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barton cole :: veni, vedi, vero scripsi
 Sunday, January 18, 2009
The other day, I wrote about dogs, and how capable they are when given a clear job description (see The Good Dogs).
I promised to make an ironic leap with the topic, so here's my stab at that:
I have a good friend, a Zen priest in fact, which I suppose makes him more the master and me the disciple, but neither of us looks at it that way - he's a fellow crow devotee, which fostered our relationship - at any rate -
He travels with his sons to Las Vegas when they attend conventions (they're in the art publishing and gallery business), and unbeknownst to the casino managers, who see this frail old man and give him a complimentary room, he rakes it in on the slots.
How does he do this?
He whips out his jizo statue and sets it on the machine, and then, if you were watching, you'd see him lean in and caress the slot machine, the way someone does with a favored horse, and whisper; he's making a connection with the machine.
"What people don't realize is that even though a man made it, the machine has a soul," which he treats with respect, and is rewarded with consistent winnings.
Really, he's just tapping into the cosmos's willingness to accommodate our needs.
I've spent a lot of time around theaters, have appeared in a lot of plays, have learned tons of lines. Fortunately, I'm good at the memorization, but for others, it's tough; I do all I can to help my fellow actors out, running lines with each other, until we're all comfortable that we know them.
I was running some scenes with a friend who was in a challenging play; most of her lines were long, non sequiturs - tricky to learn, as you can imagine: having a thread in the dialogue gives the actor some handholds, but working with random monologues is tough - you have to memorize it until your body knows it, and then deal with the chaos of the scene.
Needless to say, my friend was having trouble, which was why she called me - so I could help her run the lines, over and over.
Still, she was having trouble, which was really frustrating for her.
{note - this is funny - I know what my point is supposed to be, but I look at what I have and wonder if I'm getting close to making it, which shines a light on what would seem to be one of my approaches as a writer - if a topic is difficult to pin down, throw enough words at it to smother it).
"I'll never get this line!" she said.
No.
She won't; she can't, with that attitude.
You see, I regard everything that we say to be a prayer. Any statement can be easily recast to highlight this; in the case of my friend, the frustrated actress, her statement translates, with hyperbole intact, as:
"Please, O provident Cosmos - don't let me learn this line, please…"
I prefer to approach that situation with this prayer:
"Man, this line is a bitch - but I'll nail it down; I'll keep working on it."
Really, it works that way.
Around here, we really try to avoid negative statements, as a corollary of this approach, urging one to remember something rather than admonishing them not to forget.
It works in all kinds of ways, too, such as finding one's car keys - say it out loud - "I really need to find my car keys in the next five minutes, since I don't want to be late…:
And it helps, as in that case, to be specific. I was talking with a friend who runs a non-profit, who said the institution depended on a miracle.
My notion is that they'll get their miracle, but not until she states clearly just exactly what kind of miracle it is.
Of course, it helps to be vague at times, too - since, if there's any order or structure to the cosmos, one might assume that the providence can be obscure but authentic.
Still, if one is willing to be clear with the cosmos, it will endeavor to provide.
Just like a dog; it only wants a good, clear job description.
And that's as easy as talking to a dog.
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