There are, of course, many ways that cats communicate with humans and one another that I didn't enumerate in the previous post. Everyone knows about hissing cats and arching of backs, fluffing-puffing of tails, sideways posing, and other aspects of cat territorial defenses and protective postures. They've heard female cats in heat calling for a mate. They've also heard rival male cats yowling at one another.
But what of cats rubbing up against you or weaving in and out of your legs? What about cat greetings, both with one another and (sometimes) with you? Head butting, purring, kneading?
There is a wide physical vocabulary cats seem to use consistently across species with one another and they use it with humans, too, so even when we aren't necessarily aware of it, we learn to "speak cat," because they teach us. If we're going to be in proximity with them, we must learn to use and appreciate their language, just as they will come to understand and (sometimes) use bits and pieces of ours.
Recent study suggests that (wonder of wonders) cats are quite capable of using our language concisely and adeptly to communicate their wants and needs. Unlike dogs and gorillas and such, they don't seem to want to or quite understand how to make full sentences (as we would see it) but are content to indicate their desire/intent with one word: "Food!" "Out!" "Dog!" and such.
There's a white dog in our neighborhood, for example, a big Pyrenees/Pit mix named Douglas, who is supposed to be kept in an enclosure or in the house, but he sometimes gets out and runs free. At first he would make a bee-line for our place and chase the cats mercilessly. So far as we know, they all always got away. The cats learned that just hearing the word "Douglas!" was a signal to take cover, even if they didn't see or hear the dog. Then there were the times the dog would amble over to our place and just sort of hang around, not chasing cats or really doing anything. We wouldn't even necessarily know he was here except that the cats would come to tell us: "Dog!" They'd do it with their eyes. With their pacing. By getting down low and flat, then coming to one of us with an imploring look on their face. It took a little while to learn that's what they were saying. And once they understood or saw for themselves that Douglas was under control, they'd be fine and go about their business.
Cats primarily communicate with one another and with us through physical action (and/or telepathy, as mentioned in the previous post.) Most are not usually vocal, and when they are, their vocalizations have a tendency to grate on our nerves rather than communicate much useful information. Right now, there's a cat named Larry (for the skeleton in Clash of the Clans -- it's a long story) who wants to be fed. He will vocalize if his actions don't result in Food!, but he much prefers physical acts to get our attention and get us to feed him. He paces back and forth in front of us. He will jump on the back of my chair as showily and deliberately as possible and sometimes whack the back of my head. He will pace to the door, and when I get up to let him out, he will turn and run to the food-dish in the kitchen. He will threaten to spray urine if he doesn't get his food promptly. He will sit and look at me with the saddest possible face -- don't believe people who say cats don't have different expressions depending on their mood and demands.
So on and so forth. All to get me to open a can of cat food for him (harder and harder to get these days). Then he's happy and goes to sleep on a high perch above the washing machine.
Oh there is much more to say about cat communications, but that's it for today! 🐱
It all started with a feral colony cared for by a neighbor who moved away. We took over the colony and eventually managed to get most of them trapped, neutered and released before we moved here full time in 2012. The problem was that we weren't able to trap all of them, so there were still a few fertile females and a couple of males, as well as unneutered males in the neighborhood, so the colony kept expanding and now numbers about 25 - 30.
Ms. Ché, bless her heart, is the local Cat Lady, so we now and then collect strays, and from time to time people come by to drop off kittens or older cats, too. 25 - 30 is the maximum we can handle at any given time, and if there are more the surplus is either run off, voluntarily leave, or in some cases, dies off. Kittens, for example, have a rough time of it among the feral colony, and maybe only one or often none will survive from a litter. We've tried trapping the few unneutered cats, but they're wise to it now, and they are not cooperative. So we just have to deal with the situation as it is.
Ms. Ché, bless her heart, has taken to domesticating some of the ferals, which means some of them become house cats. Too many of them in my view, but she sees them all as potential companion animals, and enjoys the whole process of domestication. The cats seem to like it too.
One of the things that's happened is that all of the domesticated ones have learned basic communications with us. They not only understand and use some spoken language, some are quite adept at using other forms of cross species communication.
For example, several years ago we hung a set of red plastic Christmas bells by the front door as part of our decorations. There is a table by the front door as well to hold packages and such, and one of the domesticated ferals we call Woolly Bear (due to her resemblance to a giant caterpillar) one day sat on the table by the front door and casually batted at the bells with her front paw. This caused us to wonder what was going on at the door -- "who is that at the door?" -- and one of us (I don't remember who) went to check.
Wooly Bear was on the table when we opened the door, and she promptly came in. Hmm. A day or so later, one of the black cats, probably Tubby, batted at the bells, and we went to check, and sure enough, he was on the table and came in when we opened the door.
A day or so later, the other black cat, Ash, tried it and sure enough, when we went to the door to check, he was on the table and came in when we opened the door.
Now five or six of the cats routinely rattle the Christmas bells when they want to come in. And a few who know how to work the bells will actually do it for others who want to come in but don't know how to -- or don't want to -- ring the bells themselves.
We got a yak bell from the Dharma Store in Santa Fe before the Covid shut everything down, and we put it up outside thinking it would ring better than the plastic bells, but the cats wouldn't touch it. In fact, instead, some tried to ring the doorbell, but they weren't strong enough to push the button. They tried, though.
We put the plastic bells back up and put the yak bell inside by the front door at cat height and told those who wanted to go out to ring it. Sure enough, Tubby learned to do it right away. Then the one we call Kitten learned. And Woolly Bear. No others have so far learned the yak bell trick, but we are sure that some will one day.
Tubby also starts "touching" things when he wants something -- like food or attention -- going around the house touching or knocking over various objects. We've tried training him away from doing it, but he knows it will get our attention, so he keeps on, much to our chagrin.
All of the indoor (domesticated) cats know their names, but what's remarkable is that many know one another's names. That's right. If you call one, the others who know one another's names (not all do) will look toward the one you're calling or even go so far as to point out where that one is.
This winter, we have too many cats in the house which I sometimes become annoyed about. As any cat owner knows, they can be very destructive. Having so many in the house means it's a constant duty and struggle to clean up after them and protect anything you don't want broken or destroyed. Much of what they do that makes people annoyed with them is territorial. Scratching the furniture or peeing/spraying where you don't want them to is marking territory and instinctive with cats. They will do it regardless of what you want.
Cats seem to think that people are just strange, big, cat-ish creatures that need to be trained in proper cat-ish behavior. They like snuggling with people at night, sleeping in piles with their people. They're very happy to do the same with one another -- but usually only if they are related to their sleeping companions. In some ways, they seem to think that their people are their relations. I don't know how that works, but it seems to be universal among the feline species. Some form of cat-adoption, perhaps. Sometimes they curl up with non-related cats, but it's not typical.
Cats are very social. They are not solitary by nature. And their social hierarchies are very strict. There is almost always an Alpha male and an Alpha female, and they sometimes mate -- though not always. The Alpha female is in charge of the colony as a whole; the other females are subservient to her. The younger cats of both sexes take instruction from her. She's looked up to by them.
The Alpha male is the guardian of the colony, deciding who can be a colony member and running off any interlopers in concert with the Alpha female. They decide how many colony members there can be. Cats can count, you know. The Alpha male fights territorial fights with strangers and sometimes is badly injured. If he is badly injured or infrequently killed in these fights, another male becomes the Alpha. As Alphas, they physically bulk up. An Alpha cat is usually quite a bit larger than other adult members of the colony and thus is usually easily identifiable.
Cats vary in intelligence. Some are not so bright at all while others are simply brilliant. Some are vocal; most are not. Some seem to use human language; whether they are actually trying to say things in English or not, I don't know.
Ms. Ché believes that cats actually use a form of telepathy in communicating with one another and with humans. She says they communicate this way by inserting mental pictures in one another's and your brain, but how they do it she doesn't know. Nor do I. But it may be true. They can also tell time very accurately without a clock and they can do it in the dark.
There's a lot more about cat communications, but I'll leave it here for now.
I haven't participated in rohatsu in the past so this sesshin was part of my education in Zen forms and rituals that I missed back in the early days of my practice, when, if I recall correctly, Richard Baker or whomever I was in communication with at the San Francisco Zen Center made clear that Zen practice did not require shutting oneself away in a monastery or even following any particular form or rituals or necessarily even knowing what they were.
I've seen some documentaries on Zen in Japan -- where it has never been popular -- and among laypeople that's the essence of the practice. You sit. That's really all you have to do to practice Zen. None of the rest of it is essential, and there is a lot of "the rest of it."
Sitting is the key.
Rohatsu is the commemoration and celebration of Sakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment more than 2,500 years ago in Bodh Gaya, northern India. In the practice I participate with, rohatsu lasts 8 days, and during that time, there is much sitting. Oh my yes! There is chanting (which I don't do aloud) and liturgy and study. Whether we, the lay practitioners, are to achieve Enlightenment thereby, I don't know. I would say, given what I witnessed, that some certainly thought they'd be Enlightened and were Enlightened by the conclusion of rohatsu, but... well, I'll say no more about that.
I would go back to the mantra I was given when time was: "The Buddha is within you; the Dharma is you; the Sangha is with whomever you find on the Dharma Path."
(Buddha, Dharma, Sangha = The Three Jewels of Buddhism)
This mantra actually gives the practitioner lots of leeway and freedom. It's not necessarily an easy or straight path to Enlightenment (ha!) but one way among many to become enlightened. Buddha says basically, "You're already Enlightened. You just have to discover and recognize it."
The World of Illusion obscures your Enlightenment. Let go.
Many years ago, I had the physical experience of what may have been Enlightenment but probably wasn't. It's not a physical thing. Or... well, no, I don't want to get into the mystical/physical conundrum in this essay. Let that go, too!
But I would say that once there -- wherever -- I never left. I never went back there because I am there all the time, and I've mentioned to some of my teachers in the last year or so that my life is practice.
In other words, sitting zazen is a minor part of my practice, as it forms a few moments of my daily life that is in its entirety practice.
Imperfect as it is.
And that's a key to understanding. Our material lives are totally imperfect. It's OK. It's the nature of Being/NotBeing.
In the midst of our imperfections, however, we adopt vows and set goals -- not necessarily material goals, not at all. To become what we really are.
That's the hard part, the struggle that Buddha and all Buddhists go through. Who are we? What are we?
What should we do about it?
Buddha taught, and that was the full expression of his Being/NotBeing.
Zen, I think I mentioned in an earlier post, grew out of Japanese Samurai culture, as an expression of and adaptation of Chinese Chan Buddhism, for the needs of the medieval Japanese higher warrior aristocracy. It wasn't for the common people at all.
It was also adopted by the Imperial and some Shogunate households.
The Zen practice I was introduced to came from Japan in the late 1950s, through the agency of Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen priest from the time of his youth early in the 20th Century, descended from a line of Zen priests. He was deemed roshi by his US followers, and it made him laugh. But then, many things made him laugh. Especially American things.
There isn't a lot about today's Zen practice in America that I identify with the more or less "pure" Zen Suzuki Roshi brought to America. There are forms and rituals that trace back to Japan, certain costumes and physical properties of zendos and such, but not much else. Very little understanding of where this practice came from and why it was important in the context of a particular culture at a particular time and how it has had a profound influence beyond that culture and time.
I see in the context of every US Zen center I've looked into a deep seated urge to change it, change the practice to more Americanize it, decouple it from Japanese practice, especially from the rigors of Japanese monasteries. Or rather practicing some of those rigors as forms and rituals only.
Make it more like Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism. In other words, familiarize it to American notions of Religion...
When participating in the various practice periods and sesshins I have this year, I've noticed strong -- sometimes overwhelming -- resemblances between the Americanized Zen practice and say Catholic and/or orthodox Jewish observances. Why is that? Is it in part because so many influential American Zen priests and roshis and such come from those backgrounds? I would think so. Is it because so few have had an elemental experience of Japanese Zen Buddhism -- which is of course the origin of American Zen practice -- though they may have gone on pilgrimage to the sites in Japan where the practice was formulated.
And I think about these origins in the context of Gary Snyder and his epic "Mountains and Rivers Without End," a kind of Zen-ish gloss on his life and practice and relationship to mountains and rivers.
As I've said, I didn't get along with Gary Snyder, though our meetings were social and very brief. I think there was an immediate repulsion. I'm trying to get over it. I should have gotten over it decades ago, but instead, I held it in me all this time, though I obviously didn't think about it or him until returning to Zen practice, picking up Kerouac again and observing his near-worship of Gary in "The Dharma Bums."
A worship which, by the way, was not and is not reciprocated. If anything, Gary shows little regard for Kerouac at all. Borderline contempt. The barest of acknowledgement that they ever knew each other.
Why is that I wonder? There may have been more of a repulsion -- on Gary's part -- toward Kerouac than might have been the case if Kerouac had not been an alcoholic/drug addict, and not shown Gary such puppy-dog admiration and followership/worship for the few months/years they palled around.
A key passage in "The Dharma Bums" is their climb of the Matterhorn of the Sierras, something ordinarily objectively impossible, but they do it, survive it, revel in it. Gary (Japhy) has magic powers. He practically flies up the mountain and then flies back down while Kerouac (Ray) must trudge and struggle. Kerouac is tied to the Earth; Gary is a free spirit in a jockstrap, so pure he can merge with and walk within the mountain.
In "Mountains and Rivers Without End," Snyder doesn't even acknowledge it happened, and to some critics, Kerouac's description of their climb, and perhaps the climb itself, was fiction. Who knows? Kerouac drank himself to death many years ago, and Snyder isn't saying -- well, not in any detail.
Kerouac is not a wizard. Snyder, apparently, is.
I recall -- barely -- a mountain-climbing adventure I went on years ago. I came "that close" to losing my life due to an allergic reaction to warm trail mix. Anaphylaxis is no fun, and that's primarily what I remember from the adventure. There was also the attempt to hike up to a peak but getting mired in a mysterious bog not on the hiking map. Wondering if it was possible to cross it -- no -- or find another trail -- no. It was barely possible to get out of the bog without sinking ever deeper and getting stuck. There was no surface sign the bog was even there...
Nude swim in a lake. Camping under the stars. Having no real fear despite the hazards encountered or imagined. In fact, from this distance of fifty years or more, that mountain climbing adventure seems more and more imaginary. Did it happen at all?
In going through some of the stuff we moved and brought back from California, that sense of an imaginary past, adventures that never happened, and very faulty memories of what did happen came up again and again. But in Zen, of course, everything is illusory. Delusory.
There's not much "water" in this reflection. I was born a stone's throw from the Mississippi River, Father of Waters, so there's that. And I've pretty much always been or lived near the ocean or a river of some sort, except for where I live now. Plenty of mountains, but no surface water at all.
There's only what we call 'The Swamp' in the back of our place, a small wet-ish region where there must be water close to the surface, where plants grow lush in the spring and summer, and the ground is soft. There's no water on the surface, nor does it seem like any water is flowing. But it must be there.
Phantom water.
But then, isn't everything a phantom of one sort or another?
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Here is a podcast by David Chadwick about Dogen's Mountains and Waters Sutra. Much consideration of Gary Snyder's "Mountains and Rivers Without End." And very much in tune with my own thinking about the sutra...
I see that a lot of people are having real difficulties with Dogen's Mountains and Rivers/Waters Sutra, as I'm pretty sure the monks he delivered this sutra to in 1240 were bewildered and perplexed.
There's no consistency to the sutra. It's formless, something like the Void I've mentioned in other Zen postings. Mountains are used as metaphors, but for what exactly? Mountains walking, mountains flying with the clouds, mountains flowing... what does this even mean?
I've tried to rationalize it with experience, but I realize that misses the point of Dogen's vision and message. It's not rational. Not meant to be. It's a knock upside the head, a call to Wake Up! at midnight, and recognize the nature of experience, things, people, mountains and rivers, and how transitory and ultimately false it all is.
Mountains do walk and fly through the clouds and flow just so. They come and they go and they appear and disappear just as you do. For in the end, there is no difference between what we call "you" and the "mountain." It's all one thing/no thing.
Just so with the lakes and rivers and vast seas. It's all one, and you are part/no part of that one.
You know, the monks in Zen monasteries become complacent too easily, and knocking them upside the head from time to time is routine. They become attached to routine, to practice on command, to the sounds of the bells and clackers, to the feelings of comfort at meals, washings up, robing and disrobing, to the sensations of tatamis and wooden floor boards and running from hither to yon.
Relieving them of attachments to any of that often takes the form of a shock, a kick in the butt, a push into the mud, an impossible challenge in a koan, a struggle engaged. And an understanding that no matter how close you are to Enlightenment, you're held back by attachment -- like the tail of the ox that won't go through the latticed window (thank you Kozan, 🙏.)
We are attached, all of us are attached to something, someone, all of the time. That is part of our being, and detaching is an elemental part of Buddhism. Which in a sense means self-destructing. Or deconstructing the self.
Dogen lets on that mountains and rivers do it -- so can you. The very green mountains we are so attached to... aren't really there at all. What we see and feel and respond to is an illusion. The mountains we climb aren't actually there. The rivers that flow -- and by the way, rivers that wear down the mountains till they're no longer there -- are as illusory as mist.
Revere the mountain and the river, but don't become attached to them.
The struggle is not to climb the mountain but to let go of it.
I gave a khata scarf from Nepal to a friend in Santa Fe earlier this year, thinking that he knew what it was and knew what my giving it to him symbolized. He... did. And then he mentioned that his son had gone to Nepal the previous year and circumambulated Annapurna with some friends and how exhilarating it had been for him.
I said, "Please feel free to pass on the scarf to someone else if you're so inclined."
I don't know whether he has or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if he gave it either to his wife or his son.
And I've just reached the point in Gary Snyder's epic poem "Mountains and Rivers Without End" where he is about to begin the circumambulation of Mt. Tamilpias in California. Because he learned the significance of going around mountains in Nepal and India. It's what you do.
You circumambulate as a form of reverence and honor. And when I was in California in October with a friend from Gallup, we had a discussion about what was a "hill" and what was a "mountain," noting that in California they were not the same thing, and what would be considered a mountain somewhere else would be considered little more than a hill in California.
And I considered where I lived a child -- a smallish valley near the coast surrounded by mountains (as I saw them when I was little, but maybe they're only hills now) and considered where I live now, a rather larger valley surrounded by mountains and mesas and ridges, enclosed (and once a glacial lake) on all sides. It's the same.
I'm not much of a Carmelite. But since I've been back from that quick trip to California, I've found myself reflecting on the couple of hours we spent on the beach there more than practically any other experience we had.
And there were some remarkable, even wonderful, experiences during the whole trip.
So what was it about the beach at Carmel -- as opposed to say the beach at Pacific Grove or the entire California coastline from Monterey south -- that has stuck with me?
Was it the fact that I sat zazen on a driftwood log for close to an hour while we were there?
No, more than that.
I'd never been to that beach, never even really knew it was there. Been once in Carmel so long ago now, I have no memory of it (so many memories lost.) This time, many memories, every one of them good. Well, almost. There was an exception which I may get to.
The beach was not crowded. The sky was partly cloudy but sunny and warm enough. There was little wind. The sand was soft and welcoming.
Around us was so much money the soul ached. Where did it come from? What was being done with it?
Above and behind me was a vast stone mansion on the cliff. Why?
But it wasn't the only one. There were mansions beyond mansions. Wisdom where?
Yet on the beach, it hardly mattered. The sand, sea and sky were more than sufficient and complete in themselves.
I sat zazen on a driftwood log. Nothing else quite like it.
I was at a celebration yesterday for a friend who just got her masters degree. One of the very few times this year I've been socializing. Part of the get together was ceremonial and included a Navajo elder who provided blessings and songs and a surprisingly detailed explanation of Navajo religious perspective -- which of course includes mountains and waters.
Mountains personified. Waters alive. Sometimes when I drive by Mt. Taylor, one of the four sacred mountains, I see upon it/as it a sleeping woman with long black hair. The mountain and the woman are the same, indivisible, and some of what the elder had to say yesterday was aligned with if not identical to the view I've long had about Mt. Taylor/Tsoodzil. Of the other three sacred mountains, I'm only familiar with San Francisco Peak/Dookʼoʼoosłííd outside of Flagstaff. It too has quite a personality, one that changes depending on the time of year, the angle of the sun and the distance you are from the mountain.
On the way to and from this get-together, I was contemplating the mountains we passed by and the ones in the distance. Each mountain and mountain range has their own personality, their own beingness.
In some of the study we've been doing, "mountains" are stand ins for ourselves sitting zazen. That seems to be the consensus for what Dogen is saying in his (to me) bewildering Mountains and Waters Sutra. We are mountains when we sit? Metaphorically, perhaps. But I see his metaphors in a somewhat different way, metaphors without a literal analogy. He uses the mountain metaphor as an approach to the ineffable. The vastness and the sameness of the non-duality realm, the ground state, as I call it, of all that is, was and will be.
The mountain flows. The mountain walks. Walks forward and backward. The mountain is never still.
In our usual perception, the mountain doesn't walk, the mountain doesn't flow, the mountain is among the stillest things in our environment.
And yet it does, it flows. It walks. We don't see it -- unless there is an eruption or massive earthquake. But in Dogen's metaphor, the mountain walking and flowing has no reality in our common perception. Not even in an eruption or earthquake. The mountain walks beyond our ability to "see" or "know."
No, his metaphor is about the inner-being-nothingness of the mountain (and thus, yes, of we ourselves sitting in zazen or not.) In that realm, the mountain (and we ourselves) don't actually "exist." Not as separate entities. We are one and the same, and we can walk and flow and dissolve into the mist and reconstitute at will. Or not.
When I see Mt. Taylor as a woman sleeping, it's real to me, but it's not. It's an illusion. A mirage. But then... so is the mountain. And so am I.
Well no. I've never much cared for Gary Snyder for a whole lot of unimportant reasons. Why? Because he's short and old and thinks he's the King of the World? I don't know. How very Zen.
But on a whim and suggestion from Roshi, I'm reading his "Mountains and Rivers Without End" one of his seeming many Epic Poems of being-not-being and wanderlust. And I rather like it. Well, insofar as I can relate.
And that's the thing. I have had long years of wandering the landscape. Mountains and rivers yes. Many mountains, many rivers, many forests, many deserts. It's my bloodline.
So I can in part relate to Gary and his own wanderings far afield, abroad and at home. Never settling, though he's been a fixture in Nevada City for generations. He still wanders.
Yet I've become rooted.
Partially anyway.
An ancient adobe home on the high plains of New Mexico -- llano alto -- keeps me rooted to the land that's harsh and cruel and yet... the mountains brood or smile in the distance now and then dusted with snow, mostly standing charcoal gray in the daytime, dark and monstrous at night. You can't see the mountains easily from our house, though they are there, through the thicket of trees, invasive Siberian elms that were planted so long ago no one remembers.
The trees protect us from the mountains.
There are no rivers close at hand, but last spring Mary discovered what she called The Swamp, a portion of our land where water seems to collect and even flow though not on the surface. She was walking her circles and said to me, "You know the ground is soft there, up there near the fence, and you can see how the plants grow thick and tall. And look, the swampy place extends toward the house. We can see where there's some kind of water flow."
And I looked and it was there, a broad patch of wetlands in the midst of the dust-dry.
Time to bathe now. My daily Tubzen.
And then I'll read some more of Gary Snyder's Epic.
And then for the Daily Dharma Talk.
Then it's off to Santa Fe for socializing (rare, still) before returning home to feed the cats.
Ah well. Here we go again with the Buddhist retreat thing. Yah. This time a "silent retreat" -- right -- meant as a celebration/commemoration of the Buddha's Enlightenment. A week of meditation and consideration focused on Dogen's text of Mountains and Waters Sutra translated by Kaz Tanahashi.
Mountains and Rivers... Meditating yesterday with a rotten old text, wonders of the world as it is or was back in the '30s when the text was written ostensibly for young people, explaining the world and history while admitting vast ignorance about just about everything. Mountains and Rivers were brought into the picture with the acknowledgement that the mountains which seem so rooted and permanent -- because our lives are so short -- are worn away by the waters until in time they disappear as if they never were, and then are reborn by forces deep within the Earth that force and twist and uplift the very living rock into new mountains that are then worn away by the waters. Over and over in an endless repeating cycle.
And that is the theme of this Rohatsu sesshin.
Dogen says mountains walk, and they do.
The realization is a step toward Enlightenment. This realization is Enlightenment. But in Dogen-speak there is neither Enlightenment nor non-Enlightenment. The Koan of the Ox Through the Latticed Window, no?
And yet our ancestors knew for a fact that mountains walk and you could say they run, given the right perspective and time scale. Our perception is too limited to witness it in its entirety, but it happens just the same.
Now I could go on and on about the limits of perception compared to the vastness of reality, but now is not the time for that. Been down this road before, however. Trodding it one more time.
Years ago, I wrote a play that centered on a fictional encounter between Tennessee Williams and Ernest Hemingway that might have taken place at Hemingway's Key West compound in 1955. The play was structured somewhat like a bullfight, and like a bullfight, there was tragedy, particularly the tragedy of Ernest Hemingway that would result in his suicide a half dozen years later.
My use of the bullfighting metaphor and structure for the play was based largely in Hemingway's "Death in the Afternoon"(1932) and "The Dangerous Summer" (1985, written in 1959 and 1960) together with Williams' interest in and admiration for bullfighters that Hemingway shared -- particularly Antonio Ordóñez.
I did not read Hemingway's first novel "The Sun Also Rises," which is in part a bullfight novel featuring the running of the bulls and bullfights in Pamplona and a romantic and beautiful young bullfighter character, Pedro Romero and those who love him. I didn't read it because I had seen the movie version of the book many years ago, long before I even thought of the play, and thought the movie was terrible. Perhaps one of the worst film adaptations of a Hemingway novel ever.
The other day, I watched it again on the YouTube. It was worse than I remembered it. It was utterly dreadful.
The movie posits the Hemingway character (Jake Barnes) as a curmudgeonly middle aged man played by Tyrone Power, though the story (according to the film's opening narration) takes place in 1922 (the novel says 1924-25). Hemingway was born in 1899. He was a young man, a very young man in Paris and Pamploma during the period of the novel (creative non-fiction or roman a clef).
Well, the last week or so, I've been reading a copy of "The Sun Also Rises" that I brought back from California last month and I finished it yesterday. It's much better, worlds better than the movie. It, however, reads like a first novel by a very young man who hadn't actually lived much but who was coming to believe he was or soon would be King of the World.
Hemingway has fascinated me for most of my life, and I have enjoyed practically everything of his that's come my way. Perhaps I feel some kinship with him, though the adventures of my life are nothing like his. Practically nothing in my life has been like his.
And yet... there may be kinship of some sort, maybe it's that Midwestern origin we share, an origin we left behind early and never really reconnected with.
While "The Sun Also Rises" is very much the work of a novice novelist, it's not a bad book. In fact, I found it fascinating. Hemingway's descriptions of his (character's) lives, loves and longings are sometimes superficial, yet it wasn't difficult for me to find compassion for them, even when they behaved badly -- as they very often did.
They were young -- Barnes and Romero particularly so -- and wild and the world had recently been turned upside down by the War to End Wars.
Barnes had been wounded and made impotent in that war. Hemingway had been wounded as an 18 year old ambulance driver in Italy. He may well have been made temporarily impotent, but he got over it and fathered the first of his children in 1923 a couple of years before he started writing "The Sun Also Rises."
The play I wrote deals with desire. And my interest in exploring these characters' desire stemmed from my Buddhist studies. Neither Williams nor Hemingway were Buddhist practitioners as far as I know, and both were clearly driven by desire throughout their lives. Desire for attention and fame, desire for love and devotion, desire for wealth and glamour. Desire for drink and drugs as well.
Their drive and desire led them to gain what they sought, yet it also ensured their demise, Hemingway much sooner than Williams, but both in the end driven to death by their demons of desire.
"The Sun Also Rises" deals with desire too, but formlessly, as if Hemingway hadn't yet discovered what was driving him. And I think that's true. He didn't know, and he wouldn't find out for years. When he did, when he saw and confronted his own desires, I think it tore him apart -- and led to his suicide.
I appreciated the book -- whereas I didn't appreciate the movie -- in part because it was formless, searching. Whether it was the definitive novel of the Lost Generation I'll leave to the critics to decide.
