Half ventured is boldly won --

July 1st being the 182nd day of the year, we are now halfway through the Year of Ram. I thought maybe this was a good time to take stock and, since I never talk to anyone because I’m a misanthropic hermit, give my friends an update on where I am in life. My blog automatically updates to Facebook, which I recently learned means that anyone at all ever reads it, which is different from both the past and my expectations. So, you know. Here are answers to some of the most obvious questions, starting with what I think is most important.

Q. Did you shave your pubic hair?
A. I did, I really did. I still don’t know what all the fuss is about. It wasn’t a big deal. I don’t think I’ll do it again.

Q. Why is it the Year of Ram, exactly?
A. Because I’m tired of knowing how things will turn out, viz. badly. Because at the beginning of this year, I achieved a number of things I wanted ten years ago, and that made me wonder if maybe I’m not as terrible as I thought. Because I wondered if maybe it’s possible to succeed in this terrible world.

Q. Didn’t you once think you would die at twenty-seven?
A. I still might: September’s still a ways off, and no one can predict fate. But twenty-seven is a pretty rock and roll age to die, and there’s a lot more in my life now besides rock and roll.

Q. For example?
A. Prose, poetry, languages, travel, symbolism, education, knowledge, the Lord.

Q. Weren’t all those things in your life before?
A. Yes, intensely; but to be an artist, you have to be inside of your art all the time. For a period of my life, everything I knew or thought or did came to me through music as light moves through the luminiferous ether.

Q. So have you written any songs recently?
A. I have, I really have. I wrote two in the last month. They are called “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cockroach” and “Bat House.” I think they’re okay. (N.B., if you’re reading this on Facebook I think that means you won’t see those as links. I recommend visiting http://lovesolveseverything.blogspot.com/2011/07/half-ventured-is-boldly-won.html if you want to hear a couple of songs about animals.)

Q. What about that book? Weren’t you writing a book?
A. I was. I still am. I expect to finish it and revise it a few times during the course of the Year of Ram. If you told me when I started that you wanted to read it, and I haven’t sent you anything, it’s probably only because I want to wait a minute and send you everything together.

Q. What are you going to do when you’re done? Are you going to just sit on it and move on with your life like you did with your last two novels?
A. I am not going to do that. I am going to make some effort to get it published. If you or anyone you know can help with that and thinks twelve thousand-odd rhymed lines of iambic pentameter about a fat Indian Jesuit looking for a huge bird sounds like a good time, please let me know.

Q. So do you want to be a writer, then?
A. Rephrase the question.

Q. What do you want to be when you grow up?
A. No, I still don’t like that. It makes certain assumptions that I don’t agree with.

Q. What do you want to be if you grow up?
A. I’ve gotten this question a lot, and the answer is always different. True answers I’ve given in the past include, but are not limited to: an astronaut, Chico Marx, wise, dead, naked, Childe Harold, smart, well-read, Diogenes the Cynic, a musician, Joseph Campbell, cool, a novelist, an itinerant preacher, a literature professor, a legend, a favorite uncle, a mystic, a hesychast, a hermit, a saint, a sage, an omphaloskeptic, an ascetic, a prophet, a rock and roll philosopher, a tzaddik in peltz, and a psychonaut.

Q. So what are you doing now?
A. I’m still teaching. I teach English, science, Western music, and drama.

Q. Where?
A. In a village called Anaikatti, outside of Coimbatore, in Tamil Nadu, India – the same state in which my parents were born. It’s a small village set among gorgeous rolling green hills. My best friends here are three mama cows, two baby cows, and a dog named Jimmy.

Q. Why are you there?
A. That’s a more complicated question than it appears to be, and I never have a good answer for it because the true answer is one that I don’t usually like to share with people. In a nutshell, it’s this: when I was young, the only course of life that appealed to me was that of a swami in orange robes. So I imagined that as soon as I was old enough to control my own destiny, I would go to India, find a guru, and spend the rest of my life based here.

Q. So you wanted to renounce the world?
A. Well, at the time, the only swamis I’d ever met were the ones associated with some organization, because otherwise it’s difficult to go to the United States. I didn’t really think about asceticism or anything like that; I was thinking about these people whose whole job is to travel around and educate people about religion, spirituality, and philosophy. It should be clear why that appealed to me.

Q. So why did you change your mind?
A. I only kind of changed my mind. But the real issue was that I went to college and started playing rock and roll, kissing girls, and reading Ulysses. And the rest, as Stephen Dedalus would say, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. But somehow I never lost the idea that there would come a point in my life, when I had finished all my journeys and adventures, when I would go to India and not leave again until I was enlightened, if then.

Q. So do you still want to renounce?
A. See, that’s where it gets complicated. The basic issue is this: on the one hand, I see every achievement possible in this world as a fleeting, ephemeral, and ultimately worthless confection of spun sugar, and all the pleasures of Earth seem shallow and pointless to me; on the other hand, everyone else seems to be having a pretty good time, so maybe I should just try more fun things. And then, on the third hand, I really like reading and writing and those kinds of intellectual or aesthetic enjoyments.

Q. So did you come to India only for spiritual reasons?
A. No, there was one other huge worldly reason as well, which is Tamil. I am now pretty well versed in a whole mess of different languages (of which some I can converse in, while some I can only read, but read decently well), but I have a lot of trouble with my mother tongue, which I spoke before I could speak English. This is a source of shame to me, and has been my whole life. I have always wanted to improve my Tamil enough that, if nothing else, I can read the works of my grandfather, who was a somewhat famous writer.

Q. How’s that going?
A. Briefly: not so well. After six months here – and, lest we forget, twenty-seven years of speaking and hearing the language before that – I still can’t open my mouth without the people around me complaining that my Tamil is so bad. Compare this to Japanese and Thai, of which I knew nothing before I arrived in those countries, and in which I could carry on a reasonable conversation after six months.

Q. Are you giving up?
A. Part of me wants to, but that’s not what the Year of Ram is about. It’s about persevering and getting shit done. It’s about Taking Care of Bidness. One thing that would help would be getting out of the village and going to a city, where I could find some kind of Tamil class or something. I spent a month in Madurai during the summer holidays, and my Tamil improved more in that one month than it did in the preceding four. And since I got back to school, I’ve lost all of those improvements in a matter of weeks.

Q. What other cool stuff have you done in India?
A. I visited the village where my grandfather the writer was born, and while there I talked to a bunch of people who knew and admired him and talked to me at length. I went to Delhi to participate in a puppet workshop. I visited the temple of my family god. I went to a few classical concerts and dance performances. I attended some lectures at the local ashram (all in Tamil, but I was able to follow). I saw a whole mess of historical temples and other sites. I joined in with local tribal dances. I made friends with some elephants and cows. I was bitten by a tremendous number of mosquitoes. I darkened pleasantly in the sun.

Q. How’s the food?
A. Everything I dreamed and more. When I was young, I ate South Indian food through a glass, darkly: imported frozen vegetables, close-but-not-quite spices, slightly altered snacks, and so on. My mother is a great cook, but she was working with different ingredients. Here I eat the food as it was always meant to be. There’s a garden in the school, and all my favorite vegetables that you can’t get in the States I can get straight off the tree or bush or vine here. One thing I miss is my mother’s rasam, because no one makes rasam like my mother does.

Q. How is your job?
A. It’s pretty great. The kids are a lot of fun, and we get an amazing amount of freedom to do what we want in class. The headmistress is a huge supporter of the arts, and anything creative we can do with the children is heartily encouraged. Which is obviously a big advantage for me.

Q. Are you going to stay?
A. I’m not sure. For one thing, there’s the need to go into the city I mentioned before. For another, the way that no one will accept me as Indian wears on me and makes me want to go to some country that isn’t America or India.

Q. Like where?
A. Somewhere with a language I like. Italy, Ireland, Taiwan, Greece, Indonesia, North Africa, and northern South America come to mind.

Q. If you went to those places, would you teach?
A. Secretly, I’ve kind of always hated teaching. (It’s a secret – don’t tell anyone.) I always assumed that it was because I wasn’t good at it yet, and that when I got better, I’d stop having this feeling of dread before every class and this sweeping relief at the moment when every lesson ends. Now I’m not so sure. I think maybe I have the same problem as the aforementioned Stephen Dedalus:
–I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am wrong.
–A learner rather, Stephen said.

Q. And here what will you learn more?
A. We will see. Possibly much, and possibly very little. I’m definitely finishing this school year. Next April, I’ll reevaluate the situation.

Q. What do you want?
A. Deep down, underneath all my desires, only two things: to be free, and to feel like I’m worthwhile.

Q. What do you believe?
A. I believe in the Father almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth, and His only begotten son, Christ, Who is born in every soul in every moment but is seen only by those who have cleared their vision by means of love. I believe that there is no such thing as useless knowledge. I believe that most, if not all, problems can be solved by working with the way of things rather than against it. I believe that any act can only be completely effective when performed without attachment or desire. I believe that the universe is the way God looks when viewed through the prism of time, space, and causality. I believe that the world as we know it is the interference pattern caused by the intersection of matter/energy and consciousness. I believe that even the most profound mystical speculation can be known and proved or disproved. I believe that nothing is difficult when one truly understands oneself. I believe that I am destined for greatness, even if that does not include anyone recognizing my greatness. I believe that religion is mostly a load of shit, but that its symbolism and ritual can be useful to one who wants to know the Truth. I believe that the vast majority of activity of the vast majority of people is useless service to an arbitrary system of meaningless and artificial laws, and that to let myself be bound by that system would be paralyzing and soul-crushing. I believe that everything is sacred. I believe that the sum of human knowledge is close to nothing.

Q. So?
A. So I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing: learning everything I can, refusing to do anything without what I consider a decent reason, and creating interesting and beautiful things. I’m never going to have what other people would call a career, because I’ll never be able to see the point. And I’ll never settle down, because settling down feels to me like a prison. All I know how to do is to keep being what I am. And, ultimately, that’s what I’ve learned in the first half of the Year of Ram: how to just kind of be what I am. It’s not easy, but I’m getting there.