Jesse Helms is dead. Hoorah! Celeste West is also dead. Drat! According to several websites, she gave up the ghost on January 3. I'm having trouble believing it, though.


Celeste was a "revolting librarian," to quote the title of her 1972 anthology of activist essays on the theory and practice of library science. She wrote a brief manifesto by way of introduction to the self-published book with an initial print-run of 4,000 that continues to inspire radical professionals today. She expresses the spirit of her times, a loving anarchic joie de vivre that never deserted her. She was 29 when she wrote:

"Every profession is being radicalized [L. radix=root: searching for the root of the matter] as its practitioners refuse to draw any conflict of interest line between their lives and their work."

Note first the etymology. Celeste is teaching in the true sense of the word: sharing the knowledge that belongs by birthright to everyone. To make the world a more intelligible, intelligent place, which can only increase our pleasure in this incarnation. And radix is just such a fun word.

Secondly, note the stringent anti-corporate statement of conscience. A person is the work she does. Work and person are mutually defining. For the utopist, the visionary, there is no other way. The personal is the professional. West then deepens the idea of what this commitment means:

"True professionalism implies evolution, if not revolution; those who profess a calling have certain goals and standards for improving existence, which necessarily means moving, shaking, transforming it."

Third, and most important, Celeste saw work not only as a dead-end in itself, but as the royal road to happiness here, now, free and available to everyone. Work wasn't something you did so that afterward you could go distract yourself from its tedium; work was itself the means of production of a more pleasurable life.

Imagine if all of us followed this simple, radical idea of societal transformation. Politics would be part and parcel of our everyday exchanges, and our discussions would be more complex and creative than stammering responses to the non-question, "Obama or McCain?" We'd take pride in our work, not because we had a bloated salary, stock options or decent health care, but because we were mindful of the consequences of our actions.

I was fortunate to experience firsthand the practical application of these principles. At the time, I had no intellectual distance, no theoretical grasp of what Celeste was up to. I knew she was a flagrantly gaie lesbian and that her bailiwick was a refuge from institutional smugness. I knew she'd written both Lesbian Love Advisor (1989) and Lesbian Polyfidelity (1996). In person, as in print, she practiced and promoted self-expression, particularly in the form of witty repartée.


When I knew Celeste, she was about the age I am now, and I was so much younger. In 1995, the library of the San Francisco Zen Center was in the basement, kitty-corner to the zendo, which is where straight-backed seekers of internal truth sit zazen on zafus. I was an earnest new student, and Celeste was a keeper of the crazy wisdom flame.

I volunteered one night a week to run the small bookstore at the front of the library and shelve books. My reward was a 10% discount, which I immediately exploited by buying 10 copies of Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind to give to friends. But the real reward was Celeste's company — whether or not she was there. She'd leave impish notes on the back of cat calendar pages in her flamboyant cursive. She introduced me to zen humor, which offered profound insights like the classic: Don't just do something. Sit there.

When you're a zen student, you study two kinds of dharma. One is contained in books and transmitted by ordained teachers. The other is communicated constantly by existence, sometimes called the School of Hard Knocks. Sometimes the greatest teaching goes unrecognized as such.

Celeste was a great teacher. She was warm, witty, subversive, conspiratorial, endlessly playful and so appreciative of the limited help I provided. Of course, she loved cats and French. Above all, she made me feel welcome. If you've ever been subjected to the detached deadpan some zombie-like zensters cultivate, you know how much that can mean. I was desperately seeking complicity during breaks from staring for hours at a blank white wall.

Celeste had strategically placed a poster of a particularly gorgeous statue of Quan Yin beside the check-out desk. It was the sexiest thing in the Julia Morgan building. I stared at this image a lot, finding both beauty and solace in it. The lithe, long-limbed goddess of compassion watched over us in that basement Curiosity Shop. Part of me, Celeste, lingers there still with you.