Learnin' n' Unlearnin'

...it’s been...good gawd...over six months since the two hundred hour certification...during which I’ve kinda taught yoga five times...groups of one to three people...only one of whom insisted on drinking a beer while practicing...(as well as assisting with that class of, I’m told, two-hundred and fifty people)....meaning, ya could say, I’ve not been overly ambitious...perhaps lazy....or, maybe, to take a more positive view, simply humble...egoless...just too damned enlightened...

...at Kripalu, they said what we were doing was less about learning than un-learning...and I most certainly did that....still confused about those esoteric fancy-schmancy Sanskrit-derived terms...particularly that pesky pair: right and left....used, generally, in reference to something even more confusing: the human body...its anatomy, physiology, alignment...

...over a series of weekends, beginning tomorrow, I’m gonna be continuing my yogic education through a fifty hour Align and Flow training...based in principles of anusara...a Sanskrit term which, as I understand it, means something like don’t care how long you’ve been practicing yoga, your alignment’s waaaaaaay off...
...this time, it's only a twenty-minute drive away...(maybe a forty-five minute bike ride, if I could figure a route that wouldn’t likely leave me sprawled out on the blacktop with alignment off in ways all the king’s yoga teachers might never put back together)...with a great teacher I’ve known a few years, and at least one fellow student I know...who's an advanced teacher, too, actually....raising suspicions I could be one of the more unlearned persons in the room...the Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel of yoga...Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yogi...sittin' on my mat muttering downward facin’ dawg?! whut th’ heck’s that?!....I'm looking forward to it...

Two Reasons to Practice Yoga

...gorgeous afternoons...rumbling Wissahickon and gently rippling Schuylkill reflecting vibrant greens and blues as the bike floats past with minimal effort, beyond sculpture garden and gilded greco-roman art museum, all the way to the studio...cheerful vinyasa and laughter with teachers and students, all friends...then fueling up at the Indian buffet place with samosas and malai kofta for the ride home...

...and those other times...grey and cloudy outside, but even moreso in....roll out the mat for lack of any better idea, thinking maybe just maybe this’ll get me through the day...and, somehow, it does....not so much providing an esoteric heightened state that can only be described in Sanskrit or with reference to something some semi-mythic incredibly enlightened person wrote in India or Tibet three thousand years ago....and not a spiritual orgasm to be translated into new age positive affirmations or old time religion or a marketing campaign for the latest Yoga for Rich People With Big Houses and Nice Butts© DVD series....but revealing at least a window...some little bit of space...not much, maybe, but enough...that didn’t appear to be there before...

Not Enlightened Yet

I can’t be good no more...
honey because the world gone wrong...
The Mississippi Sheiks

...John Milton said they also serve who only stand and wait...but how ‘bout they who sit around getting in utterly needless nasty arguments with complete strangers in the comments under youtube videos?....

...had a bit o' road rage on the way to yoga class today...yeah, it’s happened before...this time in a car...somebody making it nearly impossible for me to merge, and I, quite unmindfully, flipped her the bird....then noticed she was driving a hybrid with all kinds of mellow, socially conscious bumper stickers, like that one with COEXIST made up of symbols representing the world’s major religions...and she seemed to be taking all the turns I was...occurred to me she could be heading to yoga class...possibly even the same yoga class I was...which could be uncomfortable....figured maybe I’d break the ice with something like actually, sister, the middle finger is an ancient Hopi symbol that means “the radiant earth crystals of my heart imbue you with their healing love energy"...and maybe she’d be really moved by that and we’d go out for herbal tea, vegan stir-fry, and the latest documentary about drinking water...

I had read everything I could find about enlightenment. But the more I read, the more despair I went into because these texts had nothing to do with me and my problems. Enlightenment? I just wanted to wake up without wanting to kill myself.
Ana Forrest

...some yogis have a real problem with that particularly potent and aromatic form of prana known as coffee....I point out that they didn't have it in ancient India...if they had, Yoga Sutra 1.1...atha yoga nushasanam...translated into the English dialect unique to Philly and Jersey as: yo, let’s do some fuckin’ yoga...would most likely be preceded by Yoga Sutra 1.0...first we drink coffee...

Creative Enough?

If the roof doesn't leak, the architect hasn't been creative enough.
Frank Lloyd Wright

...heard a song in a dream, with a chorus that kept playing in my head as I awoke, a particularly nasal Bob Dylan-like voice singing...

you’re an interesting victim but you’re
in this way

...I have no idea what this means...

...sometimes feel like a drug addict without the drugs....a writer who goes days without doing any actual writing...a yogi who sees the sun go up and then down while failing to move beyond the I should stage toward actually practicing any yoga....the old crap, resolutely failing to crumble to dust and blow away under the light of awareness, lingers on...but so do I...

...one time overheard a conversation in a restaurant between two men in suits, one of them passionately extolling his credentials as the kind of original thinker any employer would die for, announcing to anyone within earshot...which, in this case, had to include dishwashers and maybe even people in the parking lot...I think outside the box!!!...to which the other responded, consolingly, I know you do....I could sympathize, but had to wonder if someone who'd use such a hackneyed cliché as thinking outside the box actually did...

What’s the one small step you can take to change an unhelpful pattern? If the answer is ‘Nothing,’ you’re not being creative enough.
Ana Forrest, Fierce Medicine*


* cool book...see my review here

Big Time Yoga

...got asked to assist at the Philly version of this big worldwide yoga event called Salutation Nation...(9:00 this morning)...(really probably shoulda said something beforehand....but, well, y’know, focus on the present moment, don’t get too hung up on past mistakes, & all that positive life-affirming shit)...a huge outdoor class...(picture above taken when things were still getting set up)...so a major deal for somebody who’s never taught more than three people at a time...particularly since it started & ended with me sitting up on stage with amazing senior teachers on all sides....a friend was impressed...(maybe just a tinge sarcastically)...said you’re playin’ in the big leagues...and it did feel kinda like that...may have to start tellin' people to call me Swami Jay instead of Dr. Jay....well, maybe not quite yet...

...was gonna bike down there, as one eco-minded yoga blogger urged everybody to do...but, still recovering from some strange sickness...(think it may’ve started with smelling two week old garbage that’d been submerged in a flooded trash can since the hurricane)...(seriously)...(yuck)...decided simply showing up and helping people get that dog-tilt might be as much as I could handle...

...so, was drinking coffee in the car on the way down, and...just ‘cause it’s kinda what I do...spilled some on my t-shirt...which was a bummer...like, I’m gonna be one o’ the major yoga dudes at this thing & got brown spots on my duds....started wondering if assisting might merit some schwag...like, specifically, a shirt...

...as it turned out, one was waiting for me, thanks to the event's generous sponsor........meaning that I now own, and have worn, in public, a notably stretchy item of clothing with an ambiguously-spiritual-looking symbol on it....

...yes, friends, the 'til now reliably grungy Yoga Cynic has been spotted wearing Lululemon.......take it as you will...

Under the Weather

...natural disasters past, apparently, for now...time to return focus to everyday, personal disasters...

...but, at this point, can’t do much about those, either...at least not the bigger, more long-term ones....home sick...actually not feeling too bad, lying in bed, propped up on pillows, laptop propped against belly...only when I get up do things get ugly...head feeling way too heavy...trying to concentrate or think too much doesn’t help, either....then, the head is always a problem...

...nothing to do, it seems, but drink lotsa liquids and watch episodes from season three of The Wire over and over...

...gotta keep the devil
way down in the hole...
Tom Waits

...keep thinkin’ I should do some yoga...work some toxins out...but, since even sitting up straight seems like too much of an effort, maybe, for right now, simply relaxing and letting it all go may be as close to yoga as I’m gonna get...

In From the Storm

...Saturday night lights went out about 10:30...flickered back on for a second, then off for good...in a house with a well...meaning no electricity, no pump, no running water.. sweaty after a long day, would’ve liked a shower before bed...actually took a little while to figure out how to make that happen...moving in naked circles in near-pitch dark, crazed tropical winds blowing rain from all directions...



...following a night boxed in against the elements, though effected by them, anyway...morning yoga practice without music, any light or temperature control beyond what came through the windows, opened just enough not to let in too much remaining wind and rain...finding quietness, birdsongs reemerging through the waning waves of storm...



...booting up the laptop by candlelight...letting the internet keep up its busy rancorous thing without me...tree fallen across the lines blocking half a major roadway...the tree removal people said the power line’s still live...power company said could be two weeks...neighbors hope that’s just their standard answer...

Waiting for the Hurricane

...once saw a personal ad specifying, among other things, no baggage...obviously not looking for me....which is okay, since, I suspect, a person with no emotional baggage would have be either perfectly enlightened or boring...



...or both....once, talking to a shrink, expressed concerns about possible ill effects of overcoming depression...particularly on musical taste...asked if I could end up trading in Miles Davis and Lou Reed for Britney Spears and Mandy Moore...(this was ten years ago...insert appropriate poppy upbeat 2011 equivalents if you please)....he laughed, but didn’t exactly say no...



...had a version of that high school anxiety dream it seems everybody has...(y’know, walking the halls during finals week, realizing I’ve somehow forgotten to go to class all semester, and, in fact, am not even sure what rooms my classes are in...meaning that, even after all that higher education, I’m still in danger of failing high school)...



...(I’ve never had the showing-up-at-school-naked dream, but suspect that, metaphorically, it’s the same thing)...(like the dreams a friend said she was having, in which it turned out her divorce papers never got properly filed and she’s still married to her ex-)...(anyway...)...



...in this one, though, I’m at some kind of office job, realizing I haven't the slightest idea what I’m supposed to be doing, and getting a bit panicked about it...but, then, realizing I really don’t want the job, anyway...



...got an e-mail (in my spam folder) this morning reading Congratulations you have been chosen for Registry of Distinguished Women...(sic)....don't think I'm being overly humble in saying this honor was unexpected...

The Day Before the Earthquake Hit

...feeling totally miserable the day before the earthquake hit...thought I’d reply to some e-mails...y’know, reach out a bit...but was finding it difficult to say anything about my life that didn’t come across like an outtake from a Dostoyevsky novel...



...so trying to put things in perspective, decided to describe the catastrophically horrible day leading to my miserable outlook...only to find that, as details appeared in little black letters before my eyes, it didn’t really appear all that bad....slept badly, had an unpleasant driving experience, dropped my ipod in a swimming pool...(with things kinda spiraling from there, mentally, at least, to more general money concerns to self-laceration for a history of klutziness to a life seeming in such dark moments to go nowhere but the next costly fuckup...y’know, that kinda crap)....but, then, how many people got to spend a good chunk of a sunny summer Monday lying around in a swimming pool, thus allowing expensive electronic toys they’re fortunate enough to have to get wet, in the first place?...so, I left that part out, too...



...(then, I’ve never really understood how the other people have it worse thing is supposed to cheer anybody up....it’s more likely to make me think oh god, there’s misery everywhere...just as look at what a good life you’ve got makes me think jeezus, there’s no hope for anybody....and, anyway, both kinda translate as you’re an asshole for feeling bad...which doesn’t make me feel better at all)...



...then the spigot farted out something nasty when I tried to get a glass of water...so went downstairs to see what was up...



...towards the end of the yoga teacher training, they had us write letters to ourselves, put them in self-addressed envelopes...which would somehow be sent to arrive when you most need it....I thought it sounded all touchy-feely and new-agey, but, nonetheless, wrote something heartfelt...



...and there, as I asked about the water...turned out the plumber was working on the pipes, earlier...in the basket, was an envelope with my name written on it in my own chicken scratch...containing a lotta semi-poetic stuff about untapped possibilities and diaphanous veils all too easily mistaken for reality...and, at the very bottom, five words: you are on the path...

The Yoga Cynic Has Issues

It would be useless to try now to impose upon my narrative more order than there was in my life.

André Gide



....as may be obvious by now, the author of this blog has issues....



...was doing some personal writing...purely personal...none o’ yer damn business...when, as tends to happen, my inner blogger told me to turn it into a Yoga for Cynics post involving the various people inside my head...



...like the inner critic people talk, write, and do expensive self-help workshops about...even as my own inner critic’s telling me that Yoga for Cynics is delving into that airy-fairy realm of new age pop psychology where, in annoyingly cutesy-putesy ways, everything gets personified, and.......the inner blogger says shut up and write...



BALD heads forgetful of their sins,

Old, learned, respectable bald heads

Edit and annotate the lines

That young men, tossing on their beds,

Rhymed out in love's despair

To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

William Butler Yeats, The Scholars



...I’ve written about my inner Foul Mouthed Grand Inquisitor...which works better, for me, than inner critic...most likely because, given the time I’ve spent as a professional literary critic, and around them, the image of some musty academic surrounded by dusty piles of books and reminder cards for therapy appointments, unable to say anything without citing a pile of jargon-laden articles from journals nobody reads, fails to embody the kind of fear involved...



...at Kripalu, we did this psychodrama kinda thing...taking the form of one’s own inner critic...not just personifying and speaking the natterings of self-doubt and -loathing running through our heads but taking on a physical posture to go along with them...which, for me, made a kind of asana from hell....seriously, my back hurt for days, afterward....which might say something about what happens to my psyche on a daily basis...



...which might bring us to the inner therapist...caring yet dangerously opinionated, ever groping toward that celebrated inner child...



...they open and close you, and talk like they know you,

they don’t know you, they’re friends and they’re foes, too...

Joni Mitchell, Trouble Child



...I get laughs in yoga class when the teacher asks if anybody has any injuries and I pipe up and say my inner child is wounded...but it’s only partially a joke....which may be be precisely what makes it funny...



...my inner yogi’d like to describe all of this in terms of koshas...annamayakosha, pranamayakosha, manamayakosha, vijnanamayakosha, anandamayakosha...sheaths surrounding the atman...the true, ultimate self-beyond-self.......which, to my inner pomo graduate student, sounds suspiciously phallic...



...(sometimes the inner pomo graduate student bears a suspicious resemblance to the inner adolescent...perpetually smart, creative, horny, reflexively defensive, and often downright nasty...sometimes acting like a flat-out inner bully...but without the sophistication of the inner critic or old-school pseudo-authority of the Grand Inquisitor....this shit gets confusing)...



Your business is watching my words. But I

admit nothing.

Anne Sexton, Said the Poet to the Analyst



...the inner blogger says now’s the time to bring this post to a satisfying conclusion...perhaps simultaneously funny and inspiring...the kind people really like, so they leave nice comments and share on Facebook and twitter and all that...but never quite enough to satisfy the other members of the inner committee...



...and ya wonder why it’s been a week and a half since the last post?...

Rehab and Elsewhere

They tried to make me go to rehab,
I said no no no...
Amy Winehouse (1983-2011)

We’re all doing time.
Bo Lozoff

...last night, had an awesome dream...nothing too exciting...just standing, talking, after a yoga class, apparently, on a sidewalk, to somebody who, as far as I know, doesn’t exist in the world outside that dream...though, all day long, all I can think about is how much I want to see her again...

...was thinking that on the way to yoga class, and there, on the sidewalk out front, as I chained my bike to a parking meter, was a little girl, crying, and her mother, who yelled shut up, and kept walking...

...little while ago, wrote a post called Lost My Sacred Mala Beads Last Night at a Hipster Pool Party...which I mentioned to a friend from the teacher training, who still had his, wound around one wrist....that’s okay, he said, showing me an empty space on the string, one of mine broke and fell off when I got drunk and punched somebody....it was a long story...

...there’s a sign on the wall of the room where I work at the rehab that says Group Rules, with a long list underneath....one is no sarcasm....I look at that, every Tuesday night, and think I wouldn’t last five minutes...

Practice Makes...Practice (Running Into the Mirror, Part Three)

It’s been so long since I felt at home
in the mirror...
Jorma Kaukonen

...they say...or at least some of them do...that we call it yoga practice...no matter how much we do of it and for how long, no matter what our level of proficiency...because it’s practice for the rest of life...which might sound cheesy, but it’s also probably true, and valuable...(sometimes that’s the case with cheesy shit)...(but not often)...(this is still Yoga for Cynics for chrissake, not Yoga for People Who Get Their Feel-Good Philosophies of Life From Washed Up Sitcom Stars Turned Motivational Speakers, or something)...

...that includes, of course, the sustaining-the-challenging-pose thing...or the as-far-as-you-can-get-into-the-challenging-pose thing...with poise and aplomb...as well as that continuing-to-work-on-that-challenging-pose-without-concern-for-the-fruits-of-your-actions thing...(also known as, y’know, that-whole-Bhagavad-Gita thing)...

...but also, and perhaps most challenging...the trying-to-feel-good-about-the-fact-that-the-person-on-the-next-mat-who’s-never-been-to-one-damn-yoga-class-before-can-do-a-perfect-bird-of-paradise-pose-(svarga dvidasana...though, judging by my recent Google search, there's some dispute about that)-with-no-apparent-effort-while-you-can-barely-get-your-“peace fingers”-around-your-big-toe thing...as well as its opposite and corollary, the trying-not-to-feel-the-slightest-bit-smug-toward-that-ultra-spiritual-person-on-the-next-mat-who-can’t-come-close-to-doing-gomukhasana-arms-despite-having-practiced-for-years-longer-than-you-have thing....the both of which might be summed up as the acknowledging-that-you're-totally-competitive-about-yoga-on-the-inside-even-though-you're-totally-against-the-very-concept-of-competitive-yoga-on-the-outside thing...

...and, needless to say, egolessness and awareness are even harder to sustain...or achieve in the first place...off the mat...but, then, at least part of that problem is that the taking-yoga-off-the-mat thing is part of a two-way dialogue...in which we, often as not, bring non-yoga onto the mat...so that what we take off the mat ends up being closely related to what we brought onto it in the first place...

...and that, of course, is why we gotta keep practicing...

Yamas, Niyamas, and the Way It Usually Goes... (Running Into Mirrors, Part Two)

...went to dog-sit for some friends and found they’d left a bottle of Pinot Noir and two-thirds of a fresh-baked chocolate cake on the kitchen counter....some time later, sitting at the beginning of yoga class, it occurred to me that this might be a perfect yogic opportunity for an exercise in the yamas and niyamas*...particularly, santosha**, aparigraha***, and tapas****...

...but, alas, by that point, it was already too late...


* ethical restraints and practices...(you learn about this stuff in yoga teacher training)...
** contentment
*** non-attachment
**** self-discipline...not to be confused with those trendy bars whose attraction seems to be that you get to spend more money for less food...though, now that I think of it, there may be some relation...

Running Into Mirrors (Part One)

...I try not to be too hung up on authenticity...since, y’know, just because it’s authentically what some they did in some far away there in a long ago then doesn’t mean it’s good...but I do try to avoid the more obvious bullshit...

...recently took a long plane flight which dropped me into the Philly airport just in time for a forty-five minute wait for the last—12:09—train downtown, where I could wait more than half an hour for the last train going anywhere near home...standing around a series of platforms thinking about the dinner I never had...so, utilizing the few options at hand...and, no, no organic local fair trade vegan ayurvedic co-op produce was available...got a packet of cheese crackers and a peanut bar from a machine and a large McDonald’s fries...though I glanced at the new “healthy” items on the lit-up plastic menu...ultimately deciding that, if I’m gonna fool myself, I don’t wanna do it quite that blatantly...would rather have something authentically bad, without the pretense...

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.
Rainer Maria Rilke

...had a thought recently that I might feel perfectly okay about where I am in life if where I was in life were just twenty years younger...a twenty-five year old with a forty-five year old mind....so, apparently, I’ve got an issue with aging...and some people might say that’s not very yogic of me...and, most likely, start throwing out the standard positive affirmations about aging...(which might have a bit more truth-value if people didn’t feel the need to repeat ‘em so much)...except in the sense that being yogic means accepting and embracing rather than rejecting and repressing not just the feel-good shit but also whatever not-so-positive-feelings might arise, and all that goes with ‘em...and, y’know, in that sense, of course, it’s all yogic...

...music plays...some of it’s good...raspberries, mangoes, a little bit of kale, and ice make an excellent smoothie...and life doesn’t answer to my fondest fantasies...when was it ever any different?...

You'll Have To Decide For Yourself Whether Any Of This Has Anything To Do With Yoga

A dictionary resembles the world more than a novel does, because the world is not a coherent series of actions but a constellation of things perceived.
Edouard Levé

...one thing I’ve learned from being called for jury duty is that, as long as I answer questions honestly, there’s no chance whatsoever I’ll ever be picked...the truth, you might say, sets me free...

...have never been one of those desperately unhappy people who wear all black and write poems about suicide...nor one of those desperately unhappy people with big toothy smiles constantly trying to buttress themselves with feel-good notions they can't actually force themselves to believe...though I’ve danced insecurely on the margins of both...

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
Eric Hoffer

...a friend was leading a therapy group for mentally ill ex-con drug addicts....one day, a caseworker was talking with a client and had to leave the room...finding, upon returning, that both the client and her lap-top were gone....though the guy came back the next day, to what I imagine was as therapeutic a grilling about what happened to the lap-top as possible...it’s at a crack house, he said, but I can get it back for $20...not surprisingly, the staff was dubious...but given the value of the computer, not to mention all the classified files on its hard drive, twenty bucks really wasn’t much to gamble on the faint possibility of getting it back...so, they gave it to him, and, some time later, he came back, lap-top in hand...leaving my friend and me really impressed by what was apparently a very professionally and ethically-run crack house....making me wonder: can fair trade organic crack co-ops be next?...

...any time a student started asking a question beginning with do we have to...?, I’d interrupt, say no, of course not...they’d say really?...and I’d say you’re in college; you don’t have to do anything...I can’t send you to the principal’s office, can’t give you a detention, can’t call your parents, really can’t do anything to you; what you do or don't do is up to you....except the grade, they'd say...and I'd reply but that’s just a description of what you decided you felt like doing...in shorthand...like a haiku...but even shorter...

...the difference between self-pity and self-compassion is, I think, that the first is only marginally different from cruelty...a distinction merely in terms of the tone of voice with which we call ourselves pathetic...while the latter is more likely to give a soothing back rub before saying, in a loving tone, that it’s time to get up off your ass...

Where I Actually Live...

Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other.
M. C. Richards

...working from the creative center generally seems like one of the better excuses for not making any money...lucrative vocation set aside in favor of heartfelt avocation...romantic slacker bullshit, if you will........not making any money but not producing much to speak of, either...killing time before the apocalypse as opposed to dancing with the muse in creative rapture...is, however, a bit more problematic...

...read a review recently in the Philadelphia City Paper of that new Woody Allen movie, which said no filmmaker has been so self-aware and yet so trapped by his neuroses...replace filmmaker with yoga blogger and you might have me...(just self-aware enough to figure that one out and yet too caught up in the usual crap to have any idea what to do about it other than find in it a solution to the fact that I haven’t posted anything on the blog in a week)...

...the trick is to find something truthful to say that represents neither a callow giving-in to habitual depressed thinking nor forced positive affirmations I don’t believe and, let's face it, neither do you no matter how many times you repeat them to yourself like a mantra in hopes they’ll grow legs and walk with us up the street for a cup of organic fair-trade coffee.....try to focus on that walk—not along some misty path in mythical Himalayas, but a street—the same old street—in Philadelphia, where I actually live...and on that cup of coffee the hardcore yogis might spurn...officially, at least, though most’ll drink it anyway...and, maybe, most of all, on that drinking it anyway...on that un-ideal realm of what actually happens in between hope to be and fear I am...

...and, right now, I fear I’m being pretentious...though, for what it’s worth, in the rough draft I compared myself to Van Gogh, not Woody Allen...(then, what the hell, people laughed at Van Gogh for trying to be Van Gogh, too)....right now sitting here on my mat writing and feeling lazy, wondering can this count as my morning yoga practice?...

Lost My Sacred Mala Beads Last Night at a Hipster Pool Party

Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away.
Aitken Roshi

...everything you gather is just more that you can lose...
Robert Hunter

...lost my sacred mala beads last night at a hipster pool party...yeah, I hear ya: what’s a yoga cynic doing with sacred mala beads in the first place?!...is he perhaps being ironic?....actually, no....got ‘em at Kripalu on one of first nights of the teacher training, passed out with a mantra...om namo bhagavate vasudevaya...even if I can’t say what exactly that means to me....then, a night or two before leaving, passed them around ceremonially through the group...as, you might say, a means of tying us and our experience together like sacred beads on a string...to be taken metaphysically or metaphorically...and I’ve worn them every day since, feeling that connection, in some way or other...but now they’re gone, dropped somewhere, apparently, when I was changing my clothes before or after going in for a swim...

...biked over there first thing after coffee this morning...found nothing but empty plastic cups and broken pool toys in the trampled grass...

...headed downtown to yoga class soon after...felt a drop or two a few blocks from home but didn’t think that was anything...then a light sprinkle along the Wissahickon path....turning to a not so light sprinkle and then a steady rain by the time I got to the Schuylkill...not thrilled to show up soaked and muddy, but no desire to turn around and go home, either...hell, you don’t hear those old school yogis saying dude, I was gonna go meditate naked in the charnel ground with rocks hanging from my junk but checked the weather on-line and looks like it might be a tad inclement...and, really, it's not bad, biking through the rain...

The Subjectivity of Light

...got an ice cream cake for my mom’s birthday...the woman taking the order said that’s wonderful when I asked her to write Happy 85th on it...apparently, even in a youth-obsessed society, there comes a point when over the hill becomes a compliment...an acknowledgment that the hills someone’s traveling are distant and hard enough to get to that fear of getting old is finally trumped by something closer to awe...

...when caught in a storm, a point comes, after much resistance and angst, when it’s all okay...after some period of hoping it’ll stop, dreading the consequences of wetness, eyes hunting desperately for shelter...clothes become saturated, water pours down through every crease, entering every orifice...resistance dawns that you can’t get any wetter...and there’s no more reason to worry about the rain...

...went to see the new Woody Allen flick, Midnight in Paris...in which Owen Wilson, playing the neurotic, wise cracking, Woody Allen character, goes in and out of time warps in Paris, interacting with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Gertude Stein, and falling in love with a woman who both isn’t his fiancée and died years ago...at one point, he meets Salvador Dali, who introduces him to his friends Luis Buñuel and Man Ray...who, hearing about his "crazy" predicament, says it makes perfect sense to me...to which our befuddled protagonist replies yeah, but you guys are surrealists...

Practicing Yoga for the Wrong Reasons? Who the Hell Cares?

Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1.2

Some come to laugh their pasts away,
Some come to make it just one more day...
Robert Hunter

Everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner...
Lily Allen

One night a week, I work at a residential rehab for women coming from the most challenging backgrounds—long-term addiction, rape, prostitution, poverty, prison, childhood incest, loss of children, every imaginable kind of abuse. I bring my expertise in reading and writing, in hopes that they’ll get their GED’s, maybe go back to school, or simply learn to narrate their experiences in writing; they bring PhD’s in suffering.

I feel particular admiration for some of the older women, those most scarred and humbled. As bad as life can get—the stuff of nightmares that leave us shaking in our beds, afraid of falling asleep again—they’ve been there. They’ve known Hell, and what it’s like to claw their way out, only to slip and tumble backwards into the depths, again and again and again. And yet, here they are, still trying.

Then there are some of the younger women—still vibrant and cute enough to hide their scars, and still naive enough to think they can run away from it all, there because it beats jail; the older clients say they haven’t hit bottom yet. Often, as I arrive, many of the clients are on their way out the door, heading to a weekly outside meeting—a twelve-step group beyond the confines of residential rehab, allowing them to incorporate their experiences of recovery within that sequestered world with those of people on the outside...many of whom are men. While everyone, generally, cleans up a bit for the outside meetings—hair done, a little mascara, a skirt in place of sweatpants, maybe a touch of jewelry—a few of the younger clients take it a bit further: wearing thick layers of makeup, low cut blouses, jeans tight enough I wonder they don’t cut off circulation. One put on thigh high black leather boots with stiletto heels, fishnet stockings beneath a short leather skirt and bustier week after week, resisting the entreaties of staff members to the effect that this really wasn’t appropriate for Narcotics Anonymous.

But, though their attitudes seem be blatantly off, though they may be missing the point, though their dressed-up-get-messed-up choices in couture might be a complete mockery of the well-established values of twelve-step programs and recovery itself, they keep going. They’re encouraged to. And there’s a reason for that. Whether they realize it or not, they need help—badly, and such resistance only serves to put that need into stark relief. And it may be that in these meetings they attend for, apparently, all the wrong reasons, they will, in spite of themselves, find the help they need. It’s better to be there with the wrong attitude, in other words, than not to be there at all.

Meanwhile, the serious yoga world’s full of outrage that so many people see yoga as a means of getting a firm butt...or to show off one’s firm butt in the latest designer yoga clothing and compare said butt and clothing with those of others in the room...or to enjoy other peoples’ firm butts so tightly wrapped in that expensive stretchy stuff. The women at the rehab, from what I've seen, appear to see morning yoga as an excuse to go outside and smoke cigarettes.

That’s cool with me. They might learn something and it might help them, in spite of themselves...

Will Teach Yoga For Booze

The shallowest still water is unfathomable.
Henry David Thoreau

File Under: Not Sure What the Traditional Yoga Sages Would Think of This, But Doubt It’d Be Good:

...after much talk, finally taught my first living room yoga class...trucked over to my friends’ place, bringing yoga mats & ancient wisdom...they made margaritas....I was, it should be noted, firm and forthright: no drinking ‘til after yoga...

...next week, I’m heading to the shore with some other friends, who’re already making up a menu of cocktails and exotic beers....in the mornings, I’ll be leading hangover yoga on the beach...

...it’s a start...