by Alex Symington

Our little island city has many charms to crow about; gentle warm weather in January, an exciting swashbuckling and idiosyncratic history, New-England-meets-the-South architectural style, great theater and music venues, but the crown jewel, I submit, is the Key West Literary Seminar. Our near century long history as a refuge for artists and writers is well documented, making Key West the most natural place on the planet for literary greats to gather once a year, (this being the thirty-third) and talk shop to the delight of those fortunate attendees. I am a Johnny-come-lately to the annual experience in that I have only participated in the last four seminars. My first exposure was the Sunday afternoon free talk on the “Hungry Muse”, the exploration of food in literature, in 2011. Never mind, I was hooked.

To be in the presence of these great minds that courageously and deliberately have made a life and a living with their creativity is, for me, a glimpse at the potential for all of us to evolve into something better, something with a future, a healthy relationship with each other and the world at large. Soul food, if you will.

This year’s literary theme, “How The Light Gets In”, was taken from a line in Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”. The full stanza is, “Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack, a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in”. As you might expect from the title, our relationship as humans with one another and our relationship with the metaphysical were explored in great depth. Poetry and prose were used to give shape to the shapeless and illustrate our innate impulse to explain the inexplicable.

There were discussions that included specific religions and absences there of and their influences on the writer’s personal narrative. This, of course was unavoidable due in part to the writer’s individual religious indoctrination as young people and in many cases, its rejection. However the panelists went far beyond any particular dogma or rules and regulations of any one creed.

Death was a subject faced squarely on by poets, Mark Doty and Marie Howe, both having lost loved ones to AIDS. Rather than a dark and depressing verbal exchange, it was refreshing to hear through their poetry and subsequent discussion the reality of the transient nature of life and how we can honor loved ones in life AND death.

There was no shortage of humor. At one point a panel including novelist, Wally Lamb, poet, Marie Howe and novelist and poet Patricia Hampl were discussing the Buddhist approach of seeing oneself in the “other” in order to break down the us/them paradigm. To illustrate that message, at one point, Marie Howe declared, “I am Dick Cheney!” and Wally Lamb, who was sitting in a chair next to Marie, quietly slid his chair away from Marie. Henceforth, for the duration of the seminar, seeing oneself in Dick would be the benchmark of attaining Arahant, the fourth and ultimate level of enlightenment.

If I was forced to choose a favorite panel or reader it would be the Sunday morning line-up of Robert Richardson’s reading his essay on transcendentalists and the conversation that followed between Pico Iyer and Barry Lopez. Robert charmed us all with his light touch on the potentially ponderous topic of transcendence. He let us off the hook by suggesting to the audience that we might want to transcend transcendence all together. He took us to Walden Pond and we listened to Emerson and Thoreau’s take on both the earthly and the incorporeal. Can’t wait for the transcript/video!

This was followed by a literally mind altering conversation between writers Pico Lyer and Barry Lopez. Both of these men are world traveled and are intimate with the lives of others; other countries, other cultures and the varied ways that “others” look at the world. These men embody what Mark Twain alluded to in a letter, “…nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kinds of people.” Pico has been close to the Dalai Lama for nearly forty years, first introduced by his father at seventeen. He has since developed a deep friendship with the king of Tibet and written about it in his book, “The Open Road”. His home base is in Japan, yet he is truly a citizen of the world. It is pure pleasure to listen to him speak on ANY subject.

Barry is an essayist, author, and short-story writer, and has traveled extensively in both remote and populated parts of the world from the Antarctic to Afghanistan to Africa. He, like Pico, views the world holistically and is concerned with degradation of the environment and annihilation of indigenous cultures and languages. Barry had some advice for the wise traveler; when experiencing an unfamiliar culture, keep your mouth shut and listen to how they see things, how they relate to the world. That is how we learn. Listening, not talking. My greatest wish would be that young people could be exposed to this invaluable learning experience before they succumb to the mind numbing process of their vocational training masquerading as education. As I watched and listened to Pico’s and Barry’s hyper-informed dialogue on “the great mystery” I, for a moment, did transcend my mundane plane.

Bonus poem on Dick Cheney and attaining enlightenment:

DICK

Maybe someday I can love Dick Cheney
Some day enlightenment might be attained
I’ve been told all things are possible

Most of those misguided fools are
nothing more than grist for comedy
But, Dick…. Dick is special

The Buddha tells me to see myself in the other
To eliminate the artificial us/them construct
To see myself in Dick Cheney

Could Dick see himself in me?
I don’t think I like the sound of that

Would the “me” Dick become contrite and renounce
his affiliation with darkness?
Would the “me” Dick return to all those talk shows
on an Apology/Confession Tour?

Would the “Dick” me continue to rationalize
the soul deadening crime of war profiteering?
Would the “Dick” me “do it all again in a minute”?

Someday I might see myself in Dick and
Dick might see me and realize
that we are all one…

When pigs levitate.

A.S. 1/15

More from other sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvNxcxKyMrk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jO7WMsv9Kc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz2G3pFwlUg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIi1SvbFQYc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_vl3DYkt3w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1gjXSMmrHI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIsZPIHUUq8