"Two Zen Tuesday"

(34)

“Trust Your Zen”

(Published previously on Rusty’s Blog, Aug 28, 2015. 

Extensively reedited.)

“Trust yourself,” my zen said to me.

“Huh?” I answered.

(For I don’t always catch

What my zen says

The first time around.)

“Trust yourself,” my zen repeated.

“Everything you need 

Is right inside you

This very minute.”

“Everything?” I answered. 

“That sounds like a lot.

Are you sure?”

(You see, I was afraid of trusting 

Just myself alone.

For whom would I blame

If I failed?)

“Trust yourself,” 

My zen repeated

With some exasperation.

“I’d rather trust you,” 

I answered.

“Same thing, dummy,” 

Replied my zen.

(35A)

“Zen and Anger and the Lost Wristwatch” 

I remember my first wristwatch.

It was given to me by my father

For doing well in school.

I was probably eight or nine.

I couldn’t have been any older,

Because I stopped doing well at school

The year my mother died.

And she died when I was ten.

It was a bit Mickey Mouse,

That wristwatch.

But it told good time.

Until I lost it.

I took it off in the restroom at school

To wash my hands

And accidentally left it on the sink.

Realizing a moment later,

When I returned to the sink…

It was gone!

It saddened me to think

A fellow schoolmate

Would take it.

It angered my father 

That I lost something valuable.

He said I should learn 

To look after my things better.

“Maybe this’ll teach you,” he added.

But I couldn’t see it his way,

And felt no remorse for the loss.

After all, I didn’t do it on purpose.

My dad remained angry, though,

Which hurt my little heart.

You see, I wasn’t old enough

To understand that his anger

Wasn’t about me 

Or some stupid wristwatch.

It was about the death of my mother,

And the regrets my father bore

Deep in his heart.

He was angry with himself.

That’s why I get angry, usually.

I’m angry at myself.

Perhaps, sometimes, you are the same?

After all, nobody’s perfect!

Listen to me, please.

I think this is important.

Anger is a waste of good zen!

Which even though free and everywhere,

(As I’ve said many times)

Mustn’t be wasted.

And who gives a crap,

If you’ll pardon the expression,

About material things?

My zen reminds me every day;

‘The yearning for possessions

Can only lead to unhappiness.’

Ah, my zen!

Thank you for your loving wisdom!

Thank you for your humanity!

And thank you for helping me 

See a way

To avoid going crazy

In a world

I cannot control…

But must not fear.

Hmmmm,

That last couple of paragraphs

Sounded pretty wise.

Looks like dad was right, after all.

I did learn something.

Ha! Ha! 

I wonder whatever happened 

To that Mickey Mouse watch?

It’s probably somewhere now, 

Still telling the time,

Quietly ticking.

Ticking away the time…

Zen!

Critics Are Raving About Hold the Beetroot!

Critics Are Raving 

About 

Hold The Beetroot!

Yes, the reviews are in! 

Destined to be a children’s classic, a colossal bestseller, blockbuster motion picture and pirated download… 

HOLD THE BEETROOT

by 

Rusty Pliers 

Here are just a few of the ravings from the minds of friends, family and lawyers about HOLD THE BEETROOT;

“It’s my son’s finest work,” said the author’s father. 

“It’s also his first, and am I proud!”

“I almost laughed out loud!” mimed Marcel Marceau.

“Really, I’m asking,” said his father again. “Am I supposed to be proud of this stuff? Half of it never even happened! What a liar! He doesn’t get it from my side of the family!”

“Reminiscent and imitative of Groucho Marx, only grouchier and not as funny!” claimed the lawyers of Groucho Marx’s estate. 

“We thought the same thing!” agreed the Samuel Clemens estate lawyers. “Only nowhere near as funny!

“We also thought the same thing!” said the Harpo Marx lawyers. “But we didn’t want to say anything.”

“We also also thought-a the same thing!” said the lawyers of Chico Marx’s estate.

“It’s almost funny in places, sometimes,” counterclaimed the author’s overworked lawyer. “I dare you to stay awake through it long enough to locate the plagiarisms! And that’s good enough, under the law!”

“Yeah? Under the law, eh? We wish he were under something… like the wheels of a truck!” counter-counterclaimed the lawyers from every Marx Brother’s estate.

“We won’t dignify this crap with the courtesy of a response!” said the heirs of Robert Benchley. “You’ll hear from our lawyers!”

“How come you didn’t plagiarize me?” wondered David Sedaris. “I’m every bit as funny as any Marx brother you can name. Except maybe Zippo! And I’m still alive!”

“You have to say this for HOLD THE BEETROOT, there’s nothing else like it in the marketplace today!” promised the author’s publisher. “And it’s strong on subtle, effective product placement!”

“Reading it made my eyes hurt,” effused the author’s ophthalmologist.

“It made me wish I were dead,” sighed Doctor Kevorkian. “Or Mr Pliers was!”

“It’s long, isn’t it?” queried the author’s brother, when asked to read it.

“It’s a daring concept for a humorist! Over 350 pages long, and only fourteen of them are funny!” said the author’s best friend, who declined to be named.

“I thought it was the funniest book I’ve ever read,” claimed the author’s wife. “At least the few pages I read were! Of course, I’m not much of a reader. I prefer yoga.”

“Tell us more about this Yoga fellow,” demanded Groucho’s lawyers. “Or did Mr Pliers shoot him in his pajamas, too?”

“I love HOLD THE BEETROOT! It couldn’t be better!” gushed the author’s sister. “A true masterpiece! Now, where’s my fifty bucks?”

“I couldn’t put it down,” raved Miss Sherman, the author’s former sixth grade teacher. “It stuck to my fingers like wet shit to a blanket!”

“He passed the sixth grade?” wondered the author’s third wife. “I thought he was illiterate!”

“That’s not true!!” objected his father. “I was married to his mother!”

“I never said he passed the sixth grade!” corrected Miss Sherman.

“A thousand monkeys on a thousand computers couldn’t come up with stuff this good,” said the author’s editor. “We’re gonna need more monkeys.”

“Its only weakness is the beginning, the middle and the end,” uttered Joseph Conrad via the crystal ball of a Gypsy fortuneteller. “And you will meet a tall, dark stranger… or soon take a long sea voyage, one of those.”

   I could go on, but why bother? 

All the reviews are as good as these.

Thank you.

And enjoy HOLD THE BEETROOT!

A Ghost, a Girl, and Solid Gold False Teeth

That night in bed, Suzie and I shared a cigarette and talked. We often had long, rambling conversations in bed together. We’d always been able to speak our hearts, and listen to each other as best friends do. 

We knew… at such times dreams can be born. 

We were happy together. We’d been around the world together, had fun together, been tested together, could rely on each other. Suzie lived for the moment and adored life as it came, a true gypsy soul untethered and free. I was enjoying the present but, still without a job in animation in New York, brooding a little about the future. 

I listened while Suzie quietly talked of her mother in South Africa, whom she missed. She spoke of her brothers and sister and their life before her father went “crazy mean with his dopp,” meaning the booze, and she cried a little for things that were lost. Suzie didn’t often cry, but sometimes, after lovemaking, she was more emotional than usual. (Who isn't?) She naturally had a very loving heart and our act of love had set it astir.

After a long pause, she whispered, “I saw him again.”

“Who?”

“My father. He was sitting on the edge of our mattress.”

While we lived in the shared apartment on Seventh Avenue, we slept on a mattress on the floor. For privacy we had hung a row of curtains around. I sat up and looked down towards my feet. 

“When did you see him?” I asked. 

“Yesterday. Just after you left the apartment.”

“Oh? You sound okay. Is everything all right?” 

She had seen the ghost of her father before, in every place we had ever lived. Australia, Africa, New Zealand, and now New York. He was a well travelled ghost, this father of hers, I had to admit that. I had never seen him, but this did not stop me from believing wholeheartedly that Suzie had. He appeared at times when Suzie was by herself. She would walk into a room and he would already be there, sitting quietly with his hands in his lap. He wore a look of inner reproach on his haunted face, as his anguished eyes followed Suzie’s every move.  

He never spoke a word, just sat there on the end of the bed and stared with haunted eyes at his daughter. The way Suzie thought of it, her father was the one who was being haunted, not her.

“He was just checking up on me, to see how I was getting along in the big city,” said Suzie quietly. The little girl who used to be, wanted to believe in the protective father who never was. 

Laying next to me in the dim light, Suzie’s eyes glistened with tears, tears not for herself, but for her tortured father. She believed he suffered the fate of being an unhappy ghost because of the unhappiness he caused other people while he was living, with his violent alcoholic rages and especially the murderous intentions of his ghastly suicide. She blamed his ghostly troubles on his addiction to alcohol when he was alive and held her father, now that he was dead, virtually blameless, at least as far as his soul went, the thing of him that was his essence and that really mattered. 

Within Suzie’s small frame beat a giant’s forgiving heart.

“Had you seen him lately?” I asked. It had been a while since she had mentioned her father and I was curious. Suzie could be casual about things, and sometimes she failed to mention that, oh, by the way, I saw the ghost of my dead father again the other day. 

“No,” she said. “Not for ages.” She thought for a minute. “He’s never been to America before.”

“Did he try a pretzel while he was here?”

Suzie laughed quietly and her splendid white teeth showed. We both detested the twisty, salty things sold on every NYC street corner.

I pulled her to me and gently kissed her mouth. Her cheeks were damp with tears.   

“Goodnight, Suzie,” I whispered.

“Goodnight, dahling.”

She snuggled into me with her long arms folded on my chest. I held her close as she fell asleep. How innocent she looked when asleep. Like a child. 

My heart swelled with love for Suzie. 

Laying there, listening to Suzie breathe and looking up at he ceiling, I thought some thoughts to myself in the night.

So, Suzie had seen her father’s ghost sitting on the bed. Well, that had happened before and would probably happen again. So long as Suzie was okay about it, why should I worry? I stared up into the dark and allowed my mind to wander. Suzie. It was fun in the bathtub tonight. Even after twelve years together, I found her as exciting a lover as ever. It was always no holds barred! Life was fun at the apartment, with friends all around, but it would be good to have our own place, if we could ever afford it. At least I had a job working as a messenger, but it was hardly worth it. The work itself wasn’t too bad, the people I worked with were friendly and interesting, but the money was terrible. No matter how much I worked, there was never enough. It was grinding us down and making life tough. When would animation work come my way? Would it ever come my way? Somehow, I knew it would. It was just a matter of not giving up, of that I was convinced. It was just a matter of persistence. Of believing blindly and carrying on! 

That, and luck. Plain, old, dumb luck.

Well, I thought, I’d always been a lucky bastard. Ask anybody. As my father-in-law Mick used to say, “Rusty lad, if you fell into the toilet bowl headfirst, I swear you’d come up with a set of solid gold false teeth! Ahaw haw haw!”

I smiled to myself and closed my eyes.

Soon I was fast asleep.

My Uneasy Relationship With The Gods

Here is a poem that tells a story

From the youth of Rusty Pliers.

Listen if you want, 

And be entertained.

Don’t listen if you don’t want,

And remain as you are.

It’s all the same to me.

I get paid either way.

This poem is dedicated to a dear one

I knew many years ago.

I stole parts of this story 

From her life.

The rest of it, I admit, 

Is pure…

Rusty Pliers.

Enjoy!

One day when I got home from school,

I found my mother 

On the kitchen floor.

She was moaning and she’d wet herself.

I called 911. 

They told me to be brave, they’d be there soon.

Then I called my dad at work.

He told me the same thing.

This happened a long time ago,

In a place called Los Angeles, California,

That we’d just begun to live in.

My father, my mother, and me.

I was eight years old.

It seemed to take forever 

For the ambulance to arrive,

Waiting on the kitchen floor,

Holding my mother’s head in my lap.

Sunlight streamed in 

Through the window above the sink 

That gave out to the garden.

Mom’s garden. 

Her special place,

Filled with flowers and sunshine,

And of course, her being her,

Filled with love. 

She made a noise and I looked down. 

She stared up with wild, pleading eyes 

And painfully gurgled something, 

I don’t know what.

“What is it, Mom?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, 

But lifted her hands

And reached out

For something that wasn’t there.

Or at least, for something I couldn’t see.

“What is it, Mom?” I asked again,

Not knowing what else to say,

What else to do!

Then she dropped her hands 

And went quiet…

While I rocked her gently

And waited for the ambulance to arrive.

Oh! How I wish to this day

I’d understood what 

She was trying to say 

In that terrible moment!

Do you find it funny,

Ye gods above or below?

Did it give you a moment’s amusement,

You pitiless self-satisfied cannibal bastards,

To torment a little boy 

While he held 

His dying mother 

In his arms?

Fuck You!

The ambulance men finally arrived.

They told me I’d done good,

But now I had to get out of the way

While they helped my mom. 

They gave my mother medical attention,

Then they bundled her

Into a chrome-plated gurney

And rolled her away.

My dad got home after they’d left.

Boy! Was he upset!

He helped me get some dinner started,

Then went right to the hospital.

After that, Dad spent a lot 

Of time at the hospital.

Not me.

I only visited Mom a few times.

Dad made me go, 

But I hated it!

She wasn’t herself anymore.

Her hair had turned white

And she chewed her tongue stupidly

While gazing out with sightless eyes.

Her hand in mine 

Was cold, unresponsive.

She didn’t even know 

I was there.

About eight months later, 

Mom passed away in hospital, 

While at her side my father prayed and wept.

She was thirty-one years old.

I cried too, at the funeral,

Holding my father’s hand

In the big church he attended.

(Children weren’t usually allowed 

In the big church 

With the grownups.

We children attended Bible School.

But that’s a poem for another time.)

I stood beside my father 

In the big, unfamiliar church,

And I couldn’t help myself…

I cried and cried.

I wanted my mother. 

Grownups approached us from the golden pews

And kissed or shook hands with my father.

Then they patted my head, saying,

“Don’t cry, little Rusty.” 

They all said the same thing.

How much I was growing up

To look like my mother…

And how it was a blessing she was dead.

They said she was in heaven now,

Free of pain and sorrow,

Seated at the foot of god.

Or maybe the hand of god, I forget.

“It’s god’s will,” they added,

Nodding to themselves.

“His will be done.

Amen.”

That was easy 

For them to say, 

I thought,

She wasn’t their mother.

As to god’s will…

Can any mortal truly say?