Chapter 43
The shape of the body of
the Buddha’s girlfriend
Having just finished two difficult and trying weeks meditating about my relationship with my mother and father I was absolutely exhausted. But I knew that I wasn’t done with the two of them (is one ever?). My meditations had focused on the two of them as individuals and I felt deep inside that something was missing. I hadn’t taken the time to look at them as parents and as a couple. So somewhat reluctantly, I took the first two days of the following week to meditate about my parents in tandem. Not an easy subject on their own, combined together their eccentricities increased geometrically.
They were symbolic of their time, part of a generation that didn’t leave the house no matter how fucked up the circumstances of marriage were ‘for the sake of the kids’. They may well have been right. In any case, for this I am eternally grateful as I bear witness to the damage that the big ‘D’ has done to so many of the kids I have known and watch grow up over the years. I can’t think of very many circumstances where I have heard one of the kids say hey, that was the right thing to do. Even as they become kidults, after a D they wonder where their family lives went, what happened to their homes, their memories and their stuff. Most of all they have to wonder why they weren’t important enough for the parents to stay in one house with them.
While our small stucco LA home was routinely filled with behavior that went well beyond the bizarre, I am glad they stayed together if not just for my sake. I can’t imagine how my mom could have raised me by herself if they had split. She had no ability to make money and grandma was still living with us. Who would have supported her? And realistically, Dad’s legendary temper plus his Eastern European thirst for vengeance would have equaled total disaster for her and for me. He would have hunted us down mercilessly and made our lives hell one way or another.
It’s not like they didn’t think about it. In fact they got close to ending it. She even filed for divorce when I was 11. According to Mom, Dad broke down and cried on the court-house steps, begging for her to take him back just as they were ready to begin the hearing. For better for worse she relented and withdrew the proceedings. He never denied this even when pressed, which for him was tantamount to verification of its truth. I can say this for sure, for the next year or so he was a changed man. Yes, there is nothing like fear to put even a man like Dad on good behavior, opening doors for mom, smiling, taking out the garbage and never cursing. Then, as one would expect, he gradually reverted to his old ways over time and they never mentioned the D word again. Unless he was threatening Mom for even thinking that she could leave him and get away with it before exacting another act of psychic revenge, smiling all the way (Dad having forgotten the courthouse details by now).
While they weren’t the greatest parents, despite their flaws and foibles, they covered the basics well. Made sure I got to school on time every day and because we were Jewish, that I knew that failure to get good grades equaled failure in life. We stuck close to our stereotype and that mean education education and then some more education on Saturdays.
What they never ever did, for reasons that have been inferred, was express any love of any sort in the household. Not to each other or to me or even to the pets. Whether it was just the tempo of the times or not, the L word was never a popular one at our casa. Nor were they ever affectionate towards each other. The only times I remember my father touching my mother were not expressions of love but of anger.
While these meditations weren’t pleasant, they were necessary.
On Tuesday morning, after finishing a second meditation about my parent’s relationship with each other and thus with me, I hit up the computer. While scanning the emails, a good thing happened quite unexpectedly. Mixed in with usual daily electronic crud was a note from a network acquaintance about a company that needed some help. Not only that, they were in the food industry and in my old field of coffee to boot.
Good news right? Incredible opportunity! Right!
I guess so. I should have been so excited but when I read the email I felt nothing. Months ago this would have sent me into a frenzied state of possibilities and imaginary scenarios. Things had changed mightily since then. I had learned a brutal but practical lesson during the Jesse the pickle debacle. (Note to self: send a bill to that prick.) That bitter lesson was this: Do not mix personal emotions with your career. While I read this email with interest and immediately replied, I now knew better than to fantasize about what might or might not happen. Only time would tell and I didn’t have control over that.
In months past this would have been a time when I lapsed into another set of meditations about work and career and what it meant to me as was my natural tendency. Make no mistake, I still missed work badly. But I had hit the point where I couldn’t spend any more time thinking about it. Yes it was fucked up, yes I wasn’t making money and yes, I felt emasculated by my inability to re-enter the work force. At the same time I had done all I could to find work in the middle of a recession or otherwise. This subject had so dominated my mindset and my life for the past year that I had to move on for the sake of my own sanity. To change the very basis of my relationship with work so that it was not the all in all focus of my life. I knew now that the process had already started just by living my life happily without working, something that I never ever thought might occur as long as I was still breathing.
In any case, the completion of the mom and dad meditations left me full of positive spirit. I honestly enjoyed a sense of deep calm and accomplishment as well as a greater understanding of their lives and mine. This was one of most fulfilling sets of meditations that I had attempted to date. At the same time, I was also beat, it had taken a lot out of me to just to do so.
The heavy rains that had soaked us for the past few days broke that afternoon and that meant one thing and one thing only, I could get out of the house. Along with meditation, dedicated exercise was the other pillar that held me together during those grey winter days. I was ecstatic with the chance to walk up through the hills smelling wet sycamores and eucalyptus pulled along by the ever-powerful white dog tractorette on her red leash.
And finally, I was thrilled to have found this unique but highly effective meditation practice to keep me centered. The MM practice itself had gone through changes too. Not just how well it worked for me now, no, there had been a fundamental shift that had just happened recently. For the first time, I found myself consciously choosing the subject of a meditation instead of having these subconscious visions choose a path for me.
The realization that I was now in control, or sort of, set off a spasm of manful meditation possibilities as I walked along crushing a stray snail with my shoe. What to do next? Cars? More sports? Music from Ray Davies to Joe Strummer to Coltrane? Beer? Strange business experiences and bizarre bosses? Gambling? Cooking? What what what? When I got home I took out a note pad and for the rest of the day I would jot down ideas as they came to me. By the end of the day the list was long.
I was tempted to get started on something new but too tired to attempt a mediation doubleheader that day. I closed the afternoon with a gentle smile of anticipation that stuck with me all through the evening. Even she is typically oblivious to my presence at dinner kept asking me why I am in such a great mood that evening. I told her about the job lead. That alone should be good enough to keep her off of the track. Then I told her just how much I am enjoying my meditations these days and what good they are doing for me. She got a brief synopsis of the mom/dad/son group and I was amazed by the power of her response. She replied that I should keep pushing, how she never has confronted her own issues with such focus and how much she respects my work. Then she gave me a hug and kiss with her eyes open for once. Not bad.
Later, after watching another pitiful GSW loss, when I was washing my face before going to bed, I reluctantly concluded that the small red bumpy thing that was on my nose really may well not be a zit. I had been applying a variety of medications to it for months now and it just seemed to sit there, not big enough to worry about, but it wouldn’t go away. I made a note to myself to keep an eye on it.
When I awoke the next morning at 6 she who just loves to sleep was snoring lightly along side of me, relaxed blissed and blessed. I looked over at her and studied the rise and fall of shoulders as they met her back bone, a movement that I knew so well. As I watched her breathing in and out it dawned on me. In one instant, one move of her back, I knew what was coming next. A new and much more complex subject in the journey to find manful truth and understanding, something that I had been subconsciously waiting for since I made the decision to up the spiritual ante in my MM practice. The challenge of challenges, the Mt. Everest in the climb to a manful life. The holy grail of manful meditation that could only be found in a walk through the most treacherous of trails. There could only be one topic like that.
Women.
Throughout breakfast I couldn’t wait to get back into the mancave and start up this meditation sequence. Before doing so I paused and reflected. I mean, what a situation. Here I am getting ready to spend my morning thinking about women and she who is much purer than I believes that I am working on resolving longstanding and deep feelings I had about my mom and dad. Shouldn’t I feel a bit guilty about what I am doing?
Nah. I had done enough serous stuff already. I was ready to enjoy a good hour or two thinking about women something I loved more than anything. I was time to open the psychological door.
I began the meditation by recalling a historical lesson as taught by a great sage. The holy manful spirit James Brown often sang a hallowed chant of manfullness about women in a voice that was not of this life and time. He sang these words of gospel truth accompanied by what eerily sounded like a string quartet behind him:
“This is man’s world. This is a man’s world. But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing (pause and drum tap) without a woman or a girl.” Then he paused again, grunted and screamed as only a celestial visitor could, did a soul clap and uttered a loud ‘uh’. From the holy pulpit of the Apollo theatre, he continued this blessed chant.
“Man needs a woman. He got to have a woman. Man, man can make everything he can. But a woman makes a better man.”
What more can you say? It is pure and it is right.
I took several minutes and meditated on this chant but at the same time I was careful not to think too much about his hair. That mental image can distract even the most thoughtful and dedicated MM practitioner from the subject at hand.
With those timeless words I began the most complex set of meditations with an open and clear mind. I was going to need it for this subject is a hallowed but often confusing ground to walk upon. For men, women are the essence of the yin and yang of pleasure and pain wrapped into a web of often incomprehensible complex feelings merging seamlessly one into another. Or as they said in the old days, can’t live with them, can’t live without them.
Summoning my courage, I take strength in one last reminder from the Holy soul brother number#1. “A man that doesn’t have a woman is lost. “ Amen and uh to that.
There is an obvious question that needs be addressed as I begin this crucial work. Why didn’t I choose to meditate about she who is the most important woman in my life? Shouldn’t that where my focus should be, gaining a better understanding of our relationship and our life together? Of how much inspiration and perspiration I draw from our interactions?
Maybe. But not right now. First, I would have to deal with this question: What would I discover during these meditations if I focused just on her? What did I really want to find out about our relationship? Would I want to tell her? And what could I tell her without causing a rise in her temper? And more importantly, was I ready to so?
That subject could wait for some other time. I was just plain whooped from thinking about the damage suffered in the Ma/Pa/Son triangle. It was time to get off the serious MM work train and to try to have some fun.
Yes, there it was again, that three letter word fun that had been AWOL for many many years. Just hearing the word sounded a so good. Fun was a subject sorely lacking in my life (and that of most men in their 50’s) and in need of real emphasis to bring that life back into equilibrium. I wanted to have fun. And what could be more fun then to spend some quality time gazing inwardly upon the beauty of a woman’s body? That was the answer. I wanted to get away from women’s minds and back to what interested us in the first place, their beauty. Yes yes yes.
This manful meditation path offered me the opportunity to look upon some of the most revered visions that we have as men without the fear that walks hand in hand with our longing looks. In other words, thank god women can’t read our minds, as much as they want to or think that the can. They remain in our private lock box. I wanted to let those feelings out to run free.
I can’t wait any longer so I move on in earnest now. I cross my legs, lower my breathing, close my eyes and begin to drift. Women women, where to start? An idea begins to form out of the swirling mental clouds. It is a vision of the glory of that most wondrous part of the female anatomy. First one cheek, then another, then her whole beautiful tush rising from the mists in all of its spectacular glory, like some sort of anal sunrise missing only the beams of light yet illuminating my mind nonetheless. My. I am in manful awe.
Throughout our daily lives, many manful moments are spent gazing longingly at this particularly glorious part of the female anatomy without the need for any additional internal clarity or focus. Indeed, asking a righteous man to meditate upon a woman’s butt is like asking an art student to dwell upon a sculpture like say Michelangelo’s David. A perfect woman’s ass is art, plain and simple. Match. Set. Point. Game over.**
**This meditation is dedicated with deepest respect to the high priest of the holy butt mediations, the revered “coronel” of Panama City who first shared this ancient manful mantra with me so many years ago driving out of David into the mountains of La Bouqette.
How many exquisite minutes are spent as our eyes followed a beautiful woman’s body as she walked on by and then up the street? Countless. Yet there is a downside in our quest. Thank the spirits that they do not turn around to see the looks in our eyes or hear the thoughts in our minds as we say “Ay mama”. Indeed, if they truly had eyes in the back of their heads the world would be a different place. Our looks of longing tush love remain sadly misinterpreted and now, in our modern PC world, solidly out of place.
But enough philosophy, I want to focus on the subject at hand. What sort of butt is the one that I wish to meditate upon? They are infinite. It might be that of someone I love, it might be one that I have admired from afar and will never touch. Well, at least not with my hands, but I may have in my heart. I wonder.
Then the meditation picks up power and energy. I think of the butts that I have seen over the years and what creates such a perfect image. Is it large? Can you get your hands around it? Small? Round? Oblong? How does it move? Does it appear soft? Hard? Muscular? Flabby? Tense? Relaxed? Does it shift from side to side or just stay there moving up and down up and down and then just ever so slightly begin to change direction? I am overwhelmed with beauty and choice.
Over and over one word comes back into my mind as these butts hover in my mind’s eye. That word is perfect. I drill deeply into the meditation by imagining a perfect butt. And as with all of the meditations, beauty is truly in the mind of the beholder, there are as many women’s derrieres as there are men that will love them.
I come back to my breathing and slow it down. I continue on. What emotion does this particular butt carry? Is it a happy butt? Or is it sad? Is it angry? Loving? Is it a butt that hates or one that cries out for attention?
What is this butt clothed in? G-string bikini underwear peeking out from a tight pair of jeans? Bikini bottom? Black leather pants? And if women truly didn’t want men looking at their behinds why would they wear what the wear? Who can blame even a chaste and pious soul for gazing longingly at true perfection?
I settle on the butt of dreams (hey, it’s my dream) and focus on it for a really really long time. I let my third eye drink mightily from these cool waters and my id is refreshed. I take it all in without fear that someone will be offended by my love. I take my time, it’s my manful meditation and a butt that I love. So I can stare at it as long as I want. And best of all, no one can judge me.
Finally I see the barn and slow down. The meditation ends as my butt vision dissolves into soft white clouds and my imagination clears. I come out of the meditation smiling, relaxed. The rest of my day is easy. I read without distraction, walk with ease and stroke white dog’s belly over and over until she, in her way, says that is enough and leaves the room having overloaded emotionally shaking out her body with a series of violent but controlled twitches. I watch her and laugh. Another emotionally stressed girl in the house. It’s time for lunch. Hold the phone, is that a tuna melt I hear calling me?
Songs of butt love:
This is Man’s World, James Brown. Uh Uh Uh.
Da Butt, from the sound track, by E.U. (not to be confused with the EEU either.)
Walk on By. Isaac Hayes of course.
Shake it Baby, BB King
Spinal Tap, Big Bottom
Tuna Melt:
2 slices whole wheat
1 can tuna (preferably in water or quality olive oil)
1 pickle
1 tbp mayo
1 tbp curry
1 slice cheddar cheese
Heavy skillet
Butter to taste
Make tuna salad by draining can, putting in bowl and adding mayo, curry and cut up pickle.
Heat heavy skillet add butter to just before burning. Place bread slices in skillet. Place cheddar on one side.
Place tuna salad on other.
What until cheddar is melted and bread brown.
Remove from pan, combine, serve, devour.
Great with any side, from potato salad to chips to cole slaw.
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