Yoga, Biking, and Booze

Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the changing scene of autumn.
I have said enough about moonlight,
Ask no more.
Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no wind stirs.
Ryonen

Any system was a straitjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly. I didn’t believe in systems. Anything human was imperfect and ultimately absurd. What did I believe in then? In humor. In laughing at systems, at people, at one’s self. In laughing even at one’s own need to laugh all the time. In seeing life as contradictory, many-sided, various, funny, tragic, and with moments of outrageous beauty.
Erica Jong

...managed to make it to the 7:05 A.M. sit this morning...my first morning group meditation in many months...thanks, ultimately, to a long weekend of excess...insanely sweaty vinyasa yoga, biking, and booze in unseasonable heat and humidity, enough to knock me out hours earlier than usual last night, so that getting up shortly after the sun was no problem....this might be how the old Zen monks did it, but I sort of doubt it...

Dickens Didn't Know the Half of It...

...for creative types, this is truly the best and worst of times....never in the history of the world has finding a receptive and appreciative audience been so easy...

 ...now is the era where

everybody creates...
Patti Smith

 ...that is, even if what you’re doing is so esoteric that only three or four people in the world could possibly appreciate it...solo upright bass instrumental interpretations of  obscure gangsta rap b-sides, expressionistic black chalk drawings of dolphins in bondage masks, cynical musings on yoga practice...in the past, the chances of those weirdos stumbling upon what you do, even if you could find a gallery, coffee shop, or magazine that’d let you put it on display, would be about nil...but, chances are, one or two of those people is on-line right now...

 No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

Samuel Johnson

 ...and, yet, the likelihood of getting paid for creative work grows ever slighter....(if Van Gogh were painting now, he'd likely feel less isolated, with people all over the world "liking" his art...but he'd still, probably, be broke)....I got fans all over the world, and, until recently, a person with fans all over the world could expect to have royalty checks rolling in....then, similarly, thanks to the virtual world, I’ve got friends all over the world...and, until recently, a person with that many friends had no problem finding a date for brunch...

i don’t understand: my ideas are universal

but my audience is five guys at the shell
station people just don’t get it
Andre Codrescu

...quit looking at the analytics for this blog a couple years ago...and glad I did...was getting too caught up in numbers of readers...or viewers...or visitors...or clicks....ended up using artificial means to get more people here, even if most stayed just long enough to take a glance and click away: gratuitous link-dropping, pornographic tags, posting every other day, whether or not I had anything worth saying...anything for these all-important digital marks of approval...

One of these days and it won’t be long, goin’ down to the valley and sing my song, sing it loud sing it strong let the echo decide if I was right or wrong...

Bob Dylan      

...finally decided to get all Bhagavad Gita-ish and forsake the numbers...simply do my best at putting something good out there, and try not to worry so much about the fruits of my actions..........which is not to say a little money wouldn’t be nice...

Yep, That's About It, Right Now...

...after years of trying, got my mom to go to a yoga class, in her assisted living community, only to face the realization that, though showing up might be half the battle, it’s still not the same as actually participating...

...couple days earlier, back in Philly, a friend I sometimes see in yoga class was acting stranger than usual, commenting dreamily on the colors of everybody’s t-shirts as they walked in and rolled out their mats....I thought about making a joke, asking if he’d taken psychedelic drugs before class again....then, later, talking to him, realized it was probably a good thing I didn’t...

 Yeah, art may imitate life, but life imitates T.V....

Ani DiFranco

...the more beneficial meditation is likely to be, the less likely it is you're actually gonna wanna do it....the complete opposite is true of getting wasted....it’s in those times when it’ll be least beneficial, most thoroughly counterproductive, that it’s most enticing...

Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 108.19

 

...meanwhile, outside the studio, a movie was filming...Walnut Street going east to west instead of west to east, I noticed...and, somebody told me, the street signs had been changed, so Walnut Street’s not even Walnut Street...Philadelphia, perhaps, not even Philadelphia, anymore...fake gunshots and grenades going off all through our vinyasas...

 

...lately seems like there's nothing whatsoever to do and everything in the world to be done....this is where it all ends and begins....killing time before the apocalypse which is always right now...

No Direction Home...

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
Stephen Dedalus (James Joyce, Ulysses)

How does it feel
to be without a home,
with no direction home...?
Bob Dylan

...sadness didn’t really kick in ‘til the necessary stop back at the old house...the overwhelming sense of need to say goodbye...(unwilling nostalgia jostling with an equally painful desire to have it all done with and move on)...though the house is still there, certainly, though nobody lives there anymore, and, in fact, I’ll be need to be back, probably a lot, in the months to come, to go through stuff, clean up, scrub the place clean of memories and home...

...and though it’s been a long time since it’s been my own address...(though junk mail with my name on it still comes, thanks to the boundless memories of schools, political parties, and non-profits...though now there's nobody to put it in a neat pile on my childhood bed)...it's the home that's always been back there, where mom and dad and then just mom still lived, until a few days ago, when we moved her in to the swanky retirement community with the river view most Manhattanites would kill for....a good and necessary change, definitely...but...

...dogs buried in the yard, traces of pot smoke doubtless lingering in the attic, growth marked in pencil on a wall, since painted over...the world of someone's long-gone childhood and adolescence...not that those exactly constitute a paradise lost...more like a nightmare from which I’ve been trying to awake for three decades...the comfortable old house a burden in more ways than one...and yet, the birthplace, nesting place, launching pad of dreams and hopes...that shit about as ephemeral as ephemeral gets and yet still anchored, there...

Fundamentally, not one thing exists,
So where is the dust to cling?
Hui-neng

...same as it ever was...
David Byrne

...though of course as any Zen monk or Talking Heads singer can tell ya, those anchors, any anchors, really, are ephemeral as it gets, too...that we all, really, have no direction home...perhaps even more so when we don’t realize it...and that realization is, if anything, a good one...even if it doesn’t always feel that way...

Fear: It's Not Just For Breakfast, Anymore...

...a friend showed me a yoga prop with colorful lettering along its side....it read: do one thing a day that scares you....I said getting out of bed scares me....mission accomplished...

It is because a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change.
Byron Bunch (William Faulkner, Light in August)

...there’s a popular new and old agey belief about fear...that it’s a bad thing...that, with the right attitude, everything will be okay, so fear is something purely negative, to be overcome....obviously, anyone who thinks that way doesn’t get around a city by bicycle...

...to be an urban cyclist is to have a healthy relationship with fear...to see it as your friend...not your boss, your friend...to listen to, argue with, sometimes respectfully ignore...knowing that it’s there to keep you safe, but you never wanna be too safe...


...and when do you think it will all become clear?
‘cause I’m bein’ taken over by the fear...
Lily Allen

...one thing most people fear is being seen naked...figuratively speaking...(as well as literally)...I see this with yoga teachers, sometimes...acting so blissed out, so overwhelmingly positive, so damned spiritual you wonder how they deal with mundane earthly matters like paying bills or getting the toilet fixed....nice, I think, listening to another fake Rumi quote...(made up, most likely, by some anonymous greeting card company employee)...while transitioning from chaturanga to upward-facing dog, but not someone I’d likely wanna hang out with away from class...but then I run into the teacher in a coffee shop or bar and find a perfectly down to earth person with a snarky sense of humor, who's actually a lot of fun to talk to, once that bogus yoga teacher mask is off...

One day you’ll wake up in the present day,
a million generations removed from expectations
of being who you really want to be...
Ian Anderson

...met a woman who grew up in Poland in the 20’s and 30’s, and, years later, came to the United States...though Jewish, she spent the years of World War II working in a factory in Germany, having, somehow, obtained "fake papers" that identified her as a gentile...and so lived, year after hard year, hiding behind a false identity, knowing she’d be sent to her death if anyone found out who she really was....(when the war was over, she went back home, thinking to find at least someone from her previous life, but every last one had been killed)....

...thankfully, most of us don’t have to live under circumstances like that....though we might act like it, sometimes...


* note: the bike and car in the picture are both mine...no sentient beings were harmed in the production of this blog post...*

Profound Thoughts on Yoga Blogging? (for April Fools...)

Those who know do not speak,
those who speak do not know.
Tao Te Ching 56

...and those who really really don't know
write blog posts about it...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 4.1

Rite of Spring, 2012 (kind of a haiku)

biking, wearing shorts
in March; it stung me on the
thigh—first bee of spring

.,