Wilbur, bearded and wonderful, popped out of the
boys locker room to the right of the stage. The
restive audience grew quiet. Wilbur shuffled
slowly across the polished surface of the gymnasium
floor, eyes wide, and mind vacant. He then disappeared
into the girls locker room to the left of the stage. A few
titters of laughter rippled through the crowd.

Several moments of time passed. We all expected to
see him appear up on the stage. Instead, once again
he popped out of the boys locker room. This time to
gales of laughter. Wilbur turned to face the audience,
eyes wider than ever, his head tilted at an impossible
angle on his neck. Why are they laughing, he seemed
to wonder?

He did an about face and stumbled up the stairs and
was at last in his proper place: on stage.
Wilbur was in trouble and the audience loved it.

Once on stage the bearded wonder treated us to
the magic of illusion and the unexpected. He led
our minds and we eagerly followed. Wilbur clowned
and mimed for us for nearly an hour.

“Time flies like arrows,” he said to me later.

“You betcha!” I replied.

He dressed for the occasion in an old brown overcoat,
rumpled and worn. He had great fun getting out of it.
And so did we watching him. His pockets became as
birds; taking on a life of their own. When it wouldn’t
hang in mid-air as surely I thought it would, he selected
one of us at random to hang his hat and coat upon.

He wore baggy grey trousers and charcoal suspenders,
blue sneakers, and a wrinkled black tee shirt. His hat
was of old brown felt and was quite misshapen.
Although, I am sure, at one time it was worn by someone
with great dignity and aplomb. It was that kind of hat.

Wilbur never said a word, but we knew what he was about.
He became a cow. Then he milked it.
He became a frog. Then he choked to death on his tongue.
He became a surgeon and performed a heart transplant.
Then he took us on a fantastic voyage through the human
body. From anal passage to nasal passage. From stem to
stern. He did hand over hands on the rib cage.

Wilbur ate fire in the dark. He juggled brightly colored balls
In the bright white light. He lost his pants and treated us to
a view of his shocking pink boxers. Then he threatened all of
our lives by balancing first a large wooden plank on his hairy
chin. Then a long aluminum step ladder. We all sensed the
danger and shrunk down in our seats. Soon the danger was
over and Wilbur was back on stage pulling yet another bit of
magic from his bag of tricks.

“Wilbur was my first clown name,” he said proudly after the
show. Whereupon he stepped gingerly to the other side of
the room and neatly lifted off the top of Notre Dame and
peered into the darkness below to see what he could see.
I just smiled.

There is nothing more disheartening than endless futile labor or doing something you absolutely loathe or have a fundamental problem with. As you might recall, Sisyphus was condemned to an eternity of rolling a rock up a steep mountain incline only to have it roll back to the valley again once he got it to the top. On his way back down the mountain, he had to think about his existential position.

Looked at in another way, work is applied effort. It is what we put ourselves into…whatever we expend our energy on for the sake of accomplishing something. Work in this fundamental sense is not what we do for our living, but what we do with our living.

Happiness resides in activity, both physical and mental. It resides in doing things that one can take pride in doing well. Those who have missed the joy of work, of a job well done, have missed something very important.

All work can be done well or it can be done poorly. All work can be done cheerfully and with pride or grudgingly and with distaste. Whichever way we do it is really up to us. It is a matter of choice. There are no menial jobs. Only menial attitudes. In the theatre we say there are no small parts, only small actors. Our attitudes are up to us. A laborer is worthy of his hire.

As Sisyphus presses his face against the rock, each atom of the stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

First there was Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss, outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild.

– Milton

 

 

 

Great countries are those that can endure history’s convulsions without abandoning their  efforts to solve their problems at home.

 

-Albert Camus

 

According to Jane Hirshfield, in the “Art of Haiku,” a Haiku is a poem composed of 17 syllables or sound bites containing vivid imagery. The traditional Haiku poem should evoke a particular season, although western Haiku writers don’t always follow this proscription.

The original meaning of the Japanese word Haiku, according to Hirshfield, is “Playful verse.” The celebrated Japanese poet, Basho, raised Haiku to new levels of significance by adding a spiritual and emotional dimension.

Basho wasn’t too strict about the form. He advised that you can have an extra syllable or two as long as the poem sounded right. If the sound was off, then a re-write was in order. He also said it was important to see the world with new eyes and to write down the present moment.

Three Haikus

Here are three Haikus that I wrote that I would like to share with you.

The monk stumbles from
The Black Mountain Demon’s Cave
To find the world one bright pearl.

The sound of the dragon
Singing in the withered tree
Comes to my ear.

The empty boat returns
From its long Journey abroad
Full of moonlight.

“The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” by Stephen Greenblatt is a book that holds special significance for me. It is a book about a book hunter who lived in the 15th century, Poggio Bracciolini. It resonates with me because I too am book hunter.
I know how Poggio Bracciolini must have felt when he came across a dusty scroll hidden away in the library of the Benedictine Abbey of Fulda in Germany. This scroll was one of the few remaining copies extant in the world and the only copy that had surfaced to that point. It consisted of an important poem, “On the Nature of Things,” written by Lucretius in 50 BCE. This book would change the course of human events.
“On the Nature of Things” is a poem about the philosophy of Epicurus. Epicurus, a Greek philosopher living in Athens in the third century B.C.E, was a proponent of the theory of atomism. This theory rests on the idea that the basic building blocks of matter are tiny invisible particles called atoms. Epicurus was also a proponent of the pleasure principle. He believed one’s primary aim in life should be enhancing one’s pleasure and avoiding pain. The pursuit of happiness should be the goal of life. Liberated from superstition, you would be free to pursue pleasure. Peace of mind is the key to enduring pleasure. The Church of the 15th century however, thought otherwise. “On the Nature of Things” was considered to be a radical and dangerous document.
“The Swerve: How the World Became Modern,” is a book about books. Greenblatt goes into the history of writing books and bookmaking, libraries, and book storage. He discusses the readers of books and the owners of books from antiquity. He describes these readers to be few in number and usually the wealthy elite. They were a cultivated society of men and women whose homes had rooms designated solely for the purpose of reading books.
“The Swerve” is also a history of the times in which Poggio lived. He lived in Florence during the 15th century. He became secretary to Pope John XXIII. These were wild times for the Church. There were actually three Popes at the time all claiming legitimacy. Pope John XXIII (Baldassare Cossa) was eventually deposed after being accused of simony, sodomy, rape, incest, torture, and murder.
After the Pope was deposed and imprisoned, Poggio unemployed, considered himself to be free. Free to hunt books. Free to read and free from all cares and worries of worldly affairs. He withdrew into the quarters of his private library in his castle. Books delighted him. According to Poggio, time spent with books takes our minds away from our troubles.
The most important impact the book had for me was to answer two burning questions: Is the world determined? And, do we have free will?
Determinism conflicts with the doctrine of free will. Lucretius suggests that atoms tend to swerve randomly (Clinamen). When atoms fall straight down through space they deflect a bit here and there, at uncertain times and places, slightly changing their motion. This swerving action creates the free will that we all take advantage of in our daily lives and allows us to have purpose.
The other important legacy Lucretius leaves us with is the idea that the highest goal of life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain. Life should be all about the pursuit of happiness.
We find the echoes of these ideas in our own Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. In it he declared man’s right to life, freedom, and also to “the pursuit of happiness.” Jefferson owned many editions of “On the Nature of Things in various translations. It was one of his favorite books.