Laugh Like the Buddha

We just got a new bottle of Charlotte's Web Hemp Oil, and we're back to using the cannabis in a coconut oil base. That seems to be easier on Sophie's stomach than the olive oil one, and it sure tastes better. The coconut oil solidifies easily, though, so we warm it up slightly in a cup of warm water before drawing it up in a syringe. The whole thing, the whole catastrophe, as Zorba says. Hence, Frida. I think it's appropriate, given Frida's revolutionary politics and sense of humor. I've been looking through her diary and read a bit in the introduction that resonated with me, particularly as I continue to read through the more than 110 comments on the National Geographic article that appeared last week. Some of the comments are interesting and intelligent, a few are even compassionate, and a very few demonstrate an understanding of the article and by extension my story, but most of them have veered off into the Land of the Absurd where Absolutists and People Who Take Themselves Entirely Too Seriously start shooting one another while SCIENCE and MAGICAL THINKING dart in and out, dodging the bullets. By about comment 50 or so, I left off feeling despair and started doing Zorba's dance. Go watch it if you need a refresher.

Teach me to dance, will you?

I was cheered reading that Frida's Diary was the best example of this ribald, punning, dynamic genius for humorous language that makes Kahlo such an endearing and, finally, happy figure, in spite of all suffering.

"Her voice, all who knew her tell us, was deep, rebellious, punctuated by caracajadas -- belly laughs -- and by leperadas -- four letter words."

Anyhoo. That's why I stuck Sophie's Charlotte's Web (that concoction of Supposedly Not Studied Enough But Been Around For Thousands of Years and Used for Medicinal Purposes in 600 B.C.E. Cannabis and Coconut Oil in the Frida Kahlo mug.

Sophie is doing well. Her teacher told me today that "Sophie's back." They've been able to do some productive work at school, and her overall mood is better.

Cross your fingers and toes.
Knock on wood three times.
Do your Zorba dance.
Laugh like the Buddha.
You know the drill.

It's Tuesday, not Monday

I wish I could sing because Bob Dylan said something to the effect that anything worth thinking about is worth singing about. I think he might be right, and it would somehow make the thoughts easier if they were lyrics in a song. I'm thinking about my friend's dead grand-baby who didn't get a birth certificate because she had never taken a breath but she got a death certificate and it's holed up somewhere in a big building needing a signature needing release so the baby will be released. That would be a lyric in something more than a blues song, wouldn't it? The thoughts are worth thinking about but would they be a jazz riff, a lullaby or a dirge? For some reason I am thinking about those black clad Greek women in Zorba the Greek, and how they mourned. I'm thinking about the blurring of novel and movie, Anthony Quinn dancing, the full catastrophe, that music.


Zorba the Greek - Zorbas Dance (Movie Scene... by goldrausch

How We Do It: Part XVII in a series

Turn up the volume while you're reading -- or not:

I took a break from the life and stood on the rooftop of our outdoor mall this evening and looked out on the city, the suburbs glimmering, the Hollywood hills shrouded in haze, the hot day dying. I thought about pulling Sophie, naked, out of the tub the other night while she seized, her beautiful body draped in my arms when it was over, my own strength, quivering, on the edge of the porcelain. That porcelain tub, so different from the one I sat in, naked, long ago, words typed on paper creased and folded into transparency, and we both vanished for a moment from each others sights which we thought took so long yet back again we were but this time we were hunched in the porcelain tub in the complete darkness where we had nurtured the hunger until it was flicked on light and again we vanished (I fold it back, just so, square by square). What's it all for? Oliver asked, his eyes filled. What is the meaning? Later, when I cried into the phone to a friend, I wondered how I could continue to do these things, the lunches, the pedicures, the combing down of cow-licks, the reading of another novel, the changing the hose from jet to shower and sprinkling the flowers in their parched pots. I should be dressed in black, like those old women in Zorba the Greek, I cried. I should be screaming in the streets, my hair on end, my hands wringing in step with my wails.

Am I not a man? Of course I've been married!

Wife, house, kids, everything ...

The full catastrophe!

Anthony Quinn as Zorba the Greek