Where the Wild Things Are
This is a Maurice Sendak book (1963) which won the 1964 Caldecott Medal for the Most Distinguished Picture Book of the Year. My niece Elisa had the book, but I never had the time to read it myself. I love Sendak's whimsical drawings of those wild animals that made the monsters quite endearing instead of frightening. I finally checked this book out from the children's section of Los Altos Library on Tuesday, September 30. While waiting for Stanford's Shopping Express Shuttle Bus at Showers Drive, I read through this 40-page picture book. It is simply delighttul. It is a child's hero's journey to the jungle of the imagination. His courage sailing to the Island of the monsters evoked the intrepid adventure that's within all of us. It is a most satisfying story to read that parents should share with their children. I'm glad that finally I got to enjoy and relish this Maurice Sendak classic!

Mary Oliver slept with a baby skunk
While reading Mary Oliver's Blue Iris: Poems and Essays (2004), I was touched by her essay "A Blessing" (pp. 27-31) about her camping trip with her high school girl friend at age 16 in a state park near Clarion, Pennsylvania. Here's the concluding paragraph of that essay:
What we saw filled our minds. What we saw made us love and want to honor the world. And dear readers, if anyone thinks children in these difficult times do not need such peaceful intervals, then hang up the phone, we are not having a conversation. Without doubt those summers changed my life and my friend's. Whoever I am, and whoever my friend is now, fifty years later, we are both still part of this feast of the past. Happiness and leaves— they went together. The tender dripping of water on the tent roof, from the maples or, once, the realization that a baby skunk had taken to one of the cots we slept on and was, on a rainy morning, in a sound sleep. What could we do? Think of us— or think of your own children— in a tent that leaked only a little, and then from the beautiful rain and the elegant maples— think of us watching that very little skunk curled in the best blanket, opening its eyes sleepily and then closing them again; think of our silent and entirely happy laughter as we too went back to sleep. (also quoted)

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
I found the Mary Oliver poem "The Summer Day" containing the last line which Sarah cited to me with the added word "precious". It is from New and Selected Poems, Volume 1 (1992). Billy Collins has included it in his Poetry 180 (a poem a day for american high schools) as Poem 133. A musical & art accompaniment may also be found of this poem at this web site. I like Mary Oliver's meditation on the grasshopper that's eating sugar out of her hand and then "snaps her wing open, and floats away." Is grasshopper saying the next two lines or Mary?— “I don't know exactly what a prayer is. / I do know how to pay attention...” Mary Oliver is one of the most attentive poets I know. That's why her poems are so insightful about nature and the world around us. Mary Oliver ends "Upstream" from Blue Iris (2004) with this insight: "Attention is the beginning of devotion." Attention is also the first step of mindfulness, followed by concentration, meditation, contemplation, and enlightenment.

Like Max I'd sail to the Imagination Island
and encounter all the wild beasts without fear.
Sendak has no name for the place where the wild things are. I've made up "Imagination Island" based on the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street. When 9-years old Susan (Natalie Wood) tells Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) that her mother taught her that there's no Santa Claus or fantasy, Kris Kringle teaches Susan that there's a nation called "Imagination" where you could make believe that you're a chimpanzee and play in the zoo. When we identify with our limited ego self, there's always fear of the "other not-self" that includes wild beasts and demons. But if we know our true Cosmic Self, then there is no fear because the "other not-self" is also me. Then there is nothing to fear as everything and I are one.

With my magic rod I'd tame them to "Be Still!"
then I'd shout out "Let the wild rumpus start!"
I've borrowed these lines from Maurice Sendak's book. However he had Max "tame them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once". Here, I'm using a magic stick to tame the beast within (rambling thoughts) by invoking the words of Psalms 46:10— “Be still and know that I am God.” The magic rod is those found in fairy tales as when the Fairy Godmother turned Cinderella's pumpkin into a stagecoach. Or the Blue Fairy transforming the wooden puppet Pinocchio into a real boy. It is also the Caduceus of Hermes (Mercury) used as the Physician's Logo by Hipprocrates, the Father of Medicine, as a symbol of healing.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes!
Some thirty years ago, my friend Patrick Brennan and I went to hear Ram Dass speak at Boston University. The gymnasium was filled to capacity. After showing numerous slides of gurus and holy men from his India travels, Ram Dass read a story about an elderly woman's wishes if she were to live her life over again. I don't remember any item from her wish list except that she wanted to eat more ice cream. So I googled the words "If I had my life to live over" +ice cream +Ram Dass" and found it in Ram Dass's Journey to Awakening (1978). Here's another site with 85-years old Nadine Stair's poem. However an earlier version was found attributed by Don Herold in the October 1953 issue of Reader's Digest. The first line of Nadine Stair's poem is "I'd dare to make more mistakes next time." I recall my high school teacher showing her pencil's end saying "We all make mistakes— just look at your erasers!"

Always try something new!
When asked why he still looks so young, Cary Grant replied "Each year I always try doing something new." That's the spirit of exploration we had as a child which we lose as we age. But if we wish to remain young at heart, just try something new!

Brick walls are there for us to climb over!
In his famous "Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" at Carnegie-Mellon University (Sept. 18, 2007), Randy Pausch (left) said: “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They're there to stop the other people.”

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed
his grasp, or what is a heaven for!
This favorite line of mine is from Robert Browning's poem "Andrea del Sarto" (1855), a Renaissance painter (1486-1531) with consummate skill of perfection. It appears in lines 97-98 of the poem: Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, / Or what's a heaven for? Here's an analysis of the poem comparing Sarto's superficial soulless perfection of technical skill to Michelangelo's less skillful artworks but soulful masterpieces.

I'd trek up Szechwan's Omei Shan to the inns
where Li Po and Tu Fu wrote their poems.
Omei Shan is a sacred mountain in Szechwan province where I was born. Towering to 10,000 feet, the peak of this great mountain is a holy place to the Chinese Buddhists (photo). During the T'ang Dynasty, Li Po and Tu Fu climbed up the 15-miles trail to visit the monastery on top of Omei Shan. Along the way, they stopped at inns to drink and write their poems. In one of Li Po's poems, he wrote of a drinking bout with a ghost.

search in a submarine for the Loch Ness Monster
Loch Ness Monster is an alleged serpent-like giant eel or extinct plesiosaur inhabiting Scotland's Loch Ness. The "Plesiosaur" painting at left is by Heinrich Harder (1916). The Loch is only about 10,000 years old, dating to the end of the last ice age. Prior to that date, the Loch was frozen solid for about 20,000 years. Hence, it is unlikely that a cold-blooded reptile requiring warm tropical waters could survive in the Loch Ness which has an average temperature about 5.5^oC (42^oF). One of the most iconic images of Nessie is known as the 'Surgeon's Photograph' (1934), which many formerly considered to be good evidence of the monster. Its importance lies in the fact that it was the only photographic evidence of a "head and neck". All the others are humps or disturbances. However this image was revealed as a hoax in 1994.

find the Abominable Snowman
Yeti is a Tibetan word for "rocky bear". The appellation "Abominable Snowman" was not coined until 1921, the same year Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Howard-Bury led the Royal Geographical Society's "Everest Reconnaissance Expedition" which he chronicled in Mount Everest: The Reconnaissance (1921). In the book, Howard-Bury includes an account of crossing the "Lhakpa-la" at 21,000 ft (6,400 m) where he found footprints that he believed "were probably caused by a large 'loping' grey wolf, which in the soft snow formed double tracks rather like a those of a barefooted man". He adds that his Sherpa guides "at once volunteered that the tracks must be that of "The Wild Man of the Snows", to which they gave the name "metoh-kangmi". "Metoh" translates as "man-bear" and "Kang-mi" translates as "snowman". (Photo source: paranormal.about.com)

fly on the back of the Maguari Stork
In my poem "The Maguari Stork" (2007), I described my experience at the San Francisco Zoo (Nov. 1, 2006). The stork bent its neck 180^o backwards touching its back to my utter amazement. On my second visit (Dec. 6, 2006), the stork performed this feat again only after I pumped my arms and stomped my feet to Native American dancing and chanting "Heh! Ye! Heh! Ye!". As I was about to leave his cage, the stork gave one more amazing performance— he spread out those black and white wings of his like a giant oriental fan to a flurry gust of wind, then flew to the top of a tree. It was truly a symphonic moment that caught me by surprise. When I wrote this poem for Robert Pinsky's Workshop, I remembered Selma Lagerlöf's story of Nils lifted aloft by wild geese, and felt that the Maguari Stork had lifted me up that day to see greater vistas.

dance cheek-to-cheek and marry a madrone tree
The Madrone Tree's bark is cool and has been nicknamed "Icebox Tree". So whenever I encounter a Madrone Tree while hiking I'd touch its bark and refresh myself. While hiking on the Toyon Trail in Portola Vally on Sunday, June 17, 2007, 5:40 pm, I came upon a young Madrone Tree with a heart ♥ enclosing "I Love You" carved on its bark. So I wrote this haiku: “I touch your cool bark / with heart inscribed "I Love You" and say "I do too.” I asked my hiking friend to snap a photograph with me cheek-to-cheek hugging this Madrone Tree. I recalled Apollo chasing Daphne when she turned herself into a Laurel Tree (Bernini sculpture), and asked this Madrone to be my bride. I wondered if this is the end of my long bachelor days of monkhood and is my quest as Percival for the Grail coming to an end? Here are more Madrone haikus on my hikes: (July 4, 2007, Purisma Creek Redwoods, Madrone tree on the North Ridge Trail): “ Beautiful Madrone— / I hug your cool bark as you / bend toward the sea.” (Easter March 23, 2008, Pulgas Ridge, Blue Oak Trail): “ Hello Madrone Tree— / my love at last! I hug you / dancing cheek to cheek.”

converse daily with a stone till we merge as one
My first version was conversing with a rock since "rock" in Greek (petras) also means "Peter" (Petros), thus I'd be communing with myself. Then I recalled Annie Dillard's book Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982). She tells about a hermit living alone in a shack on a cliff. Several times a day he performs a ritual with a stone on his shelf, teaching it to talk. Dillard's description: “a palm-sized oval beach cobble whose dark gray is cut by a band of white which runs around, and presumably, through it; such stones we call 'wishing stones'... I assume that like any other meaningful effort, the ritual involves sacrifice, the suppression of self-consciousness, and a certain precise tilt of the will, so that the will becomes transparent and hollow, a channel for the work.” Wislawa Szymborska (1996 Literature Nobel Laureate) has an intriguing poem "Conversation with a Stone" (commentary) from her book Salt (1962). Here are the concluding lines from the poem:
    I knock at the stone's front door.
    "It's only me, let me come in.
    I haven't got two thousand centuries,
    so let me come under your roof."
    "If you don't believe me," says the stone,
    "just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same.
    Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said.
    And, finally, ask a hair from your own head.
    I am bursting with laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter,
    although I don't know how to laugh."
    I knock at the stone's front door.
    "It's only me, let me come in."
    "I don't have a door," says the stone.
In his metaphysical novel Going Deeper (2004), Jean-Claude Koven tells about speaking to stones and learning from them in his journey to spiritual awareness. I just realized that stone may be rendered as St-One or Saint One. Thus, the stone is my guru and mentor to oneness and enlightenment. (Poem: "On the Nature of the One")

so I'd be like Emerson— an all-seeing Eyeball
Emerson writes in Nature, Ch. 1 (1849): “I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; am part or particle of God.” I recall reading Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching that "the sage is like an eyeball" because he is sensitive to the needs of all beings. Hence the eyeball is a metaphor for the sage whose characteristics are wisdom (prajña) and compassion (karuna)— epithets for the Buddha, The Awakened One (TAO). Tao Te Ching: VII “The sage puts himself last and others first.” XXVII “The sage always excels in saving people, and so abandons no one; always excels in saving things, and so abandons nothing.” XLIX “The sage has no mind of his own. He takes as his own the mind of the people.” (Dogen: Eyeball, Dharma Eye, Buddha Eye; Sariputra's giving his eyeballs)

enter white holes to explore multiverses
In physics, a wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that is basically a 'shortcut' through space and time. Spacetime can be viewed as a 2D surface, and when 'folded' over, a wormhole bridge can be formed. A wormhole has at least two mouths which are connected to a single throat or tube. If the wormhole is traversable, matter can 'travel' from one mouth to the other by passing through the throat (White Holes & Wormholes). In astrophysics, a white hole is the theoretical time reversal of a black hole. While a black hole acts as a vacuum, sucking up any matter that crosses the event horizon, a white hole acts as a source that ejects matter from its event horizon. The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise all of reality. The different universes within the multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes. Here are my Stanford lecture notes on Multiverse or Universe? by Paul Davies, Martin Rees, and André Linde (March 26, 2003).

dive into my inner self and find Buddha in me
While travelling around the world and into outer space to explore the universe is exciting, the sage is content staying where he is for there is nowhere to go! Hence it's more challenging to delve into our inner self and realize who we really are. Reality is defined in Hindu Advaita Vedanta philosophy as that which exists in the three frames of time (past, present, future) and the three states of consciousness (waking, dream, deep sleep states). Only Pure Consciousness is real because it satisfies all these six conditions. Wendell Berry comes close to this idea in his poem "The Wild Geese" concluding with the lines:
    Geese appear high over us,
    pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
    as in love or sleep, holds
    them to their way, clear,
    in the ancient faith: what we need
    is here. And we pray, not
    for new earth or heaven, but to be
    quiet in heart, and in eye
    clear. What we need is here.

make a film revealing our Cosmic Consciousness
The Hindu sage Ramana Maharshi often compares our true Self that is timeless to a cinema screen. It doesn't get wet or hot when the scene is rainy or on fire. Happiness and sadness in the characters don't affect the screen's demeanor. The blank cinema screen is like a clear mirror projecting whatever comes before it. Ramana advises those who wish to know thyself to fashion their mind like a movie screen or clear mirror— accepting all, rejecting none, always peaceful and calm. Movie goers want action so their minds get stimulated with fantasy. If they come, and all I show is a silent soundless screen, they will riot and demand a refund! Last Spring Semester at Stanford, I audited Film Studies 152 "Cinema-Machine" by Professors Scott Bukatman and Pavle Levi. They screened Erni Gehr's Serene Velocity (1970) with the camera focused just on a hallway. It looked like a "Homage to the Square" but with daybreak, sunlight could be seen in the window. I had a Platonic epiphany: Square becomes circle! / Plato's cave allegory— / from earth to the Sun!. The other screening was Michael Snow's La Région Centrale (1971) where a machine camera's eye was set on a mountain top and rotated & gyrated to scan sky and earth without human intervention. I had a Zen satori like Hui-neng: The earth is spinning. / The sky is spinning— No. it's / your mind that's spinning! This was followed by an I Ching awakening: Lake above, blue sky / below: image of Breakthrough— / Water is now crown!, and another Platonic epiphany: The camera's eye shows us the four elements— from / many to the One! While these two experimental films propelled my mind to a kind of spiritual awakening, a friend who saw them with me thought they were boring. So the challenge is to make a film that will give the audience rapture and ecstasy. Perhaps uplifting classic music combined with beautiful scenes of nature's landscape and galactic panoramic views from the Hubble Space Telescope will be inspiring. Then they'll jump and dance with delight in the aisle and all the way home. [Photo— V838 Monocerotis (NASA): Ouroboros & the Cosmos]

Without compass or chart, I'd sail back to Eden
spent wild nights with Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson's Poem #249 "Wild Nights"
Wild Nights— Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile— the Winds—
To a Heart in port—
Done with the Compass—
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden—
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor— Tonight—
In Thee!
Here's one commentary on Emily's "Wild Nights". While many see this as an erotic poem about desire, I believe it's a mystical poem on spiritual ecstasy. My leaning in this direction arises from my discovery of Emily's interest in alchemy which is a spiritual discipline.

wrestle with that Angel with the flaming sword
"The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden" from Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling painting shows the Serpent giving Adam and Eve fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. At the right, an Angel with the flaming sword has his blade on Adam's neck as he and Eve shrinks in fear departing from the Garden of Eden. Here's the passage from Genesis III.22-24— “And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.“ This Biblical passage has always intrigued me. Why is God so afraid that man will eat from the Tree of Life and become immortal? If God created us in his own image, why is he keeping the best for himself and not sharing it. I told myself not to shrink with fear like Adam but be more daring like Jacob and keep on wrestling with the Angel until he is blessed (Genesis XXXII.24-26). Here's one of my favorite paintings— Delacroix's Jacob Wrestling the Angel (1861) from Saint-Sulpice Cathedral in Paris.

claim the fruit from the Tree of Life!
My first version of this poem ended with "to steal the fruit from the Tree of Life!" but I realized that "stealing' is taking things that don't belong to us. I feel strongly that the Tree of Life is man's heritage as well as the gods. So like Prometheus bringing man fire, I'm claiming it as our birthright! What is this Tree of Life that God deemed so precious that it was withheld from mankind? The Tree of Life is a mystical concept, a metaphor for common descent or a motif in various world theologies and philosophies. The Tree of Life is at the center of Paradise and signifies regeneration, the return to the primordial state of perfection. It is the cosmic axis and is unitary, transcending good and evil. Immortality is obtained either by eating the fruit of the Tree of Life, as with the peach of immortality in the midst of the Taoist-Buddhist Western Paradise, or from drinking the juice extracted from the tree, as the Iranian Haoma from the haoma tree. In Kabbalah, it resembles the ten Sephirot or emanations of God. The Sephirotic Tree has a right- and a left-hand column representing duality, but a middle column balances them and restores unity and lead us back to the Creator. In the Katha Upanishad VI.1, the Tree of Life has its roots above and branches below (like a genealogical tree). The Tree of Life appears in Norse religion as Yggdrasil, the world tree, a massive tree (sometimes considered a yew or ash tree) with extensive lore surrounding it. The painting above is Gustav Klimt's Tree of Life (1909). (Reference: E.O. James, Tree of Life, E.J. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands, 1966).

                                        — Peter Y. Chou
                                             Mountain View, 10-6-2008