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...

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?...