My marriage to the Buddha

Dream:
I'm among a group of American tourists in some exotic, mountainous country. We're observing some local people who have prostatrated themselves in front of an ancient shrine, where a headless statue of Buddha sits among the ruins. Common legend holds that for some especially devoted followers, Buddha restores the head to the statue by inhabiting it. The tourists are moving on, but I can't go with them. In a gesture completely out of character, I throw myself to the ground and stretch out my arms before me, my palms together in namaste. A girlfriend tries to draw me back to the tour, but I refuse to move, to speak, to acknowledge her at all. I am intently praying, somewhat surprised to find myself doing so, but passionately given over to it. My friend whispers--you must have loved him in a past life, and disappears.

There are some ugly American tourists in a bath behind me, hoping sheepishly for the Buddha to come to life. He will not come for them. An indian man, about 15, steps in front of me. We are standing in front of the pool where the Americans squat. We are not in the water. We are divided from the others. I step to the side. A wall moves back and squeezes the pool into a rectangle, then a box, then into nothingness at all.

The scene changes. Local women with long dark hair and brightly colored saris join me on the ground, our hands outstretched in supplication. We are like flowers scattered across the hillside. 

The Buddha comes to life. Among all the women, it is me he looks at, me for whom he has awakened. He reaches out his arms to me, and I rise and go to his side. We have found one another again. I am my beloveds and my beloved is mine; he feedeth among the lilies. We are together briefly, and then he must turn to the daily business of caring for his people. There are lines of supplicants, and dignitaries, and diplomats. Among them the representatives of Abraham Lincoln have come. It seems the Americans are planning some kind of invasion, or colonizing movement. Between them and the Buddha, who retreats sometimes to the tallest and loneliest plateau in the mountain range, where he reads a few carefully chosen books of philosophy, shuffle the women with the long dark hair. Each of these bureaucrats would give her life for the Buddha, each of them has a personal relationship with him. He loves them, but is not intimate with any of them. He tells me that I am the one he has been waiting for. I am his beloved and my beloved is mine. But the women who minister to him and for him do not believe that this is true. They interfere between us, they refuse to let me advance up the mountain, through the many different plateaus of increasing importance and intimacy. The ministers have turned Buddha's open lap into an elaborate court. They want to protect him.

A toy plane, with Buddha's household on it, zooms by, catching me up. Or I catch hold of it and go careening above the heads of the guests at the party, who are holding their breaths in fear. I am not afraid. Carried impossibly by the tiny plane, I tear around under the enormous, red, ceiling of the tent, or giant hanger, that houses all of us. Elated--my childhood fantasy of flying has finally come to life--I laugh uproariously. Not hysterically, but happily, full-belliedly, mirthfully. I see the humor in every situation, in all the petty worries of human life, the immense joyfullness that defeats despair. The central truth of existence is mirthfulness, joy, laughter.

I return to the Buddha's court, and throw myself beneath the Banyan tree where he usually manifests himself. "He is not here," one of his ministers tells me. She is irritated, clearing up the mess from a recent appearance. There is debris on the ground, ribbons and long swaths of colorful cloth sweeping among the branches of the tree. He has just departed. "But I must see him. It is urgent. There is danger!" I have news of an encroaching enemy, which share with the minister in the hope that she'll let me past the gate. But she rudely pushes me away, "Now I will be the bearer of this news. The Buddha will reward me and never know that you were here at all." I am desperate, I plead. The ministers herd me away from the tree, away from my beloved, towards the edge of the plateau, a cliff that falls miles down to the ocean. I know that I can fly, and leap out...plummet, and then, miraculously, level out and lift. My body arcs through the air, finding the current, pulling up and up, nosing into the wind, rising. I head up the mountain, above the amazed and angry ministers, and find my way to the eagle's nest that the Buddha can reach, his most private refuge where he reads and mediates. I have proven that I am his coequal, his beloved, as he is mine. He manifests and embraces me, and I know perfect bliss.

We move down to the level where he communicates with his ministers, and tells them that I am his partner, and that they must accept me. They complain, and then adjust. Time passes.

He disappears. Suddenly, without a word. He is simply gone. Is this a test? Terrible things begin to happen--tornadoes of bolders begin to whirl up the mountain, and the ground erupts, spitting rocks. All the angry forces that the Buddha has kept in check unleash. The people are frightened. Where has he gone? What will we do? I must act. I must believe in my own power. I must try. I hold out my hand against the tornado, willing it to settle, and, amazingly, it does! I halt the rocks sputtering out of the earth. When the winds rise up again, I calm them. I quiet the waves. I have always had this power within me, but have never believed in myself enough to feel it.

Yet my faith falters. I doubt myself, I pity myself. My ability to fly comes and goes. Sometimes I can lift only a few inches off the ground, and then can move only slowly. I can't seem to steer. Other times I careen straight up above the skyscrapers, and flit about like a swallow, or a bat.

Why I write

It's hard to explain why I no longer keep a journal. I used to. Writing daily used to be the activity that kept me sane. Do I not write because I can't face myself? Possibly.

I read a review of Susan Sontag's recently published journals. It wasn't very nice. The reviewer complained, it seems to me, because Sontag used the form to do what most people do in their journal: record their feelings, their emotional responses to events or thoughts that take place. He searched in vain for polished prose, complex sociological analyses, political commentary, and found the record of the heart's movements. This disappointed him. What a jerk.

I don't keep this diary to count the number of men I've slept with, or to pronounce wittily on public phenomena, or to explore philosophical issues, or whatever it is that Mr. Reviewer looked for and could not find in Sontag's journal. I write here because it helps me to express. It's vital to my sanity. And if i worry about how intelligent or sophisticated or stylistically correct I'm going to appear to some future reader, if I write for any reader at all, then I tend to fail to achieve what it is that I want to achieve when i write--which is mostly to express, to let out, to think through, to relieve my mind and heart of its burdens.

Writing here, in this public blog (which no one ever reads, which no one is likely to read) then seems rather wrong. It's not technically personal, hidden, private enough a venue to serve the function for which I'm theoretically writing. But I have to admit that I've never only written for myself. It's no so much that I want or need to be read and praised (what every writer truly longs for, obviously, is praise) but more to reach out, to communicate. To find myself and to find others with whom to communicate. Readers of the future, perhaps.

What makes a writer write? A need to get it out, to craft, to express--to get out of the head and onto paper what presses to be released, that which irritates until it is out. But also to figure out what it is that is inside, what needs to come out. To be seen, by the self, the writer, who shapes, molds, prods, teases, but also by the reader, who receives, acknowledges, and reshapes. Reading is never passive. But who is my reader?

Who do I imagine you are, dear reader, dear lovely, sweet, sugar-candied reader, you who have taken the time to read, to pay attention, to acknowledge my words. Fit, though few, you get me. I also fear you, of course. I fear your disdain, contempt, dislike. I long not for your love but rather your understanding, your generous sympathy. And also for your response. I want to communicate, to move you to reach out to me.

I write from a position of profound loneliness, isolation. I write to know that I am not alone. That what I experience, feel, say, formulate, make up, has some kind of reality and in its realness has meaning. To hear the sound of my own voice? Not so much. But more to see the evidence of my own being, and to have the opportunity to think about what I am thinking, to reflect, to consider, to evaluate and reevaluate. To make conscious what largely goes unconscious, unspoken, unheard, and unremembered. To see the mark of my wake in the water and to chart its direction in relation to the sea and landscape.

What prompts writing is often pain. The pain is always the same: I miss him, my son. I am always mourning the loss of time with him. It's worse, strangely enough, after we speak on the phone. Easier when we videochat. The voice alone, over the phone line, underscores the distance between us, the time lost. I don't want to write about it. And yet I want there to be a record of how much I have missed him, how terrible it has been to have been separated from him for so long. I want the record to be here. I can't bear to record it. It bores me, for one. It is always the same. There is never anything new to say. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. He hurts. I hurt.