Walking down to Bellingham Bay / Thinking about Luis Bunuel and Dalton Trumbo

Johnny Got His Gun and Dalton Trumbo are still on my mind. After re-reading Johnny Got His Gun, for the first time since Richard recommended it while he was in Vietnam in 1970, I've been checking out related DVDs from the public library. A few days ago, I watched "Trumbo"(2007) and was reminded that Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplays for "Exodus" and "Spartacus." Yesterday I watched "Johnny Got His Gun" on DVD. Although it was first released in 1971, this DVD with additional features was released in 2009. I don't remember seeing "Johnny Got His Gun" when it was released on September 22, 1971, but I am guessing that Richard did see it.

Richard's last weeks of life in a VA hospital in spring of 2008 appeared to be much like those of Joe Bonham in Dalton Trumbo's 1971 film, "Johnny Got His Gun."

In 1971, when Dalton Trumbo directed "Johnny Got His Gun," he added to and changed the story from what he had written in his book in 1939. Scenes with Joe Bonham's contemplations on Jesus were written by Luis Bunuel.

Of all the changes and additions that strengthened an already powerful testament against war, what stood out for me was the scene near the end of the film where the military hospital doctors and staff were standing at Joe Bonham's bedside after Joe had finally been able to communicate with them by banging his head on his pillow in Morse code, "S.O.S. Help me." The commanding officer had asked Joe what he wanted, and Joe had replied, and the commanding officer had denied Joe's requests. At that point, Joe began to bang his head against his pillow, saying "Kill me" over and over again in Morse code.

The commanding officer then turned to the chaplain and said, "Don't you have some message for him, Padre?"

The priest shook his head.

The officer said, "You could at least tell him to put his faith in God, couldn't you?"

The priest said, "I will pray for him for the rest of my days, but I will not risk testing his faith against your stupidity."

The officer said, "Well, you're a hell of a priest, aren't you?"

The priest said, "He is a product of your profession, not mine," and walked out of the hospital room.

Now that is a mysterious statement. The koan here is, "What is the product of the priest's profession?" Certainly Dalton Trumbo had given some thought to that when he wrote that scene and asked Luis Bunuel to write words for Jesus to say earlier in the film.

The two following paragraphs are from a Wikipedia article about Luis Bunuel:

In a 1960 interview with Michele Manceaux in L'Express, Buñuel famously declared: "Thank God I'm an atheist."

However, he repudiated this statement in a 1977 article in The New Yorker. "I'm not a Christian, but I'm not an atheist, either," he said. "I'm weary of hearing that accidental old aphorism of mine, 'I'm an atheist, thank God.' It's outworn. Dead leaves. In 1951, I made a small film called "Mexican Bus Ride," about a village too poor to support a church and a priest. The place was serene, because no one suffered from guilt. It's guilt we must escape from, not God."

I'm feeling Richard's serene presence today. It is nearly four years since he died. We are not suffering from guilt. We are too poor to support a church and a priest. We do not walk alone anymore. I think that the word God is a koan.

A sunlit wood where the true way was a koan

At 20 years beyond what may have been the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a sunlit wood where the true way was a koan.

(with many thanks to Dante Alighieri)



This film clip shows the approach to the children's fishing pond and the little bridge over the fishing pond dam on Whatcom Creek You can hear the water rushing over the dam as well as a small waterfall just beyond the dam. You can see a little of the fishing pond. Nice surprise to see a man and his young daughter out enjoying the sunny day.

"...not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart..." / A Memorial Koan

Listen to Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 30, 1967:





"Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love (am's italics). I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are brothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State--they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.



It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America."







In this speech, Martin Luther King, Jr., remembers and relates to the anxious and sorrowful Jesus taking up his cross and then a few moments later speaks of an angry God. The angry God part of Christianity and Judaism has always troubled me. People are asked to be nonviolent. The violence is left up to God? I don't think so. The whole thing sounds like a koan, doesn't it?



Still meditating on Buddha's empty hands and Mahalia Jackson singing "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands," remembering that Martin Luther King, Jr., nominated Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, for the Nobel Peace prize in January of 1967 and that Thich Nhat Hanh had urged Martin Luther King, Jr., to publicly and peacefully oppose the war in Vietnam.



Meditating on the thought that it is not easy for any of us, including President Obama and Martin Luther King and Thich Nhat Hanh, to live up to these ideals, and that a memorial to Martin Luther King during the troubled presidency of Barack Obama speaks of the inner koans that President Obama and all people of conscience must live with each day no matter what their spiritual perspective.



From the Nobel lecture by Martin Luther King, Jr.:



"We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say "We must not wage war." It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace."













































"The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure. To live it you have to explode. In that last hour of need, we entirely agreed, sacrifice was the code of the road."

(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)"



"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."

(Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself")



(Pastel on paper, "Self-Portrait of an Old Friend as a Young Man," drawn by am in the early 1980s from a photo sent to me by my friend, Richard, taken of him in Vietnam in 1970)