The hundred-and-eight sorrows

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I am not a Buddhist really. (Just ask Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse about that, and he’ll agree.) But I know some Buddhist doctrine, and it has actually helped me stumble through life.

How many different ways to suffer are there, do you think?

There are exactly one hundred and eight.

There are six senses in the Buddhist world view: smell, taste, touch, sight, hearing, and (the one we Westerners forget) the mind. Suffering can enter through all six of these.

What enters? The six stimuli: things we like, things we dislike, things we don’t care about, things that bring us joy, things that bring us suffering, things that make us feel nothing at all. Things we like may be bad for us (like alcohol). Things we dislike (like bitter medicine) may make us suffer, though they’re good for us physically. Things we don’t care about may be vitally important, but we don’t realize it. Joy is wonderful but it never lasts, and its departure causes suffering. Unhappiness is suffering itself. Indifference can lead to suffering later, through regret.

Six senses x six stimuli = 36.

All six stimuli can be past (remembering the six stimuli), present (experiencing them in the moment), or future (anticipating them).

36 x the three time periods of past / present / future = 108.

These are the hundred-and-eight sorrows.

In some Buddhist practices, there are commemorations of the number 108: 108 prostrations before the Lord Buddha, 108 circumambulations of his statue. Sometimes they ring a bell 108 times at the New Year.

Try this exercise: think of something you do, something you love or hate or don't care about in the least. It will be one of the hundred-and-eight.

How about smoking? I smoked for fourteen years. I liked the way it tasted back them.

So: (sensation: taste) x (stimulus: liking) x (time: past).

And now I have throat cancer, almost certainly as a result of those fourteen years of smoking. (See also karma.)

The one-hundred-and-eight sorrows go on and on, endlessly, so long as there’s a single unenlightened being in the entire universe.

We need to realize them, and name them, and let them go.

Then we can move on to whatever comes next.

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For Sunday: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance "The Continental" (1935)

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“The Continental” was the first song to win an Oscar for Best Original Song, in the movie “The Gay Divorcee,” back in 1935.

This is a video of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing to the tune in the movie. They are wonderful together.

Enjoy.

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Counting coins

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My bank, TDBank, is very good. Its rates are low, and its staff members are invariably friendly. (It’s one of the main reasons I transferred my account over from the expensive unfriendly Citizens Bank a few years ago.) Also, TDBank has many hidden advantages. For example: its foreign exchange rates are very low (perhaps because it’s based in Canada).

Also: it has a coin-counting machine in its lobby.

This is a huge advantage for people like me who hoard coins. I learned the habit from my parents, who hoarded them also; in my childhood, we spent many happy evenings counting and rolling coins.

But rolling coins is tedious. It’s so much easier to feed them into a coin-counting machine and take the resulting calculation to the cashier and get your money. (Every bit of it, mind you, not like CoinStar, which keeps 10% or more of it as a “fee.”)

The TDBank machine is set up for children. There’s an animated character on the viewscreen named “Penny,” who talks you through the whole process. “My goodness,” she says periodically, “you sure have saved up a lot of money!”

This is a little annoying, but there you are.

The other day, when I was running some coins through the machine, Penny stopped suddenly. “You’ve save up so much money,” she said, “that I’ve filled up my coin sack! An attendant will come help you shortly.”

And an attendant did. As she finished up, she turned to me and said (I thought): “Just touch your nose and you’ll resume.”

I thought she was joking, or that I’d misheard. So I touched my nose.

The attendant grimaced and pointed to the viewscreen. “Her nose,” she said. “Touch her nose.”

Ah. It all made sense suddenly.

Am I not a stupid funny old man?

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Journeys

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I wrote recently about my distaste for the word “battle” as used to describe a person’s life with cancer. There are obvious similarities: yes, I suppose you could say we’re fighting for our lives. But – um – does that mean that dying is the same as losing the battle? I’d rather think not.

I’ve decided that it’s more like a journey. You’ve left your humdrum normal life, and you’ve set sail on unknown dangerous seas. Nothing is familiar anymore. It’s scary, kids.

You have a goal: getting rid of the cancer. It’s possible. Other people have done it. You’re not completely alone: you have friends and supporters, and if you’re lucky (as I am), you also have a partner who loves you. You have doctors who help you chart your course. (My hematologist even has someone in her office who’s the “navigator” – planning treatment schedules, coordinating with other doctors’ offices, etc.)

Journeys have all kinds of endings, don’t they?

-         You make it to the end of the journey, but it’s not quite what you thought it would be. You don’t suddenly win the game. You realize, after what you’ve gone through, that you can never be sure of “tomorrow” again. You completed one journey, but now it turns out (in case you didn’t know) that life is just one damned journey after another.

-         You run into unexpected complications. You get nasty side effects. You catch a random virus from a stranger who sneezes on the back of your neck while you’re on the bus. Suddenly your seven-week journey is a ten-week journey, or a three-month journey.

-         You decide not to take the journey after all, or you begin and decide to turn back. What happens then? I suppose you hope for a miracle to pick you up and drop you at the finish line: you pray, or just dumbly hope, for an Act of God. (For me, this is a non-starter. God is not going to cook up any Acts of God for me, especially after the way I’ve talked about him.)

Journeys are strange and unpredictable. You do your very best, with the help you’re given, to make your way through unfamiliar and changing terrain. And you realize that you’re not really in control much of the time; it’s just out of your hands. Sometimes the end of the journey is way beyond any horizon you can imagine.

So get off your ass and pick up that One Ring and take it to Mount Doom.

Even if you don’t know the way.

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Sense of taste

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One of the “minor” side effects of both radiation and chemotherapy is the loss of one’s sense of taste.

Well, not so much “loss.” More of a horrible transformation.

I had one of my favorite Japanese dishes recently: ahiru donburi, strips of grilled duck and bits of scallion scattered in a bowl of rice. Delicious! But a bit – hem – metallic.

Then wheat bread began to taste like cigarette ashes.

I tried a McDonald’s hamburger and fries recently. The fries were perfectly inedible, like pieces of uncooked leather. The burger tasted as if it had been marinated in Clorox.

Meat’s not good anymore, nor is bread.

What’s left? Chocolate pudding. Frozen yogurt. Lemonade. Soup. Rice Chex. Cheerios. Grape Nuts. Marshmallow Peeps! Mashed potatoes.

I told this to Apollonia, who was philosophical. “Take a lesson from Robocop,” she said. “Robocop ate a rudimentary paste.”

“A what?”

“A rudimentary paste,” she said carefully. “And now that’s what you’re going to have to eat too.”

“I wish I were Robocop right now,” I said. “I know what I’d do.”

“Calm yourself,” Apollonia said severely. “That’s the chemotherapy talking.”

So: anyone for some nice rudimentary paste?

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Becoming a Rhode Islander

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I came to Rhode Island from Washington state thirty-five years ago, in August 1978. There were some obvious differences. Rhode Island is a tiny provincial state with a long history; Washington is a large diverse state with a much briefer history.

It took me a long time – almost until the present day – to figure out the subtler differences between the two.

I was puzzled (at first) by people who kept asking me if I was “one of the Rhode Island Williamses.” I had no idea what this meant. I finally realized they were asking if I was descended from Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island colony in 1636. I am not one of his descendants, so far as I know. But I wasn’t here more than a year or so before I became acquainted with someone who was. See? The Roger Williams family is still here. Everyone's still here. People here stick around.

They seem to like it here.

They like it so much, in fact, that a lot of people never cross the state line. I saw a cute bumper sticker in Frog & Toad the other day: THIS CAR NEVER LEAVES RHODE ISLAND.  (That’s not a joke, for a lot of people.) The Rhode Island border is a little permeable here and there – into Attleboro, Mass. in the northeast, and into Seekonk, Mass. in the east, and maybe just a little into Stonington, Conn. in the southwest – but it is generally a very watertight little enclosure, in which everyone bounces around, but which no one ever really leaves.

Which leads to the next thing: everyone knows everyone here. 

In Washington, you know the people in your community, or at least a few of them. In Rhode Island, you know everyone. Of course you do. You keep running into the same people over and over again. How can you not know everyone?

But Rhode Island is a very private club. It takes a while before you’ve really been accepted.

Now I’ve been here for more than thirty-five glorious years. People smile and wave at me in the street. I say hello to everyone, and they say hello back, because they know: deliverymen, cashiers, business owners. Even one of the homeless people downtown greeted me the other day with casual familiarity.

I’m a local, at last. A real Rhode Islander.

And it only took thirty-five years!

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My lunchbox

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In the summer of 1963, just after I turned six years old, my family took me to the Payless Drug Store on Fourth Plain in Vancouver, Washington, and I was allowed to pick out a lunchbox.

I picked out the version pictured above. (I still remember how excited I was to pick out my own lunchbox, and how pleased I was with my decision.)

I was in love with it. It had spacemen! And rockets! And moonscapes! And the most vivid beautiful blue outer-space sky!

I still have it, intact, with the thermos and everything. When I open it, there’s a smell of stale sandwiches and Kool-Aid left over from the mid-1960s.

There’s also a small piece of white fabric tape on the side, with LOREN WILLIAMS written in my mother’s fancy cursive handwriting.

These lunchboxes are collector’s items now. We’re not talking a million dollars, but maybe a hundred or two. It’s on the shelf in my bedroom now, and I look at it every day, and I am so pleased that I still have it.

I made the mistake of bragging about it to Apollonia the other day, and showed her a picture of it. She looked at it dubiously. “What show is this supposed to be?” she said. “’Lost in Space’?”

“Nope,” I said happily. “Generic. No branding at all. Just spacemen from the future.”

“Dude,” she said. “That’s kind of lame.”

“You’re lame,” I said.

Let haters hate. I’m as happy with my generic-spaceman lunchbox as I was when I first set eyes on it in 1963.

Off to Mars!

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Movie review: "The Princess and the Frog" (2009)

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I like Disney movies very much. They can be screamingly funny at their best, and pathetically sentimental at the same time; and who can resist that combination? Love and kindness always win out over greed and hatred (just like in real life). But (unlike real life) there’s always a shadow: death, separation, sadness.

The Disney studio went through a long lull in the 1970s and 1980s, with only a few movies: “The Great Mouse Detective,” “The Rescuers.” Then, suddenly, in the 1990s, they blazed to life again with movies like “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King” and “Aladdin.”

Then another lull, but of a different kind. Disney was producing a lot of movies again, but they weren’t quite as good: “Pocahontas,” “Mulan,” “Hercules,” “Atlantis: The Lost Empire,” “The Emperor’s New Groove.” (I’m not saying these movies are bad; all these have redeeming qualities. “Mulan” is beautifully animated and uniquely sensitive, and “Hercules” (which I saw again recently) is very funny and has some good music, and “Emperor’s New Groove” has the voices of David Spade and John Goodman and Eartha Kitt and Patrick Warburton, all apparently having an excellent time. But they’re flawed too: “Mulan” gets pretty dark – it’s about war, after all – and “Hercules” and “Emperor’s New Groove” both have endings that go seven directions at once. I don’t even like to think about “Pocahontas,” which has some pretty animation, but a garbled plot and not much entertainment value.)

It was for this reason that I put off seeing “The Princess and the Frog.” Disney had done a Native American princess, and an Asian princess, and even a Middle Eastern princess. (I use the word “princess” instead of “heroine,” because we’re talking about Disney. You understand.) Now – ta-daa! – they created an African-American princess. I didn’t want to see the movie. It was bound to be pious as hell, and cutesy. Oprah herself was voicing the heroine’s mother! For some, that was a seal of approval; for me, that meant that the Disney studio (with its history of racism – go watch “Dumbo” again if you haven’t forgotten) was finally making amends for its past.

And amends might be good for the soul, but they aren’t necessarily fun to watch.

Well, friends, I was wrong. “Princess and the Frog” is a jolly good time. The heroine this time round, Tiana (voiced by Anika Noni Rose), is a hard-working Jazz Age New Orleans waitress who just wants to open a restaurant. The prince, Naveen (voiced by Bruno Campos), is a good-looking royal wastrel who’s in New Orleans looking for a good time (in the short term) and a rich wife (in the long term). The villain turns Naveen into a frog. Naveen mistakes Tiana for a princess, and gets her to kiss him (it doesn’t take him long to talk her into it!), and she turns into a frog.

Hijinks ensue.

As always with Disney, there’s lots of crossover. We’ve been in the swamps before: go watch “The Rescuers” if you don’t remember. Also, we spend a lot of time looking up at the evening star in this movie – one character even sings a song to it! – and that should make any faithful Disneycrat think of Jiminy Cricket.

The songs are pretty good, especially one called “Dig a Little Deeper” (with a chorus line of pink spoonbills!):

There’s also a nicely creepy comeuppance song for the villain (voiced by Keith David) at the end:

Flaws? Yes, a few. They lay on the N’Awlins charm pretty thick, as well as the bayou slapstick. Also, New Orleans in the 1920s appears to be amazingly free from racism and segregation.

But we’re talking about a fantasy here, and – as fantasies go – this is a lovely one.

Not all Disney princesses are the same. Some are frail and need constant help, like Snow White. Some are very tough, like Mulan. Tiana is tough: she wants to fulfill her father’s dream, and she wants to make her mother happy. She’s willing to put her own happiness aside to make those things happen.

She’s a good person.

And Naveen – a shallow good-for-nothing – turns out to be romantic, and kind, and selfless.

After seeing “The Princess and the Frog,” I felt triumphant.

And that’s the way you should feel after watching a good Disney movie.

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For Sunday: Ginger Rogers sings "We're In The Money" in Pig Latin

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As a movie buff, I always stand and salute whenever any of the “Gold Diggers” movies of the 1930s come on the air. I DVR them and play them over and over again.

This is from the first (and best) of them: “Gold Diggers of 1933.”  It opens with a cheerful song – “We’re In The Money,” a renunciation of the Depression – and ends with a very downbeat musical number, “Remember My Forgotten Man,” very sad indeed.

Not your usual movie.

Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Ginger Rogers, and Joan Blondell are featured, as well as some names that aren’t so well remembered: Warren William, Guy Kibbee, Aline MacMahon, Ned Sparks.

For me, one of the most astonishing things in this excellent movie is in the first sequence: Ginger Rogers singing “We’re In The Money” in Pig Latin.

Watch and be amazed.

The perfect homemade soft pretzel: the research continues

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The nice folks at King Arthur Flour, in their most recent catalog, posted a recipe for pretzel sandwich buns.  I made them, and they were very nice, but I thought: well, why sandwich buns? Why can’t I make nice soft pretzels at home?

I can, as it turns out.

But not a single batch has turned out perfectly yet. Some have a nice sourdough flavor, but lack consistency. Some are too bready. Some are too tough.

I’ve made at least four batches so far. They’re all good, but none has been perfect.

I’m still working on it.

Here’s the best version so far:

Combine –

·        2 cups flour (white, or a mix of white and whole-wheat)

·        1 tsp salt

·        1 T instant dry yeast

·        1 T butter

·        A scant cup of warm water

·        A pinch of sugar, or a scant teaspoon of honey

Mix, and knead for at least five minutes, using enough extra flour to make a nice smooth non-sticky dough. Put down in a greased bowl, covered with a dampened cloth, in a quiet place, for at least an hour (preferably more), until the dough has doubled. (A longer rise gives a yeastier flavor, which I like.)

Punch down the dough, divide into eight pieces, and roll each into a long rope about 15 inches long. Tie into a pretzel shape. Here’s a video to show you how:

(You can tie a double knot too. But practice a bit first.)

Place your eight pretzel children on a greased surface, cover with a dampened cloth for 15-30 minutes, and let them rest. While that’s going on, prepare for the end of the process as follows:

·        Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

·        Prepare a water bath: a saucepan with about a quart of water and about ¼ cup baking soda, heated to boiling.

·        Also break an egg into a large bowl and beat it.

·        Also line a baking sheet with parchment paper, or (second best) grease a baking sheet heavily.

Carefully drop your unbaked pretzels one or two at a time (depending on the size of your saucepan) into the boiling-water bath. Flip after 30 seconds or so. Take out of the boiling water after a minute.

Let the boiled pretzels rest for a few seconds. Give them a bath in the beaten egg (both sides), place them on the baking sheet, and dust them with coarse salt. (Coarse sea salt is inexpensive and easily available, at least locally.)

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden-brown.

Cool, and serve with butter or mustard. If there are any left the next day, reheat them in the microwave for (literally) ten seconds or so, and they’ll be almost like new.

Still not perfect, I know. Something’s missing.

But I’ll figure it out. I’ve got lots of time on my hands.

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