Maria Espinosa

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

Back in the Sixties I began studying yoga with a guru in San Francisco who rather jealously promoted strict celibacy. Not untypically, he later became involved in a sexual scandal. However, I learned much from him, and to his credit he promoted my poetry and urged me to publish it.

At the same time, wanting some kind of balance, I began corresponding with a rather mad poetess in Manhattan who on me the absolutely necessity of orgasms – the more the better – and urged me to a lovers, each day of the week. Although this seemed extreme, I admired her stance, and it balanced out my guru’s.

You see, I was looking for integration of opposites. I was searching for an ethical code, a way of being true to my nature and of expanding awareness – such a Californian quest in the Sixties, the innocent Sixties when the sky was not smogged, and traffic jams were a thing of the future, and one could get by on comparatively little money and just a few hours of week of work – except that I was supporting my daughter, and I worked a full-time job…..

Onwards with the story. Always trying to bridge opposites, to create a truth for me out of disparate elements, I am now reading Chogyam Trunpa’s THE HEART OF THE BUDDHA along with Tennessee Williams’ Memoirs, in a shabby, worn paperback edition I found in a discarded heap of books at Merritt College.

What I admire about Tennessee is his honesty, which can be bone-painful. He is also greatly entertaining, with his nonstop sexual adventures with handsome young males…not a gay life I search, but he tells it so entertainingly and with such honesty, such truth, admitting his flaws, and yet his charm and brilliant self-awareness shines through

Chögyam Trungpa (February 1939 – April 4, 1987) was a Buddhist meditation master, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and a Trungpa tülku. Widely recognized, both by Tibetan Buddhists and by other spiritual practitioners and established an international organization of Buddhist centers.
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The synthesis: Chogyam Trunpa, I believe, would have appreciated Tennesee’s honesty. True art, write Tennessee, has to be personal—that is its bedrock. Even if the personal is transmuted into science fiction, historical work, or a medium far removed from the confessional mode.

His honesty provides a peephole or channel into our own natures – and what a relief, these human propensities are shared, are expressed by another being!

And so I continue relishing his confessional adventures, told with such charm, while rereading THE HEART OF BUDDHA, and realizing that in a deep sense they connect.

Both Chogyam Trunpa and Tennessee Williams are larger than life figures.
Mindfulness- one night stands. Unsparing honesty. Truth about human condition.
Noble aspect to their telling. Style is character.