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An Autobiographical Obituary
A fine, passionate, and well-articulated autobiographical
obituary has been written. It all but
definitively reveals the true identity of the person whose nom de plume is Dr. Tiffany Twain.
Since I prize my anonymity and seriously appreciate living a
life out of controversy and the spotlight, this Obit will remain
confidential.
Besides, mystery is a powerful force, and may well prove to be
a pivotal aspect of the discovery and promotion of the Earth Manifesto. This would be very good.
My passionate philosophizing spirit has demanded
self-expression in an outpouring of written observations that incorporate
extensive reading and conversations and an evolving sense that our crazy world
requires a revolutionary transformation toward a more ecologically sane and
honestly sustainable future.
Somewhere along the way, I recognized the high
improbability of finding success in changing the world by publishing ideas in a
personal Earth Manifesto, so I began a years-long effort to assemble
germinating thoughts and ideas on an Internet website.
Early on, I had decided to use Mark Twain’s fame
and insightful perspectives and sense of humor as an inspiration to illuminate
the world, together with the thoughts of other famous writers and artists and
philosophers and thinkers. Recognizing
the profound and far-reaching malaise associated with the domination of
societies worldwide by men, and the severe ecological and social mess they were
making, it seemed appropriate to adopt a feminine perspective and nom de plume,
Dr. Tiffany B. Twain.
I love my good fortune in life, and treasure my anonymity,
so I have kept my writing activities largely secret from all I know.
From my current Germinating file:
Note to self:
Make it funny, like Carla Zilbersmith did in her obituary!
REFLECTIONS
Famous mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested to
John Steinbeck that he make revisions to his 1930’s elemental story, To a God Unknown to ensure that it
contained a sensual and visual quality.
Imagine this epistle commencing with a few paragraphs that are rich and
evocative.
Think of towering granitic peaks that vault into a
deep blue sky above a picturesque alpine lake where a backpack tent is perched
on a calm morning in the early summer.
Framing this scene are a number of puffy white cumulus clouds that are
building into thunderclouds that will drop precipitation by mid-afternoon. Lightening and thunder will flash and rumble
across the alpine landscape. At lower
elevations to the west, a wide swath of evergreen forest covers the lower
mountains above dry foothills, and beyond that, the Central Valley of
California bakes in the summer heat.
Coastal ranges further west separate these ecosystems from the beautiful
shores of the Pacific Ocean.
The genesis of the Earth Manifesto has its roots in
a genial and voluble storyteller within me that generates a running commentary
on life and the world and the societies in which we live. My inner narrator is too reflective and
gently compulsive to be able to do Transcendental Meditation, but it certainly
does love to ponder the nature of Nature, of relationships and
interrelationships, of beauty, of both noble aspirations and human follies, and
of the sublime and the ridiculous.
This voice within is sensitively tuned to ideas and
understandings and feelings that are consistent with the greater good. I am also alternatively highly sensitive to
perceiving those things that are contrary to fairness and the common good.
A complex network of competing interests within our
selves and in our societies strives to find identity and meaning and purpose
through a wide variety of behaviors and activities. Because of our big brains and self-reflective natures and abilities
to make inferences and deductions, our species is uniquely capable of making
choices that actually strongly affect our destinies, either propitiously or
adversely.
My brain absorbs inputs from daily life and digests
them and makes observations about them.
This steady stream of inputs comes from personal relationships,
conversations, books, various sources of the news, and from spontaneous
perceptions that arise within my subconscious mind. I strive to convey my convictions with an Apollonian detachment
and as proper a sense of proportion as possible. Humor and irony, being the soul of perspective, inform my
understandings.
A triumvirate of concerns predominates in this
associative complex of considerations:
peace and fairness and sustainable existence. The über-context of feelings and judgments always seems to
conclude that our most important priorities are dramatically different than
what would be best for the common good.
My convictions are passionately grounded in astute
observations and open-minded perspectives and intuitive understandings. Many people are passionate but blinded by
dogma and spin and cherry-picked information, so they become inflexible in ways
that are socially undesirable. Foremost
amongst these orthodox people are those who are extreme social conservatives,
religious fundamentalists, apologists for the status quo, and corporate
lobbyists. These types of people seem
to have a distinctly different worldview than mine.
Earth Manifesto
writings have a strong emphasis on sensible and responsible protections of our home
planet’s habitats and ecosystems. Such
perspectives are a natural evolution from the overriding issues of Mark Twain’s
day when Gilded Age inequalities, robber baron injustices, monopoly abuses of
power, and American imperialism were the primary socioeconomic and
econopolitical concerns. As an heir to
Mark Twain’s acuity of observation and incisive wit, I feel strongly that in a
reincarnation today he would be critically aware of these new overarching
ecological exigencies in human affairs, along with the host of problems
associated with them. So the entire
body of Earth Manifesto understandings is incorporated into this biography by
reference.
Intriguing! The influential ideas of the humorous
visionary Mark Twain have had a powerful cultural effect on our nation and the
world. The Earth Manifesto takes
advantage of Mark Twain’s ideas and evolving understandings and scientific
insights to emphasize modern progressive perspectives and a more feminine
worldview in order to try to transform our world by making it more receptive to
principles of fairness and peaceable coexistence and collaborative undertakings
and sustainable human activities.
A new feminist
revolution would arguably be one of the best ways for us to commit our
societies to developing positive and propitious compromises between competing
interests and to staunch the impulses toward war over limited resources and
differing religious faiths.
In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is
perplexed with the moral quandary of his helping a slave to escape as they
journey down the Mississippi River on a raft.
His conscience tells him he should turn Jim in to the authorities, but
another part of him says that Jim is one of the best friends he has ever had,
and he even thinks that maybe slavery ain’t a fair institution.
Tom Sawyer
would have said, “I reckon we should devise a real razzmatazz plan, and heck,
if it doesn’t work out, we can always absquatulate and light out for the
territories.”
Huck Finn,
desperate to get out of a tight spot, would have said, “Tom, can’t we just go
with a simple plan that would have the best chance of succeeding? The territories are getting’ pretty crowded
these days, and the complexification of matters by politicians and lawyers is
calamitating the country.”
Tom, of course, would have replied, “All
the real adventurers go with fancy plans, so it’s hardly worth doing if it’s
just going to be simple and fair and effective!”
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One of the best things
about Ken Burns' documentary, Mark Twain,
was its timing. It appeared just before
September 11, 2001, precisely when we most needed wisdom about who we are and
what we stand for, and nobody gave us a better going over than Twain. He railed against imperialism, and racism,
and conformity. He also celebrated the
better angels of our nature: our
orneriness, our independence, our "Huckness," if you will.
Mark Twain had a reputation as an
unconventional thinker who irreverently seemed to enjoy exposing
hypocrites. He loved to play billiards
and the card game “Hearts”, and seems to have been much better than most people
at remaining a fun-loving boy into his old age.
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“The trouble with resisting temptation is
that you may not get another chance!”
--- Edwin Chapin
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I remember a cogent sensation of having seen
myself in a reflection of a large window of a lighted room where friends of
mine were socializing in the background.
What, I thought, do I really know about any one of these people? Who, for that matter, am I?
John Steinbeck debated many of his formative ideas with
biologist-philosopher Ed Ricketts and a small cohort of friends at Ricketts’
Pacific Biological Laboratory in Monterey, California during the early
1930’s. One of these friends was the
great mythologist Joseph Campbell.
Their avid reading and inquisitive nature and intense curiosity played
out in a larger context of their appreciation of bohemian attitudes toward life
and meaning and identity. They strived
to make the obscure more comprehensible and cultivated visionary ideas and
embraced live-and-let-live philosophies.
This seems to me to be an admirable way to regard
the world. I have a strong respect for
the progressive, irreverent, freewheeling ideas that they all passionately
discussed, as epitomized in Steinbeck’s book The Log of the Sea of Cortez.
My enjoyment of this story was a principal inspiration for me to record
my own philosophical exploration of provocative ideas during a catamaran
excursion on the Sea of Cortez with a group of good friends in March 2008. Check it out in Part Three of the Earth
Manifesto! It is titled Tall Tales, Provocative Parables, Luminous
Clarity, and Evocative Truths: A Modern Log from the Sea of Cortez.
“We gals sought
a luminous clarity of seeing that was commensurate with the starkly vivid
clarity of the dry Baja skies. We
strived for a rich and evocative and holistic and compassionate clarity of
perception and thought, but predictably, being members of the two-legged
paradox that is humankind -- and perhaps particularly for the subset of human
beings that are female -- we found a bit of anxiety in the confirmation that
what Steinbeck described as “the tragic miracle of consciousness” is always
filled with uncertainties. Awareness is,
by its very nature, both burden and glory, pain and pleasure, unsatisfying and
fulfilling, mortifying and sublime, and it is inevitably book-ended by the
individual birth and death of every conscious entity.”
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The Three Fates were the three goddesses of Greek
mythology: Lachesis, who measured the
thread of life and guarded what had been;
Clotho, who spins the web of life and guarded what is; and Atropos, who cut the thread of life and
determined the manner and timing of each person’s death, and thus oversaw what
is yet to come.
A wide variety of tragically mortifying
indignities will almost inevitably be involved in the process of aging and
dying for each and every one of us.
This will be true unless we die young, or suddenly, which are
eventualities that aren’t exactly all that appealing!
I hope to live a long and healthy life – so far so
good! And then to die in dignity. My Advance Health Care Directive has been
completed, in case any “death panels” want to know the details.
“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
---
Mark Twain
The ultimate final dignity is dignity in dying. How can we move our society toward committing
to initiatives that allow people greater dignity in life, and in death?
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“The
personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.”
--- Anais Nin
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Imagine embracing a faith that not only satisfies the exalted
aspects of our spiritual selves but also the more grounded aspects of our souls.
“Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with
modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for
reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”
--- Albert Einstein
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Thoughts and
opinions germinate mysteriously in my mind, and then bubble forth, sometimes
half-baked and sometimes fully-formed like the Greek goddess Athena who was
born by springing forth fully grown from Zeus’ forehead. Athena, curiously, was the goddess of wisdom
and strategy and war and just causes, and the helper of heroes. Perhaps good ideas, well conceived, are the
most valuable of things to spring forth in our consciousness.
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And Then It Happened
And then, at that moment, a
great-horned owl hooted anomalously from the branches of a nearby old oak tree
just as a hummingbird seeking sustenance happened to find the intricate yellow
petals within red sepals of the particular Crimson Columbine I had been
regarding a moment earlier. Naturalists
would identify this plant as Aquilegia
formosa, which is Latin for ‘beautiful eagle-shaped petals’. The hummingbird, hungrily acting it its own
self-interest to obtain nectar from the flower, as nature would have it
incidentally fulfilled the mutualistic evolutionary purpose of pollinating the
columbine. The pollen at the tips of
the columbine’s long protruding yellow stamens adhered to the bird, and was likely
to be transferred later to the reproductive male pistil of another nearby
columbine flower. As this scene
unfolded, the shadow of a black Turkey Vulture gliding in thermals overhead
passed by, as if a sign that patience and grace and curiosity would be rewarded
with interesting developments.
I picture an enlightened being
alertly perceiving the moment, like the Buddha, relaxed and thinking nothing,
appreciating the warmth of the sunshine and the marvelous beauty of a colorful
columbine growing on a verdant Springtime hillside, knowing that existence is a
wonder beyond fathoming. Existence,
such a philosopher might provisionally conclude, is a wonder best comprehended through
holistic awareness and mindful appreciation and full acceptance of ephemerality
and transcendence and uncertainty and sublimity and spiritual essence.
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I
personally find a wisdom tradition like Buddhism to be much more personally
valuable and socially desirable than dogmatic and orthodox religions, which can
be turgid with doctrine and self-righteousness, closed-mindedness, prejudice,
intolerance, and catechisms of certainty in what are really suspiciously mythological
conceptions of reality and history.
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INSPIRATION:
Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’:
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day
I’ve looked at
life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace
from day to day
To the last syllable of
recorded time
And all our yesterdays
have lighted fools
The way to dusty
death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking
shadow, a poor player
That struts and
frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard
no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury
Signifying
nothing."
--- Macbeth, Act 5, Shakespeare
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“Be here now. Be someplace else later.
Is that so complicated?”
--- Sayings of a Jewish Buddhist
“Breathe in. Breathe
out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and attaining enlightenment will be the least of your problems.”
“I’m all for everything!”
--- ‘Industrial Tony’, January 15, 2009
“If you think it’s everyone
else … it’s probably just you!”
--- Is It Just
Me?, an indie film
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It’s curious, and curiouser. There seems to be an imperious Red Queen in
each and every one of us, like the one in the recent 3-D film version of Alice in Wonderland. This Red Queen compels us to act in
domineering ways with an almost hormonal urgency. Deep down, however, this drive may principally be a cry out for
recognition and respect, and it may be a means of attempting to find
compensation for feelings of insecurity.
Helena Bonham Carter plays the role of the Red Queen in this film,
commanding obedience and perversely acting as if she is propelled to puerilely
throw obstacles in the path she is trodding with those she loves, as if turmoil
in important interpersonal relationships is a necessity rather than an
unfortunate outcome. Surely there must
be a pill for this – one that makes us larger and emotionally more intelligent
rather than smaller and more foolish!
“Me ineptum.” (Latin for “Silly me.”)
In a moment that resembled a religious experience, only more
honestly perceptive and authentic, the reverb in my brain sang out with a
feeling that resembled a nautical expression of goodwill:
“May you have fair winds and following
seas!”
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