Say-So

The traditional Polish dish served on Christmas Eve, Kapusta z Grochem is also commonly used as the proverbial equivalent of the Kitchen Sink in the English language, or the “anything and everything” of a particular topic. Having listened to a recent Forum interview with Jennifer 8. Lee about her book, “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food”, and having read yet another fascinating chapter of Liao Yiwu’s Paris Review series of encounters - “The Retired Official” which recalls the Great Chinese Famine, I tip my hat to the resilience of the Chinese people and their creativity in search of comestibles in dire circumstances. Similarly, putting split peas into a pot along with sauerkraut, as baffling as the combination seems to me, is the legacy of the poor people of Eastern Europe and their lean years.

The lethargically crawling days of the first months of 2008, come spring, culminated in a sudden “peas and cabbage” barf of events in my personal life. Back in the lull of February, with first whiffs of spring air and warm and decisive sunshine, I watched the virile forces of seasonal rebirth in the ubiquitous mating pursuits of male pigeons. The aggressive pacing and puffing-up of feathers that is not a dance but a chase, leaves me dumbfounded by its euphemistic name - the “mating ritual”. Sexually driven males relentlessly trot behind females (or other males) who invariably attempt to get away. They persist until they succeed, or until they tire, or till their attention and their path of pursuit swerves to follow a new potential subject. If intercourse is achieved, it bears no similarity to the way human females positively respond, embrace and unfurl in the act of copulation. Nor, is the human male pursuit of sexual encounter limited to cornering a female into a situation of no escape routes. Men must employ psychological tactics to come up with the right combination of sound-bites, visuals and olfactory stimulations to trigger a positive response of the women they desire. The process is self selecting since simple minds and cliché methods procure simple, cliché women. I vividly and fondly remember a scene from Martin Scorsese’s film Raging Bull, when rising boxing star Jake LaMotta meets the budding, almost a woman not quite a child, beautiful Vicky. He swaggers over towards her, looks her over in silence for a moment and after a short introduction by his brother Joey, points over to his car with a nonchalant head gesture and says: “You wanna go for a ride?” to which she plainly responds: “All right…”. The minimal dialogue exchange between the two throughout their courtship brings forth the body language and emphasizes the simplicity of their psyche but more importantly, the archetypal nature of their connection. The beautifully acted love sequences, more than any other I’ve ever seen, depict the bare, naked essence of human male and female, falling in love.

“Love is only visiting” - she said. Smilingly, she dedicated the practice to the appreciation of love in our lives saying that we bask in it and enjoy it deeply because it does not stay. I frequented Studio Rasa for their lunch sessions. On one of the last practices, a teacher shared an introductory thought induced by her own personal turmoil. These words meant to bring student yogis in touch with the present moment in humility and surrender, had the contrary effect of almost launching me out of the classroom. I am a conscientious objector in fatal matters such as death or loss of love. I cannot deny or dispute the factuality of such events. Yet, I refuse the implication of reveling in their existential aspect. Death is easily defined, universally recognized and accepted, love is nothing like it. The word may embody a wide range of concepts from friendship, to admiration, physical desire, infatuation or habit and attachment. It is not measurable in pulse beats. Its presence or absence are not definite, clinically defined states. Yet my approach to both is equally “unenlightened”. Life and Love are to be lived with every fiber of our bodies and mourned with equally dooming abandon.

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Note: This entry was written in early April. It was stashed and unpublished till now.