The Angry Buddhist by Seth Greenland: A Good Book for Me

Katherine today.  Good Morning.

I think this is the last Monday I'm waking up with a pretty good sized To-Do list facing me.  The one vital item at the moment (moving some money into the cash-strapped checking account) can wait at least until the Schwarz Group wakes up.  This gives me time to build up the nerve to let the financial planner know I blew it again.  Things just aren't going according to plan around here.  It pisses me off.

For the last year or so I've watched my angry side grow up.  I've generally buried anger and lots of cancer stuff I've read has suggested that hiding anger inside is like a cancer invitation.  I've been actively working at being okay with being angry on the outside.  I'm not very practiced at it though.  I suck at it.

I know folks at the gym who have anger mastered.  The towels, the temperature of the pool, the temperature of the running track, the lack of Kleenex or the wasteful provision of Kleenex or the generic brand of the Kleenex, the politics of anybody, the weather (I can't remember a day that made a certain crinkly semi-swimmer happy), the kids waiting for a van to school, the crappy coffee--all of these things make these people really angry.  The weather and traffic can make some folks crazy mad and one man is ready to punch folks out because "Obama has cut the parking in downtown Littleton."  Like I said--lots of anger I could learn from if I was any good at taking tutorials.

My problem, however, is none of that stuff makes me mad.  My problem is that I'm vaguely angry.  I have pissed off days.  My doctor and one daughter-in-law suspect hormones because I can't take any.  I'm not sure why it's ok for fellows to get mad, but girls are hormonal if they get mad.  I don't think I'm hormonal.  I think I am unschooled in the whole anger business and it's just another bit of gender discrimination I'm coming to terms with in my sixties.  See--a little anger poking through here.

Now, general existential angst I can handle.  I feel strongly that I have worry and guilt mastered.  I had training here.  My mom made sure I would worry about everything.  She made sure that I would attack duties and complete them at a top-notch level and that I would feel guilty if I did not.   Give me a good existential crisis and I'm ready to roll--I can worry with the best of them.  I need help battling the gods though.

Mom didn't believe in saying anything about bad stuff.  Period.  Anger is bad stuff.  We, as girls, were not to get angry or express anger.  There was no battle practice growing up.  My parents didn't fight.  Mom didn't fight.  It was wrong to fight--but wrong because she was a girl, because I was a girl.   Now here I am and it's downright depressing when I am agitated that I just can't aim a tidy "Fuck you" in any accurate direction.  I'm working on it though.

I've begun to see clues.  I adore Lizbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and her other books.  I like a Pink song where she tells off her husband and the Amy Winehouse anti-rehab song and I looked at two of my playlists a bit ago and pissed off women were there big time.  When I picked them, I remember thinking these would be good for running.  They look angry now.  Lots of gender aiming here.

I'm also avoiding the news.  How can anyone keep from living in anger with what goes on outside--girls chained in basements, marathons blown up, churches on fire, a dysfunctional Congress.  Part of this is just plain age and seeing that the news today is no different than the news of my youth.  I read this morning that the Jackson Hole newspaper compared FDR to Hitler when the Teton National Park was created.  Nothing changes.  It wears on me and makes me mad, but I'm not sure at what.

All of this stuff is why I picked up The Angry Buddhist by Seth Greenland.  I bought it when it first came out, but I just got to it recently.  It seemed like a perfect title for my mood and I ended up really liking the book.  It wasn't a cure--I still feel a good deal of un-targeted anger and I'm not sure if I should identify the anger or not and I'm not feeling any closer to the sort of Buddhist enlightenment that would make dealing with the anger a kind of normal detachment.  None of that happened, but like I said, it's a good book and it's fun to read.

The book takes place in desert California and Jimmy Duke is the protagonist.  He's been recently forced out of the police department in a suburb of Palm Springs because he didn't kill a dog he was ordered to kill.  Jimmy is angry about this and lots of other things in his world.  His all-image brother Randall is running for re-election against a very Sarah Palin-ish woman in a Congressional race.  Randall wants to use Jimmy and a recently paroled third brother, Dale, as political props.  There is lots of political fuel for Jimmy's anger here as well.

Lots of odd characters float through adding fun and fire.  There's a bisexual tennis coach/tanning salon girl and a political advisor both scheming their way to the tops of their weirdo worlds.  There's a hard-ass local police chief (named Hard) who forced Jimmy off the force and he discovers some folks can get angrier than he can.  There are lots of folks who remind me of the dolt in Fargo--sometimes crime needs to be left to the criminals.

Because of the dog (happily living with Jimmy), our hero did a small stint with anger management classes the department required him to take before his ultimate departrure.  He found his way to some beginning Zen teachings and as his asshole political brother keeps pushing his buttons, Jimmy imagines Randall in pink bubbles and has the bubbles float off the horizon of his mind.  It doesn't work long or very well for Jimmy.  I've tried floating away some thoughts in pink bubbles a couple of times.  It didn't work for me.  I just can't think in pink.

This is a fun and funny book.  It attacks politics and the people in politics and how the only thing a politician can do is run for office.  The remaining circus of characters make fun of the self-importance we all suffer from--I mean I'm writing my wee thoughts on this wee blog with its wee following.  I know I overweigh my thoughts, but the characters surrounding Jimmy are superstars at over-valuing everything about themselves.  Mostly, The Angry Buddhist is a really good time.