Goldfinches

this is a story about stories

and about something that we might call “the storyless state”

joseph campbell wrote a book called the hero with a thousand faces about a kind of story that is found throughout history and all over the world that he called “the hero’s journey”

we can use the hero’s journey as a metaphor for our life

and i would like to use it as the structure for this evening’s entertainment

the hero’s journey begins with the call to adventure

we have all already answered the call to adventure by coming here tonight

we could have stayed home and watched tv

but instead we left the comfort and safety and security of our homes—for what?

we don’t know

and that is where the hero journeys: into the unknown

into a dark wood, or a cave, or to the bottom of the sea

one of the main things about the unknown is that you don’t know what you will find

i answered the call to adventure by deciding to write and perform a theatrical monologue

why would i want to undertake such a thing?

that brings me to a little story about my life…

when i graduated from high school, i went to college just like i was supposed to

but i had never liked school

it always felt like a prison to me

one day i realized that going to school was optional

and i could opt not to go

which i did

now that is the age when you are supposed to choose a career and get with the program

but i graduated from high school in 1969, during the hippie era

we are very prone to conformity at that age—maybe throughout life—and somehow i found myself conforming to the hippie form of “non-conformity”

with long hair and oddball clothing and bare feet and all that

that was how i wanted to present myself to the world

i felt more at home in this costume than in a white shirt, suit and tie

now, “hippie” is not really a career choice and in fact, i neglected to choose an occupation

i’ve held a variety of odd jobs—i once spent 18 months testing beet pulp pellets for hardness, durability and fine particle content

for many years i found the familiar question “what do you do?” to be difficult to answer

now that i’m old, i can look back on my life and ask: “what is my job?”

or, better yet, “what did i come here to do?”

and the answer, i think—or at least one answer is: to gather people together

and so that is why i had the hare-brained idea of writing and performing a theatrical monologue

it’s a trick to get people to gather together

and here we are

so, what happens after the hero answers the call to adventure?

he or she goes into the wilderness—the unknown—on a quest for something

and sometimes you know what you are seeking and sometimes you don’t

but in the unknown you always find something

and typically, the hero encounters obstacles or difficulties

and meets magic helpers

and finds a treasure—which is probably guarded by a dragon or something

and the hero kills the dragon or at least tricks it

and steals the treasure

and returns home with something of value—not just for himself or herself—but for everyone

now here’s an interesting thing: each one of us has treasure within

each one of us is the treasure

so, why do we have to go down into a cave or to the bottom of the sea to find it?

well, that’s a good question

here’s a story that is found in many cultures:

before we are born, we have a special gift

and in the process of being born, we lose the gift

and it is our task to find out what our gift is and then give it to everyone

for example, you might have a gift of music

and not know it

and you need to discover that you have it before you can share it with others

but if you do, your gift blesses everyone

another version of this story is:

when we are born, we forget who we are

and who we are is god

and we have to re-discover this

we have to remember what has been forgotten

the greek word for this is “anamnesis”—remembering what has been forgotten

so that is one version of our hero’s journey—we have to go to the bottom of the sea, or to the first unitarian church, or wherever, to remember who we are

and we have to do this every day

going to sleep every night is like dying

and every morning we wake up and it’s a new day

we have been reborn

and it’s great if we were happy yesterday, but it doesn’t really help us to be happy today

and we need to find happiness today

and what worked yesterday will not work today

we have to try something new

and where is the new found?

in the unknown

and so, in a way, we all may have thought we were coming here just to entertain or be entertained, but actually we came here because we have to save our own life

we have to be reborn

now, as the storyteller, or entertainer, i guess it’s supposed to be my job to come up with something really fantastic

you know, the greatest theatrical monologue you’ve ever heard, or whatever

but i’m not too worried about that, because, as far as i’m concerned, i’ve already done my job, which is to gather us together

and i don’t have to bring a great treasure, because you are, we are, the treasure

and i have a kind of foolproof method of creating a magical, fantastic, wonderful experience, which is: at the end of my monologue, we will have a dialogue

and a dialogue circle cannot fail to be a perfect thing

and so i’d like to reassure anyone who is worried that this evening will be something less than perfect—that is not gonna happen!

it’s gonna be perfect

because however lame or inadequate my “entertaining” monologue is, we will all have an opportunity to remedy that together in the dialogue circle

okay, back to our hero’s journey, which is our journey into story and storylessness

william butler yeats said that each person has their own myth and that one of your jobs as a poet, or just as a human being, is to find out what your myth is

that goes back to the idea of remembering what has been forgotten

i’d like to talk about a couple kinds of stories, which i call:

identity and mythos

identity refers to the stories we tell ourselves about who we are

and mythos refers to our stories about the world

now i am going to tell you a little story about my mythos

many years ago, when i was young, i read a story by fyodor dostoevsky called “the dream of a ridiculous man”

i loved the story

it really resonated with me, as they say

here’s the story:

there’s a guy who is depressed

life has no meaning for him

he feels that nothing makes any difference

he decides to kill himself

he buys a gun

he’s just waiting for the right moment to do the deed

and he’s walking home and he sees a star in the sky and decides: “tonight is the night”

but then a little girl comes up to him and wants his help

her mother is dying or is in some very bad situation and the little girl is crying and trying to get this guy to come with her

but he doesn’t help the little girl

he goes home so that he can commit suicide

but he can’t get the little girl out of his mind

and he feels like he has to figure something out before he dies

and while he’s sitting there, trying to figure it all out he falls asleep and dreams a dream

and this is his dream:

he dreams that he kills himself

and he goes to another planet, which is like earth, except that it is paradisal

there is no fear or war or hatred

it is a world where everyone lives in love

and in his dream he ruins everything in this perfect world

he brings about a fall, very much like what happens in the story of adam and eve

and the love planet gets worse and worse until it resembles our own

and then he wakes up

and he has a very strong feeling that he has seen the truth—that our life could be completely transformed, it could be perfect, if only we would love each other

so that’s dostoevsky’s story

and i liked it so much that i decided to perform it

but it seemed too short for an evening in the theater, so i added a piece that i had written called “columbus”

i wrote columbus in 1992, for the 500^th anniversary of columbus’ first voyage to the western hemisphere

i grew up with the story that columbus was a great hero who had discovered america

in my version there’s this guy who is drunk and he claims to be christopher columbus

and it isn’t explained whether this man is delusional, or if he is the spirit of christopher columbus, back from the dead, or whatever

anyhow, this christopher columbus is self-medicating with alcohol because he is in a lot of pain

in his version, he didn’t discover anything—people already lived here

and they were a beautiful people—the taino—and they lived without war, in a kind of paradise

and he brought about a fall

the taino are no more

and my blubbering drunken christopher columbus wanted everyone to know that he had seen and understood something—that people can be beautiful and innocent and loving

he had seen it with his own eyes

and it was only after i had put these two pieces together that i realized that they had the same theme:

paradise, fall, and a vision of a possible return to paradise

and i thought: “maybe this is my myth”

people tend to think of paradise as something that may have existed in the past, or which might exist in the future—maybe even after we die

but paradise is this world in which we live—just as it is

this gathering is paradise

and everyone sitting here is perfect

is paradise

so it seems to me

this is my mythos—the story i tell myself about the world

now it may be objected: “how can this world be paradise when it is obviously all screwed up?”

good question

instead of arguing whether the world is in fact perfect or whether it is all screwed up, i would like to explore the sense in which it seems to me that the world is perfect

imagine, for a moment, a goldfinch

a goldfinch is perfect

a goldfinch does not need to be improved

the very idea is absurd

everything is like the goldfinch

each one of us is a goldfinch

perfect

this is my thesis

my mythos

um, so where are we on our hero’s journey this evening?

okay, so you answered the call to adventure by coming here

and your guide, your magic helper, on this journey through the dark wood of this evening is me

an unreliable guide!

and now we’re lost!

but according to the unreliable guide, the trickster-helper, that’s okay

according to me, getting lost is a perfectly acceptable variant of the hero’s journey

let’s take an example from alice in wonderland

alice says that she feels like maybe she’s lost and wonders which path she should take

and the cheshire cat asks her where she is going

and she replies that she doesn’t know

and he says: “then it doesn’t matter which path you take”

and that’s kind of like us

except that we don’t need to get anywhere, because we are already here

that’s another common story theme

the bold adventurer travels the world and ends up returning home and finding the treasure under his or her own hearth

hearth equals heart

that’s where our treasure is

not far away

and what is the point of this theatrical monologue?

it is to go forth and return home

to the silence which preceded the story

the world is always larger than our picture of the world

our descriptions and explanations are like cartoons

it’s like the difference between looking at a postcard of multnomah falls and standing in front of multnomah falls

or as mark twain said: the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning

in this analogy, my “entertaining” theatrical monologue is the lightning bug

and what is the lightning?

you are the lightning

i am the lightning

the lightning is us—just as we are

words are useful in reminding us of the inadequacy of words

the gold that each of us came here to find, whether we knew it or not, is each other

we tend to believe that the stories we tell ourselves are true

the friendly person lives in a friendly world

the fearful person lives in a dangerous world

we imagine a world and then we live in that world

and who is the person who lives in this imagined world?

i think it works something like this:

when we are born, we cannot speak or understand what people are saying to us

but very quickly we get the hang of it, and by the time we are four—even earlier—we are quite fluent in speaking and understanding the language that our parents speak

as we grow up we learn whether we are a boy or a girl, whether we are smart or stupid, whether we are beautiful or unattractive, whether great things are expected of us, or whether we’ll never amount to much

by our early twenties we should have everything figured out:

we might be a beautiful republican woman

or an angry environmentalist

we could be a skater, a scientist, or a sinner

a buddhist, a baptist, an atheist, a plumber, a poet, or a certified public accountant

we might be fat, depressed, friendly, ambitious, lazy, sexy, shy, anxious, optimistic, pessimistic

but whatever we have become, whatever we believe, we are sort of stuck with it

it’s impressive and amazing that we can create an identity and a mythos

it’s absolutely necessary that we do this

but it becomes a kind of prison, from which it seems there is no escape

we are fictional characters, living in fictional worlds of our own creation

end of story?

well, sort of

because this is prelude to the storyless state

in addition to our very impressive ability to think and to speak, we have the wonderful ability to be still

to be awake and alert

each one of us is nourished by a silence that has no beginning or end

not confined within our descriptions, explanations, thoughts, memories, stories and imaginings

fearless, loving, carefree

not in the world, we are the world

a world beyond our ken

where everything and everyone is miraculous

perfect

like a raincloud, a stone

a goldfinch

thank you