Shopping While Drinking (Leonora Carrington part 2 and the Stupid Guru)
In the middle of the 1980’s in Minneapolis, where I grew up, there were all kinds of new-age books stores, little reading circles, zen centers, and on and on. I remember reading the Upanishads and thinking “Um, well this is the whole ball of wax right here!” I then started meditating etc. and honestly, I think a lot of good things came out of this for me. BUT…there were also some very funny things that woke me up to the “ontological treacly mess of bullshit” true believers swim about in, or whatever Julien Torma called it in his book, Euphorisms (an Atlas Press publication).
I had a couple of amazing visions at this time:
I saw a large donut shape spinning in on itself and thought it was the key to how all time, and space, and the universe worked.
That all language was operating on one level like everyday statements and another level that constantly connected the one to the many via sparrows…and this almost caused me to have a nervous breakdown!
The Donut I saw in a vision
Anyway, one day in maybe 1985 I was downtown shopping, drinking lots of wine at various little bars, and buying clothes and books, and honestly, I don’t know why I bought a little set of books called Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson, by a writer named G.I. Gurdjieff, but it was a cute little tiny box set, so maybe that’s what I liked about it. I also bought a book about heuristics, which I knew absolutely nothing about. (A brief note: I am very happy to no longer use drugs and alcohol :) )
Anyway the next day I was emptying my shopping bags and started reading book one of the little set and I remember the syntax was super convoluted and because I later learned Gurdjieff was all about our inability to pay attention to anything, I thought “oh! he was trying to train my attention through these long run on overly complex sentences!” The only thing I remember about the first chapter of the book was that there was a long story about wisdom teeth.
stupid guru
A couple of weeks later, I was walking around Uptown (Lake and Hennepin), and at a little new age kind of store, I saw a flyer posted for a Gurdjieff reading group with a phone number listed to get info about time and place, etc. I thought, “What a miracle! I’m going!” So I called the number and got a date, time, and address for the next book club meeting.
I remember it was way far away, but I grew up riding buses so I found a way to get there by transferring twice and then walking 10 blocks or so. It took me almost an hour and a half to get there, but I must have been really set on going because I made it on time for the reading circle!
I walked in the door and was sort of waved through a kitchen inside a back door and went into this candle-lit living room where this tall lanky guy was sitting on a pillow with the book opened.
He hadn’t started reading yet so I looked around the room and saw about 5 or 6 people just standing there. I was curious about the whole thing and started introducing myself excitedly to people and asking how they had stumbled on this weird thing I had never heard of until I drunkenly bought the books. I was happy and hadn’t spoken to anyone on the whole 3 bus rides I’d been on, so felt like chatting about the weirdness of it all.
No one would talk to me. Not one person.
The lanky dude (who I can still picture) rang a little bell or gong and started reading.
I thought maybe it was protocol to not talk until after the reading so although I was sad and lonely I thought maybe after the reading they would talk to me about what these books were all about.
So, he read on for a while and then stopped, and then he set a teapot on the kitchen table with cups and maybe some weird little treats, and I tried again.
No one would talk to me. Not one person.
Lanky Guy
I finally was able to get someone to agree to drive me to downtown Minneapolis. I remember in the car a woman and a man talking quietly with each other while I sulked in the back seat. I was used to people liking me and I couldn’t understand why they were being so rude!
Anyway, a week or two went by, and by then I had found out more about what the books were connected to. It was a sort of path to enlightenment that this Gurdjieff had put together, and he had these disciples. I remember one writer’s name was Ouspensky and he had a book I found called ‘The Fourth Way” so I read a little of that and another book called “Meetings with Remarkable Men” about how Gurdjieff had met people who would travel around and were able to recite incredibly long epic poems and it was because they had discovered the secret to the ability to pay attention.
So anyway, I can’t remember which of these books I was reading but I came upon this part where Gurdjieff said (basically) that we won’t all be allowed this special state of miraculous attention and the heavenly state that comes with it, because some of us just don’t want it or are too stupid to do it, and that these poor bastards would “wind up working like ants on the moon”.
For some reason, this seemed especially unfair to me. Maybe because I was still mad about these people not acknowledging me and how cute I was, but that was it: if the poor people who couldn’t cut it were to be stuck going to the moon working like ants, then I wanted nothing to do with it.
One day shortly after this realization about the moon thing, the guy who had done the reading called me at work! I worked in the surgical instrument room at a hospital at the time and I guess I must have left messages with phone numbers when first seeking out the address.
He asked me where I’d been, I had missed the last couple of readings.
I told him that I couldn’t abide the part of the teaching that curses a large part of the population to being worker ants on the moon, and also nobody talked to me while I was there.
He started trying to explain the deeper meaning of the teachings and I told him to NEVER CALL ME AGAIN.
Ok, so years later, I’m reading that awesome book by Leonora Carrington called “The Hearing Trumpet” that we wrote a blog post about a couple of weeks ago, and in the book is this sort of weird guru-type character called “Dr Gambit”, and for some reason, I was curious about who this character was based on because maybe attention training or certain movement exercises were ringing a bell for me. I can’t remember what made me look it up but sure enough! The character was based on Gurdjieff, and Leonora Carrington had some kind of negative experience with that fourth-way movement in Mexico. I think in her case it was some sexist bullshit built into the whole system.
That’s all I have this week!
Here is an article about Dr Gambit/GI Gurdjieff
"Should we try to Self Remember while playing Snakes and Ladders?"