laughter from the monk's cell

Ha! Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a monk’s cell. One of those tiny little cells like they have out at the Missions, or maybe in a monastery high up in the Himalayas. Praying to God all day. Living the simple life of contemplation and a bowl of gruel. Nobody bothering you. So my idea was to write about it, self-reflect as if I was a monk, which I think I kinda am, and see what I could come up with. Lamentations or laughter? Ha, ha.

Is there a book of the Bible named Laughter? There should be. There is a book of Lamentations.

Jerusalem has just been razed to the ground by the Babylonians and Jeremiah is crying out ‘Great is your Faithfulness, oh Lord’. I’m not sure why. Then he starts with his lamentations.

All our enemies
have opened their mouths against us.
Fear and a snare have come upon us.
Desolation and destruction.
My eyes overflow with rivers of water.

Lamentations 2:46-48. On and on it goes in pretty much the same fashion. It was kinda like his poem.

Anyways, when I’m at home I’m usually sequestered in my cell, deep in deliberation and prayer. Also called writing. The altar of the Great Internet Computer stands glowing and humming in the very center of my desk, connected by cables and wires to other sub-deities: the printer, the mouse, the external drive, the powered speakers. They are all worshipped here. Or cursed. That’s when they don’t work.

Actually my altar sits at the end of a long desk that lines one wall. It’s centered in front of the window that looks out on the bright day and the front lawn. That’s where I can rest my eyes when they grow weary of staring at the screen, I mean the Computer God. The Computer God’s face. You can’t look at the face of God because your eyes would melt is what I heard. Or atleast start tearing up and you have to put eye drops in.

‘Lord, you know I have failed at everything pretty much. My life has been a miserable failure’ is how I started out my original version of ‘laughter from the monk's cell’. Ha, looking for humor in that. I went on and on with a long list of things: ‘my failed relationships, my failed careers, my failed poetry, my failed fabulous books. Oh Lord, I’m filled with regret. It keeps re-circulating in my head. I wrote it all down but I wasn’t laughing. I failed to get married and have kids. I failed friends who I thought would always be my friend’. Nothing was funny yet. I failed to get the joke.

Towards the end of my monk’s lament I began to feel feisty, rebellious. I wrote: ‘Yes, and you know what else, oh Lord? I have been here. Oh yeah. Infact, I am here right now, sitting in my monk’s cell watching the little shadows move across the wall. Everything opens up if you’re looking at nothing.’ Still pretending I’m a monk in my cell. A bed, a small window, everything made out of stone and tiny.

‘I’m thankful for the corn gruel twice a day, for the small square of sunlight that comes thru the window above my cot in the morning, for Missy the cat who visits me once a day, maybe more, although I have little to give her.’ That was mildly funny. Actually I eat pretty well. I make it myself so why not? I don’t have a cookbook, I just riff off beans and rice. Endless combinations. Right now it’s black beans and organic brown rice with fresh, diced lion’s mane mushrooms, kale (dressed with deep roasted sesame sauce), aged cheese and my 3 secret herbs and spices; turmeric, fenugreek and aesfoetida. Oh yeah, I threw in a handful of corn chips on top. Yes I’m writing while eating. Two of my favorite things.

The funniest thing of all that I’ve found sitting in my monk’s cell, to be honest, is life. Just being alive. It’s so hilarious if I can single it out as an ‘it’. That’s hard to do of course. It gets mixed up with everything else and I lose the focus. But when it’s sharp I can feel the delight that a baby must feel sitting on the floor with her sister, at the foot of her mother playing with a bag of wooden blocks that fit together. That’s what I saw in the cafe this morning. When I spoke to her she gave me a beautiful smile and said hello.

What the heck, I exist. On a planet, in a universe. I can feel something inside me like some kind of energy and I know I’m alive. It’s amazing. Everything is amazing. My monk’s cell is amazing. My failed life is amazing. It’s hilarious.

It’s like a theatre piece I saw in the cafe the other day. I was sitting on one side and the barista counter was on the other side, behind a rack of knick knacks, and people would enter, stage right, do their thing and exit. Then a completely different person would come in, a girl with green hair for example, and she would perform her part: aspire, order, wait, and receive the blessing. That was the sub-routine that everybody performed. A mom holding her daughter’s hand descended the steps, stage left and entered. She navigated to the barista counter while the child explored the knick knacks. I watched them as if they were actors on a stage, as if it were their moment in a theatre show, the spotlight was on. It was lovely. There’s even a mezzanine.

In actuality, though, I laugh alot. Usually when I find a good musical track that I can use on my podcast. Or when I see a baby playing. Or when I realize I’m alive.

I guess it’s not that hilarious to other people, I can’t stop laughing myself.

music from Carbon Based Lifeforms / again / thank you so much