Friends have often said of me that if one digs past the calcified layers of culture and education, I am deeply superficial. They don't often add "and that's what we love about you," though I think they should. But I'm so shallow that I just move on instead, like a shark, and pick up some casual new friends. That's how I am and nothing pointed it up better than this week-- Holy Sweep and Dalai Lama Week.

At the last minute, a friend laid two tickets to his Holiness's lecture on me. I felt burdened from the start. I had already started imagining what kind of scene it might be at the Kohl Center, which I must add, I grudge deeply as its whole east side crouches Jaba-like on what was once my bedroom and tiny garden with lilac bush. Some of my fondest memories of arriving in Madison are buried in that sacred ground where Frances Court intersected Frances St. That rowhouse of ramshackle but charming apartments once housed Phil Ball, Karlton Armstrong, Hank Haslach (who sits on his porch talking about the Weatherman Movement in the film The War at Home) several other famous politicos and musicians and for a short time, me.

At about this time each spring, I would try to trowel up a few peas and some lettuce in the dumpy soil outside my kitchen door. I enjoyed screaming at people for robbing MY lilac bush. But knowing I wasn't worthy of them, I still could not turn down free tickets, especially since everybody I miss seeing when they are in concert ends up dying. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia. I missed 'em all and it was curtains for them. It's true Jerry gave me a second chance, but still, you see the trend.

So I wanted to catch the Rock Dalai show, even if it meant going alone, since early on my husband refused. But all the time I was halfheartedly calling around to see who wanted my spare ticket, I was secretly planning the Superbowl of all Shallowness-- the party I was going to have Thursday night for the Demise of Nothingness, the Finale of Folly, Seinfeld Exeunt. That's how it is with us "skin deep" types. We're always dreaming small and sordid dreams.

I went to Tosca recently and all I could concentrate on was how the diva could sing from a divan--lying down. Her heaving bosoms looked mighty uncomfortable to me too, though they came in handy in the groping scene. Instead of being overwhelmed by the glitter and grease of the circus, I'm the type who thinks about how fast a Pez would rocket out of the pocket of the trapeze artist turning somersaults.

Oh yeah I'm all surface when it comes to culture, but did I mention I'm also seriously compromised in the crowd department? I sat mortified through the time- before-last Stones concert at Camp Randall (see above for reasons I went.) Glancing furtively around, I was sure nobody noticed because they were all Medusa-ed by other substances. And rationally, I suppose I knew that it was highly unlikely that hundreds of high ex-hippies-turned-lawyers and housepersons would suddenly leap to their feet and stampede the stage. They were just too tired, I think, being middleaged like me. But of those hundreds, I'll bet more than a few were fantasizing about being home in front of the tube, where you can really SEE the entertainment.

And that's the other shocker of the Dalai Lama affair. For such a wise man (and I know he is because I understood everything He said in the few minutes I lasted at the concert) he is very very small. From the third balcony, which looks as improbable as the underside of the Mobius strip the ants crawl on in that famous Escher print, I would say His Holiness is about one-half inch tall. So it was like a dollhouse Dalai. Go figure.

I had the windows of the doors of my perception well-cleaned while I lasted there and I did enjoy the scene on the weirdly-green lawn where Buddhists of various stripe prayed and protested (I'm too light in the brain to bother getting clear about what god has been demoted and why or who is right, the Dalai or his detractors, but it wouldn't be Madison if everybody agreed and had a good, guilt-free time.)

And I loved the Big Screen TV monitors in the lobby, which showed those saffron robes against that great green chair and His flowers to great advantage and all. As I wandered back up to State Street I saw a mosquito on the back of the guy walking in front of me. I watched that evil thing hunker there for about one-half block as I pondered whether it was more compassionate to let this least of creatures live or swat the guy from behind and risk being swatted back by the man or the skeeter's karmic load. I finally tapped the man on the shoulder, which caused the pest to fly. Then I didn't have anything to say to the man that wouldn't have taken way too many words. I loved it though. It seemed just like the kind of thing they may do tonight on Seinfeld.

-Gay Davidson-Zielske


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