Journal Notes 1989

By Tom Larsen

ENTRY 1

The setting is Ruth’s Diner, Sunday morning, over Ruthlessly Hot Juevos, coffee, and buttermilk biscuits with strawberry jam. All the beautiful people are there, seeing and being seen. We’re not so beautiful but we’re there. It’s the usual conversation whenever Lindsay’s dad makes the journey down from Ogden (approximately once every three months) to take us out to breakfast. On the surface there are smiles and the apparent exchange of ideas… .but underneath the bloody duel continues. Every time we get together it is there, the unacknowledged battle, hinging on one fundamental difference of opinion. He won’t accept the notion of duty, responsibility; Lindsay and I wear it like a bloody badge of honor. No matter where the chit-chat goes, Bill can be counted on to say such things as, “I’m just glad I don’t have anybody I have to answer to,” or “I use to believe in the marriage myth,” or “My father made my life so miserable with his absolutes,”… .while Lindsay and I faithfully assert our commitment to each other and our burgeoning litter. What it boils down to is that Lindsay and I see Bill as a selfish, Me-generation casualty, who’s main pursuit is still the perfect party. And all his New Age mumbo jumbo about traditional myths and the evils of organized religion is nothing but a convienant justification he’s developed so that he can continue his hedonism unperterbed by pangs of guilt or doubt. The conflict comes close to being exposed whenever Bill says, “I think it’s great that you guys have found a myth that you can support each other in,” implying with his oh-so-subtle-condescending tone that someday we’ll grow up and realize that true happiness is to be found in broken homes, displaced kids, and endless forgetable nights at Vicious Rumors and Greenstreet. I come closest to an expose whenever I say, “Well, I’m just now barely getting over my parents divorce and realizing how devastating it really was to me.” It’s ironic to be secretly lecturing a 49 year-old man on the importance of responsibility, duty and obligation while he conintues to imply that “do whatever feels good” is the only way to go.

ENTRY 2

My grandmother advising me on the beauties of being a mindless follower: “Now Tom, I just don’t know why you have to get into all that heavy thinking…it just boggles your brain…and makes things so complicated. I know that if you just went to church it would make you happy—“

“I am happy, grandma,”

“Well, yes, I know, but if you just went to church—“

“Grandma, I have a good relationship with God. I always have.”

“Well yes. I know, but if you just went to church—“

ENTRY 3

Same righteous grandmother warning me against fanaticism:

“Well, you can’t keep your kids from the real world…”

“Oh, does that mean I just let them watch whatever they want? Have you seen the crap that’s on television lately? It’s garbage! The “real world” is not the same world you grew up in.”

“Well, I know, but you;ve just got to kind of live with it…”

“What?! Does that mean that if people are giving your kids drugs at school and showing them pornography you just sorta shrug and say ’Oh well, that’s the real world’? I don’t think so! Isn’t the whole point to have some type of standards that you adhere to?”

And there I go lecturing my 74-year Mormon grandmother on the need for moral standards… ..

ENTRY 4

I go to lunch with a lawyer-friend. I tell him I want to go into international law. He says I’d have to move to a coast. He suggests I go in to entertainment law, that there is a need for it in this area. I admit that it occured to me and that it would be the most practical route since I have experience in the field, but I say that it would be too hard for me to be so close to it and not be the one doing it. He says, “Naw—that I’d just be able to empathize with the artists. I say, “Naw,” it would be too hard—I want to go into international law. He says I’ll have to move to a coast.

ENTRY 5

Ricklin and I are having the kind of discussion that would curl my grandmother’s toes. We’re wrangling over matters of ‘IS-ness’. Ricklin likes to retreat to the distant metaphysical peak of ‘IS-ness’ whenever my reasoning gets too fierce.

I say, “I understand The Moment, Rick. But it isn’t complete.”

He booms with laughter that suggests I’ve just accused the great I AM of being incomplete.

I persist. “Yes! That’s the incredible part. He has managed somehow to create the reality of incompleteness. That is the miracle. Why would you want to go and ruin it with the achievement of Enlightenment? Mysticism has its place—“

He booms with laughter again. I know he’s keying in on the absurdity of my qualifying The Unspeakable.

I continue, “Without the structure of imperfection, mysticism is a bowl of tepid soup… it’s like folding up the game and saying ‘I don’t want to play anymore.’ Mysticism is what you should drape on the structures of your reasoning.”

Rick shrugs with his wry smile. “I don’t know what you should do with it.” He adds a little koan, “Maybe it’s where you leap off the structures…”