Mitchikaboola or A Couple of Buddhists Walk Into a Bar

I've placed a framed photo of the Dalai Lama in the breakfast room. Let's call it the breakfast room, shall we? One of these days I expect to come home and find the Housekeeper passed out in a dead faint on the wall-to-wall below the photo, vacuum in hand. One of these every-other-Thursdays, that is, which is when the Housekeeper shows up to clean our den of iniquity. The Housekeeper is a Fundamentalist Christian. She can Swiffer the downstairs bathroom and pray at the same time. She scares the bejesus out of me.

Not since my glow-in-the-dark cross which smelled like rotten eggs and was vaguely radioactive have I been moved to create such a shrine. Let's call it a shrine, shall we? When I was a kid, I used to keep the cross in the light of the clown lamp by day and spin it through the dark of my bedroom by night, spelling out swear words for my little sister in the next bed. Hell! Damn! Poop! Sometimes I spelled out names. I thought if I could spell my name fast enough, get the entire thing to appear all at once, one letter after the other before the first letter faded, a miracle would occur.

I'm not sure what I expected to happen. Something along the lines of dolls coming to life, or the ability to turn invisible or make Miss Seranno's clothes catch fire during multiplication.

I've included the Dalai Lama in the collection of family photos on the sideboard, not just for his compassionate knowing expression, but because he looks Finnish. Maybe everyone thinks this. Not that he looks Finnish, but that he looks somehow familiar. When I glance at the photo, I expect the mouth to start moving, curling up at the edges in that ironic way. I expect the eyes to crinkle behind the ubiquitous glasses, the shoulders to shift and settle beneath the gold and scarlet robe.

The DL speaks to me. Not in person obviously. Maybe everyone thinks this.

I keep a vase of flowers beside the photo. I've kept flowers in that particular spot for years. Not the same flowers obviously. I've only recently added the photo. It joins a jumble of other shrine-y stuff, including a cheap resin statue of a garden fairy, a conch shell from California which belonged to my mother, a tiny picture of my dog and my daughter taken on my daughter's first day of Second Grade.

When she was younger, I used to hold the conch shell up to my daughter's ear. She never heard the ocean, although once she heard Cinderella.



I'm a Kindergartener when it comes to Buddhism. His Holiness* seems to know this. When I pass by and catch his eye, I could swear (Hell! Damn!) there's a twinkle there. As if he had a really great joke to tell me and was practicing the punchline in his head. I'd like to think we share the same sense of humor. I'm sure we don't. I'd just like to think so, is what I said.

I'm pretty sure the Housekeeper doesn't have a sense of humor. Or if she does, it's different than mine. She's had a rough life, Jesus is her Savior. I can dig it. Only, who would you rather hang with? Jesus was a flash in the pan and then he hightailed it ("Feets don't fail me now!"). In spite of this, the faithful have been awaiting his return for two thousand years. Talk about faith. Meanwhile, the DL has reappeared at least fourteen times, no matter things have gotten even crazier since his last incarnation. This speaks volumes. Next to the DL, Jesus is a no-show. The date that stood you up.

As usual, I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just reacting. That's me, a walking reactor. Maybe I should learn to chant at the same time.

All I know is that it gives me a little rush every time I see the Dalai Lama in the breakfast room, I have to catch my breath. Something having to do with connectedness. I feel reassured. Of what, I don't know, but it doesn't matter. The feeling itself is enough. Which, given my slip-slide-y perspective on such things, borders on the miraculous. Let's call it miraculous, shall we?

Once or twice I've paused at the sideboard and put the conch shell to my ear. An echo-y tubular sort of sound, featuring our aquarium burbling in the background. I'm not sure what I expect to hear. Something along the lines of "A couple of Buddhists walk into a bar..." spoken in an ironic male voice. Or maybe the ocean. Or my mother. Or, for that matter, Cinderella. Whose life, when you think about it, was one miracle after another.





(*We'll address the issue of a "Her Holiness" at our next meeting.)