Month: June 2023

Empty Boats, Mark Salzman, and Life Without Narrative

I have been reading various novels and memoirs by Mark Salzman – all of which I recommend highly.  But the one that has stayed with me longest is his last book, The Man in the Empty Boat, about a devastating year in Salzman’s life and the epiphany that he experienced at the end of it – with the help of a flatulent dog.

Our author explains the Zen parable of the empty boat, which I had remembered from a dharma talk long ago.  It is worth reprinting here:

If a man is crossing a river
And an empty boat collides with his own skiff,
Even though he be a bad-tempered man
He will not become very angry.
But if he sees a man in the boat,
He will shout at him to steer clear.
If the shout is not heard, he will shout again,
And yet again, and begin cursing.
And all because there is somebody in the boat.
Yet if the boat were empty.
He would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat
Crossing the river of the world,
No one will oppose you,
No one will seek to harm you. – Chuang Tzu

It is a story worth thinking about, but like most wisdom it probably cannot be internalized unless it is experienced. After a memoir of serious life experiences (births, deaths, success, and failure) – in which our author exposes a fantastic ability to describe such experiences, but a limited capacity for coping with them – Mark Salzman gives us his epiphany as he realizes that his dog is not releasing gas to annoy him, but just because he is… a dog.   The author shares his experience of realizing that all dogs are just dogs, and that all the boats are empty:

My normal sense of being the author of my life-narrative gave way and was replaced by a sense that I was the audience for it.  The author, I felt, had to be the cosmos as a whole, the vast matrix of who knows what and where and why, of which human consciousness is one part.  From that point of view, I could no longer believe that we determine what happens to us or choose who to be; we find out what happens to us.  We do what we must as we fall through time, which means – this is the feel-good part again – that we are doing the best we can, always. (146)

And, perhaps, we should treat everyone else as if they are doing the best they can.  We need to cope with life, of course, but the key lesson is that there is nothing/nobody to get angry at.  The boat is empty. Salzman laughingly calls himself a futilitarian. The interesting thing is that the author’s wife (this is a memoir, remember) refuses to let him teach their daughters about his epiphany – he can’t “deny the existence of human freedom and responsibility in front of the girls until they’ve finished high school.”  Hah!

And then there is this: Salzman’s life-narrative gave way.  Human beings love narrative – when there seems to be no narrative in a situation, we create it.  I have written about this before (insert title), but it seems that old people particularly like stories, narrative – they like to construct stories for their lives in retrospect.  We want it to make sense, and we especially want a happy ending.  Did fairy tales teach us to expect a happy ending?  Because, surely life did not.

So, we look for the happy ending in books, be it novels, spiritual guides, or the latest how-to-fix-your-life from the best seller list.  Salzman says in another wonderful book (The Laughing Sutra), “Enlightenment cannot be found in books.  It must be experienced directly!”  Ironically, of course, he say this in a book.  But for those of us who may have spent our lives trying to find answers in books, the likelihood that this is true hits hard.

Salzman wrote a number of books before he wrote The Empty Boat in 2012 and has published nothing since.  He must be in his sixties now – did he indeed find the answer and give up writing books?  I want to know if his epiphany stuck – I want to know if any epiphanies survive in the face of what life dishes out.   Where are you Mark Salzman?  You might not have all the answers, but you give me something to think about!

Old Folks and True Love

Since moving into a neighborhood of mostly retirees, I have been stunned by the exemplars of true love that I have encountered.  Not true love in the sense of mindless passion, but in the sense of real people doing superhuman things for the people that they are committed to.  True love is not determined by wine and roses – or even by white weddings and gender-reveal parties.  True love is sticking with someone you are committed to even when the passion is gone, even when it is not easy, even when they are not exactly sure who you are.

We think of true love as the province of the young; there are few classic stories of old lovers (and there are even fewer rom coms).  But there are some.  In his Metamorphoses, Ovid shares the tale of Baucis and Philemon, an old couple who live together in poverty with their pet goose:

They had married young, they had grown old together

In the same cottage; they were very poor,

But faced their poverty with cheerful spirit

And made the burden light by not complaining.

It would do you little good to ask for servants

Or masters in that household, for the couple

Were all the house; both gave and followed orders. (Humphries translation)

“Both gave and followed orders” – perhaps the recipe for a good  marriage.  Most old marriages do seem to have given up traditional delineations of responsibility – old women mow the lawn, old men run the vacuum.  They do what needs doing.

But, back to Baucis and Philemon.  As in many stories, the gods (Jupiter and Hermes in disguise) come to town and find no hospitality, find no doors open to them, until they get to the old couple, who dig into their meager stores to feed the unexpected guests.  When they realize they are entertaining divinity, they even decide to sacrifice their beloved goose to give the gods a good meal.  Zeus stops them from this act, saves their house when he floods the rest of the inhospitable town, and grants their wish that they may live together until they die, serving the gods.  Then, Philemon makes a final request: that they not outlive each other: “that I may never see the burial of my wife, or she perform that office for me.”  So, in due time, while they are “talking about old times,” they simultaneously metamorphize into trees – an oak and a linden – which stand intertwined.

Now, old couples might hope they die at the same time, but they seldom do.  What usually happens, in stages or spurts, is that one has to take care of the other through physical or mental infirmities.  It is not easy; it is often unbelievably hard.  Newborns and toddlers are tough on a marriage, but we know they are going to grow up (and be difficult teenagers) and eventually leave home.  And we were younger then.

In the enthusiasm of new love, younger folk may say, “I’d do anything for you!”  When they married, they swore to stick it out through sickness and health.  No one had any idea of what that all really might mean. Think of the old man who has to wake up to help his wife to the bathroom or clean up after her if she doesn’t make it.  Think of the old woman who has to tell her spouse for the 100th time that day that she isn’t his mother.  Then think of these same people holding hands on the porch.  This is life for many, and they seldom complain about it and almost never throw in the towel.

The divorce rate for elders has been increasing – from 1.4 to 6 per 1,000 for women and from 1.4 to 8 for men – but the rates for seniors are nothing compared to those for younger folk (which run closer to 20-50 per thousand).  I can’t think of any “gray divorces” among my acquaintances, but I know they do happen.  What happens more often, in my observation, is that commitment deepens with age. Once in a while, perhaps, a spouse gets sent to the memory care home or nursing facility sooner than we might think necessary.  But I never judge.  One cannot know what the demands have been or what the capabilities are.  For the most part, old married people are heroes.

And it is not just the big stuff.  There are also illnesses, joint replacements, falls, cataract surgery, and endless dental work.  There are special diets and walkers and installation of balance bars all over the house.  Sometimes the stress spreads equally over time between the partners; sometimes not.  But let’s call their devotion what it is: true love.

The presence of a purpose often seems to focus the caretaker’s life.  This does not mean it is easy or pleasant; nor should the challenge be underestimated.  Nevertheless, it is a common occurrence that the caretakers themselves do not live long after their duties are ended, their partners are gone.

So watch your romantic comedies, drool over white brides and roses, fixate on Romeo and Juliet.  But I know where the real romance is taking place, where “till death do us part” means something tangible, where “devoted” is a verb and not an adjective.

This week’s story is not about old love – if you want to read about that you might try “Again and Again and Again” or “Slip Slidin’ Away.”  But for a laugh and a ponder, there is this week’s “A Life of Twelve Toes in Six Pages.”  (Don’t ask me where I get these ideas!)