After traveling a circuitous route in order to place free copies of Waiting for Westmoreland in many SGI-USA community centers across middle America, we have arrived in Silver City, New Mexico. It's small town, the southwest and an arts community all rolled into one. The bustling little downtown features sculptors, painters, ceramicists, jewelry designers and others. Nearby are historic artifacts of the Mogollon culture and the Gila National Forest. But we're not tourists. We're here to consider this as a home base, a place for the dream house from which stories will unfold in the form of books by me and quilts by her. By the end of the summer, we will know whether this is that place.

This is a very long post. It is one of many incarnations of the life of Jackie. It’s not new, but it’s new to most of you. I delivered it at a monthly meeting held at the Northern Virginia SGI-USA center in late 2005. See a picture of Jackie at the end--don’t peek.

I was looking for a place to call home when I first met the Maberrys in March, 1995.   We hit it off right away.  I liked them and they liked me.  After a rigorous home interview, the local officials allowed them to adopt me.  No more living in a shelter, no more bouncing from place to place, wondering whatever happened to my original family.  

I was already an adolescent, ready to test the limits they would try putting on me.  I was a challenge for them and they kept me on a short leash most of the time, watching my every move.  While I tugged and pulled to break free, I soon realized there was no better place to be than in their home.  They gave me love and attention, a nice place to live and good food.  So I settled in and returned their kindness.

They have a great back yard, where the snow piled up during a few of the winters, reminding me of my native Germany.  I wasn’t too old to play in the snow.  In the summers, we had great vacations, to places I had never been before.  Like hikes in the woods of Canaan Valley, West Virginia—up and down one hill after another.  Or the Outer Banks of North Carolina—riding the car ferry from Hatteras to Ocracoke, sea gulls flying in formation above.  Beach combing at Avon or Buxton and swimming in Albemarle Sound.  We drove all the way north to Maine, to the Maberry family’s American roots; there we stayed in some lake shore cottages—or "camps" as they call them up there.  And close enough to see the water drip from the chin and antlers of some bottom-feeding moose.  We even took an RV trip through the Great Smoky Mountains all the way to Mammoth Cave.  Like I said, great vacations. 

Day to day life over the past ten years was a little more humdrum except for one thing—learning about Buddhism.  I didn’t know anything about it before I came to live with the Maberrys.  Once I did, I never missed a day of gongyo.  My adopted dad could be kind of lazy at times, kind of a procrastinator like that Kankucho bird Nichiren Daishonin writes about in the Gosho.  So if he kept on reading and replying to email or, more likely, playing solitaire on the computer, I would remind him it was time for gongyo.

As much as I would have liked to, I wasn’t able to go to SGI activities with the family.  I always had to stay home and watch the house.  Even when there were meetings at our house, I was often relegated to another room—because I could get a little too exuberant with the members, distracting them from gongyo or the discussion.  I couldn’t help it; I just wanted them to be as excited about Buddhism as I was.  Weren’t you supposed to be happy?  Later on, as I got a little older, I calmed down and gave an enthusiastic welcome to the members without going overboard. 

Karma can be kind of a strange mixed bag.  In my case, I was abandoned and homeless in my youth.  Once I had a home and family again, a variety of little ailments popped up.  The doctor said I had hypothyroidism.  Tiny little thyroid pills took care of that problem.  I got osteoarthritis in my left hip, causing pain and a limp for a little while.  But with a few shots in the hip and the glucosamine Dad gave me every day, the hip was fine.  I think what really made the pain go away was my doing gongyo every day and how I treated the medical staff.  While other patients were anxious, frightened, complaining or whining, I always greeted the staff with joy, showing them how happy I was to see them.  Something about being a bodhisattva, that I learned at home, that stuck with me.  I never let any of my problems get me down.

Three years ago, Dad retired from work.  It was a really big benefit for him, being able to retire on a good pension at age 55.  I could see how much fortune the Buddhist practice can create.  But that is only a treasure of the storehouse.  More important are treasures of the body and he too has been able to overcome health problems.  Of course, most important are treasures of the heart.  Among other things, he told his former coworkers that he would spend more quality time with me once he retired.  Well, he did, but not quite as much as he would like.  Working on his book took more of each day and a lot longer than he planned.  Then there were those fun computer games he played.  Finally, this summer, his old employer called and asked if was interested in coming back for a limited time; they needed help getting the budget out.  He  didn’t need the money, but agreed to help them out.  They allowed him to work from home much of the time. 

He thought it would work out great.  He farmed out a near-final draft of his book to several readers—giving them six weeks or so to review the manuscript.  Then, when the budget was done, he could finish editing the book in time to get it out to an agent in late fall.  He might even still make his goal of being on Oprah’s show this year to tout the book.  It is an important book after all, about turning karma into mission.

But things don’t always work out according to plan, even when you chant lots of daimoku.  With three weeks still to go on the budget, I got sick.  I didn’t want to eat and what I did eat I couldn’t keep down.  My regular doctor said  she couldn’t be sure, but the x-rays showed a shadowy area near the liver.  So Dad set up an appointment for an ultrasound by an internist she referred us to.  That same day, Monday, August 29, I went almost directly from the ultrasound into surgery.  The surgeon put in a shunt to relieve an obstructed bile duct.  I had a lump on the pancreas, the adjacent lymph nodes were enlarged and there was a spot on the liver.  They said I would be in the hospital for two or three days, if all went well.  Tuesday, the hospital called in the morning to tell Dad he could come visit any time.  By the afternoon, they had called back and said I could come home that same day—only one day after surgery.

Dad picked me up on his way home from work.  With staples running from the upper chest to the abdomen, I wasn’t a pretty sight.  I was out of it for a little while, but within a few days, I was back to my old self—sort of.  I mean I didn’t feel bad, I didn’t look bad and I could eat as much as I wanted without a problem.  I got around fine, with no pain.  On the other hand, just as the surgeon and the internist had suspected, what was growing in me was an aggressive pancreatic cancer.  It was not operable.  It was not treatable.  Chemotherapy might give me a little extra time, but only at great cost in money and additional suffering.

Dad was determined my life not end this way.  He wanted me to die peacefully, of old age.  He began chanting a lot of daimoku, determined to rid my body of the cancer.  He surfed the web, looking for alternative treatments, for different diets that could starve the cancer cells and prolong my life.  All the while, no one could even guess I was even slightly ill.  Dad finally made good on his promise to spend quality time with me.  From the chair he had adopted for doing gongyo, he returned to the floor where I could lie next to him, with my head in his lap.

He wanted me to have another opportunity to walk in the woods.  We took a long car ride, which I always enjoyed, to the mountain trails of Canaan Valley, West Virginia.  We arrived Monday evening, October 3rd.  It was just Dad, Mom and I in a spacious rental house at the top of a winding road.  The next day, I ran freely and happily along a rhododendron and conifer-lined trail we had all to ourselves.  I trotted 50 to 60 yards ahead of them before pausing to look back to see if they were coming.  We also traversed some familiar, but easy trails in Blackwater Falls and Canaan Valley state parks on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I did have a little difficulty with the steps along some of the trails, since the cancer had wasted away a lot of muscle, but I was thoroughly enjoying the hikes. 

  Wednesday night, October 5, I focused my gaze on the Omamori Gohonzon and expressed my appreciation for the fortune I had accumulated during this life.  The next morning, the day we returned home, I couldn’t keep food or water down.  I vomited water and bile.  I went to my regular doctor that afternoon for some anti-nausea injections.  Friday morning I hadn’t improved, so I went back for more treatment.  She told Dad to put me in the hospital overnight.  The hospital called my family at 3:45 a.m. Saturday morning, asking them to come right away; I had taken a turn for the worse.  When Mom and Dad arrived, I got up and out of bed.  I took a few unsteady steps toward them, greeting them with a weak smile and a weary wag of my stubby tail. 

The doctor spelled it out for them.  She suggested the family room, for some privacy.  Mom and Dad spent an hour and a half petting, talking and chanting daimoku to me.  We did gongyo together one more time.  I sighed weakly at the end, the best daimoku sansho I could offer.  It was difficult for them to let me go.  But I had to go, so I could be reborn as a human being, able to tell others directly about Nichiren Buddhism.  Nichiren Daishonin says in the Gosho that "When the fox of Mount Shita encountered the Buddha’s teaching, he grew dissatisfied with life, longed for death, and was reborn as the god Shakra." Just being human will be enough for me.  For now, I must rely on Dad to tell my story, how I uplifted the spirits of all the staff at Hayfield Animal Hospital. It has been a major experience for Dad as well.  A lesson in compassion he has promised to extend to others.  How he found Buddhahood even in the depths of hell and how he turned suffering into Nirvana.  I will see you all again, later—although you may not recognize me without hearing a bark or seeing a tail.

 

 

 

 

 

We had an enjoyable time at Walt Disneyworld this February, save for one sour taste their customer service left in our mouths--and in our pocket book. Disney puts on a great show, treats patrons graciously at all their attractions, but when it comes to money--there is no compromise, no negotiation, no capitulation to the old credo of customer satisfaction. One would think with all the gazillions of dollars they rake in and the importance of maintaining good will and repeat business they would treat customers better. We have gone there several times; we won’t be going again.

We booked a reservation for the RV and ourselves at Fort Wilderness Resort but confirmed it on the phone with a live person. The purpose of the call was to verify that we could get a AAA discount (20%) for the stay. The person my wife spoke to said since we had already made the reservation she could not adjust the price but to just ask for the discount at check-in. So we did that. Having first greeted us warmly, the person at the gate took on the appearance of someone confronted by a bum begging for a handout. "Oh no, I’m sorry; we are not allowed to change the balance due on your reservation." After further discussion, we were told that we could take it up with the manager of that portal, but those were the rules. The manager had the same unyielding, corporate gatekeeper response. We were told we would have to take it up with the people in charge at the headquarters. We did that in writing, in a letter to Meg Crofton,  head of WDW. Instead of writing back, she had a flunky call us back reciting the same litany of why were not entitled to the discount--no apology that the operater who spoke to us may have been mistaken and no adjustment in price.

So if you are thinking about going there, think twice. At the least, get all the financial arrangements in writing because Disney will not bend--you will. 

Normally, I don't post the same item here and on my Views from Eagle Peak blog and certainly never on the same day. But since I thought highly of this one, I am doing it anyway.

This just in from deep below Avila, courtesy of the Satanic News Service: Former Grand Inquisitor Torquemada today congratulated President George Bush on his veto of an intelligence bill that would prohibit CIA use of waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques.

"George, you are a man after my own heart," Tomas de Torquemada said. "I salute your grabbing Congress by the cojones and letting them know you won't let them hold back your efforts to extract the truth–no matter what it takes. Whether it's Jews or Moslems, you gotta do what you gotta do. Go George! Look me up in Hell whenever it's your time to get here."

Do dreams mean anything to you? Much of the time, at least for those I can recall, my dreams incorporate people and events or situations that are currently occupying the conscious mind. Sometimes they include things that seem to have no obvious connection to anything within my day to day life, recent TV shows or books I have read, etc. Sometimes it is just an odd word that I recall. Like the time I woke up with the word "widdershins" in my head. Not a word I casually throw around in conversation. Not, in fact, a word I could recall having ever heard before. So I looked it up and wrote it down as a future story line or topic. It could go really well in the context of a political observation given its meaning: To go in a left-hand, contrary or opposite direction.

It started innocently enough. As couples remain together, they naturally acquire the knack of completing each other's thoughts--each other's sentences. They respond and think in similar fashions to comments received. But as the patterns of speech and mannerisms became so similar, they began to seem more and more as one than two. Beginning in sympathy, continuing through empathy, his aches became her aches; her pains became his pains as if in a mirror. A pain in her right leg generated one in his left. They communicated non-verbally with an eyebrow arched, a head tilted or even just a thought sent--silently across a room. Eventually, he wondered, would the marriage of souls become a merging of physical identity, leaving only one? Perhaps, perhaps not; only time will tell. Still, the portents make it seem so.

I am on Tengo Internet--very slow, low signal strength, in Pecan Park RV park north of Jacksonville right now. Headed for the Happy Bookseller in Columbia, SC for an event at 5 p.m. tomorrow. It has been a busy ten days with intermittent to no internet access. So here is the briefest of brief thoughts about a new storyline: A mixed couple, perhaps, opens a restaurant called Sauerkraut and Sushi. They serve German and Japanese food. I see lots of potential here.

Hey everybody, we are in Sunny Florida right now, back in 10 days. Posts will be infrequent in the meantime.

A reprint from my non-MySpace blog:

What did we do before the cell phone?

Shopping, walking, driving, so alone.

How did we manage with thoughts only our own?

All those hours we spent–away from a phone.

 

Now we can stop all those things that intrude;

Flowers bright and pretty, birdsongs trilling or tasty food.

Friends or family here with us now–our cellphones exclude;

We talk of elsewhere or talk of elsewhen, the present we elude.

 

© Copyright 2007 by John Maberry

I suppose this could have been in Movies, TV and Celebrities, but it really is mostly about writing. Perhaps mine is the only household in America (or the entire world) that actually puts Chinese food on plates, for eating. At least that is what I must assume from watching yet another TV show on which the characters are shown dining out of the cartons. Which comes back to the relative lack of sympathy I have for the writers on strike right now who, on average, are making far larger salaries than most freelancers are. I mean way larger. Yet time and again I see hackneyed, cliched, lazy [see any redundancy here; that's really an example of how someone could actually use a different word or phrase sometimes in a movie or TV show] scriptwriting--an example of which is a couple people sitting around eating Chinese food out of cartons. Try some original scene setting once in awhile, OK? There are plenty more examples, but that is enough ranting for today.