lets me know I am drinking this Midwestern jewel in the Sonora Desert, that I feel as if my world is collapsing around me.

“The water, it tastes different,” she says after her first sip.

“Yeah,” I say, “that’s the taste of Lake Michigan fermented.”

The waitress comes back and asks if I’m enjoying my beer. I’m not sure if it could be more obvious that I am so I say, “Yeah, it’s good. But next time I come in I expect to see Brador on tap.”

“What’s that?” she asks.

“My youth,” I reply.

She looks me up and down and then says, “We sell beer and sushi, not miracles. You want another Oberon?”

I look over at the little orange ball on the tap and think to myself, “This certainly feels miraculous to me.” Then I look back into her sarcastic eyes and say, “You’re kidding, right. Of course.”

Mr. Bronner

And as I type this, I feel the water of the Great Lakes coursing through my veins once again and the warmth of that cold little mitten has already smitten me. In a few hours I will be stepping into a flying elevator and then stepping out again onto the frozen tundra of my childhood. (Okay, so it’s not quite tundra, but it’s still a lot colder than Phoenix.) Just to make my point, here’s a video to a couple driving in Michigan. Notice their quaint Michigan accents:

The picture at the top of this post is from the 2003 Sufjan Stevens album entitled Michigan. In the summer of that year Helene and I went to Portland, Oregon and caught Steven on his first ever West Coast tour. It was in a small bar and half the folks seemed to be there for the opening act, Joanna Newsom. (Although I wish her well, I am not a huge fan.) The group had on blue Boy Scout Uniforms, U of M baseball caps and in the back was a handmade map of Michigan. Between songs, Stevens would point on the map to where he was taking us next. After the show, I told Stevens that his album’s exploration of what it meant to grow up in the mitten had saved me years of therapy. Here’s a wonderful video from that disk:

Ahh Impermanence

Last night, Phoenix was hit with a major storm. Today, December 8, 2009, there are many people without power. This tree is at the front of my complex. Had it fallen the other way, it would have smashed into my neighbors’ bedroom. I always liked this tree when I walked past it to the grocery store. According to one of the old timers who were gathered around this morning, the tree was planted in 1968. The year I was born. We were the same age. They are cutting it up now and taking it away. It is no longer considered a tree. The police officer on the scene referred to it as a road hazard. It went down around midnight last night. Midnight last night I was asleep in my bed, like my neighbors. I am happy the tree fell in the road and not on their bed. Two people ran into the tree this morning with their cars, one at 4:30am and the other around 6:00am. No one was injured. One car needed to be towed. At 4:30am I was sleeping in my bed. At 6:00am the first bell rang for sitting on our zendo. There is a giant eucalyptus tree hovering behind our house on city land. I have been asking that it be trimmed for three years. If it were to ever fall due west, it would land right on our bedroom.

Today is Rohatsu. On this day, 2,500 years ago, Siddhartha Gautama dropped his hand to the ground, looked up at Venus in the early morning sky, and understood that we are all Buddhas. And so the Dharma wheel turns and our tradition has grown over time to this day of Rohatsu, December 8, 2009.A tradition that Shakyamuni Buddha said would end in 2,500 years, which is right about now.

This tree fell in the the garden next to the clubhouse where we used to hold zazenkais. It will be cut up and hauled away soon too. Hopefully, it will be used to create something new. We no longer use this space for zazenkais.

Today, December 8, 2009, was the first weekday morning the Sitting Frog Sangha sat together in our new space. I anticipate sitting in the mornings as a sangha for many years to come.