Wild Ducks Flying Backward

by Tom Robbins

  Kissing is the supreme achievement of the western world. Orientals, including those who tended the North American continent before the land developers arrived from Europe in the 16th century, rubbed noses, and millions still do. Yet, despite the golden cornucopia of their millennia—they gave us yoga and gunpowder, Buddha and pasta—they, their multitudes, their saints and sages, never produced a kiss. (Oh, sure, the Rig Veda, a four-thousand-year-old Hindu text, makes reference to kissing, but who knows the precise nature of the activity to which the Sanskrit word alludes? Modern Asians, of course, have taken up kissing much as they’ve taken up the fork, though so far, they haven’t improved upon it as they usually do with those foreign things they adopt.)

  Kissing is the flower of the civilized world. So-called primitives, savages, Pygmies, and cannibals have shown tenderness to one another in many tactile ways, but pucker against pucker has not been their style. Tropical Africans touched lips, you say? Quite right, many of them did, as did aboriginal peoples in other parts of the world. Ah, but although their lips may have touched, they did not linger. And let’s admit it, the peck is not much more than a square wheel, sterile and slightly ominous. With what else did Judas betray the Big Guy but a peck: terse, spit-free, and tongueless?

  Kissing is the glory of the human species. All animals copulate but only humans osculate. Parakeets rub beaks? Sure they do, but only little old ladies who murder schoolchildren with knitting needles to steal their lunch money so that they can buy fresh kidneys to feed overweight kitty cats would place bird billing in the realm of the true kiss. There are primatologists who claim that apes exchange oral affection, but from here, the sloppy smacks of chimps look pretty incidental: at best, they’re probably just checking to see if their mates have been into the fermented bananas. No, arbitrary beast-to-beast snout nuzzling may give narrators of wildlife films an opportunity to plumb new depths of anthropomorphic cuteness, but on Aphrodite’s radar screen, it makes not a blip.

  Psychologists claim that talking to our pets is a socially acceptable excuse for talking to ourselves. That may cast a particularly narcissistic light on those of you who kiss your pets, but you shouldn’t let it stop you. Smooch your bulldog if you’re so inclined. Buss your sister, your uncle, your grandpa, and anybody’s bouncing baby. No kiss is ever wasted, not even on the lottery ticket kissed for luck. Kiss trees. Favorite books. Bowling balls. Old Jews sometimes kiss their bread before eating it, and those are good kisses, too. They resonate in the ozone.

  The best kisses, though, are those between lovers, because those are the consequential ones, the risky ones, the transformative ones, the ones that call the nymphs and satyrs back to life, the many-layered kisses that we dive into as into a fairy-tale frog pond or the murky gene pool of our origins.

  The fact that we enjoy watching others kiss may be less a matter of voyeurism than some sort of homing instinct. In any case, it explains the popular appeal of Hollywood and Paris. Who can forget the elastic thread of saliva that for one brief but electrifying second connected Yvonne De Carlo to Dan Duryea in Black Bart? And didn’t Joni Mitchell’s line “in France they kiss on Main Street” inspire hundreds of the romantically susceptible to pack their breath mints and head for Orly?

  A final thought: beware the man who considers kissing as nothing more than duty, a sop to the “weaker” sex, an annoyingly necessary component of foreplay. That man has penis plaque in his arteries and will collapse under the weight of intimacy. Send him off to the nearest golf course while those of us who are more evolved celebrate the unique graces of the kiss:

  No other flesh like lip flesh! No meat like mouth meat! The musical clink of tooth against tooth! The wonderful curiosity of tongues!

  Playboy, 1990

  Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh

  I’m no disciple of Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh. I am not a disciple of any guru. I am, in fact, not convinced that the Oriental guru system is particularly useful to the evolution of consciousness in the western world (although I’ll be the first to admit that what is most “useful” is not always what is most important). The very notion of guruhood seems at odds with the aspirations of the passionate individualist that I profess to be, and I’d be only slightly more inclined to entrust my soul to some holy man, however pure, than to a political committee or a psychiatrist.

  So, I am no sannyasin. Ah, but I recognize the emerald breeze when it rattles my shutters, and Bhagwan is like a hard, sweet wind, circling the planet, blowing the beanies off of rabbis and popes, scattering the lies on the desks of the bureaucrats, stampeding the jackasses in the stables of the powerful, lifting the skirts of the pathologically prudish, and tickling the spiritually dead back to life.

  Typhoon Bhagwan is not whistling Dixie. He is not peddling snake oil. He won’t sell you a mandala that will straighten your teeth or teach you a chant that will make you a millionaire. Although he definitely knows which side his bread is Buddha-ed on, he refuses to play by the rules of the spiritual marketplace, a refreshing attitude, in my opinion, and one that stations him in some pretty strong company.

  Jesus had his parables, Buddha his sutras, Mohammed his fantasies of the Arabian night. Bhagwan has something more appropriate for a species crippled by greed, fear, ignorance, and superstition: he has cosmic comedy.

  What Bhagwan is out to do, it seems to me, is pierce our disguises, shatter our illusions, cure our addictions, and demonstrate the self-limiting and often tragic folly of taking ourselves too seriously. His pathway to ecstasy twists through the topsy-turvy landscape of the Ego as Joke.

  Of course, a lot of people don’t get the punchline. (How many, for example, realized that Bhagwan’s ridiculous fleet of Rolls-Royces was one of the greatest spoofs of consumerism ever staged?) But while the jokes may whiz far over their heads, the authorities intuitively sense something dangerous in Bhagwan’s message. Why else would they have singled him out for the kind of malicious persecution they never would have directed at a banana republic dictator or a Mafia don? If Ronald Reagan had had his way, this gentle vegetarian would have been crucified on the White House lawn.

  The danger they intuit is that in Bhagwan’s words, as in the psychedelic drugs that they suppress with an equally hysterical bias, there is information that, if properly assimilated, can help to set men and women loose from their control. Nothing frightens the state—or its partner in crime, organized religion—so much as the prospect of an informed population thinking for itself and living free.

  Freedom is a potent wine, however. Its imbibers can take a long while to adjust to its intoxications. Some, including many sannyasins, never adjust. Patriotic Americans pay gassy lip service to their liberty, but as they’ve demonstrated time and time again, they can’t handle liberty. Whether more than a fistful of Bhagwan’s emulators can handle it has yet to be determined. It likely will take something more eschatologically dramatic than the unorthodox wisdom of a compassionate guru to dislodge most modern earthlings, be they seekers or suckers, from our age’s double helix of corruption and apathy, let alone to facilitate the human animal’s eventual escape from the web of time.

  Meanwhile, though, we yearn for sound advice, and Bhagwan’s discourses ring a lot truer than most. He has the vision to see through the Big Mask, the guts to express that vision regardless of the consequences, and the love and humor to place it all in a warmly mischievous perspective. Moreover, here is one teacher who is honest enough, illuminated enough, alive enough to openly enjoy the physical world while simultaneously pointing out its ubiquitous traps and trickeries. Zorba the Buddha!

  Predictably, the journalists who’ve investigated Bhagwan have each and every one been befuddled by his methods, his messages, and the delightful paradoxes that they see only as flaky contradictions. Even many of Rajneesh’s followers end up being confused by him. Well, Jesus left numerous contemporaries, including fellow Jewish reformers and his own disciples, in a comparable state. It goes with the territory, which is why they say in Zen, “The master is
always killed on the road.” Frequently he’s killed by those who profess to love him most.

  When Rajneeshis misbehave, the media and the public blame Rajneesh. They can’t understand that he doesn’t control them, has, in fact, no intention of ever trying to control them. The very notion of hierarchical control is antithetical to his teachings.

  When Bhagwan learns of vile and stupid things done in his name, he only shakes his head and says, “I know they’re crazy, but they have to go through it.” That degree of freedom, that depth of tolerance, is as incomprehensible to the liberal hipster as it is to the rigid square. And yet, as an outsider who’s been moved, impressed, and entertained by the manner in which Bhagwan has put the fun back in profundity, I know it’s a level of wisdom that we simply must attain if we’re to climb out of the insufferable mess we most aggressive of primates, with our hunger for order and our thirst for power, have made of this splendid world.

  Introduction to Bhagwan: The Most Godless Yet the Most Godly of Men, by Dr. George Meredith, 1987

  NOTE: When Bhagwan was shown the preceding remarks, he laughed and said that he didn’t believe in Oriental guru systems either. In fact, he disavowed any connection to guruhood, saying that the very notion of a guru-disciple relationship is an affront to human dignity. He explained that since his emphasis had always been on just being oneself, the act of refusing to be anybody’s disciple is precisely what being a disciple of Bhagwan is all about. Bingo! I believe he was speaking truthfully and I love him for it. In complaining that others have misrepresented Bhagwan, I misrepresented him myself, and for that I apologize.

  Incidentally, as the reader probably is aware, not long before Bhagwan was poisoned by government assassins, he changed his name to Osho. At the Poona ashram, the name change was embraced so thoroughly, so fervently, one would have thought “Bhagwan” had never existed. It was almost reminiscent of one of those old Soviet appellation purges. However, I believe that had he lived, he would have eventually changed his name again, the whole point being, in my opinion, to demonstrate the ultimate fallacy of identifying with and becoming attached to one’s name; or, for that matter, any other self-defining labels, including occupational titles and ethno-geographic distinctions. Who knows, had he survived, Bhagwan/Osho might have become Wolfgang, Bubba, or World B. Free.

  Ruby Montana

  When you learn that her name is Ruby Montana, you figure right away she’s a cowgirl. An urban cowgirl. Which is to say, a make-believe cowgirl. Real cowgirls, working cowgirls, have less romantic names, such as Pat Futters or Debbie Jean Strunk. Still, Ruby is so appropriately booted, vested, and bandannaed that you wonder if she mightn’t at least be a weekend rodeo queen. Ah, but then, far from the lone prairie, she drives up in a lurid two-tone 1955 Oldsmobile, removes a French horn from its trunk, and enters her house—a pink house, a house the color of the sorest saddle sore Dale Evans ever sat upon—and you conclude that she must be something else.

  Something else, indeed.

  In actuality, Ruby Montana is a popular Seattle shopkeeper. She is also that city’s sweetheart of fantasy. For Ruby’s imagination isn’t simply tied to the hitching post of the make-believe cowgirl; her whole existence is an exercise in make-believe. In the world she has made for herself—a world built of neoteny, nuttiness, nostalgia, and kitsch; a world in which the secret life of objects is not only recognized but allowed to interface dramatically with her own life—Ruby daily demonstrates that reality is a matter of perception and that dreams don’t come true, dreams are true.

  Her shop, Ruby Montana’s Pinto Pony, sells collectibles, and she herself is a collector. Should you follow her into that pink bungalow (its façade a hue similar to the Pepto-Bismol a nervous Daisy Lou chugs before the big barrel race), you would be amazed by both the extent of her collections and the artistry with which they are displayed. Every room is teeming: cookie jars, candlesticks, lamps (lava, figurative, and magic spinning), wall fish, ice buckets, ashtrays, bookends, German mythological prints, ranch furniture, Pee-wee Hermanesque gewgaws, Hollywood dime store Wild West memorabilia, and—in the Flamingo Room, the den where Ruby hopes to be sitting “when they drop the bomb”—a bar in the shape of a late 40’s speedboat, aloha pillows, South Sea coffee tables, a shrine to Elvis, and twinkling tiki party lights. Inexplicably, all this sub-lowbrow ornamentation is arranged in a manner that approximates good, if freewheeling, taste. Roll partially over, Beethoven.

  And we haven’t even mentioned the salt and pepper shakers. Not that they could be overlooked, God no! There are hundreds of salt and peppers. Hundreds. Most of them unusual, many of them rare. They dominate the house. In some ways they dominate the owner of the house. They hold her much as a director is held by the various competing egos in his troupe. You see, Ruby Montana interacts with her treasures. She’s involved with them. Dissatisfied with mere ownership, she doesn’t accumulate knickknacks (“I despise that word!”) to impress others or decorate a space. Ruby selects her salt and peppers carefully, and those that pass audition she plays with. She makes up tales about them. She casts them in private productions staged on Formica tabletops and kitchen shelves.

  For example, there is the gay donkey (maybe salt, maybe pepper) whose parents can’t handle his proclivities. Today, the donkey is dancing with his lover while Mom and Dad look on in bewilderment. There ensues poignant dialogue in which the hee-haw homosexual explains he’s leaving town. So is the pig family next door, though the pigs, more happily, are off to Florida to attend a space launch: the dinnerware rocket is poised on its pad, presided over by JFK, who looks dignified and healthy despite high levels of sodium. We’re talking salt and pepper dramatics here. Condiment-dispensing theater.

  Born and largely reared in cowgirly Oklahoma (Montana makes a prettier surname, you’ve got to admit), Ruby (her birth name remains a secret) loved visiting her grandmother in Stillwater, who collected souvenir pitchers that she would eulogize for the grandchildren. “The pitchers all had stories,” says Ruby. “I decided when I grew up, I wanted a house full of stories, too.”

  In 1974, having earned a music degree in classical French horn from the University of Michigan—“nobody offered me a scholarship to ride horses”—she moved to Seattle after drawing its name out of a hat. Presumably ten-gallon. She abandoned plans to study for a Ph.D. (Dr. Montana?) because Seattle was “too damn pretty,” and took a job teaching school. By then she’d begun to collect tramp and folk art, some pieces of which became so valuable she felt obliged to sell them off. It wasn’t long before she’d lassoed a house, painted it the tint of a stablegirl’s first hickey, and was filling it with narratives of her own invention. “I’m in touch with everything in my house,” she confides. “The furnishings are connected to my fantasy life and to my heart. They are my joy, my friends.” And not just the nostalgic items. “We live in an age when most things feel like dental tools, although I do like modern objects if they have character.”

  She’s also in touch with the sweet bird of youth. “Ceramics and cowgirl stuff are each a part of the child in me, and I’m interested in keeping that part alive. So many of the harsh realities of the adult world are unnecessary and absurd. People kill themselves because they’re alienated from the child they really are.”

  Neither as flaky nor as flamboyant as you might suppose, Ruby comes across as the kindly enthusiastic schoolteacher she must have been. In pop culture, she searches for depth and meaning, not frivolity or escape. Her Pinto Pony is a gathering place for serious collectors and those attracted to the benevolently bizarre. Someday they may be able to ride the range with her as well. Ruby’s professed ambition is to open a dude ranch. Complete with a personally decorated Roy Rogers suite—and a salt and pepper museum out back of the corral. Pink, no doubt. Like a twister of newborn mice, or a cowgirl’s bubblegum cud.

  House & Garden, 1991

  Terence McKenna

  From my downtown Seattle apartment, a number of provocative neon signs are visible, silently
reciting themselves like lines from a hot, jerky poem. Above the entrance to the Champ Arcade, for example, there flashes the phrase LIVE GIRLS/LIVE GIRLS/LIVE GIRLS, a sentiment that never fails to bring me joy, especially when I consider the alternative. Less jubilant, though more profound, is the sign in the dry cleaner’s window. It signals simply, ALTERATIONS/ALTERATIONS/ALTERATIONS, but it always reminds me of Terence McKenna—not merely because Terence McKenna is the leading authority on the experiential aspects of mind-altering plants, or because his lectures and workshops have altered my own thinking, but because Terence, perhaps more than anyone else in our culture, has the ability to let out the waist on the trousers of perception and raise the hemline of reality.

  Scholar, theoretician, explorer, dreamer, pioneer, fanatic, and spellbinder, as well as ontological tailor, McKenna combines an erudite, if crackingly original, overview of history with a genuinely visionary approach to human destiny. The result is a cyclone of unorthodox ideas capable of lifting almost any brain out of its cognitive Kansas. When Hurricane Terence sets one’s mind back down, however, one will find that it is on solid ground; for, far from Oz-built, the theories and speculations of McKenna are rooted in a time-tested pragmatism thousands of years old. Many of his notions astonish us not because they are so new, but because they have been so long forgotten.