Comments
Loading Dream Comments...
You must be logged in to write a comment - Log In
ArtistTrout Fishing in America on the Blackfoot with Mr. Dress Up My meditation teacher, Mr. Dress Up, a.k.a. Jim Swartz, had a summer cabin up the Blackfoot River, just beyond Bonner, Montana. He grew up there. His mother was a judge in Bozeman, which seemed important in the way origins always do, even when they explain nothing. He moved to California and by twenty-five made his first million. He was, by any reasonable measure, a wretched person—no moral compass, no brakes, no curiosity about consequences. Amazing Grace fits him well. A wretch saved, though the mechanism was unconventional. On his way to a business meeting, he picked up a hitchhiking hippie. This hippie was Grace, capital G, and carried grace in a more practical form. He offered my teacher a hit of LSD and said, simply, “Try this.” It worked immediately. The meeting evaporated. He watched the longest sunset of his life bleed into the Pacific, the sun stretching itself out as if it had nowhere else to be. Within months he was in Morocco, smoking hash and flying out of his body over Marrakesh, where he darted downward and landed inside the body of a sleeping beggar, who startled awake, confused and briefly enlightened. India followed. Then an ashram in San Francisco. But back up the coast, in Fort Bragg—an old logging town—trouble was brewing. The lesbian Vedanta mafia had taken over and snitched out our beloved guru to the kingpin of self-knowledge, Swami Grumpy Ananda Saraswati, who in secret was also a notorious playboy guru with a San Francisco harem and an active nightlife. This is where the hippie part of me laughs and says, “It’s all love. Who cares, if no one gets hurt?” But my teacher—Jim Swartz—had a special power: he could change personalities at will. One minute a guru, the next an international art dealer, then a suave businessman, then a red-neck cowboy. Once he dressed the part—hat, boots, sunglasses—and picked up his main disciple, Shanti Mayi, in a pickup truck with loud mufflers. We drove to KFC, ate fried chicken, and discussed the remake of The Fly and how it related to tantra. He was a writer. He wrote a story in the shadow of Trout Fishing in America. When he went fishing, he wore the full costume: vest, waders, hat, shades. In yoga circles he was a vegetarian. Quietly, privately, he was also a killer and eater of trout. And somehow, improbably, he taught me meditation. The truth be told, my first guru was an electric fan, which taught me Om somewhere before I was one. I developed a power over my dreams and began confronting that consciousness within them. When I met Jim Swartz, I was couch-surfing on Shanti Mayi’s couch. Meditation for me was less about transcendence than alignment—making the outer guy resemble the inner one. This is what Mr. Dress Up did for me. Years later he showed up at my place in his noble ashram—a Ram van—sleeping twelve hours a day. When I asked about it, he spoke of symbols of the Self. I told him the Self doesn’t need a symbol, and that was the last I saw him. I imagined making an image of him fishing on the Blackfoot beside his cabin, turning it into a large postcard, writing this text in very small letters, and sending it to the rest home his fifth wife put him in when she grew tired of taking care of him.
My meditation teacher, Mr. Dress Up, a.k.a. Jim Swartz, had a summer cabin up the Blackfoot River, just beyond Bonner, Montana. He grew up in the state. His mother was a judge in Bozeman, which seemed important in the way origins always do, even when they explain nothing.
He moved to California and by twenty-five made his first million. He was, by any reasonable measure, a wretched person—no moral compass, no brakes, no curiosity about consequences. Amazing Grace fits him well. A wretch saved, though the mechanism was unconventional.
On his way to a business meeting, he picked up a hitchhiking hippie. This hippie was Grace, capital G, and also carried grace in a more practical form. He offered my teacher a hit of LSD and said, simply, “Try this.”
It worked immediately. The meeting evaporated. He watched the longest sunset of his life bleed into the Pacific, the sun stretching itself out as if it had nowhere else to be.
Within months he was in Morocco, smoking hash and flying out of his body over Marrakesh, where he darted downward and landed inside the body of a sleeping beggar, who startled awake, confused and briefly enlightened.
India followed. Then an ashram in San Francisco.
But back up the coast, in Fort Bragg—an old logging town—trouble was brewing. The lesbian Vedanta mafia had taken over and snitched out our beloved guru to the kingpin of self-knowledge, Swami Grumpy Ananda Saraswati, who, in secret, was also a notorious playboy guru with a San Francisco harem and an extremely active nightlife.
This is where the hippie part of me laughs and says, “It’s all love. Who cares, if no one gets hurt?”
But my teacher—Jim Swartz—had a special power: he could change personalities at will. One minute a guru, the next an international art dealer, then a suave businessman, then a red-neck cowboy. Once he dressed the part completely—hat, boots, sunglasses—and picked up his main disciple, Shanti Mayi, in a pickup truck with loud mufflers. We drove to KFC, ate fried chicken, and discussed the remake of The Fly and how it related to tantra.
He was a writer. He wrote a story in the shadow of Trout Fishing in America.
When he went fishing, he wore the full costume: vest, waders, hat, shades. In yoga circles he was a vegetarian. Quietly, privately, he was also a killer and eater of trout.
And somehow, improbably, he taught me meditation. The truth be told, my first guru was an electric fan, which taught me Om somewhere before I was one. Is this how I remember being a baby? I developed a power over my dreams and started confronting that consciousness within my dreams.
