Entries by Doug Motel

Poem by John Burroughs (April 3, 1837-March 29, 1921), American naturalist and essayist important in the evolution of the U.S. conservation movement.





Look Under Foot


The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is "look under foot." You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.

Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.



- John Burroughs

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.


A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.


Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.


The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.


Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.


-Rumi

VIDEO:



“There is a curious, extremely interesting term in Japanese that refers to a very special manner of polite, aristocratic speech known as “play language,” asobase kotoba, whereby, instead of saying to a person, for example, “I see that you have come to Tokyo,” one would express the observation by saying, “I see that you are playing at being in Tokyo”—the idea being that the person addressed is in such control of his life and his powers that for him everything is a play, a game. He is able to enter into life as one would enter into a game, freely and with ease.”


-Joseph Campbell
Myths To Live By

After becoming interested in professor, writer, and orator Joseph Campbell from his interviews on PBS with Bill Moyers, I read this great quote from his best selling book Myths to Live By: “There is a curious, extremely interesting term in Japanese that refers to a very special manner of polite, aristocratic speech known as “play language,” asobase kotoba, whereby, instead of saying to a person, for example, “I see that you have come to Tokyo,” one would express the observation by saying, “I see that you are playing at being in Tokyo”—the idea being that the person addressed is in such control of his life and his powers that for him everything is a play, a game. He is able to enter into life as one would enter into a game, freely and with ease.”

The concept of “asobase kotoba” thrilled me because there seemed to be so little out there to support my personal belief that an attitude of play, directed toward our so-called “adult life” was essential for successful living (successful by my definition at least.)

For instance, imagine if your approach to dating were one of complete play. Suppose you went out on a date with no attachment to the results but approached the evening with the same spirit that you would approach a rousing game of volleyball with your date being a player on the same team.


The first time I tried to apply the power of playfulness to my life, it was as an experiment was while looking for an apartment in LA. I was an apartment manager in Hollywood with a free apartment and a small salary in exchange for collecting rents and making sure that the pool guy showed up. It was a great gig except for the rock –n- rollers who would ring my buzzer at 5:00AM.


“Dude, can you tell me which buzzer is Kiki’s?”
“Do you know that it’s 5:00AM?”
“Yeah I know..I’m an asshole bro.”


The owner sold the building to a nice Chinese man with an old Mercedes Benz who could not fathom the idea of someone getting free rent and a salary. He said I could stay but no more salary and I would have to pay rent or I could move out in 2 weeks. My extra income came from the rare 5 lines on a TV show or from selling the T-shirts that I had silk screened from the pen & ink portraits I drew of silent film stars (you can just imagine how they were flying off the shelves right? “Ooo anymore Louise Brooks Mr?”.)


At that time I had some serious money issues to say the least, so I went into panic mode. Where will I live? How will I pay a deposit? How will I afford anything that isn’t skuzzy?


I was getting so stressed out about it that I was forced to take another approach for my sanity. I had one of those “there must be a better way than this” moments.


So I decided to pretend that I was on a treasure hunt. The treasure was finding a home that I would love. Each phone call or appointment was a clue. Suddenly I went from dreading each potential roommate or apartment manager meeting to a feeling of giddy anticipation . I was meeting so many great characters and really get a chance to refine what it was that I did and did not want in a home.

I know that my attitude affected the people I was meeting because more people were calling me back to follow up. By the time I found the bright sunny apartment with a private terrace overlooking Silver Lake reservoir I was having so much fun, I forgot that there was a goal.


What makes Asobase Katoba so powerful is that when you bring the attitude of playfulness into your language: “I am playing the game of finding a new career”, “I am playing the game of investing money to buy a home.” You start to think of your desires not as problems to be solved but opportunities to play and express.


Like mastery at any game, it takes practice but the rewards as indescribable.

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My maternal grandmother was Margaret Dunbar, but I always called her Foxy Lady because that was her C.B. handle. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the 70's craze, C.B. stands for Citizens Band radio. My grandmother used to drive herself back and forth from Atlantic City New Jersey to her trailer in South Florida every year until she was in her late 70's. This was no small miracle given that her other nickname was Mrs. McGoo because she was so nearsighted, she was almost legally blind. (She once asked a chubby 10-year-old girl in a restaurant When are you due? thinking she was looking at a pregnant adult.)

Foxy Lady would sign on to her CB radio somewhere south of Maryland on I-95 and scope out the speed traps Any Smokie's south of Santee?..over!.

She moved on to the next adventure in 2005 at 92 years old, but she was and will remain one of my most favorite people on earth. Though she was a Shiks (a gentile woman) my grandmother was the biggest jew-a-phile you would ever meet. Most of her friends were Jewish, and I think the only thing she admired about my father was that he was mostly Jewish. She had many little Jewish sayings and she was never more adorable than when she was coughing up some Yiddish expression in her over-the-top guttural pronunciation. She was a reader's digest of philosophical slogans and she had plenty of non-Yiddish expressions too. One often repeated bit of wisdom was act the way you want to be and you will be the way you act.

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One of my favorite movie scenes is from The Witches of Eastwick with Jack Nicholson, Susan Sarandon, Michele Pfeiffer and Cher. Jack Nicholson, in a perfect bit of typecasting, plays the Devil. The actresses play women who try to best him with their own experimentation in the black arts.

For me, Jack Nicholson's character represents the ego in its purest form: fear turned inside out projecting itself into everything it sees.

My favorite scene, one that I often show in my workshop is one where the Witches discover that laughter can stop the effects of fear right in its tracks.

It's the scene toward the end where the devil has been attacked by the Witches through a voodoo doll. He comes looking for them in an intense rage. His fury blows them forcefully down a long corridor and Susan Sarandon's character falls from balcony. As she tumbles through the air to certain death, her friends Michele Pfeiffer and Cher call down to her instructing her to "laugh".