NinjaRadio

I left a comment on Leesa Barnes blog : http://www.leesabarnes.com/happiness-is-a-choice-not-an-emotion/ after she called for all of us to write about happiness.  Happiness is completely overrated.  Don’t you think?  It’s a scam - it’s something the priests and rabbis and American revolutionaries say you should pursue at all costs. Why?  Why can’t I be miserable?  I love my misery. I love my pain. 

Yeah well this is what I wrote:

“Three percent of the world’s population (check snopes and wikipedia - do not trust ninja) are naturally happy. Money or good health apparently have nothing to do with it. Just gobs and gobs of serotonin jumping from neuron to neuron I imagine. For the rest of us happiness is choice. And for everything else - of course - there’s mastercard.

Not to diminish any of the other comments, but we women are famous for believing that doing for others makes us happy - that going within and finding our inner strength and loving ourselves are the keys. The men of the species don’t have to bother with all that because, at any age, a red sports car and a looker on their arm is sufficient to make them happy. They really know how to live in the moment don’t they? (at least 3% of them anyway). I kind of like being a curmudgeon - that’s what makes me happy.”

Leesa made me happy tonight because she gave me this opportunity to gush about my despair.

We broke the plastic bag holder. It’s not the one with the tartan pattern. I gave that one to Charlie. She really wanted it even though so did I. The tartan one was a gift and I liked it better the one we already had. She didn’t want the canvas one Special K and I brought for ourselves in Sydney, Australia a few years ago when we went to the gay games. So I gave her the tartan patterned one. Now the canvas one from Australia broke. Well it didn’t break and so that all the bags came out. The rope holding it up on the hook in the bathroom tore away from the bag. I yanked it off the hook actually and it fell to the ground like a dead weight. Well not a dead weight. A dead weight doesn’t roll. A soft dead weight that rolled. “Oops - shit”, I said. Now we’ve got a plastic bag holder that we can’t pull the bags out of because we can’t hang it up. So I took it to Special K. “Can we put it back together?” She turned it this way and that. She examined it. She examined the rope. “I think what’s really happened is that I tore the hem that may have been holding the rope in.” She continued to contemplate the condition of the bag and how to repair it. To be honest with you I walked away soon after I lost interest in her forensic exercise. Special K does not give up easily. I checked in on her progress a few hours later. “This rope was stitched into the top of the bag,” She announced. “What do we do?” I asked. “Help me. We’ll staple it.” She brought out her mini-stapler. “Wait,” I responded enthusiastically, “I have an office stapler. That’s more heavy duty. Let’s use that.” I stapled and she held the rope in place. “Was there any other option?” I wondered aloud to her. “Well we could have sown it.” “Hmmm. Nah. Lesbians don’t sew. What are you talking about? We had no other option.” Didn’t we?

Zeitgeist is a German word that means the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era according to the Merriam-Webster. It’s the title of a documentary that you can find at http://zeitgeistmovie.com/. It was produced by Peter Joseph and won an Activist Film award. Its premise could be controversial: That our lives our nothing more than fuel cells for a few lucky powerful people. Somewhat like the matrix except there is no need for a red pill or a blue pill. The produce of our toil feeds the few wealthy and powerful while we ask for nothing more than beer, medications, mindless televison and films, Second Life and other web 2.0 false realities.

He builds his case by showing us first that Jesus never existed. Religion is a tool, he suggests, to keep us under control. God is a myth that is so convincing that we are unable to question it. Next, he shows how 9/11 must have been an inside job. Furthermore, he asserts, no buildings can fall in such a controlled fashion unless they have been preloaded with explosives that result in such a perfect demolition. Finally and this is where for me the arguments become the most obscure: our money has no meaning and no value except what the one central bank declares it has. The rise and fall of the markets and my spending power is little more than at the whim of the controllers of the bank whose own money is always protected. They will get into the market and out of it before I feel its effect.

One nice touch in this movie are some still brilliant scenes from Network (1976) where Peter Finch admonishes our attachment to mindless entertainment in the form of television. The scenes from Network were actually the more powerful message for me. What the newscaster says is still relevant today. But did Zeitgeist itself shock me? No. Did it disturb me? Absolutely. Because at the core of its message I think is an invitation to question basic assumptions of what my life in society really means and to whom it benefits and in what ways. From that point of view I loved the movie. As long as you keep an open mind and do not merely open your mouth like a bird to receive it as some kind of false nourishment, it can be thought provoking and serve to spur on any personal inquiry into these matters that you may have been reluctant to explore.

I parked my car somewhere tonight and well I didn’t think about it. I just went about my errands and met up with Special K. We went out for a nice dinner and then walked back to the vicinity of my car. “Where’s the car?” she asks. “Er…near Dearbourne.” (Maybe on Dearbourne…no no on the street north/south to Dearbourne…yeah that’s it). So we get to that street, the name escapes me, and I’m trying to reconstruct where I may have left the car. “Ninja. This is much worse than not remembering in a carpark. Much worse.” (I think it’s further down…) “It’s further down. Keep walking.” But somehow I know it’s not further down. Oh. Now. Where did I park that car? Oh yeah yeah, it’s on Fairview. Maybe. “Ninja - do you know where the car is?” “Go over to Fairview.” I remember now. “I’m nervous Ninja. Do you know where you parked the car?” “Of course. Of course.”

Yeah right, Special K thinks.

Whoa. As a teenager, I worked with autistic children as a day camp counselor. Nothing was harder. I was given instructions on what to do and how to behave with them and how they would behave with me. Not being able to connect with these kids was complete torture for me. Especially when I could, in comparision, fully express myself in relation to the other so called, normal children. I remember with joy and affection how I was able to be a friend and playmate, (I was little more than a child myself at sixteen), to the other children. But the autistic children were seemingly unreachable. Odd motor behaviours, strange repetitive movements and sounds - I had no idea how I was supposed to react. There was no yardstick for knowing whether I was doing the right thing or not.

So it comes as a great surprise and revelation to me that though the autistic interact with their world differently than I do, they have no less awareness about that experience than I have about mine.

If you have not seen it - you must watch this video. You can also supplement that experience with this article from the March issue of Wired.

Photo credit: Jessica Dimmock.

Tomorrow my neighbour has offered to do an interview with me about his feelings regarding the American Democratic nomination race. He’s turning into a democrat and we’re all surprised. I’d like to hear what he has to say. But the weekend is another tight one. I’m hoping to schedule him in between snow shovelling and cleaning up inside.

So, I think that love is the most important thing in the world and then humour is a close second. But Special K thinks that humour is the the most important thing in the world then love comes second. Furthermore, she thinks you can’t have love without humour as a foundation. Am I that funny?

I am so out of it. First I didn’t know that the spec was that Ellen Page might be the next Jodie. I had no idea. And I just found the Big Gay Sketch Show. Check these out.

That’s the question of this blog Stuff White People Like, also reviewed at the L.A.Times. I think the blog is very funny. The writer Christian Lander is Canadian. P.S. Do I smell a book deal?

If you want to go for extra points - white people really love FAIR TRADE coffee, because paying the extra $2 means they are making a difference.

I found an interesting site while looking for temple links for the podcast. Enlightening and entertaining. http://www.do-not-zzz.com/. It’s ZEN for the web. Web Zen.

Why would I even mention Carlos Castaneda? That obscure writer with a huge cult following who believe that his semi-fictious stories about Don Juan and the indigenous peoples of Mexico hold the keys to power and enlightenment. Ninja is a skeptic. She doesn’t believe in any of that rot - but they are best books being peddled as non-fiction that I have ever read.

Years ago, I caught an edition of “Imprint” on our local public television station TVO. The host, Daniel Richler, was leading a panel discussion about native spirituality and its literature. At one point during the discussion Richler held up a copy of Carlos Castaneda’s first book The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. He said with great confidence and certainty that Castaneda’s works about the Yaqui Indians of Mexico represented the greatest hoax since the Piltdown Man. With that, he seemed to dismiss the book out of hand. I had already, if truth be known, dismissed Castaneda as a new age phony long ago so I too moved right along with Richler to the next item of discussion. I was surprised then when one of the panel members, Medicine Grizzly Bear Adams, brought the discussion back to Castaneda. He said that Castaneda must have really been trained under a traditional man of knowledge, (as Castaneda referred to don Juan). Otherwise,Adams insisted, he must be “one of the greatest philosophers or genius’ of your time…” to be able to synthesize the information he presents in his books from his sources, whatever they may be.

That made me revisit the body of work Castaneda wrote, and since then I have read all the books about his so called tutelage under the nagual, Don Juan. They are most entertaining and thought provoking and many quotes from the book have come down to us into the popular culture. The most well-known of these is has come down as something in the form of following a path with heart.

“…a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions. His decision to keep on that path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. He must look at every path closely and deliberately. There is a question that a warrior has to ask: ‘Does this path have a heart?’”

There are many more gems like this in the books. He was a spiritual genius. Whether or not he made it up, he weaved the work into a self-contained reality in its own right.

If I were Carlos Castaneda I would be don Juan’s successor. I would be the Nagual. I would be with my party of warriors. I would spend my time not-doing. I would practice the magical passes as he taught them to me. I would recapitulate and then I would recapitulate again. I would spend my days and nights in the second attention. I would dream and stalk. I would be making car engines stop dead at my will. I would be weeping with joy every second. I would be awe-struck. I would be a man with no personal history. I would be inaccessible and impeccable. I would be silent.