Apogee and Perigee of Bengal Tigers.

Here is my petite femme, my Bengal tiger, making tiger prints in Paris.

We are all on journeys, but sometimes we forget where we are going, and often we fear we do not have control over where and how our journeys will end. Enjoying the ride of life is a worthy goal. Ideally, if we grow old gracefully, wisdom envelopes us with the attributes of being at peace with ourselves, despite our failures in life.  From that vantage point we better understand the artifices society has invented, and the rituals we have incorporated into our lives to help us assuage our fears, and to shed light on the mystical path we are walking towards fullness of being. And likewise, this learned wisdom, will show in our joie de vivre. The light of our raison d'être will inevitably inspire others to find their way. Esprit de corps is contagious. When we emulate others, we ourselves become lights to those who follow after us. We become mentors, and leave footprints for others to follow, or paw prints, as it were, of Bengal Tigers.

The moon will be at perigee tomorrow, the closest it will come in 2012, in its irregular orbit around Mother Earth. In the jungles of India, tigers will gaze with yellow eyes at the huge full moon and think thoughts about their lives and where they are going as they prowl in the night. In cities around the world, human beings, who are often Bengal Tigers in need of epiphanies, will look with weary but noble eyes at the moon and wish for greater things for themselves. The huge moon will certainly facilitate a more festive Cinco de Mayo. There are no Bengal Tigers in Mexico, though I am sure that had there been, Montezuma would have had one or two in his zoo. But both Montezuma and Cortes were Bengal Tigers, in their zest for life, and indomitable personalities. They were the dangerous types of tigers that do exist in the world, from whom we must we wary.

I knew the state of the moon because I am a moon child. I know about the lunar cycles by experience. I do not need to glance out my window to know if the moon is full. I feel it. The tides are high inside me, and I know a new beach will be revealed soon.

On this beach there will be time to walk, and perhaps find new things have washed up in the night and early morning hours, when the tide was low. There may be paw prints of a Bengal Tiger there. And perhaps when I turn I will see the prints are mine own. For we all can have the spirit of the tiger inside us, and often we must have it in order to excel.

Today, on Burnside Street in Portland, I stood near a homeless older man, his stringy white hair and beard framing a face that has seen many struggles. He had a dirty yellow blanket wrapped around himself, his oversized glasses were stained and hung low over his weathered nose. His material possessions were contained within a shopping cart, that was topped with two small umbrellas. It was raining in Portland, and this man was hunkered down in a bus stop, until the rain subsided. As I often do with strangers, I struck up a conversation with the man. I commented on his need for two umbrella's, and that segued into the man espousing his life view that we are all the same, and the fabric that binds us is our common need to survive. He did not say it in an eloquent way, but there was gritty truth to his words. We cannot know the impact we have on those we meet. One kind word may be enough to help them get through one more day. One full, oversized moon may be enough to inspire them to the fact that despite all the hurt and hopelessness in the world, there is also great beauty, that walk together like strange companions.

One of things that occur to me today, on this, my strange journey, this moon dance, this beach, is that job interviews are not unlike the knowledge that when we enter a room to be interviewed there is a certain apprehension about whether there will be a Bengal Tiger waiting for us inside, or a friendly farm dog or cat, the former seeking to eat us alive, and the latter to make us feel at home. We step into the unknown, the night, our feet seeking to land on solid ground. We are apprehensive of our interviewer's will accept us or reject us. We go hoping we will find a new home.

But where is home, exactly? I am not sure where my home is anymore. I have made my home in many places, and yet the thought keeps returning to me that I must return, like a spawning salmon, to the countryside, where my head and heart will be at peace, and my hands will till the earth and in the quiet evenings there will be only the sound of crickets and the musical scrapes of wind bowed wild grasses caressing one other in the night. You can take a man out of the country, but you cannot take the country out of the man. Rural life has deep roots in me, and like a tree's roots that sense water in the earth, so mine do as well when I see a wild tract of land where my future house might stand.

My daughter lives in a suburb of Paris. She is an urbanite, a brave soul, small in stature but hugely resolute in her belief that in the madness of life she can find her way as an artist. I have taken this same journey, and as her father I have offered layers of advice and gentle encouragement. A father should be required to carry pompoms and know a certain number of basic cheers to encourage his children. And not only his children, but everyone who he meets in random and planned places. My daughter attends École des Beaux-Arts, where the archaic art forms and methodologies still thrive. She emails photos of her artful life, and shares her fears and hopes. She took a leap of faith in going with her French boyfriend to Paris, after her graduation from a good east coast college. It was a leap of love, which is often the best motivation for action. When we leap, we extend our feet and hearts in expectation of a solid landing on a new place where all we have worked for will come to fruition. We leap into the unknown, like tigers. We leap because we must leap, or see our dreams diminish.

What have I worked for? I thought to myself as I readied my portfolio for my interview. We are all still a bit lost, but some of us have good maps that we hold in our trembling hands. The trembling is due to two things: our fear of failure, and our fear that all our altruistic hopes for ourselves will come true. I am holding that map in my hands now. I often get it out to examine it and think, no, visualize that new me, in that new land.

We each have within us, the enormous capacity for goodness. Some, more than others. In the night, when I sit up in my bed and play my guitar, or write, I have a sensation of warmth that wells up from deep inside my heart. The heart is a much wiser organ than the brain. The heart believes things the brain resists believing. It is a sense of knowing that fills me now, as I prepare to enter a room where a Bengal tiger may be waiting. But one can be at peace even when stared at by a Bengal tiger. For even tigers can sense a person's self-confidence, and courage.

I mailed my daughter two CD's of my original music a week ago. In the package I also enclosed a 1925 edition of Little Orphan Annie. The comic, created by Harold Gray, has a number of endearing qualities. I read the comic while in an antique store in Hillsboro, Oregon. Mr. Gray knew something about life.  He understood the difference between genuine and disingenuous people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Orphan_Annie
We could all learn something from that cartoon. We have all been Little Orphan Annie's in our aloneness.

I am sitting in a cafe called The Side Door, in southeast Portland, writing this blog. A young man was in the parking area of the cafe, dumpster diving. As I sit here I think of the old man wrapped in a filthy yellow blanket. I think of the old man Phil Connors (Bill Murray) helps in the film, Groundhog Day. There are many lessons to be learned from that comic film. Given enough time, even the worse of us can become better people.

As I sit here in this old but revamped cafe, admiring the high bare brick walls, watching the friendly barrister interact with customers, the Indie music on the stereo, the comfortable and well used seating whose crinkled faux leather fabrics testify to meals shared, I remember that we are all the same. It is possible that Bengal Tigers can become friendly farm cats and dogs if we present ourselves in a non-threatening manner. This is Portland, the land of Portlandia, where Bengal Tigers await their transformation into loving and successful human beings while lingering over well-made soups in cafes, or hunkered down in bus stops on a rainy day, mulling over their homelessness and how they will resurrect their dreams.

My daughter works in a children's shoe store to augment her bank account while she attends school. Paris is not unlike Portland in many ways. Bigger, of course, but it is raining there too, and though they speak French, and have ways of doing things that seem far different than the way things are done in Oregon, we are kindred spirits. We live at the same latitude, we cultivate similar wines. We love our families and offer words of encouragement to homeless strangers in bus stops, in much the same manner, and for the same reasons. We interview for jobs we need and leave jobs we do not need.  We aspire to be better people, to reach our goals, and mentor others along the way. I am going to Paris this year to see my daughter, and her boyfriend, Gregoire, who is a cinematographer on his own artistic journey. I have no proof of this, but I feel it, as I feel the appearance of a full moon.

It occurs to me now that my daughter, when faced with a Bengal Tiger in a room, became a tiger, and any fear she had: that she could not become fluent in French in two months; that she could not become a skilled artist; that she could not make her love affair with Gregoire last; that she would starve for lack of money; were conquered, and now she is realizing she can do anything. I am waving my pompoms for her.