BLIND AS A BAT AND TOOTHLESS TO BOOT

“What The Hell!” original multi-media figure by kayti sweetland Rasmussen

There is something viral about the Heathrow airport in London. For the third time the minute my feet found the restroom after landing, my teeth fell out.

I can’t read a word on the map without my reading glasses. I know we will find our hotel, if it’s the same place as it was. English hotels don’t seem to stray for a century or so. But finding a dentist to put my teeth in order was another question. Finding one to do it in a week was another problem.

I always felt comfortable being lost in Venice and in London. I knew I would run into water at some point in Venice, and the English have been trained since babyhood to be polite, and someone always shows up to help. Paris is another side of the coin. I once asked directions in my best high school French and received a snarl much as if I had tried to grab a bone from a starving dog.

Dr. Advice says he hates being lost, but we found him sitting happily nursing a beer with a group of artisans in a bodega in Guadalajara an hour or so beyond the agreed meeting time.

Teeth and eyesight become even more prized in later life, when you realize you can’t read the phone book, a map or a menu. I miss my relationship with the telephone directory. I used to believe you could find anything you were looking for in one. Now it contains everything but your can no longer see it.

When you are forced to call Directory Assistance you receive a disembodied recording from India asking for answers you can’t supply in one word.

The menu, the cookbook, and of course the map can only be read if written in large type–extremely LARGE TYPE. Mostly I’m sad about just plain reading. When I pass a bookshelf I need to stand on my head to decipher the titles. Reading is one of the main things I do and is entirely dependent upon the whereabouts of my glasses.

And I forgot to mention the pill bottle! Who can read that small print? They crowd all the information on one tiny little bottle and expect you to read it?

Three years ago when they finished excavating my mouth I discovered that you could survive by pulverizing all your food in a blender, but it isn’t nearly as much fun. Food vanishes. Not literally of course, but our concept of food as habit, as pleasure, as love.

Steak becomes a memory. You don’t smile because there is nothing to smile about. Your dentist becomes not only your best friend, but a constant companion. The waiter at a favorite restaurant supplies your lunch before you order. Soup and ice cream as usual? You nod while sadly watching your companions chomp away at their salads.

The same waiter is discreetly pleased when you next show up with glasses and teeth.

TIGER, TIGER BURNING BRIGHT

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
in the forests of the night.
What immortal hand or eye,
dare frame thy fearful symmetry.” William Blake

It’s easy to see why Ang Lee’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s fantasy novel, Life of Pi, became a surprise success story around the world, winning four awards from eleven nominations in the Academy Awards.

It is a story both striking and unique telling of Piscine Molitor Patel, a boy growing up in Pondicherry, India, the son of a zookeeper. Piscine changes his name to “Pi”, to avoid being teased by his classmates, who pronounce his name “Pissing”.

This change of name is only the first of several fascinating changes in Pi’s experience. Some, like his name, are more or less under his control, like his pursuit of truth by simultaneously studying Christianity, Hinduism and Islam at the same time. He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognize benefits in each. Some, like his father’s decision to move the family and some of the animals to Canada, are not under his control, especially when the ship carrying the Patel family sinks, the rest of the family is lost, and Pi is stranded in a lifeboat for 227 days with only a zebra with a broken leg, a hyena, a gentle orangutan and a 450 pound tiger named Richard Parker for company.

The bulk of this fascinating and colorful story focuses on Pi’s struggles to survive and to make sense of the dehumanizing condition in which he finds himself. The hyena first eats the zebra and then the orangutan. The tiger has found a place to hide under the tarpaulin on the lifeboat, but the tension grows as you realize it is only a matter of time before he will emerge to kill off the hyena and then Pi.

The tiger indeed kills the hyena, but then miraculously goes back under his tarpaulin, where there is an occasional growl, keeping Pi alert for constant danger. Meanwhile, Pi is developing survival skills and learns to live alone with the threat of the tiger always present. Throughout the odyssey, it becomes apparent that when Pi is angry or fearful, the tiger comes out from his lair, and Pi strugges to regain his strength and domination over the animal.

When the journey is finally over, and the little boat reaches land in Mexico, Richard Parker and the boy are weak with hunger and near death, and the skeletal tiger silently slips off into the jungle.

Several years later, Pi has settled in Canada, and is interviewed by the insurance company for the sunken ship, who are still trying to learn how and why the ship was lost. Pi tells his story, but the men do not believe that a 13 year old boy can survive with a live tiger in a lifeboat, so Pi tells them another story, this one involving the base and vicious cook from the ship, a sailor with a broken leg, and Pi’s mother, who had miraculously made it into the little boat, and the tiger, Richard Parker.

In Pi’s mind, to shroud the utter horror of his condition, the cook has become the hyena, who kills and eats the helpless zebra with his broken leg. Pi’s mother is his next victim, with Pi cowering at the end of the boat awaiting his turn. Giving a huge roar, Richard Parker emerges from beneath his tarpaulin, and quickly disposes of the hyena and returns to his den to sleep and digest his meal.

Who then, is the tiger?

There is a tiger within all of us, sleeping, but capable of taking control unless constrained. It represents our fear and our anger. This is our ultimate strength: we are endowed with the ability to choose in which path our best interest lie. Do we conquer the tiger, or learn to subdue him?

ATTAINING BALANCE THROUGH MEDITATION

Meditation doesn’t have to involve sitting cross-legged on the floor trying to clear your mind. The pleasure of losing oneself in something beautiful or meaningful such as art or music answer this need abundantly.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love” tells about her four month visit to Italy where she grew several sizes larger, while exploring the joys of spaghetti in all its meltingly delicious forms. The next four months were spent in India learning to meditate while sitting in a dark cave clearing her mind. I prefer to look at something beautiful or thought-provoking.

“Meditation” Bronze by kayti sweetland rasmussen

This quiet bronze is very peaceful to me. It invites stroking, and it encourages me to close my eyes and breathe deeply, much as one would while in the practice of yoga.

Oil Painting by Brad Young”

This large oil painting hangs in my friend’s home and I would go to her home just to stand and study the painting. It is by her son, Brad Young, and I don’t know the title, or even if it has a title, but it is thought-provoking. I’m sure everyone sees a different image from mine, and I too, can see something different each time I see it. When I photographed it, I was able to turn the image into various directions, and found that it was intriguing, however it was viewed.

This is what art should be; a visual feast to enjoy forever. Something to give balance to our lives.