TERMINAL ORPHEUS: METHOD AND MADNESS

TERMINAL ORPHEUS


In the purple-tainted twilight
of the oil refineries,
I drove Orpheus late at night

while he sang his chronic hymn
in praise of suicide –
his urge to crash

into a concrete wall.
Something still smolders
from those years, nods over me

with the wheezing heads
of oil pumps on Signal Hill;
hisses pale burn-off flame –

reminds me how free I was then,
how I sang And that was life
from Tosca, the love aria

before the execution.
Those dreamless nights,
the terminal Orpheus in me

excited by infernal landscapes,
interrupting with the idiot question,
But without wanting to die,

is it really life? turning his
bird-bone back to me,
staring at that long-ago

concrete wall. That’s all right, Mama, 
I sing. I’m my own mother now, 

dead Orpheus in my arms as I sing.

~ Oriana © 2012

**

This is a confessional poem, though not only about me. There is a young man, now dead by his own hand, fused into the story. I’ve turned him into my inner Orpheus since I knew what it was to think about suicide almost every day. The suicidal depression was real, and the concrete wall was real. When you take the Cherry Avenue exit from I-405, you find yourself in Long Beach, a part of the Greater Los Angeles dominated by the Mobil Oil Refinery. Cherry is a fast street at first, running through industrial wasteland. Not far from the freeway, it veers to the left; on the right is a long concrete wall -- just a wall without a building, if I remember correctly. The years I lived in Long Beach, in my middle and late twenties, were the worst years of my life. I took the Cherry exist hundreds of time. Every time, the wall was an invitation: what if I accelerated and kept going straight --

What restrained me was not the thought of the suffering it would cause my parents (I was an only child). When seized by a suicidal impulse, I never remembered that I even had parents. Those are moments when you feel alone in the whole world, totally abandoned. No, what stopped me was the thought that I might survive, but maimed, doomed to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. That kind of failure -- ending up in a wheelchair through my own fault -- would have eclipsed the total sum of failures that my life consisted of.

One comes to America in order to be a success. I felt I was a failure at everything, but at least I could walk -- and I loved taking long walks, even if just in the streets of Long Beach (in some sections, with charming old houses with large porches, with old trees and overgrown oleander bushes, and lots of cats).

My car, the first one I ever own, was a solid Dodge, with a long hood -- lots of metal between me and whatever I might crash into. I didn’t know if my Moonbaby (the Dodge was baby blue) could accelerate to a lethal speed fast enough. I didn’t know what that speed would be. Let’s face it, I simply didn’t know how to do it right. (You needed a crash course, chuckles a naughty imp in my head.)

As for sleeping pills, Student Health dispensed no more than seven at a time. I had enough money to buy a gun, but had no idea -- this is embarrassing to confess -- how to load a gun. Did they come with a user’s manual? Besides, I was too vain. If I were to die at home, I wanted to be a pretty corpse.

I knew about running the engine with the garage door closed (this is how Anne Sexton committed suicide). The problem was: no garage. I had to park in the street. As for jumping, that also was a frequent impulse. But there were no nearby tall buildings with roof access. The one I mention in the poem “Surprised by My Own Breasts” http://oriana-poetry.blogspot.com/2011/03/frida-kahlo-suicide-of-dorothy-hale.html -- that was later, when the suicide fantasies still kept me company, but my life wasn’t as desperate, and basically I already knew I wouldn’t do it. It was too late for suicide. That strange insight led to a beautiful breakthrough later on.

Thus, thanks to my practical incompetence and the lack of means, I managed to survive my youth. I also thank the gods (or call it an accident of fate, circumstances, or whatever forces govern our lives) that no one in my life said at a critical moment, “I bet you don’t have the guts to do it.” With my sense of being a failure, I was heavily into “proving myself,” and was particularly sensitive about the issue of courage (in part a legacy of coming from a family of war heroes and never-give-up survivors). (Now, if need be, I wouldn’t be ashamed to say, “You are right: I simply didn’t have the guts to do it. Isn’t that wonderful?”)

To reiterate: my incompetence saved me. I was a total failure at suicide, a klutz who didn’t know how to load a gun and was too embarrassed to ask, and vain on top of it, so no hanging myself either. Crashing the car meant a risk of mangling myself instead. I felt I couldn’t do anything right, outside of academic achievement and cooking, but excluding baking. I liked to improvise while cooking, and baking didn’t allow for that.

Stoves . . . Gas stoves are another illustration of how the method may be more important than the madness. The most famous case in point is 30% drop in suicides in Britain after the change from the use of coal gas in kitchen stoves to natural gas. Coal gas contains 10% of highly lethal carbon monoxide; natural gas, none (besides, modern stoves have a safety feature that prevents gas from escaping if no burners are lit). Take away a convenient gas chamber, and save lives.

What also comes to mind is the famous example of a would-be jumper off the Golden Gate Bridge. When he discovered that getting to the place he’d picked would require crossing six lanes of traffic, he gave up, since he was afraid of getting hit by a car (this is a real story).

You may wonder why he didn’t proceed to pick another spot, or even a different bridge. He just didn’t, and the impulse passed. Would-be suicides are fussy -- “I must do it my way” -- and certainly not logical. 

 Then there was a young man who fired a rifle to his head. Nothing happened. So he aimed the rifle at the wall, pulled the trigger, and saw the bullet hit the wall. He gave up on the rifle, though, and instead swallowed some Seconals. He was found in time, and woke up from his long sleep in a hospital. He felt tickling. The nurse said, “I’ve been tickling you for three days now.” He decided he might as well live. There is something to be said for being a failure at dying.

(A shameless digression: Last night I saw a coyote on J Street, not far from where I live. He had a loping sort of half-run, half-walk, without fear, without hurry. He ran down the middle meridian, then turned right into a small cul-de-sac. So skinny! How hard his life, how smart and fit he must be just to survive. I hope he had a pack to return to, a safe place where they could gather and laugh at the moon.)


THE LIBRARY DREAM: ANOTHER REASON I DIDN’T COMMIT SUICIDE

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

The shattering of dreams in terms of both work and love I think explains why in my late twenties I was constantly thinking about suicide. So why didn’t I do it? Practical incompetence is part of the answer. There were other factors. Not only was I suicidal, I was vain, and that meant sleeping pills, and I didn’t know how to get enough sleeping pills. Not only was I vain and suicidal, but also terminally intellectual. The life of the mind was my real life. I loved books. I instantly memorized Pound’s “What you love best shall not be reft from thee.” I also loved trees and classical music.

One time I felt particularly desperate and drove aimlessly around Long Beach -- just around and around, as if repeating the aimlessness of my life back then. Suddenly Mozart’s 25th Piano Concerto came on the car radio. All that beauty and harmony flowed over my agitation and worked its brain-healing miracle. Within minutes, I calmed down and simply drove home.

Later, actually past the worst years, I had a dream that I remember more vividly than any other dream. I’m walking around a campus that seems a generic college campus: the paved walkways, the tall buildings, the generic landscaping. I keep saying “Goodbye” to passers-by. I’ve made up my mind to commit suicide, but feel the need to say goodbye, be it to strangers (In Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevski has a brilliant scene where Svidrigaylov wants to say goodbye to someone, anyone, before shooting himself).

In the dream I keep walking and saying goodbye until I come in front of the library. Through the tall windows, I see the endless library stacks under rows of fluorescent lights. I’m seized with astonished awe and start thinking: So many books. So many books. I wake up with that thought filling my mind.

WOMEN POETS AND SUICIDE

Of course everyone knows about Plath and Sexton. But we’ve had some fairly recent suicides. In 2007 Sarah Hannah leaped to her death. Rachel Wetzsteon wrote a lovely tribute at the end of Inflorescence, Hannah’s brilliant posthumous volume. On Christmas of 2009, Rachel Wetzsteon took her own life. Also in 2009, Deborah Digges, whom I had met and adored, also killed herself. And those were just the poets who had some fame. In fact they had what many others would crawl on their knees to get: a dream academic job, adoring students, publications, awards.

Depression and suicide seem to be occupational hazards of being a poet and/or writer. The manic-depressive disorder, often compounded with addiction to alcohol, is known to be significantly more frequent among creative people. Even aside from that, the intensity that goes with giftedness, the difficult struggle for recognition, the difficulty of the craft itself -- it’s a virtual guarantee of a stressful life. This is best summarized in this little drawing:
 

Now that we’ve had a bit of comic relief, let me honor two of the women I’ve mentioned by sharing a bit of their work -- what they should be remembered for, not the manner of their death.

Here is a gorgeous short poem by Rachel:

GOLD LEAVES

Someone ought to write about (I thought
and therefore do) stage three of alchemy:
not inauspicious metal turned into
a gilded page, but that same page turned back
to basics when you step outside for air
and feel a radiance that was not there
the day before, your sidewalks lined with gold.

~ Rachel Wetzsteon
 


In my previous post, I quoted Sarah Hannah’s “Macbeth’s Problem.” Her sense of humor wasn’t always dark. Here is something light-hearted:

AFTER THE LONG CHARD SEASON

My salad days, when I was green in judgment. . .
                          ~ Antony and Cleopatra

After the long chard season
We had a lot of chard.
Winter ran for miles -- stone
Fortress, struck leaves, frozen yard.
Even the dirt was dead.

But we had chard -- abundant bundles.
Forty days in snow drifts, eating stalks.
Eighty days, a stockpot, stirring.
And then an easing of bombardment,
A grocer rushing down a busy street,
Purposely, solemnly, carrying chervil --
Charein, from the Greek, to take pleasure in.

Who knew there were so many greens?
Chive grass, Boston lettuce pollard,
Elysian shade of parsley boughs.
It might just possibly be true
That all that was undone is through.
These are the salad days.
These are the salad days!

~ Sarah Hannah

Minor, but delightful: “forty days in snow drifts, eating stalks”; “Elysian shade of parsley boughs.”

(Another shameless digression: charein is also the root of “whore.”)

(An even more shameless digression: the pure light blue dawn sky through the widespread branches of a neighbor’s tree.)

**

And Deborah, the beautiful, loving, dazzling Deborah Digges. Her last masterpiece was this haunting poem:

The wind blows
through the doors of my heart

The wind blows
through the doors of my heart.
It scatters my sheet music
that climbs like waves from the piano, free of the keys.
Now the notes stripped, black butterflies,
flattened against the screens.
The wind through my heart
blows all my candles out.
In my heart and its rooms is dark and windy.
From the mantle smashes birds’ nests, teacups
full of stars as the wind winds round,
a mist of sorts that rises and bends and blows
or is blown through the rooms of my heart
that shatters the windows,
rakes the bedsheets as though someone
had just made love. And my dresses
they are lifted like brides come to rest
on the bedstead, crucifixes,
dresses tangled in trees in the rooms
of my heart. To save them
I’ve thrown flowers to fields,
so that someone would pick them up
and know where they came from.
Come the bees now clinging to flowered curtains.
Off with the clothesline pinning anything, my mother’s trousseau.
It is not for me to say what is this wind
or how it came to blow through the rooms of my heart.
Wing after wing, through the rooms of the dead
the wind does not blow. Nor the basement, no wheezing,
no wind choking the cobwebs in our hair.
It is cool here, quiet, a quilt spread on soil.
But we will never lie down again.

~ Deborah Digges

**

Alas, now we understand what all this letting go was about, the sheet music leaving, the dresses leaving, the dresses presumably still on their hangers, thus becoming “crucifixes.” The imagery is spectacular and mysterious, unless you already know that this was preparation for departure. It’s a very dark poem to end on, so let me quickly add a favorite passage from “Ancestral Lights”:

And though I know now that Heaven may be 

only the mind’s fear of the wonders it imagines,

the way our best thoughts surprise us 

and seem not to be our own, I like to believe

we turn into light around those we love,

or would have loved, had we known them.

~ Deborah Digges

**

~ or would have loved them, had we known them. I, for one, feel I could love more people, more trees, more animals -- but my circumstances are constrained. I had to learn economy: a lawn in a park has to stand for a mountain meadow. But the wealth of poetry is mine. Let me give you again Rachel's poem:


GOLD LEAVES

Someone ought to write about (I thought
and therefore do) stage three of alchemy:
not inauspicious metal turned into
a gilded page, but that same page turned back
to basics when you step outside for air
and feel a radiance that was not there
the day before, your sidewalks lined with gold.

~ Rachel Wetzsteon
 

 Lilith:

“Terminal Orpheus” is a wonderful blog. I love your accidental conflation of “exit” and “exist”: “I took the Cherry exist hundreds of times.” We all exist on the exit, obviously . . .

Your meditation on methods of suicide arrived before the news of these three holiday incidents in San Diego. During the worst years of my life, I reviewed all the options for suicide, and one thing that stopped me was realizing what a mess it leaves for others, like the people on the street who witness someone jumping out a window. Of of the three San Diego incidents this week, only the man jumping off the Coronado Bay Bridge was successful. And the police had to fish him out of the water to declare him dead.

The picture of the man perched on the freeway bridge -- so gray and desolate, and such an annoyance for the whole city.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/dec/28/north-i-805-shut-down-south-bay-due-possible-jumpe/
 
Oriana:

It’s wonderful that you managed to think of the “mess [that suicide] leaves for others.” In my sane moments I thought at least about my parents and their potential immense suffering, and how I had no right to make them suffer that way. But when the impulse is very strong, sane thinking is gone. 

According to experts, most suicides are impulsive rather than pre-meditated. Having a gun in the house increases the risk of suicide five times. I have all kinds of theories about what saved me, and not having a gun or sleeping pills, or a high place to jump from, did play a role in that the impulse to end it all was not triggered in an overwhelming fashion. My practical incompetence was definitely a significant factor. I didn’t have the means, and when I thought of crashing into the concrete wall, I was too afraid I’d survive, except maimed and crippled and doomed to a wheelchair. Or, worst of all, brain-damaged. Though I felt like a failure in life, to fail at suicide in that manner was worse.

That is indeed a desolate picture in the link you sent, but it’s the comments of the readers that are an eye-opener: anger instead of compassion. And in a way, the angry are correct: life is difficult, but killing yourself is like deserting your post, or refusing the carry the burden of mortality that we all carry. Our greatest heroism is simply carrying on, in spite of existing on the exit.

Hyacinth:

I’m surprised at how our lives had so many parallels. I moved from Connecticut in 1944 to Long Beach and lived with my parents in housing. I was eighteen and got a job right away with the telephone co. which I hated but I found a skating rink  and had lots of dates. A and I were engaged but he was back East. I wanted to get an apartment with Catherine and go on to college (no money), but my parents were set against it. I despised Long Beach -- the constant reek of oil and water that tasted like rotten eggs. Probably why I decided to get married to get away to San Diego.

I still have trouble understanding depression since I have rarely been that down. And suicide-- why leave this world if it's all we have. I do know depression exists from reading Jane Kenyon and Plath, and observing friends and family who suffer from it. Who could welcome death when one remembers Autumn.

I wrote “Second Thoughts” about suicide after hearing about the suicide of the younger brother of my son in law. The police officer said, “I think he had second thoughts but it was too late.”

Digges has written so much that is memorable. My favorites are ones you quoted: the bleak  " wind blows through the doors of my heart" and "I'd like  to believe we turn into light for those we love or would have loved, had we known them."

The chard poem brings back  many memories. It's a good thing I liked it as my mother nursed the plants on and on. An aside -- I noticed  by the rose bush today the lush green leaves of a dandelion plant. We ate those too.

Oriana:

Thanks for this charming aside. Yes, dandelions are edible, and good for the liver too. Sorrel I never liked -- too sour. But it amazed me that you could go into the woods and bring back edibles of that sort. In Poland during wartime, even nettles were used for soup.

Depression often starts with some genuine emotional disaster, let’s say a bad break-up when you are still madly in love. But some people, including myself, have a gift for multiplying past disasters, even after life improves. As long as the sense of being a failure prevails, there are those times when it’s difficult to remember the beauty of autumn. Depression is extremely self-centered, so you can forget anything positive. The longer depression continues, the more positive memories are blocked.

The main thing is to survive one’s youth. After that, if you are lucky the way I was lucky, at some point you realize that you are going to die anyway, and life is really quite short, so you might as well make the most of whatever time is left.

Charles:

This is the user’s manual for suicide. I was laughing with every paragraph.

Oriana:

I’m thrilled, since I meant to be humorous, though with an underlying serious message. Making access to various means of suicide more difficult can be very effective prevention, as the British example of gas stoves demonstrated. 


Charles:

I love the shameless digression stories. Only a great writer can get away with such a shocking writing style.
 
Oriana:

I think it’s poetry trying to get in through the kitchen door, so to speak. The Muse of Weeping has departed, leaving me the beauty of nature, and nature imagery is the foundation of lyricism. Even writing about the weather -- a slight mizzle outside, so fine it’s invisible and doesn’t even wet the pavement -- I get a hint of lyricism, of the mystery of the world.



 

THE HUNGRY GHOSTS

You may wonder why I chose a post on “hungry ghosts” for a poetry blog. How does it relate to writing? It does. Bear with me: explanation will follow the introductory excerpt.

IN THE REALM OF HUNGRY GHOSTS ~ Gabor Maté, M.D.
 
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
 
The Buddhist Wheel of Life revolves through six realms. Each realm is populated by characters representing aspects of human existence—our various ways of being. In the Beast Realm we are driven by basic survival instincts and appetites such as physical hunger and sexuality, what Freud called the Id. The denizens of the Hell Realm are trapped in states of unbearable rage and anxiety. In the God Realm we transcend our troubles and our egos through sensual, aesthetic or religious experience, but only temporarily and in ignorance of spiritual truth. Even this enviable state is tinged with loss and suffering.

The inhabitants of the Hungry Ghost Realm are depicted as creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated limbs and large, bloated, empty bellies. This is the domain of addiction, where we constantly seek something outside ourselves to curb an insatiable yearning for relief or fulfillment. The aching emptiness is perpetual because the substances, objects or pursuits we hope will soothe it are not what we really need. We don’t know what we need, and so long as we stay in the hungry ghost mode, we’ll never know. We haunt our lives without being fully present.
 
Some people dwell much of their lives in one realm or another. Many of us move back and forth between them, perhaps through all of them in the course of a single day.

My medical work with drug addicts in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside has given me a unique opportunity to know human beings who spend almost all their time as hungry ghosts. It’s their attempt, I believe, to escape the Hell Realm of overwhelming fear, rage and despair. The painful longing in their hearts reflects something of the emptiness that may also be experienced by people with apparently happier lives. Those whom we dismiss as “junkies” are not creatures from a different world, only men and women mired at the extreme end of a continuum on which, here or there, all of us might well locate ourselves. ~ Gabor Maté


 **

How does this little essay relate to the art of writing? It’s an example of an indirect, metaphorical approach (in this case the Buddhist WHEEL OF LIFE) that relies on knowing an additional field (woe to poets who read only poetry). As Henry James said, “To be direct is to be inartistic.” Art is usually indirect: it tries to convey its message through unexpected imagery and metaphor. It is a special kind of “fused” thinking that uses fewer words, but makes the meaning larger.

Popular books on addition take the chatty “human interest” approach that relies on telling the story of one particular addict, and making general statements later on. The books meant more for professionals start with abstract generalizations and continue in that manner, with case stories here and there. But this Hungarian-born physician makes a wonderful leap, talking first about the Wheel of Life. Note, however, that the author does not go into excess detail about the Wheel of Life and each of the realms. He skips the realm of the demi-gods, and quickly gets to the Hungry Ghosts, adapting the metaphor to create an analogy with addiction.

Those of you who know my interest in “interweave” -- a skillful weaving of two or more realms -- will know what I am leading to: the importance, for a poet/writer, of reading in depth not only the work of other poets and writers, but also in some field that is of interest -- history, astrophysics, geology, botany, Buddhism, the life and writings of Saint Augustine, anything. Or it may be sensory and practical knowledge, the kind you gain from mountain-climbing, for instance. That “other realm” is likely to provide a wealth of metaphor and simile, and an unusual and more interesting angle to anything that you write about.

One example that comes to my mind is Sarah Hannah’s second book of poetry, Inflorescence. In it she combines the story of caring for her dying mother with, amazingly enough, botany. Hannah’s additional asset is her familiarity with Shakespeare’s plays. The layering creates a rich kind of writing to which the reader can return with pleasure again and again. Here is one of my favorites:

MACBETH’S PROBLEM

You never think it’s really going to happen --
That Birnam wood will come marching
Down to Dunsinane --

Until, suddenly, your wife’s got OCD,
And babies visit you in dreams,
Clutching eucaplyptus.

And then those trees start walking.
I mean downright trouncing, toward you.
They do not come in peace,

And they are not willows or any other
Delicate variety; they’re rowans,
Oaks, and ash.

And they will kick your ass to Cardiff.
Hello? You were so damn hot and ready
To jump the life to come,

You misread all the signs, and now it’s Act V,
And you can’t rinse out what you’ve done,
Can’t redeem the time

Like Prince Hal, and besides, this one’s a tragedy
Well into hour two; the place is packed with folks
Who’ve paid good money

To watch you go down bloody with a bough.
 
~ Sarah Hannah, Inflorescence, 2007

 The “Birnam Wood” comes from the Weird Sisters’ last prophecy to Macbeth: “Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until / Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him.” In the literal sense, this seems impossible, and so Macbeth is lulled into a false sense of security. He doesn’t think metaphorically. But Birnam Wood turns out to the enemy camouflaged with branches.

But never mind metaphorical thinking. We prefer not to think at all. “You never think it’s really going to happen” -- that constant denial of death that is perhaps necessary to keep us going. This is a ruthless poem, unlike Sutton Breiding’s soothing

tell me, stranger,
. . .
are your days like shadows passing
and your nights a sweet taste of the longsleep?

No, this is no lullaby. Like Macbeth, we are crazed to defend our kingdom and our life. This is a battle that each of us is doomed to lose, so ideally we need to have an answer to the question that is never asked, yet central to each life: “So what are you doing about mortality?”

For me, the best answer was supplied by Rilke: “To work is to live without dying.” Of course Rilke meant meaningful, fulfilling work. I want to keep writing to the end.

**

To write means to have the courage to reveal more of yourself than at first feels comfortable. But that’s where lies your richest material. It would be evasive to say that I chose the opening the opening of Gabor Maté’s book on addiction strictly because of its stylistic merit, as a way to discuss the technique of interweave. As you probably suspect, I instantly felt a personal connection to the content.

I recognize my Hungry Ghost years very well: the years when I couldn’t get enough of the things I didn’t really want -- for instance, I was a  compulsive thrift store shopper. What did I really want? I don't care if Freud said it first: love and work. When you can't find reliable love and meaningful, fulfilling work, crazy substitutes emerge, often in the form of addictions. For me it was crazy behavioral compulsions rather than substance abuse, and that was my great good luck, since drugs and alcohol kill faster. 

My writing talent -- which I was first told I didn't have -- also saved me in the end, and that's where crazy persistence (this is a genetic trait) turned out to be beneficial. In addition, over the years I managed to soften "love" to affection, and that's easier both to give and get. Affection does not have the dark side that romantic love has -- though losing a friend can be almost as painful as losing a lover. Loss as a part of life cannot be evaded. But if we have something to fall back on -- doing the work you love, your other friends -- we have a certain “safety net.”

Another thought: seeing that having developed a writing skill laid a foundation for the rest of my life, making everything else fall into place, I suspect that everyone could benefit by developing some kind of "valuable skill.” For people in trouble in particular, the need is tremendous. Once I read that addicts are typically people who “have been trained to be incompetent.” 

Part of that incompetence is an absence of vocation and work skills. This is not always the case, but if it happens to be, then it would be wonderful if there were more places that teach various valuable skills. As I’ve discovered through my misadventures and eventual overcoming of the discouraging “curse” by someone I mistook for a mentor, talent is something that develops. And once you are able to use and expand your talent, the farther away you get from the realm of the Hungry Ghosts.

**

From Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying:

“Six realms of existence are identified in Buddhism: gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hells. They are each a result of one of the six main negative emotions: pride, jealousy, desire, ignorance, greed, and anger.”

[Oriana: Ignorance is not an emotion, but let’s not be fussy; Sogyal means ignorance as a negative state of being -- hardly so for animals, but undesirable if we want to be fully human.]

Sogyal continues: “The main feature of the realm of the gods is that it is devoid of suffering, a realm of changeless beauty and sensual ecstasy. Imagine the gods: tall, blond surfers, lounging on beaches and in gardens flooded by brilliant sunshine, listening to any kind of music they choose, intoxicated by every kind of stimulant, high on meditation, yoga, bodywork, and ways of improving themselves, but never taxing their brains, never confronting any complex or painful situation, never conscious of their true nature, and so anesthesized that they are never aware of what their condition really is.

If some parts of California and Australia spring to mind as the realm of the gods, you can see the demigod realm being acted out every day perhaps in the intrigue and rivalry of Wall Street, or in the seething corridors of Washington and Whitehall. And the hungry ghost realms? They exist wherever people, though immensely rich, are never satisfied, craving to take over this company or that one, or endlessly playing out their greed in court cases. Switch on any television channel and you have entered immediately the world of demigods and hungry ghosts.”

It’s interesting that Sogyal chooses examples from the world of the rich, while Gabor Maté starts his books with examples of homeless street junkies as the Hungry Ghosts, trying in vain to escape from the realm of Hell. But hell is universal, and so is greed. The mob that trampled to death a Walmart security agent on a “Black Friday” was a crowd of Hungry Ghosts. “Greed is the failure to choose.” There are things more important by far than a flat-screen TV, but for this we need to stay calm for a while, until we are able to think at a higher level.

(A shameless digression: during a recent trip to Walmart in pursuit of a larger soup pot -- my soup therapy is working! -- C and I spotted a nun with in a peculiar headgear: on the cap on her head, there was a red dot that made me think of the Third Eye -- also called the Sixth chakra, Ajna, the chakra of forgiveness and compassion, of God the Mother, “beyond wisdom,” intuition.

On top of the cap was another red dot, which could symbolize the crown chakra, Sahasrara, the thousand-petaled lotus -- the chakra of pure non-dualistic consciousness, the union of the masculine and the feminine. But I noticed that there were dots also on the sides. Intrigued, C and I approached the nun. She explained that she belonged to the Sisters of Saint Brigid, and the dots stand for the  five wound of Christ. The order is dedicated to prayer and contemplation of the five wounds.

At the check-out, we ended up behind three of the Brigidine nuns, carts full of flannel pajamas, cat food, and an abundance of other colorful, practical objects. “Going to Walmart is probably the most exciting event in their lives,” C observed. “They don’t just have one sister go shopping. They travel in a pod.”)
 
I wish to end on a more joyful note: trips to the the realm of the Hungry Ghosts are  not the only way to gain respite from the hell of fear and despair. I discovered this through my experience of the Paradigm Shift that ended my depression. My recurrent dreams about being in a concentration camp also ended. This poem celebrates this liberation.

THE ROAD TAKEN

Only a year ago I finally understood
the kingdom of hell
is within you
and chose to walk out of
that concentration camp

The gate’s wide wings stood open
the guards diligently did not look
the road led through sunlit woods
past bride-like birches: the road to heaven
I must have seen in childhood and forever

Only yesterday I looked out the window 
and thought this is my country now and not
a Nazi camp or a Siberian gulag
astonished that after all
I wasn’t sentenced to hard labor

Only this morning I understood
my task is to keep on walking
reading sunlight and shadow
listening to birds in all their languages
singing the holy word home

~ Oriana © 2012

By now it’s been more than three years, without a single relapse. I take no special pride in this: “shift happens” and makes staying out of hell effortless. True, full recovery takes time. Memories of positive experiences are blocked at first; they can be gradually rebuilt (our memory is constructed; it’s not like a videotape). The capacity to experience pleasure also takes time to blossom again.

I’ve posted this poem before, I know. I’m doing it again because few things are as important as understanding that both heaven and hell are within. They are states of mind. We can choose to walk out of hell, and not into the brief artificial paradises of the hungry ghosts, but into the astonishingly beautiful world we live in.

Hyacinth:

The art work is beautiful and well chosen. Of course I loved "bride-like birches" and the  "nuns travel in pods."

"We haunt  our lives without being fully resent" is certainly true of all of us but especially the addicted.

"Hungry Ghosts": hungry  to be free of fear, rage and despair but lost in addiction.. trapped in the terrible guilt.

I enjoyed the reference to Macbeth's Birnam Wood. I always loved that twist, and especially after seeing it performed in the outdoor theater at the Old Globe. Eerie and magical.

The final photo of woods is perfect, the way the trail bears that intermittent light.
 
Oriana:

Thank you Hyacinth for that “intermittent light.” You made me see the beauty of it. Forest light is beautiful because it’s not “full blast”; it’s interrupted, softened, intermittent. The same way, we wouldn’t want our lives to be an eternal sunshine. We need to travel between realms.

Addicts badly need an alternative reward, a feel-good condition that's not destructive -- something that makes them feel content and like a good person in a lasting way: an entry into the kind of world that offers something richer than what addiction can offer. Instead of “escaping into drugs” (which are “never enough”), they would be able to “escape into life” -- into volunteer work, for instance. (Milosz spoke of “escaping forward” as his defense against brooding about the past.)

I think that dear old Sigi (Freud) was right: we need love and work. If we have those two, or even just meaningful work, the rest will take care of itself.

Half-way houses seem to offer “love and work” (especially if we substitute “affection” for love). We need more half-way houses. If some people need to live in a half-way house for the rest of their lives, that’s not a tragedy. The tragedy is not providing help. 

Scott:

Loved Hannah's poem and that line...'and they will kick your ass to Cardiff.' Macbeth is my favorite of the Bards's plays. There's a great Macbeth allusion near the end of Moby Dick!

In Chapter 117 'The Whale Watch' Fedallah, Ahab's agent of his demise, tells him that before he dies, he will see two hearses and 'the visible wood of the last one must be grown in America.'  Melville had been re-reading Shakespeare around the time of Moby Dick, especially Macbeth, and this was a clear allusion to the prophecy of Birnam Wood to Macbeth's end.

Oriana:

Thank you, Scott, for never ceasing to astonish us by finding references to Moby Dick in everything under discussion.

Charles:

Seems to me that "the Hungry Ghost" phase is that period in anybody's life when one is in great need of change. Some people choose the pursuit of greatness and some people are chosen by addiction. Great goals and drug addiction are opposites.
 
Oriana:

That’s more or less what I read about drug addicts: they don’t have a vocation or any real goal in life. But then some great writers were alcoholics. Still, Hemingway had terrific self-discipline: he got up at dawn and wrote until 11 a.m., at which point he began to drink. Without writing, he’d have been drinking the first thing in the morning. 

It’s interesting that you mention being a Hungry Ghost as a phase in life. For me the main source of hell was romance with dysfunctional men -- it’s hard to believe how many of them are out there. Functional men are “taken” early, leaving behind the undesirables, often addicts.

It wasn’t until my late thirties that I could say: “Writing is the most important thing in my life.” Once that happened, once I had a clear sense of vocation and the excitement of seeing myself grow as a poet, romance lost most of its power to turn me into a hungry ghost. I remember the first time I turned down a date because I wanted time to write. The old joke about discovering something more interesting than sex -- it’s true. But hormone levels have to go down. 

Sarah:

Liked the hungry ghost post a lot. Those realms have always spoken to me. Did I tell you about my fairly recent visit with a friend when i fell asleep on the sofa and was woken by a voice saying "You are already dead! Do not look back! keep going!" Something like the announcements on the London Underground (Mind the gap!). My friend thought it was a good idea to put the film of the Tibetan Book of the Dead on while I slept.

It wasn't a dream, it was the actual voice in the film, reading the Tibetan book of the dead. It woke me up, but, not realising a film was on, I wasn't quite sure where I had woken into!

Oriana:

Thanks for sharing this fascinating story. So interesting about cultures sharing the prohibition on looking back while you are in the land of the dead. “Keep going!” is the imperative -- our eyes on whatever slender light is guiding us.

I immediately identified with the Hungry Ghosts. For many years I despaired of ever breaking free. I knew that if only I managed to drop ambition, I’d be happy just living, writing whenever I felt like it, for the pleasure of writing and sharing with whoever might come by, so to speak. And finally, finally, it simply happened. The grasping desire fell away, part of my insight that I am posthumous now, so I can relax and be happy. 

In fact, now that I posthumous in terms of the life of striving, I am in heaven. Or, to be precise, I am in heaven on days when I get to do whatever I feel like doing, no longer whipped by “hungry ghost” desires. I don’t have to achieve anything, I don’t have to prove anything -- not to others, not even to myself. It’s an imperfect heaven, with bursts of unpleasantness such as noisy neighbors, but still, that passes -- and there is so much beauty around me!