The Good Luck of Right Now(8)

(Also, I thought about how it is okay to look at a man on fire on the Free Library’s Internet, but not two naked women licking each other. Who makes the rules? Death is okay. Sex is bad. Mothers must die. Cancer comes when you least expect it.)

I looked at the man on fire for a long time, but couldn’t make my mind believe it was a person. Not that I doubted or mistrusted the caption. It was just very hard to believe that such things actually happen. That people on the other side of the world care enough about anything to set themselves aflame.

From what I understood, these monks performed the self-immolation in order to attract attention to your mutual cause—returning the Dalai Lama to Tibet.

The article went on later to say “TIME magazine has conceded that it generally takes a U.S. President aggravating Beijing by meeting with the Dalai Lama, or a high-profile celebrity Richard Gere fundraiser to get Tibet into the news these days.”

When I read that statement, it hit me—you, my friend, Richard Gere, are more powerful than a U.S. president, because the president wasn’t even named, and yet you were.

How does it feel to be more famous and powerful and iconic than Barack Obama?

I also understood that you can do more for the Dalai Lama by hosting a dinner party than Buddhist monks willing to burn themselves to death. Their sacrifice hardly makes the news—they go unnamed—but your being blessed by the Dalai Lama was in the Huffington Post.

You are a powerful man, Richard Gere.

I’m glad that I chose you to confide in during this difficult period in my life. The more I learn about you, the more I realize that Mom was right to keep your letter in her underwear drawer—that maybe she knew I would need your counsel after she was gone, and left your letter behind for me to find as a clue. It’s almost like she’s still helping me by making sure you and I are corresponding.

On a website called Tibet Sun, I read (and copied into my Interesting Things I Have Heard notebook) this: “A former Buddhist monk, who burnt himself last week in protest against the Chinese rule in Tibet, has reportedly died from burns. He was the twelfth Tibetan to have burned themselves in Tibet since March this year in protest against Beijing’s rule in Tibet. Seven of them are reported to have died.”

Twelve monks have lit themselves on fire trying to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish.

This, of course, reminded me of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ, including Bartholomew (sometimes referred to as Nathaniel), who is my namesake.

I wondered if you, Richard Gere, were not the modern-day Jesus Christ of Buddhism.

It made me wonder if you ever thought about lighting yourself on fire, since you are also a Buddhist. Imagine how much news coverage that would demand. Everyone around the world would be transfixed if famous Hollywood actor and humanitarian Richard Gere performed a self-immolation.

Imagine it—the power!

Your greatest role!

I sincerely hope you will not light yourself on fire, because I have only just begun writing you. I would like to continue this conversation, so please do not go the way of these Tibetan monks. I believe you can accomplish much more alive than dead, and it doesn’t seem like their sacrifices are doing much to weaken China. Also, there is the clue—what I found in Mom’s underwear drawer—and perhaps you are meant to help not only the Dalai Lama but also me, Bartholomew Neil. Your self-immolation would not help me at all at this juncture, or at least I cannot see how.

No one in the United States even knows that these monks are making such a huge sacrifice, which makes me feel very disheartened for them.

“Life is shit,” my young redheaded grief counselor Wendy says whenever we reach an impasse in our conversation.

It is her default platitude.

Her words of wisdom for me.

“Life is shit.”

When Wendy says that, it’s like she’s pretending we are not bound together by her job, but really truly are friends. It’s like we’re having a beer at the bar, like friends on TV do.

“Life is shit.”

She whispers it even. Like she’s not supposed to say that to me, but wants me to know that her happy talk and positivity are part of her pretending game.

Just like being a bird.

And I’ll try to connect the freckles on her face to make pictures—like new constellations—and I can make a heart when I try really hard.

Her face is an oval.

Her eyes are sometimes the color of a May sky at 2:00 p.m. on a Saturday, and sometimes they are the color of polar bear ice.

She’s beautiful in a little-sister way.

But back to the monks—I’m not sure I would light myself on fire for any cause whatsoever, and sometimes I worry that I just don’t believe enough in any one thing to make a significant contribution to the world, now that I no longer have to care for Mom.

Sometimes I wish I felt the passion and purpose you must feel for returning the Dalai Lama to Tibet, but I’ve never experienced such intense feelings.

Mostly I’ve just been content to spend time with my mother, and she said that our spending time together was fine by her.

She said she needed me, and it was nice to be needed.

She never made me feel as though I should be doing more with my life—like making money and having beers at the bar with friends—and I sometimes worry that her lax attitude was a mistake, especially while raising a fatherless boy.