The Window

(retold 1994 for my English pupils, from a story remembered from my childhood,
origin unknown to me)

“What do you see, boy, what do you see out there this morning?“ Every day in the primitive military hospital ward, far from home, and far from the world of battlefields, the hopelessly wounded who were brought there to live out their remaining days would ask this of the young man who lay beside the only window in the room. All were legless or just bedridden, and from their positions they could only receive some indirect light across the room through that window.

At any given hour during the day, on any given day, their miserable lives were brightened but by one little comfort. The boy who lay wounded by the window would raise himself a just a bit and and turn his head toward the glass pane and tell what he alone saw from his special vantage point. The soldier who had occupied the bed before had lain in coma. All came here to die, and no one stayed longer than a few weeks.

The boy opened his eyes, and then his mouth, and spoke; and from the grateful hearts throughout that room came a long, deep sigh of remembrance, from every eye a drop of bitter-sweet affirmation.

“The green meadow is especially wild this morning,“ he would say, this boy with half his body gone. “It may have rained last night, because the river is higher and faster, and the tall grasses very colorful, very new and proud – the sky is clear and blue like sapphire, and the tallest of the blue-green trees are like a forest of spears piercing it.

“The swallows are dashing back and forth by the window here, but the hawk that lives in the forest is climbing skyward on its way to a distant lake. The sun warms everything alive except me. I feel cold in my bed. ...“

Surely one can imagine what food this provided the dozen other men in the ward, what hope and what stretch of life it gave to them. Many weeks passed in this manner, and for all their suffering and medication, all of them still lived; not one died, as weeks turned to months in that dim hospital ward. The lonely, pain-wracked and forgotten soldiers began to think only of the boy's descriptions; they no longer had to ask him, he volunteered these reports of the wonders outside his window. And their wounds and their pain mattered less, and they struggled for one more hour, and for one more day, if at least to hear the boy's calming voice and to relive through it their most basic longings for something that is still beautiful.

At any time of day he could arouse their attention with a few well-placed words, whether it was to mention the first shafts of sunrise stroking the nearby hills in changing shades of color, or the variations of mood throughout the day, or the sinking of the last light behind those nearby hills.

He never seemed to grow tired of giving his daily reports, and these were always consistent without being redundant. He just grew tired and colder in body. And at night they slept. And one morning he was dead.

His bed now lay vacant and it remained vacant for some days. The aching soldiers grew restless and thirsty for the hearing of what they could not see out there, what they could not kiss. One of them was then moved into the bed by the lovely, coveted window, the bed of privilege. And he gazed silently out, gazed and said nothing. The men in the ward grumbled nervously, impatiently, and one finally called out, “Hey! So tell us already about the world out there, don't keep it all to yourself! Tell us all that you see, we're waiting – now tell it!“

But he only lay there with an expression of shock and defeat. He mumbled, then with a mixture of confusion and anger he spoke for all to hear, “For the love of Christ, man – why, it's just a wall there, blocking everything … nothing but bricks and bricks on … more bricks … it's all there ever was!“

The Suit, or The Truth About Santa

(as I lived it in Berlin, Christmas Eve 1990)

'Twas the night before Christmas...no, that would be leaving out too much. 'Twas a couple weeks before I entered the Army, living in San Francisco I made one lone attempt to live out a dream I'd often nurtured: to be a department store Santa just once in my life. And really BE it, express it, do an Edmund Gwinn on it, inspired by the old “Miracle on 34^th Street,“ but it was not to be. I called two or three large stores who offered this, and the answer was always: senior citizens only. They don't use 30-year-old Jewish Coloradan health-care givers, down-and-out in San Francisco. My luck. No sign of snow anyway, some cheer.

Berlin, 1990, five years after that disappointment in the City on the Bay. I'd just lived through City on the Wall, and a new era was in the making, hardly dared dreamed of – and now my own little dream was about to be realized, hardly could I have imagined.

Living in the barracks installation which had once housed Hitler's private HQ, I was employed on the side as masseur in a tiny rec center on this very compound. In a building where the Gestapo once tore muscles and shattered joints, there I was working at deep-relaxing muscles and helping joints bend better. It was called Hi-Light and offered a massage service as well as limo-rental, video-rental, ping-pong and a small library, whatever came to the mind of whichever military wife happened to be running it at the time, and was open to creative inspiration. I was available on commission by appointment, according to contract I also gave quarterly workshops. This all ran until the last American military installation was closed for The Drawback, 1994.

In December of 1990, Kelly from Texas was at the helm. She was a congenial sort, and as with her predecessors I often had a good hearty chat with her in the office after an appointed session on the bench. On this particular day she hit me with a volunteer request. Would I be willing to go house to house, flat to flat, for three evenings running, ending with Christmas Eve, in the military housing areas? Would I be willing to do it unpaid, although families responding to this clever little offer were paying a fee of five bucks for Santa to spend 2-5 minutes “dropping by“ and enchanting the kiddies? Would I be willing to have Kelly as a “Rudolph,“ sledding me and about four “elves“ in green from the Berlin American High School around in her van? My heart jumped.

I said, “Maybe. First tell me about The Suit.“ The Suit was grander than I could have dared hoped: the costume itself was totally alright, with enough room for pillows, and as only the boots were missing, I stuck with my military boots, the kids would just have to deal with that. The main thing, the beard and the wig, were as good as it gets, cotton would help the eyebrows, nothing was loose-hanging, it was perfect. As a pipe smoker with a nice collection, I would use my very long- stemmed number which was right out of the traditional illustrated poem – everything was set. So would I do it? I said, “One other thing. Snow. Tell me about snow, I want snow.“ It hadn't snowed a winter in Berlin worth mentioning. That year it would, and did, and how. I told Kelly, leaving the snow open to chance, “Yes. I'll do it, I'm in. Am I alone with this?“ No, it seemed there was one other Santa going on his own tour for the Hi-Light, a Master-Sgt., a tall and lanky, rather banal and colorless fellow who thought that just wearing the threads made the theme, as if just wearing the duds made the dream, and when I heard that he was all they had and they needed a second for another tour, I said, “YES KELLY! YES! I WILL BE YOUR SANTA!“

And so it went. I fit into the whole shtick like an apprentice to the Real McCoy. I went through every tour those three evenings with one thought: I am He. What would He do if He were Me? And what would The Universe wish to communicate to all these children, or to a specific not-yet-encountered child - in the form of a kitsch-traditional, warm'n'rosy Santa – this creative Universe so electrically resonating with compassion, with warmth and love, pregnant with joy like a Santa.

The effect was a complete outward transformation, and inwardly I was morphing into my interpretation of a divinely-dropped North Pole Messenger of love, of joy, of goodwill, of Christmas warmth and cheer at its best – no clichées, no bullshitting, no “acting“ but being it, taking my time actually paying attention to the kids, listening, playing, laughing and joking – and sharing that twinkle of the glance. And it worked. The ho-ho was heartfelt, and slipping into the role I rolled in and out of each visit feeling enriched and in more than a few cases tangibly enriching.

Among all the many various drop-ins, at some I was known by military co-workers, and for them it was “Sam-ta Claus“ - explaining to the young and inquisitive that the military boots were a logical gesture of solidarity with the troops – heaven forbid it should mean I was actually some seargeant- dude dressing up for a stint... Most of it all went pretty much according to program, I spent anywhere from four to five minutes per visit, and there were quite a few of them. And it was fun.

There were about four incidents which will always remain with me from the latter two evenings. I worked the crowd, as they say, on gut instinct and hunch, or call it intuition. My elves were sometimes nonplussed, trying to remind me that time was running, as five turned into ten minutes, ten into twenty. I reminded them with the sternness of a Papa Christmas, that we were on my clock, not Hi-Light's, not Kelly's, not the 5-dollar fee's. They gulped and must have thought, “Oh, shit, the dude's gone mental, he actually believes he's...“ And they dealt with it.

In one flat there was a young mother with her little daughter. Different than the other families I'd been seeing, the air semed laden with an unspoken blue-mood. It expressed the overall tension over the Gulf deployment, Desert Shield was close to becoming Desert Storm, and everyone was more or less on edge in the face of unknowns. I wasn't here for commercial purposes, but on quite other business: Being Christmas. After entering the kitchenette with a hearty greeting, I sat on the nearest chair and motioned the girl toward me, inquiring as to what was on her heart. If you can't do that, what are you doing Santa for? She hesitated, and her mother, leaning against the counter and reflecting this mood as well, courteously explained that they were both concerned about Dave, a family member or friend being in the Gulf, and what danger might await him.

Nodding sagely (Santa does that), I drew the girl to my knee, hugged her gently closer, and spoke very softly to her. Naturally we had one simple rule, if you happen to know what the parents had in store for the child you could “promise“ that – but you don't promise anything you can't, nor can anyone, deliver. So for warm-ups I asked her if she knew who I was, then I asked her if she knew where I lived. When she answered with North Pole, I told her, “No, that's what everyone says, but the truth of the matter is, I live in your heart, right there in your heart, that's where I live. And all year round I am there, loving you, watching you grow, and there is nothing, nothing you can do that could make me love you less. I am seeing everything, just like they say, only I am not thinking bad or good, I am just loving you.“ Well, good for the warm-ups, that got her up on my lap. Her mother's lips were already quivering.

“Now then,“ I went for the gold. “You're going to get this and that for Christmas, aren't you? I don't have to tell you. But you are worried about Dave, and we are thinking about Dave, now aren't we? There are things even Santa cannot promise you in so many words, there are things we just have to leave up to Jesus, and there are things we just have to leave up to God. So what to do? Well we can pray, can't we? You pray with me, with ol' Santa. Now see if you know this song, and anyone who knows it can sing it with us, right now and right here, and we will offer this song up like a prayer for Dave to come home safely. Alright? Alright, now here goes...“

I broke into one of my own most favorite childhood songs from Pete Seeger, also performed by Simon and Garfunkel, “Strangest Dream“ - the whole song from beginning to end, softly and yet with a penetration which carried the mood in that kitchen into a level of refreshed hope and wonder at the power of possibility. If that ain't Christmas. And the child was much more relaxed, and the mother was brushing away tears, and the elves dealt with it. My clock. In Sufism we call this: effacement-of-the-self-in-the-elf, in Arabic, fana-fi-santa.

Shortly after, the elves got a taste of Santa's irritation. We made a stop at one flat where the only child there was an infant, not even half a year old by my reckoning, and with web-cam running and the adults making jolly, I was supposed to gratify their selfish whims of scaring the living bejeebers out of a little one who had no idea what this massive red and bearded intruder bursting through the door was after. And the child burst into screams of terror, to the gaity of these perverse American idiots. Not even then did they have a clue that they were being stupid. I gazed very gently on the child, then growled at the parents and guests a sarcastic “Merry Christmas“ and beat it out of there in less than half a minute. Their five bucks. The elves, following me down the stairs, were shocked and bemused at hearing Santa muttering a very un-Christmas “such bullshitters,“ and “Santa don't play that shit.“

It was the third incident which most moved me. There the elves had to really learn some patience, and live with my Santa-wrath. While I was equipped with a never-empty sack of little brown baggies of goodies for each child no matter how many I encountered, it was part of the deal that a family could leave a bag with a present or two with a note for me to bring it into the apartment as if it was from the Great One himself, a nice touch when one thinks about it. I was not however, expecting what hit me at this domicile: One, maybe two wrapped little boxes, and a note taped on the door, addressed to Santa, requesting that he ask the girl “in which bed she's been sleeping“- in which bed she's been sleeping? They wanted to draw me into their twisted family dysfunction? My intuition was on alarm, I grimaced as I ripped the note off and crunched it in my North Pole fist, I growled with a side glance to my wondering elves, “Santa – doesn't – play – this – shit.“ And we went in.

There were the parents, with the boy, the older of two childen, dressing the tree it seemed, everything appearing quite normal, none of them actually moving toward me or getting into The Visit much, just carrying on with what they were doing. Then I saw the little sister, seemed not older than four, standing at a distance in the living room apart from me and from the family, standing and looking – well, for me quite clearly traumatized, if one looked at it. And that evening I was looking.

I dropped the rocks, and left the others who didn't even take notice, and sat my big North Pole ass down on that couch where she was, and gestured her to come nearer. My previous experience over Dave and Pete Seeger had prepared me for this moment, and I was dismayed to see that this precious child's clear inhibition, her blank stare unmoved by any little humor on my part, was too deep to just be distracted by grins and jests, it was a sign of trauma. What the game here was I could not for the life of me surmise. But with the same wrathful energy coursing through me toward her parents I radiated toward her in concentrated, attentive stillness, all the compassion I felt toward her, all the cherishment, all the joyous love and aching to wrap this little one in my heart.

I got her over to me and went through the same chat as with the other girl the evening before: who I am, where I really live, and it took twenty full minutes to get her to a normal child's responsiveness, a turning up of the lips, a glint in the eye again, a voice. I told her that I watch over her, that she is an ever, ever so good little girl, that I love her, that Santa loves her, that Jesus loves her, that she is loved by God every moment of every day, and that no one, no other person big or small, may tell her differently.

I had to work for those five bucks, I had to penetrate hard rock in what time I had, and I wasn't leaving till something gave. I addressed her with the authority of my office in The Suit, I addressed her with the sovereignty of love. And I stayed with her till she could return to normalcy, if even for that moment. And she got it. And the elves, I think they got it too. Her family got nothing, they were beyond reach. Had I seen anything tangible I could have reported, I would have alerted our youth services. I left there without a word to the others, but took one last lingering gaze at the door, toward the little sister still standing by the couch in that living room, still apart from her family who had missed everything and would still. And she returned my gaze and was back with the living, I hoped, to stay.

Kelly made a grand “Rudolf“ in all that generous Berlin snow, and we wrapped it up from there. A day or two later she asked me what all went on with my tours, several families had called her up especially to tell her they got far more for their five bucks than they'd bargained for. I said, “Oh hell, you know, Kelly, the Master-Sgt. probably had more goin' on in his bag than we'd thought...“

My tours were over, it was Christmas Eve, and I just wasn't finished, after waiting all these years to be The Fat One. I visited a five year old girl I personally knew, a fair piece away in Kreuzberg, not one of your better-heeled districts in town. I had some fun with Berliners en route waiting for the subway and while riding it, appearing as this totally American Clichée of Christmas walking around in an area uncharacteristic for this, being outrageous, greeting people in my still broken German and getting the jaded, seen-it-all Berliner or dour Turkish faces to break into bewildered smiles and laughter. If this wasn't fun, what the hell is!

En route back to my barracks, still in full dress and character, I left the subway and took a short bus run to the front gate. The driver and other riders seemed to know this American shtick, but sitting there as well was a very traditionally dressed, middle-aged Turkish Muslim couple, who checked me out and seemed to figure in a polite way, as I was reading their faces, “Well, yes, this is their Christmas holiday, it has nothing whatesoever to do with us of course...“ How wrong they were, as tonight Santa was there for everyone, and so was Edmund Gwinn, who'd spoken Dutch to the little Dutch girl on his lap, to a watching young Natalie Wood's astonishment, and the “Miracle on 34^th Street“ was about to be transfereed to “Finkenstein Allee“.

I waited till we reached my stop, made a belly-ho-ho, wished everyone “Frohe Weihnachten,“ this being, Merry Christmas, and directly at the shocked but delighted Muslim couple, a ringing “as-salaamu aleikum, wa-rahmat-ullah wa-brakatu-hu!“ - this being, peace be with you and mercy of God and His grace! An especially Muslim touch to this season of joyous love and renewal.

I wondered how the Master-Sgt. was holding out.

- S. Inayat-Chisti, Berlin - Dec. 2011 

(Pir Vilayat Khan doing my Shtick, early '70s) 

Practicing in Farmington NM

It was a blind alley. Between the theatre and a few shops here and a few shops there in the San Juan Plaza ran an alley, with another blind one turning off at 90° behind the cinema. In Farmington you didn't walk around at night, so I was told - you ran the risk of being harrassed, or mugged, or raped, or whatever, or so one heard. Well, if anyone ever stepped out of their safe pickup trucks to even ventrure out alone, in their swaggering cowboy boots and beer-stained Stetsons, I'd have been surprised, and for my part walked the town's streets carefree and regularly regardless of the hour.

My humble abode was a far enough walk from my two jobs to encourage my use of this particularly blind alley for my morning or late evening prostrations and sitting practice. It was really ideal since no one in his right mind would think of going down there at night, pitch-dark as it was, and it served no useful purpose by day, I noticed - not even to piss or sneak a joint. It was indeed reserved for my use, clean and free of trash, only had to be swept once. It afforded me the privacy I needed, just outside the din and away from the periphery of passers-by. I could carry on with a light bit of yoga, with sitting meditation, with prayers and prostrations - even at certain odd times, the singing of a hymn or two. It was truly my cave away from home, where I had only to unroll the unobtrusive mat I kept with me, and voilà:  lights, incense, magic, roll 'em.

Now Farmington had lots of cowboys and truckers, it had Navajo ruins and ruined Navajo. It had whoopin' white teenagers and its share of Mexicans, but no Blacks. The only black fella I remember knowing there was Jerry, a guy I worked with in this Plaza, slinging hash and burgers in a 24-hour family restaurant called Hobo Joe's. I shuttled between two full-time jobs on the cook line, the other being Village Inn down the road a piece.  In my "cave" was the refuge I needed when time didn't permit a trip to my bare humble flat, and I could perform my devotions avoiding notice better than using some back lot or park.  It made perfect sense.

As my sitting meditation drew to a close late one evening, and I was due for work in about another twenty minutes a few doors away at Joe's, I was passingly aware of a commotion coming from the main alley pssageway.  This posed no bother in itself, as I felt very calm, my breath deep, and – I was somewhat interested in what all was afoot out there.  My instinct was in any case, to remain rock solid and at least outwardly unconcerned with whatever phenomena occurred.

No black youth in Farmington, I said, but right on the money here came five or six – sent from central casting, no doubt – quite seemingly looking for mischief.  I followed my instinct further for once, and learned a great lesson while having fun with these guys.  At age 26 I was about to release some baggage I'd been lugging around since my early school years all the way through junior high, high school and college.

My stillness and moreover the profound stillness of that "cave" if one can imagine it, so affected the lads they stood stalk still and one would honestly have thought they'd collided with a mama grizzly. That they even noticed or were the least concerned with this empty, uninviting, nearly pitch black blind alley instead of just glancing once if that, and running on looking for trouble, was really remarkable in itself.  They shouted, they threw pebbles.  I did not flinch, partly because I was in such a rich feeling of space at that moment and partly because I was preparing us all for a startling encounter.

They proceeded toward me one by one – with great caution.   What objects they carried, if any, I could only guess; my left profile was all they had, and I strayed not a hair's breadth.  This was not from fear but to create a learning experience for myself, using what was there, and for some likely benefit for all concerned; in other words, I was feeling friendly.  What was happening was occurring on three levels.

Deep in myself I was really enjoying this.  Outwardly I inadvertantly presented an ominous confrontation to these teenagers.  Nestled between these two perceptions were all the thoughts and emotions I was diligenty studying since the visitors actually caught me at so opportune a time.

What came up for me and how I approached it went as follows:  as they stood there grouped at the mouth of this "cave" shouting out "feelers," I was inspired in turn to remain as I was, resting on my heels, and relax deeply in contemplation that "me" and "them" were one – and on a gut level, or it wouldn't have been authentic, would not have been substantial for me.  I had to abstract and suspend the images of fear which arose full of subjective associations about former encounters with precisely similar groups of unruly teenagers, observing very carefully how my mind held the range of possible directions this story could easily take, and I became clear that it would go according to how I chose to "write" it.  This made me feel very generous in contrast with the intimidation I might have felt, and had felt when their clamor first struck my ear.

I turned my attention to this body, to the physical rather than the emotional, and all of that mental energy was not wasted or leaked out into the range of proximity I shared with them, where they could have picked up the germ of my paranoia (as that is how things work) and I did not stifle or sell out – all that mental energy, that simple concentration of thought, of prana, breath directed by will, was trained on my body, my physical form.  This was the decisive difference, and it beat me how I'd figured it out.  Training my thought entirely on my body, where I knew the whole drama was really taking place (not in that alley), and excluding all else, I focused on the sensory responses in my gut, the pounding in my chest (of which I alone was aware but was convinced it could be heard at a yard's length), and on the impressions which surfaced along with this.

When there is a physical pain or trauma to the body, the placement of a hand to the immediate area, along with a steady and calm mental current projected into the place (whereas the normal reaction is to recoil, tighten up and withdraw from the traumatized part precisely the urgently needed nourishment, acknowledgement or validation, or detached sanity) brings the body back into equilibrium as psychic resources are rallied to unify and to integrate.

Just so did I manage to hold and influence, by breathing into those areas, the network of reactive mechanisms set off by the encounter.  I grasped the immediacy of this circumstance:  that any empowerment of “numbers“ which they had, I'd given them; as I disempowered that notion – for my part – I disempowered it in them, and in the warmth I felt toward each individual, the recognition, even appreciation, we became a group which included me and them.   They felt no fear from me and nothing there for me to defend.

Indeed, the Buddha was in the palm of my hand.  Using a sense of timing to maximum enjoyment of this moment, I finally opened my eyes fully and turned to them, actually receiving them as guests, as though they'd walked into my living room rather than a bare concrete dark alley.   And they felt it.

The next ten minutes were spent discussing meditation, as that is what they caught me at.  Some remained standing, some crouched or sat.  I answered their various questions briefly, to the point, but with a relaxed humor, I felt they deserved my honest attention.  After all, why else was this totally unlikely event happening?  They even accompanied me "protectively" the couple doors further to my job, assuring me that this way nothing might befall me, as one never knows.   Had I not been due there for graveyard in a few mintues, we all would have been sitting together, that was fairly certain. "No," I'd answered one question they threw out in the alley-cave, "meditation isn't necessarily about leaving your body, it's often much more about being in one."

I believe this sort of turning a situation inside out is what the Sikhs call pratyahara.

I saw them on one occasion after that, the night they slashed a couple random bike tires which happened to be mine, that was it.

Scene from a chapter of an unwritten book . . .

(probably San Francisco, year uncertain)

… We sat amicably at a pub on Wallace Ave., this lad and I, our faces and our necks lightly warmed by the mid-morning sun. His features moved me, and he was easily twelve years my junior. It wasn't his body which stirred my body; it was his face which stirred my heart. And the soberly thoughtful aspect which bespoke integrity in his soft Nordic face lent a slight melancholic pang – of what? - to my little pondering.

The beer stood half-consumed on the lacquered table. I poured from the pitcher as his eyes roamed the room, returning to the table, sifting impressions. Nothing was being spoken, we needed no conversation just then. There had been no idle talk, though we'd known each other but two days. He could be a good German "Aryan," but was Scandinavian by name; and his jaw, though squared, lacked the heaviness which often characterized the German bone-structure, to my reckoning; his eyes had that Scandinavian touch, the brows ever so light yet visible. His lips were so formed as to be full but willful, suggesting a straight-forwardness which would prompt him to say just what he thought – were he to break his reserve and speak.

My mind was fixed not so much on his features alone, but on what may have been his mother's or a sister's (got any sisters at home like you?...) - yes, I thought of that woman who brought him into the world, how much of her breath still formed him, even as he came into his manhood. I couldn't shake the thought of her; this one was but the product.

There was a shift in the attention, mutually felt. His eyes met mine. They focused on the mood in my face, and reflected caution. "No," mine replied, dismissing his concerns with an imperceptible flick of my glance. It wasn't that. No sexual motives were present between us. This he understood, and relaxed.

But my eyes did not shift. And what he couldn't have known from my looking upon him as his face returned to the sun outside and then back to my face – through which shone the sun in my heart – what he ought not to have perceived, which ought not to be said aloud, was this: that I want to father a child, a son, by the woman who bore you; I want to be that one by whom she conceived you.

And he nodded. For it was spoken.

Most intimate beauty . . .

 
The most intimate beauty resides in my heart,

annihilating me, dismembering the organs of separateness.

I love with the full length of my body,

with a still mind and a free heart.

Passionately I live, the passions only garments.

One desire remains,

toward this beauty residing in my heart,

annihilating me.

(Monterey, ca. 1987)

Sema at Fort Dix, a Rendezvous With Rumi

Ft. Dix NJ,  Feb. 1986.

We're Companies Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.  I'm with Bravo.  We're all on "bivouac" training.  That means, we're out in the woods somewhere, freezing our asses off, combining my own rain poncho with that of my buddy's (Vince N., Civil War freak), to make a tent for two.  Our M-16s and "combat gear" remain in our tents as we go to chow.  One company after the other.  We're up.  Alpha and Charlie are finished, or at least Alpha, I don't know where Charlie is - probably in the trees sniping - a little Vietnam humor there.

Some other dude and I show up a tad late for instructions of how this buffet works:  There's a big concrete slab outside the Drills' tent (a real tent) - on this are a couple of long tables set up with grub.  Sorry - chow, grub went out with WWII.  At the end of the chow line are 3 big water drums set up, one with soapy water, one with plain hot water, one with...whatever.  And that was the rub:  We'd missed out on the instructions and weren't clear as to which drum came first when you dipped your chow-smeared mess kit and utensils to wash them clean.  And like a day out of my 12 years of Sufi training, there were consequences for missing out on instructions and not being clear about the micky-mouse rules.

Out came a big Alpha Drill Sgt. with dark hair and glasses (we spec-wearers all carried the field-approved "rape-prevention-glasses," or RPGs, which were like the black horn-rimmed '50s model - later at Monterey's Defense Language Institute with my David Niven-regulation moustache the glasses made me look like Groucho Marx in "You Bet Your Life", or like the glasses-nose-moustache you buy at gag shops...which we did there at DLI when I became captain of our running team and I led with my own face, 16 other guys carrying the gag number, so that you had 17 "Sams" running the two mile race for Bravo Company at DLI...we always came in second, but as that was the start of a new gag each month we had more fun than the other companies and everyone loved it - but I digress and I didn't want to do that.  Another story, so back to ours: Ft. Dix, the woods)... Out came this Drill from the other company, and barked at me and this other guy for using the water drums in the wrong order: Penalty!

For the penalty to come across I have to explain:  of the basic principles of a soldier, one of the first we learned, after the Greek one about never leaving your buddy's behind, was never to leave your post (for example when on guard duty) until your relief comes or you are dismissed.  This I could understand and relate to - after all, how many years of Sufi training... So this in itself was for me, a no-brainer.  And in context here, it recalled for me the term "Post" in regard to the Mevlevi Sema, where the dervishes turn in reference to the Sheikh in the Sema functioning as Post.

"Hey, you!  Yeah, you!  The dumb one with the glasses."  That was certainly me he had in mind.  We both had to go back and get our respective combat gear (as if for guard duty): flak vest, M-16, Kevlar-helmet, combat belt, the whole 9 yds. - and return pronto to "guard this drum" as if to keep others from falling into the same mistake, which was pretty humorous as we were the last two anyway.  But alright, thought I, I'll bite - I'll play your silly little game.  You have me for 8 weeks.  So I returned, the other guy didn't.  Drill wasn't even around anymore to check.  I just followed instructions, and a little something told me to treat my Drills as "Sheikhs".........see what all those years do to you?  So the following actually occurred, exactly as it reads - my thoughts, what was occurring, the timing, the effect on me.

In full gear, I turn my "guard duty of this stupid drum" into a circumambulation around my Post, or around that imagined Sheikh sitting on the red sheep skin.  I am entering dervish-heaven.  I "march" around this drum in a sema rhythm, my mind is absorbed in zikr and Mevlevi music and overtones.  I don't know anyway how long the jerk's going to make me do this stunt so I'm resigned utterly to possible hours of it.  (The total running time of this unique meeting of dimensions if not universes, was indeed a solid half hour.)

As I'm doing this a truly extraordinary event takes place about 50 yds. distance or more.  These "grunts," these hormone-stupid numb-nut kids in Charlie Company are about to add their own, albeit profane - and that's the Rumi-inspired beauty of it! - Hadhrat (Sufi ceremony of zikr, or remembrance through repetition), and all for the benefit of my psychotic fantasy that we are maybe not in Ft. Dix after all, but Istanbul or Konya.

Someone among them had a birthday and received a cake from home.  Nice.  One of their Drills, a short guy with eyes right out of Doonesbury, was about to pass out to each of them a slice of cake.  That meant, they all had to line up in an orderly fashion, in formation, and receive that slice from his hand.  In their very grunt-mentality they created a loud festive atmosphere.  Now think for a moment of what it sounds like when dervishes recite zikr in an overwhelming rhythm and some ecstatic God-intoxicated idiot among them shouts "ya Allah" or such out of turn, and yet in no way disturbing the procedure but on the contrary embellishing it with........mood.

 This was neither being imagined, nor hallucinated!  As I did my "Turn" they began to chant, yes, chant in one united husky college-fraternity voice:  "Piece of cake!  Piece of cake!  Piece of cake!"  Just like one might have heard "Allah-hayy, da'im-hu!" or similar.  This was already sending me into fits of quiet ecstasy.  Their Drill "became" a Sheikh handing out prasad, plain and simple.  Period.  But that's not all.  In the midst of this chant, one or another would suddenly shout out above the other voices, "fuckin'-ay!...........fuckin'-ay!"  This went on.  And on.  I was beside myself with joy and ecstasy.  It was purely God-inspired, I felt so un-alone and un-forsaken, I wished it would continue without end.

Then as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.  They had their cake....yes, and ate it.  And at that exact moment, as I was sort of coming down from my peak, the big Drill who'd put me there came out of his tent, he'd forgotten the whole affair, told me to quit and go, asked me where the other guy was, I told him he never returned, he shook his head and that was it.  I could have apparently ducked out as well, but didn't, and received this very off-color blessing form the Sufis in the Unseen.  All directed and arranged by that clever sonofagun we call God, and it should be no wonder that I am in Love.

Where Peace is Power, Prayer is Sovereign

I share this very very rarely with anyone, normally where it's applicable to present a living metaphor. But it's no metaphor, I'm telling this as always, as it happened, to the letter and without any further embellishment, as the events in my life, when they occur like this, stand on their own as living metaphors in actual literal expression:

It was in my earliest period in Berlin, maybe '89. I lived on a barracks installation which had once been Adolf's own private HQ and installation, complete with private 'Praetorian Guard'. There where I massaged as a side occupation, Gestapo had onced ripped bones from flesh. There where our dental facility was were the bullet holes still left from the 'Night of the Long Knives' when Adolf purged his SA command. I rejoiced in the irony of being part of the Allied Occupation which now raised its stars and stripes every morning where this motherfucker once ruled from. A Jewboy from Colorado-in-America.

Every morning (sometimes I even had the honor of this duty) the flag would go up with the manner of ceremony which I've only ever known among us Americans, dismayed that not even the Brits did this half as well with theirs. Now the "German-national" guards employed by us manned the gate, and they put on the recorded 'Reveille' on the raising and lowering of that flag. On the minute. That meant mornings exactly at 0600 hours, x7, rain or shine. You could hear that recorded Reveille for a span of blocks. Now to what happened.

The windows in my humble quarters, the room I shared with friend Brad, faced in the direction of that gate and that parking lot where the flag went up, blocked from view only by the next barracks which stood between us. Every morning, without fail, I was up early enough to do my set, whatever form that took, before the 'Army-world' even woke up – to the sound of its 'Reveille'... Normally I had finished my breath practices, my 'morning set' of Sufi prayers, and would sit in the lovely morning stillness until I was finished or until that 6:00 Reveille broke out.

On this particular morning I had neglected to notice the time, and on this particular morning, a Saturday where everyone slept-in anyway, like my roommate Brad snoring through this entire episode - on this particular Saturday at one minute to six, sitting on my prayer mat, facing that window (because it was a window, the direction being of no consequence), I was in a particularly intimate feeling, having nearly completed my set and just sitting there with The Beloved, continuing my concentration. It was that soft-morning-light-after-having-just made-love feeling: intimate, close. Not to be disturbed. I'd forgotten to register that my timing was off, that Reveille would blow before I was finished, with a thoroughly obnoxious interruption. It did.

The problem was not merely that it made a bumptious and crude interruption, it was the fact that I was just in the middle of completing my prostrations, toward that window which happened to overlook the area int he actual direction of the recorded military-national music blaring its guts and the raising of the flag which under any other circumstances would be okay, just – not – this – circumstance. That was too much.

Without 'thinking' but with a colossal mega-wrath pointedly directed at that flag and trumpeting, there went a vector of thought energy, literally a command out of my third eye, wordless and nano-second swift, yet robust and vulgar, that is, if I were to put it into words, which it nearly was but nano-second time: 'Shut the fuck up – right now!!! Now!!! I am prostrating to God and never to you!!! Now you shut...the-fuck...up!!!' Like a finger pointing, this went out from my third eye not as a wish but an order. Exactly seconds after that occurred, the music went haywire: obviously, in the physical world, the recorder was eating the tape in the cassette, could happen any time, I knew this.

Only this time it happened now, on command, I knew this as well. I found it later remarkable that I was not for a second the least bit surprised at what was happening, it felt very very natural. And I knew that since a tape had just gotten eaten, they'd be scrambling for a reserve one, find it, slip it in and start over. Until then the flag itself had to wait. And this would take at least a good couple of minutes, which were all I needed. And as I sat there those next seconds, the next wrath-command-thought shot out of my third eye – never once did I think 'wow, gee, didja get that?' - sovereign, one-minded, exactly as follows, 'pointing': '...And you'll stay the-fuck shut-up until I'm finished...until I'm finished!!!' And it did. As I was really finished and satisfied, I sat there erect, at peace, and only then it cranked up anew. And that was okay.

Right after it all happened, and I was sitting there, having "made" the US military tradition and custom "bow" to my morning practice, so to speak, and quietly remarking to myself, "So. ... So be it" - and I could hear my Teacher all the way from the West Coast clearly laughing in my skull between my ears, bellowing with characteristic humor and irony:  "SO!  NOW WE KNOW THAT GOD IS GREATER THAN THE ARMY!"

Now being methodic and scientific, I went out to check whether I'd dreamed the whole thing up. Only I needed to know objectively what had happened with me, no one else, but I needed to corroborate with the outside whether what had happened 'out there' was objective fact or merely subjective on my part. Brad had slept through it, the compound was all in slumber, those who'd raised the colors had long since gone, but there were the guards, they had duty. I asked them casually if anything odd had happened. They confirmed the entire occurence, down to the minute, down to the detail. I kept my side of it to myself, they'd had enough excitement for one morning.

"Balm of the Arab Masses"

I had a dream of which I very rarely tell, and at the same time have referred to in one or two poems ("Cornerstone of Your Faith," for example).  The dream's importance in my life turns on the time and place and circumstances in which it came, but also as a task (or so I 'd understood it) for me to fulfill in my life, and to this day I am wondering whether and how, and whether in the literal or universal sense, but there it is:

Summer of 1976, I'm 21 and leave Boulder for the one and only "Sufi Camp" I would ever attend, and it was at Neve Shalom, a piece of land smack at the midpoint of the boondocks on the Latrun road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.  Across from us was a Benedictine monastery which produced wine - of course.  Neve Shalom was already an established plot of land used for the purpose of Peace Alternatives, of bringing groups of youth together, Muslims and Jews, Christians, Israeli and Palestinian...here was where the four week long camp was to be held and was held; preceded by a three week long work camp to set the camp up; I was in it for the full 7 weeks, and it was all and altogether an experience that's remained with me for life. 

Three individuals were to have been the main feature, not the only but the main, here:  Banefsha Gest, one of the earlier pupils of Samuel Lewis in San Fran, Murshid Hassan who she first introduced to us in the first place, in Boulder, and Rabbi Zalman Schachter who taught in Penn., a wonderful and dynamic man.  The Camp's intention was to bring Jews and Christians and Muslims, Arabs and Israelis to work together, worship and celebrate together and to eat together - and together we performed the Dances of Universal Peace given by Murshid Sam Lewis with all the Hebrew and Arabic and Christian phrases, etc., to finally sow these seeds on Israeli soil, where Sam Lewis never set foot (he'd been practically everwhere else).  This did happen.

As as it so happened, Reb Zalman was certainly there and we in-joyed each other's presence very much.  Banefsha was most certainly there, it was sort of "her" camp - there was much to appreciate about her, but she had this ego.  And that was the rub, why Sheikh Hassan was not physically at the camp, she'd had a falling out with him, and that was its own story.  Where was he while I was there?  He was with us at our house in Boulder, staying there on his 2nd of 3 visits (I got to catch him on the 1st and then later the 3rd) - so in a typically comically "Sufi" madcap way, it was all perfect.  He was where he should be and I was where I should be.  And after his first visit with us in Boulder I carried plenty of what he'd put out there in me.

A quick background, so as to put the dream in still better perspective.  Since the age of 19, now going on just over 2 yrs., I had gone around washing, literally washing, and massaging feet (with almond oil and intuitive reflexol.), as my inner discipline/ love-task to connect as directly as I could with the beginning of the Last Supper in John.  I washed the feet of street transients in Boulder, of students, of guys and women, of the hot and beautiful and the far from hot and not very beautiful, in fact as much and as willingly even-mindedly, the very shabby and dirty, and of my compadres in the house (our khanka / at times ashram), and of every guest who came to us - and that meant as well some pretty prominent ones, including among others, Pir Vilayat.  I had my wash cloth and plastic basin, my hand towel and oil - for a long period I was even seen going around in a Moroccan woven jalabea, sometimes barefoot myself, sometimes with sandals or shoes.   This was all okay in Boulder back then.   And I did this at Neve Shalom where I also brought this concentration to a close.  Pir Vilayat had told me after doing his feet, I should go on to full-body and work on that, which I already had but now expanded more to it.

Among the various Zikrs / Dhikr-Allah (ceremonial Remembrance of God through repetition) evening sessions (often called Hadhrat, or Presence) we did with Murshid Hassan in Boulder, there was one very soft and mild one, or a version of it, where we stood clenched together in a line or a wide circle swaying left, chest, right, chest, left... intoning like a breeze:  Ya...Huu...Ya...Huu.   (By the way, the original "Jews" addressed God with Remembrance of "ya hu," hence Yehudim, its form YaHuwa may appear familiar: Yahuvah, Jehova...)

So I'm on my flight to Israel via Tel Aviv.  I'm starting to compose my Christ-poem which you have already read, "A Prophet's Reward," making myself very receptive, primarily through the text of the gnostic Gospel of Thomas which was unearthed at Nag Hammadi some 30 yrs. earlier, and through the Shiva Sutras of which there were some 107 or so listed at the end of Paul Reps' Zen Flesh Zen Bones, and I found myself picking one and concentrating on that, it was focused on the outgoing breath and holding that point between the exhale and the inhale.  And "dying".  I believe through these two practices, the Thomas Gospel and the Shiva Sutra, I received all the impressions I needed for this poem which was also centered on the washing of the feet.  On the evening I finished this poem, that August in '76, in a big tent at Neve Shalom, Ramadan had just begun.  It was about 1 a.m. and I went into the open field and zipped myself up in my sleeping bag and was out.  I woke up around maybe 8 a.m. with tears streaming from my eyes after having the following dream - which I'd tried to crawl back into but that didn't work:



In the dream I was in  a hole in the ground - in later reflection clearly a well, but there was no water in it, we were standing dry.  We were three:  myself, Reb Zalman and Banefsha.  Murshid Hassan who was not with us there but was thoroughly present and dominant in spirit - or literally, on and in the breath - in that we performed the "Ya Hu" dhikr between us three, hands and arms clenched, swaying in that dry well.  While there was no actual water in which we stood, the entire atmosphere in it and surrounding us and reflected in the dhikr was full of the water element.  And added to this we were weeping together.  Why?  Well one, we were so deeply moved.

And two:  what is most sacred to desert dwellers?  Water.  And where was this well?  In the middle of the fucking desert.  While we were in this condition, there surrounded us inside the well a voiceless voice, that is, no one spoke and yet the voice-impression surrounded us and permeated the place even as the element water had - you could say, it spoke in our hearts and addressed us there.  It said, and I remember this, it referred to our dhikr in there and the condition it brought us to:  "This is the balm of the Arab masses."  - 'of' or 'for' are the same here, the 'balm for the masses' was meant and I also strained to grasp later whether 'Arab' or 'poor' was said, and remained certain with my first impression, that by 'Arab' was meant 'poor' - and not in any positive or any coddling sense.  I did also understand - or misunderstand, but I maintained for a long time - that this was more universally meant, not just 'the Arabs' - today, I see that differently, as I also always maintain:  the real enemies of Islam are the Muslims themselves.  But the dream:  it was really clear to me afterward, that this was the voice of Prophet Muhammad, and the 'well' was his own heart.  Period.

And our instruction, to take this out there, struck me while still in the dream as being like - or being literally, in dream-symbol - carrying a pan full to the brim of water on our heads over the desert to the thirsting masses without spilling a single drop - some undertaking, that.  And this made us weep further.  And with that I woke up, still weeping.  And with, oy, such a headache!

And my Christ-poem was finished and would be read aloud that morning by Banefsha to all present, and my dream was intact even if I wasn't - don't ask me whom I then told this to, I don't even know any more, I was no longer in touch with anyone there interestingly enough.  Except one correspondence to Zalman in 1980, where I hand-typed some 100 letters to Jews and Christians and their respective organizations and congregations, of my intention to some day and somehow make it to Germany as an American Jew and, yes, in the spirit and reality of Christ (some Jew, eh?), on my own recognizance and following my own inspiration (with encouragement form my Teacher but in no connection with any group or sect) to connect specifically with the population of the post-war born generation, mine and the one just prior - of younger Germans who MUST largely be normal feeling human beings like myself (yes, they were) and therefore, if I as a Jew was still so affected by the Shoa, I figured - and I was right as rain here - how thorough and yet ignored, unrecognized by everyone else must their burden be as children and grandchildren of the perpetrators and members and accomplices and those compliant, of the Nazi generation!  I had to meet them and let them meet me, to listen and share with each other, to find each other, to let them know that here was at least one American and Jew who wanted to meet them and hear them out and join with them - and to expose myself to exactly what not one single Jew or American I ever met even once ever considered or considered possible, ever mentioned or even wanted to look into.  Where was our compassion!  If I were the child or grandchild of Nazis, I figured, I'd want to shoot myself.  We needed to meet and we needed to embrace.

As fate would have it, I wound up in the Army in '86 and without my asking and without asking me first, they sent me here to Berlin - really, the Army was the horse I rode in on.  So I joyfully got here, joyfully stayed, stayed longer, remained.  And my hunches were all true and produced 23 yrs. of relationships.  So fine, I'm in Berlin, now what do I do with all these Arabs and world's third largest Turkish population in one city?  The trend is not, nor ever was, toward Sufi thought, Sufi tolerance, Sufi dhikr and universality - rather toward nationalism, mythological Islamic supremacy, playing the victim while milking the generous social system here for all its worth, producing more kids while barring them from normal schooling, i.e., from participation in important and normal activities if not keeping them home altogether, maintaining a parallel society which no politician has the balls (or ovaries) anymore to challenge with any teeth, and of course keeping a tight hold on family holdings in Turkey and shuttling between the two - keeping the wheels greased so that they can get what they want out of Germany without holding a whit less onto the Anatolian illiterate, superstitious and controlling village-mentality.

 I advised a dear American friend who wishes to travel to Pakistan to bridge understanding between Christians and Muslims, that what she is bringing with her there is not popular, certainly not now - and is this an understatement!   On the other hand, when Murshid Sam Lewis (also known, in fact specifically there in Pakistan, as Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti) was over there and in India in the '50s and the '60s, as well as Egypt, Japan... meeting Sufis and dervishes and roshis and masters and saints and swamis of a whole range of caliber and standing and attainment and energy, he was constantly running into them, as American as you could get and yet recognized everywhere he went as one who'd "got it"  - and initiated into and brought further along by several orders and schools - his life demonstrated that when you are there in the breath and conscious of what you are doing there, magical things do happen, which "don't get written up in the papers, as not-news" as he often loved to point out.  This all fed into his eventual breakthroughs in San Fran.

He passed away in Jan. '71 at the age of 75, after tripping in Dec. of the top step of the flight of stairs in their house in San Fran and suffering the expected concussion and any other such injuries as a fall like that can bring on.  That was the entire story as I always had it - there was never anything else to it.  Yet at the beginning of this year, I received word which was from pretty unquestionable sources, and supposedly corroborated when my source asked further (by certain former pupils of Sam's from that time), and that this was already well known among at least some in the Sufi Order - but news to me and very disturbing at that:  he was supposedly or evidently pushed down, at that dawn hour, by a Muslim fundamentalist (what one was doing in THAT house and moreover at THAT hour, beats the hell out of me).

He did not have "friends" among the Muslim Association of San Fran, although he was due to meet with them in the near future. He never had anything to do with them, he just did what he did (and cnfirmed to him by Sufi Barkat Ali in Pakistan) and was better at it than they ever would be: he brought hundreds to chanting "Allah" - and the Muslims blocked any dialogue he may have offered.  Once they approached him in regard to the Dances of Universal Peace which he'd received in inspiration directly from the spheres and the instruction to manifest this directly from real Sufis, the "Muslim Bruddas" approached him there around '67, and said, "We don't appreciate what you're doing," they meant using the sacred Arabic phrases in Dance, praising God and producing actual joy - they didn't like that.  He replied, without losing a beat, "Oh I'm sure you don't - but the only matter of importance here is, whether Allah appreciates it."  He said they took off in a huff without another word, and that he knew then that their arrogance would net them a smashing loss of face in the '67 war with Israel, he saw that coming.

I went on to advise my American friend to always stick with what she knows and come from experience, to stay open to inspiration but trust Allah and no Muslims.  S/He's got your back, I cautioned, they'll try to put a knife in it.  And last of all, I offered her this as a Great Concentration:

"On the in-breath:  TOWARD THE ONE, on the out-breath:  TOWARD THE ONE.  Let it sink deep, take it in, anchor it, let it guide you and energize your work and cover your ass."