The Odd Persistence and Absence of Memory

Note: there has been much editing since I first published this post. And a discovery or two.

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This goes back to that picture haul I was gifted with on Father's Day. One picture in particular sticks in my mind, but there were several taken on what I think was the same day in the summer of 1957 (I was 8 or 9), and while I focus on one, the others might be referred to from time to time for context.

The photo in question is one of me sitting on the couch in the living room of my house in the San Gabriel Valley of California on a sunny but probably smoggy day. There's a sort of misty quality to the photo which I find intriguing. It's probably due to a dirty lens, but when I think of that, I also wonder who took the picture. The picture appears to be taken from the level of the seating, and I suspect the camera was placed on the seat of a wing chair that faced the sofa (a sofa that was actually a sofa-sleeper.) I'm holding a fluffy cat whose name I don't remember. I don't recall the picture being taken -- nor do I recall ever seeing it before. This makes me wonder. 

I don't recall having a camera of my own at that time of my life, but maybe I did. There was a dual lens reflex camera I remember using frequently a few years later after moving to Northern California, and it is at least possible that I had it much earlier and that the picture in question was taken with it -- or one like it. I say that because I have a vague memory of more than one such camera.

But the problem of who took the picture -- or the series that day -- is vexing. I have the feeling that I took them with a shutter-timer. But I have no memory of having a camera with a shutter timer until much later in the '60s or even the '70s.

So I think the camera was placed on a chair, the timer was set, and I got in position -- with a cat -- before the shutter was tripped. If there was someone else there, who could it have been?

I had quite a few friends in the neighborhood, but they rarely came over to my house. I usually went to their houses, and I remember many games of canasta or Monopoly at friends' houses, but hardly any at mine, and when we did play cards or Monopoly at my house, we sat on the front porch, never that I recall in the house or backyard. The rarity had to do with the fact that I was there by myself while my mother was at work at the hospital, and she was quite clear that she didn't want me to bring other kids over to our house while she was not there. Could she have taken the pictures? Perhaps, but I don't think so.

These pictures were taken at my house in the living room and the back and side yards of me and my pets and there appears to be no one else there. Which would be right -- it would be very rare for one of my friends or another adult to be there when my mother wasn't.

This is one of the many oddities of memory, though. I could be misremembering. There were times, I know there were times, when a friend, a neighbor, or another adult came over when I was there alone, I just don't remember it happening as part of taking these pictures, nor do I remember my mother taking the pictures, and there is nothing in these pictures that indicates anyone else was there.

And I don't remember these pictures being taken or ever seeing them before Father's Day this year.

The sight of a much younger me sitting in my living room in 1957 holding a cat is somewhat jarring. I remember the room quite well and its furnishings. I remember what that couch upholstery felt like (rough) and look of the round oak table we used as a coffee table (it had been a tall mission style "center table" that my mother had cut down). I remember the antique mirror hanging above the couch and the Currier & Ives prints on either side. I remember the white cotton shag rug under the table -- and how glad I was when my mother bought it and brought it home. If I remember correctly -- and I may not -- the walls of the room were painted gray-green. There was a huge picture window at one end facing the mountains to the north and I remember the light from that window being very bright despite its northern exposure.

The story of the rugs in that house is kind of important to my memories of living there. The house was not quite finished when we moved in in 1954. There was still stucco-ing and painting going on and there were bits of trim being applied and plumbing fixtures being installed (if I recall correctly, the shower wasn't finished when we moved in). There was no landscaping; the lot was bare and dusty. There were no sewers, no curbs, no gutters. Initially the driveway wasn't finished, and one day the asphalt pavement was put down, but we had to be careful not to walk or drive on it for a time. The absence of sewers meant that the plumbing drained into a cesspool -- not even a septic tank -- in the front yard, and I remember it had to be pumped out from time to time. The sewer line was installed the year after we moved in.

We had a few braided rugs that had come with us from other houses, but they were small and didn't do much to muffle the echoes of footfalls in the house. Oh yes, I remember the house being very echoey due to the plaster walls and hardwood floors. The white cotton shag rug in the living room probably appeared some time in 1957 -- my mother also got a new car that year -- and even though it wasn't all that big (probably 6x9 though it may have been 9x12) it made a big difference because it was soft and sound absorbing, and I remember the echoey-ness of the house diminishing greatly once that rug was put down.

By the time these pictures were taken the back and side yards -- and the front, too but there were no pictures of that -- had been planted with grass and bougainvilleas and roses and there was a water feature in the backyard ringed with bricks and lattice fencing put up to hide the incinerator (which I think we couldn't use after 1956) and to mask the side yard where the clothes line was.

I had asthma and the smog was bad in the San Gabriel Valley, so being outside (or inside for that matter) could be difficult for me. I had attacks fairly often until we moved to Northern California in 1959. But oh well. It was what it was.

I remember the house was painted white with hunter green trim, quite different from other houses in the neighborhood which were mostly brown, beige or gray with white trim. I remember my mother insisted on white and dark green trim. She said there was a reason, but I don't remember what it was.

I'm 8 or 9 years old in these pictures, and I'm surprised at how skinny I was. I don't remember being skinny until I was a teenager. In fact, I remember being kind of pudgy up until the age of 14 or 15 when I started getting taller. So seeing how skinny I was at 8 or 9 is a revelation.

There's an exercise I'm supposed to do prior to a Zen workshop coming up: describe yourself from the point of view of the Earth.

From the point of view of the Earth, of course, these descriptions of myself as skinny or chubby or alone or with friends or my age in these pictures or really anything are silly, irrelevant, laughable. From the point of view of the Earth, I don't exist as an individual at all. The minuteness of humans in the context of the whole wide world -- which itself is minute in the context of the Solar System -- is striking. There is no "me" in that context; there is no "we." Less than a mote of dust. 

And yet from the point of view of the Earth, I and the aggregate of humanity of which I am a infinitesimal part are in the process of "killing the planet." Perhaps like a disease organism might do to me or someone else at human scale.

The planet, the Earth, is responding. Cranking up an immune response against which I and the aggregate of humanity have no real response.

In thinking about these matters of scale and existence/non-existence, past and future, I recall the teachings of Vimalakirti  and all the Buddha-realms beyond our ken. Perspective is hard to obtain. Once obtained, it may be hard to maintain, and memory may fade. But what is is no matter whether we see or know it or not. 

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Silly me. I looked on the back of the photo and found a note written in my mother's handwriting stating that the "we" took the picture in the house, and the flash didn't work. Note says, "How was I to know it needed batteries!" 

Living On the Surplus and Study

Part of my study during this practice period and sesshin has been about renewing acquaintance with the people and places that were important during the early period of my introduction to and practice of Zen Buddhism. Not just important to me but important to the Zen movie (as I call it) that was then being made and shown.

This was pre-Counterculture. 1964-1965 ish. Zen came to America earlier of course (c. 1958-59), but it only seemed to be beginning to blossom when I encountered it and got in contact with the Zen Center in San Francisco. I would see it that way because that was when I myself was "beginning to blossom" as a rebellious teenager. Zen practice was part of my rebellion. I think that was true of many Anglo early adopters. Not so much for the Japanese American Zen practitioners at the Sokoji, though. It wasn't rebellion for them. Or was it? 

I have to give great credit to David Chadwick* among others for preserving so much of the Early Days literature, photos, film clips and reminiscences. People who were there then are dying off quickly, probably many more lost than would have been otherwise due to the Covid pandemic. It's a shame, but much has been preserved, and I could spend the rest of my life poring through it. 

It's not just David's stuff, either. The San Francisco Zen Center has preserved extensive archives; Suzuki Roshi's archives at Shunryosuzuki.com is another source. I'm sure there is much more to explore.

*Links to other sites David maintains or recommends are available at the first linked site. 

So much more to explore. And one of the insights I had about it was that all of us -- well, most of us -- were living on the surplus of the post-War (WWII) era. This was one key to the what the Counterculture would become. '64-'65 is pre-Hippie, just barely, but following the assassination of President Kennedy, young people's lives began radicalizing almost immediately. By 1965, many -- particularly on the West Coast -- had effectively separated themselves from whatever had gone before, their parents' lives, the experience and expectations of the post-War suburban life, etc., and were exploring alternatives. 

Zen was (and still is) an alternative.

A certain kind of young Anglo adopted it, tried to adapt to it. Zen wasn't for everyone. It still isn't.

Suzuki Roshi gently tried to guide the newcomers into the practice through his adaptations of Japanese Zen practice as it had been when he was trained (pre-WWII).

I say gently because he was very gentle with his Anglo charges who were attempting to practice a very strict Japanese discipline. 

So gentle that by the time Richard Baker took over after Suzuki Roshi's death in 1971, only the outward, visible forms of Japanese Zen remained; the inner practice had become something else, for different purposes I think.

Because it wasn't what I had been introduced to -- and what I had studied hard to start to master the practice -- I stayed well away from Richard Baker's Zen Center in San Francisco and whatever they were promoting. 

It wasn't "Zen." They called it Zen but it wasn't.

It had become Baker's vision of grandeur. I hate to say it, but that's what I saw. 

But maybe that grandeur was part of Suzuki Roshi's vision as well. Maybe that's what I'm trying to find out with all this study.

It's possibly useful to see the origins of Zen in America as a pre-Counterculture "living on the surplus" alternative -- ie: pointing the way for what was to come.

Sokoji, for example, was housed in a former Jewish temple, Tassajara was a former "carriage trade" resort, the City Center was a former Jewish women's center and residence. All these locations and many more were surplus, they weren't needed by their original users anymore and they could be reused for alternative purposes -- such as Zen. The alternative lifestyles that came out of the Counterculture were almost all based in the fact that there was a big surplus of practically everything needed for living from which to create and sustain alternative (at least for a while.)

Many of the branches that would arise from the SFZC began in well-off people's homes, unused commercial or religious sites, and other private but surplus locations. None have become what primary Zen sites are in Japan. They all still have this temporary, ad hoc, reused location sensibility about them.

Sometimes it's charming. No doubt about that. 

There's also a sense that none of it is really here, either.

Zen is still trying to plant roots in America.

As opposed to, say, Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village in France. Which seems to be about as permanent and rooted as something Zen can be outside of Japan (and, well, Vietnam...)

I think my study will continue for as long as I can keep it up, and the two practice periods I've been part of this year have renewed my sense of Zen as it was and as it is now (something else again.)

So many elderly women participants... I've been thinking about that. 

How different that is from times gone by. But then, it's probably natural, too.