7
Earth, Wind, and Fire
I love New Mexico and got to work there in 2007 and visited the Hanuman temple in Taos. I was filming a movie in Albuquerque called The Eye, starring the beautiful Jessica Alba. It was a Hollywood movie based on a Korean horror film and directed by two Frenchmen. Jessica plays a blind violinist who gets a cornea transplant. The cornea she now sees with belonged to a girl in Mexico who had hung herself after receiving a vision of a horrible industrial accident she couldn’t prevent. After the transplant, Jessica’s vision becomes psychically blurry because she’s seeing with the eyes of the visionary girl. The horrible accident keeps playing in her mind’s eye as she progressively loses her grip. Therein lies the horror. I never saw the movie because I’m not a horror movie fan.
I liked the part I played of her sister, though, who shows up intermittently to tell Jessica that she’s acting strange and to ask if anything’s wrong. I was relieved not to know any of her horror, and I got to play a flight attendant, which I’ve always romanticized. I wanted to wear soft materials Jessica’s character would find comforting, and since it was a gothic story, I thought playing guilty was the way to go. I threw on a comfy sweater but looked too much like a schoolmarm, according to the producer, Paula Wagner, who wanted me to dress more like her. I ended up getting fitted for expensive power suits that a flight attendant would never have been able to afford.
I was difficult for a day in wardrobe fittings because my character’s clothes were less personal, but understood this was “genre” and I’d need to blend in with the dark color scheme of everything. I was grateful for the paying job, really. My last film, Broken English, had been at Sundance a few months prior and got good reviews, and I was hot enough for a second to land a Hollywood gig. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, I learned, and plus, I was already digging the horizon and the air and driving to my music, like Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter. “We’re going to come up to the eyes of clarity / And we’ll go down to the beads of guile.” Joni Mitchell and New Mexico went hand in hand—and the expanse of sky was like medicine. I need the wind.
There was an Ayurvedic café in Albuquerque called Annapurna’s, which is Sanskrit for “full of food” or “goddess of the harvests.” I wanted to see if it would be my hangout during my downtime. I always check out the yoga or vegetarian places when I’m on location, because they attract people who are searchers, or looking to heal themselves (and in turn others), because they’ve suffered (or are suffering), which I think is deep and cool—and because I’ve suffered. No one gets away without it.
An Indian man named Prakash was the chef of Annapurna’s. He was effervescent and liked to name-drop Julia Roberts, who’d been there a few times. I told him what Shirley MacLaine had said about her, that everyone knew she was going to be a big star when they did Steel Magnolias. Then I went into my spiel: “Why do these movies with these big actresses never have roles for her friends? What happened to the funny friend in those movies? I always thought I’d be that friend. Rhoda to Mary Tyler Moore. Friend to Julia Roberts.” Blahblahblah. I was still suffering in that gripe mode.
Prakash led me to the Ayurvedic Institute, where Dr. Vasant Lad taught Ayurveda—a belief system and practice of balance through food, movement, and the climate or place you inhabit. I went to the institute one evening to drop in on a lecture, which took place in a small room where everyone was sitting on the floor. The students were writing in their notepads while Dr. Lad was telling a story about a boy who’d received a kidney transplant from a boy who’d died. The boy found himself sleepwalking to the village where the deceased boy’s family lived, and he knocked on their door. I don’t know what he said and can only imagine. After introducing himself, he asked to use the restroom.
There was also a story about a man who’d been given the heart of a suicide victim. He reached out to the wife to thank her for this gift. Well, they fell in love; he married her and fathered her four children over twelve years. And then he killed himself in the same way her first husband did.
Dr. Lad explained that organ transplantation was not condoned in Ayurveda because it’s considered taking a part of someone’s soul and putting it into someone else’s body. I thought, well, hey, you could get lucky, and the new soul could make your life more interesting and give you more of a personality or make you better at math. But it wouldn’t be very Ayurveda of you. Ayurveda is more about psychological mindfulness solutions to illness, which is part of your soul and the diet that goes with it. It’s not just about being sick; you have to get deep about it and think that it’s teaching you something. It’s not a “fix it” solution with a pill; it believes that illnesses are part of your karma, your path—and the actions you take can remedy the imbalance. I’m not saying I’m balanced, by the way, but I work at it.
“Ayur” means life, in the Vedic culture, and “veda” means science or knowledge. It’s a five-thousand-year-old system, which says a lot. It’s a belief that humans are a part of nature. How could we not be?
There are three fundamental energies to our nature, to our inner and outer life, that are dominant in particular body types: there’s Wind (Vata), Fire (Pitta), and Earth (Kapha). Or Earth, Wind, and Fire, if that’s easier for you to get down with. We each have all three qualities, or doshas as they’re called, and they each have different attributes that manifest physically. So, to give an example, a big burly man carpenter would be Earth (Kapha) dominant: he’s slow and steady, and can focus in on a task. The Kapha-dominant person is grounded and can tell a long story without going “all over the place.” Let’s say that you have a Kapha contractor working on your house and he’s overweight from drinking too much beer, but he tells great stories. Everyone has seen that guy (like everyone’s seen a skinny bitch). On a good day, the contractor is doing his job and is content. On a bad day, he’s gluttonous.
I am Wind (or Vata) dominant: I have lots of energy, am a small person, am changeable, and like to move. But when I’m out of balance, I move too much and spin out and have anxiety and forget what I’m doing; I’m prone to spiraling down or spinning out. Vata people eat a meal at the same time that they’re walking down the street and talking on their phone—and while they’re running an errand. I could benefit from burly carpenter/Kapha energy, and there is a whole system of vegetarian fare that will bring me back to balance. Right now, I forget what it includes.
Fire- (or Pitta-) dominant people are intelligent and ambitious and intense; if they’re out of balance, they tend to be assholes and have prostate problems. Think of the skinny “live wire” comedians you’ve seen who do lots of coke and become impossible to be around.
Places, as well, carry a dominant dosha: New York City is Vata, Los Angeles is Pitta, the South is Kapha. I suppose Canada is, too.
Anyway, I liked the talk; it rang true. It reminded me of drama school and a teacher named Joan Potter who typecast based on physicality and essence, and would recommend which Chekhov character would best suit each of us.
One of the things that Dr. Lad said in class was, “We never see our own faces, we only see them in mirrors. We will never see for ourselves our own image.” Maybe for you, this isn’t a mind-blow but something obvious, but for me, it blows my mind.
Excuse me, I’ve brought my tea and thermos for some hot water, when you get a minute. This is a dosha-balancing tea from this place called Premium Steap. I got it when I worked in Philadelphia. It’s a local company and the tea sommelier, Peggy Stephens, is really nice and cool.
I introduced myself to Dr. Lad after the class and told him about The Eye—that I was playing a part in which my sister had the eyes of a visionary who committed suicide. I told him I was an actor, but he wasn’t a movie person, so he didn’t recognize me, and he took what I said at face value. So I was taken aback when he made an announcement to the class that there was an actor in the room and singled me out, which made me feel exposed. He thanked me for the work that I do, and spoke of entertainment as having an important place in healing. Or something like that. I blocked out the flattery because I didn’t want the other students to resent the extra attention I was getting—I wanted to be independent of that.
I sat in on some more classes and took yoga with the students. During one class we all lined up against a wall and kneeled down, facing front, eyes closed, with our hands behind us, against the wall, while making buzzing sounds, like insects. I heard the clank of keys opening the door, and I opened my eyes to see the mailman coming in to drop off the mail. Here was a room with thirty people, backed up against a wall, making loud collective insect noises. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, which I did, alone.
I went to a few house parties and sensed the different levels of tightness and silence that people exhibit as they are suffering. There was lots of looking down while talking. Mainly, though, I hung out with Prakash and learned some recipes from him, like how to cook bitter melon, which is extremely bitter, but once you get used to it, it’s alright. And it’s a great system cleanser, if you know what I mean. I also got turned on to this stuff called triphala, which is a plant medicine that really cleans your system, but not in a scary way. I took a tablespoon in powder form and shot it down with water while not breathing through my nose, because it tastes like ground furniture.
One day Prakash and I drove to Taos for the Hanuman festival. Hanuman is the monkey god in Hindu mythology, and he has a blue face and is extremely devoted to his own god, Rama, for whom he’ll run errands and move mountains. Prakash told me that George Harrison brought the giant, however-many-tons Hanuman statue to America and drove around with it for some time while looking for the right home, which turned out to be Taos. I don’t know if this is true, but I know the Beatles turned this country on to India in the sixties. There’s a Hanuman pose in yoga, which is the splits as you hold your arms back together above your head to grab your foot. I can do this, not to brag. But I will go out on a limb to tell you I have had past lives in India.
Julia Roberts didn’t show up at the festival, but we did—with a giant bag of lentils, ready to feed a hundred hippies and Hanuman devotees. When we opened the first bag, hundreds of bugs came out, so we walked into some open land and dumped the lentils there. Luckily, we had another bag, and I helped Prakash make dahl. We ended up having just enough for everyone, and it was such a cosmic handshake that we were like, “Right on, brother.” I live for moments like that.
