Dogsitting, the Universe, and Getting Lost in Suburban Neighborhoods

We live in an old chaos of the sun...
Wallace Stevens

...I’m dogsitting this week...which means I have no choice to go on long walks with my good friend Bella...and, sometimes, get lost...like last night...

...as an adolescent read practically nothing but science fiction and fantasy...certainly didn’t read much that was assigned as homework...kinda burned out on it midway through college, though...too many space wars...too many elves...barely touched the stuff since...then, just recently, visiting mom’s house, decided to dig out the Foundation Trilogy...which is probably more interesting now than back in eighth grade when my eyes likely drifted over pages, waiting for old Isaac A. to cut the philosophy and break out the laser beams...

....one thing occurred to me, though, in reading all that about planets and stars and galaxies...I hadn’t seen the night sky in quite some time...not really...couldn’t remember the last time I paid attention to the stars or moon....partly, no doubt, the result of living in the city for two years...so, late last night, hopelessly lost with Bella the dog in a suburban neighborhood, spent a good amount of time looking up...

...some people look at the vastness of the universe and see proof of the existence of God...since how else can you explain something so awesome...others see quite the opposite...since how else can you explain something large and yet so empty...

...all I know is that we were lost for hours late at night...but it didn’t seem to bother the dog...so I didn’t let it bother me, either...

From One Messed Up Dude To Another

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
Nietzsche

I can still hear momma say: “honey, don’t let it go to your head.”
Kim Gordon

...one thing I’ll say about Michael Jackson, he was one messed-up dude...and I say that without judgment, as a fellow messed-up dude...even if messed-up in very different ways...Tolstoy didn’t say that normal people are all alike but messed-up people are all messed-up in their own particular ways, but he might as well have...

...Michael Jackson’s problem, some say, was that he didn’t get to have an adolescence...my problem, it could be said, is that I did have one...and yet, like him, I suspect, I’ve sometimes felt that true happiness was lost with some important formative experiences I never had...

...I’ve certainly tried to remake myself...at least in terms of the ways I thought other people looked at me...more than once...even if I haven’t had any actual “work” done...nor have I managed to get obscenely wealthy...but, as with Michael Jackson, as has been made all too clear, I found the same problems remained right there where they were on the inside no matter what was done to hide them on the outside...

...to be honest, can’t say I was ever much of a fan of his...then, to the best of my knowledge, he was never much of a fan of mine...so we’re even....besides, if one thing’s clear about Michael Jackson, it’s that whatever stardom did for him, it wasn’t good...so, guess I can be glad I didn’t contribute to it, much...

...and, anyway, this is really only meant as a salute from one messed-up dude to another...and to all the other messed-up people out there struggling to love their messed-up selves...

If you're going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill*

*stolen from Yogadork

The Other People

We are the other people, we are the other people, you’re the other people, too...
Frank Zappa

...had some friends in Arizona...mix of college students and drop-outs...some planning on dropping back in, some not so much...living in this ramshackle house next to a scuzzy bar...narrow front porch butting up to the sidewalk...cool place to sit and watch people pass by...two real bedrooms, as I remember, and a kind of walk-in closet just big enough for a bed...often a person or two sleeping on the couch or living room floor, as well...a likely place to find weed, beer, and loud music at any hour...

...one day there was this new guy sitting on the porch...turned out he’d moved in with the girl in the walk-in closet room...which meant he wouldn’t be there long...but that’s another story...longish hair, dark sunglasses, big smile...into Kerouac and Vonnegut, Nirvana and P. J. Harvey, hiking and dogs...got us tickets to see Johnny Cash in Phoenix, just before he got sick and stopped touring...we became friends immediately...

...a couple weeks later, were walking down the sidewalk and ran into a friend of his, who had a dog...said he’d gotten kicked out of a pizza place because he took the dog in with him...my friend, grinning, snorted, I’m sure the dog’s cleaner than the Mexicans they got working in the kitchen...

...which, I told myself, must’ve been meant ironically...or something...though it didn’t really sound like it...and, soon, started hearing more...about blacks, gays, women, Jews, people who didn't respect his right to smoke cigarettes wherever he wanted, and, most of all, as this was northern Arizona, Indians...ended up in a big ugly argument with him every time we met...and, as gradually became clear, he liked it that way...fed off of the reactions his hateful words elicited...and I decided our friendship had to end...

All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color.
Warren Beatty, Bulworth

I support gay marriage because I believe they have a right to be just as miserable as the rest of us.
Kinky Friedman

...saw that new Star Trek movie...younger, hipper, less boring...I liked it...and was reminded that the first...or, at least, most famous...interracial kiss on American TV was between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura, in 1968...though, in order for it to happen, they had to go way into the future...and to another planet...and fall under some kinda alien mind control....strange as it may seem now, in 1967, when anti-miscegenation laws were struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, in the appropriately named Loving vs. Virginia decision, Gallup polls showed that 70% of the population was opposed to interracial marriage...a considerably higher figure than current...or recent...levels of opposition to gay marriage....

Of all dangers to our nation that exist in our day, there can be no greater one than having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn—they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account.
Walt Whitman

Weather Report Suite

Winter rain, now tell me why summers fade and roses die.
The answer came: the wind and rain.
Eric Andersen/Bob Weir

...sunshine outside...day before the summer solstice...just moments after acknowledging to friends behind the counter: it’s now official—the weather’s made me depressed...paid, picked up the coffee mug, walked to a window table...and there it was...felt it before I saw it...a warmth and brightness coming in through the glass...

...could only hope it’s shining on my friends at the Clearwater Folk Festival, singing along with Pete Seeger...to everything, turn turn turn, there is a season, turn, turn, turn...

...woke this morning half an hour after Saturday morning yoga class started...heard the rain beating down on the roof before even opening my eyes...decided to go back to sleep...

...wouldn’t’ve been so bad if it hadn’t been for the teasing un-wet summerlike yesterday...walking in the early evening, I saw fireflies...fireflies...for the first time this year...

...ended up going downtown for a different yoga class in the afternoon...was sitting around feeling miserable thinking jesuschristIdon’tfeellikedoin’anyfuckin’yogatoday...but know from experience that there’s no better time to do yoga than when you’re sitting around feeling miserable thinking jesuschristIdon’tfeellikedoin’anyfuckin’yogatoday...and it’s true...

...started out by bike, then turned around and got the car...don’t mind getting wet on the way home...just keep peddling to keep warm then jump in the shower and into dry clothes...but getting soaked on the way to somewhere else is different...

Tonight's Fortune Cookie

...kitchen so small in the new place it’s not exactly curbing my tendency to get take-out instead of putting in time and effort to make dinner...particularly not with that Chinese place down the road with its five buck heaping portions of General Tso’s and rice...deep frying, high fat content, MSG—check, check, check...does it help at all that I biked the half mile or so and back for it?

...there’s also the ongoing cold and wet that’s making Philly in June more like Seattle in April...I’m a negative creep, I’m a negative creep, I’m a negative creep and I’m stoned...Kurt Cobain...been there, done that, of course, but not now...

...now I’m sitting in my mellow room after midnight, reading poems and typing away on another blog post...was getting heated there for a bit, reading politics on the web...which, of course, is outside the purview of the mellow room...but, then, the number one rule of the mellow room is that if I break the mellow room’s rules, it’s not a big deal...

For now, my life is enough. There’s not much more to expect.
Simon J. Ortiz

...still going to four yoga classes and biking between fifty and a hundred miles most weeks...cut down to not-too-much-more-than a mug of coffee a day months ago and, amazingly enough, have stuck to it...even if I’ve started drinking soda again...don’t drink much alcohol, though...don’t smoke anything...so, all in all, really not doing badly...even if...oh, god, do I love junk food...that fortune cookie merely a final sugary bite to cap off the day’s indulgence...but it's alright...

...and its fortune, as it turns out, was memorable enough to cap off this post...

Don’t ask, don’t say.
Everything lies in silence.

Wrestling, Yoga, and That Touchy-Feely Loving Kindness Shit...

the race is long, and in the end it is only against ourselves
Baz Luhrman

...have a terrible tendency to treat the yoga asana thing kinda like a wrestling match...I mean, I get that whole loving-kindness-toward-yourself thing...in theory...and yet...there I am again telling my knee to get down on the goddamn floor...whether it’s actually good for said knee to go all the way to the floor or not...

...and that’s not even mentioning calling my tendencies terrible...

...these things get complicated...

...especially since, even as I begin to see that vicious circle of recrimination clearly, that voice in my head keeps up...jeezus christ, yer the only person in the damn room can’t do a goddamn crow pose without fuckin’ fallin’ over...yes, the Foul Mouthed Grand Inquisitor even finds his way into yoga class... that’s the thing about the yoga crowd—so open and accepting they even let the Foul Mouthed Grand Inquisitors in...so long as they take their shoes off...

...for that matter, he even sometimes makes his way into this blog...yer usin’ that lame-ass Spanish Inquisition metaphor again?...jeezus , yer stretchin’ it ’til it breaks...kinda like torturin’ your readers on the rack...how fitting...this post suuuuucks...and, actually, I was wrestling with this post until three A.M. last night, and, this morning, deleted most of it...

...the truth is, sometimes the Inquisitor’s criticisms are valid...I mean, that stuff I cut out really did mostly suck....I just wish he’d be nicer about it...

...a person who’s likely encountered some actual flesh-and-blood grand inquisitors, Aung San Suu Kyi, wrote kindness is in a sense the courage to care...which, I think, means something other than the courage to beat one’s opponent into submission in a wrestling match...whether that opponent is a leg, a blog, or a Foul Mouthed Grand Inquisitor...

...since, in the end, what is a Foul Mouthed Grand Inquisitor but a badly wounded part of oneself, desperately trying to look tough...and, as such, as much in need of that touchy-feely loving kindness shit as anybody?

Famous Yoga Dude

Fame—

What’s your name what’s your name what’s your name?
David Bowie/John Lennon

...as you’re no doubt aware, this once-humble blog has hit the BIG TIME...prominently mentioned...in between Lululemon ads and photo-spreads of nubile yoginis performing asanas in exotic locations...in the August, 2009 issue of...Yoga Journal...

...that’s right, sisters and brothers...Yoga...Mother...Shut Yo Mouth!...Journal...

...and so I join Sting, Russell Simmons, and Bikram Choudhury on a plane of consciousness inhabited only by that unique, highly enlightened caste known as...The Famous Yoga Dudes...

...upcoming posts...written by the most able members of the Yoga for Cynics™ professional staff...probably outsourced...cheaper that way...will chronicle my planetary journeys by private yogajet...demonstrating chattaranga in Melbourne...addressing multitudes in Mysore...adopting babies with Madonna in Africa...

...and get ready for a brand spankin’ new line of Yoga for Cynics™ merchandise!...I’m thinkin’ cheap styrofoam visors and plastic key chains...



...in all seriousness, thanks to Yoga Journal and particularly Lauren Ladoceour...who, it should be mentioned, also had the wisdom to mention my good blog friend Brooks...

Bring on the Foul Mouthed Grand Inquisitor

...have a tendency to beat up on myself...what a jerk I am for doing that...just kidding...

...seriously, though, Amy Weintraub said something about how we tend to say horrible things to ourselves that we’d never think of saying to a friend or family member or, really, anybody...and it’s true...if you were eating breakfast at my house, I would not call you a stupid fucking asshole for spilling a little bit of soymilk on my crummy easy chair that should’ve been thrown in the dumpster months ago, anyway...but when I do it?...bring on the foul mouthed Grand Inquisitor...

...I can work with maximum security prisoners and have little problem seeing beyond armed robberies, rapes, and murders...really...but if I’m too lazy to do anything productive all afternoon...or blow it with that kind, smart, beautiful woman who seemed like she wanted to get to know me better...or fail to put up a blog post for nearly a week (seriously...the last one was on Thursday, and today's Wednesday, for chrissake...)...here come the thumbscrews, the rack, the guillotine...

...and yet, sometimes, even I get a reprieve...like forgetting my mom’s birthday, which, as it turns out, is today....a few hours ago my brother called and mentioned it...mid-afternoon, still an acceptable time to call up and let her know I’m taking her out to dinner tonight...so, instead of beating myself up, for this evening, I get to enjoy a nice dinner out with mom...it’s all good...for now...

Broadcasting Live from the Mellow Room...

...I’ve got all my yoga books arranged on a windowsill...I’ve read a whole bunch...and most have a lotta good stuff in ‘em...even if they also, sometimes, include stuff that makes me gag...and, no, I’m not talking about that vastra dhauti thing where you swallow the twenty-foot-long cloth...though, yeah, that’d probably make me gag, too...

...one instruction you see commonly in books on yoga and/or meditation is practice in a part of your house that you don’t use for anything else...to which I tend to reply, with, uncharacteristic as it might seem for one so pious and reverent as myself, some sarcasm: why just a part of my house? Why not tell the servants to clear out one of my guest cottages?

...nonetheless, in my new place, small as it is, I’ve managed to reserve a tiny room to be, if not technically a yoga room, as I’m not gonna be using it exclusively for practicing yoga, at least a relatively yogic room....that’s where the aforementioned books are, along with some poetry, and various art objects, that big round piece of coral I found kayaking in St. Lucia, a couple candles people gave me, and an incense burner, arranged on the broad windowsill...and there’s no furniture, just some cushions on the floor, and my small moon and stars rug and purple yoga block and yoga mat...and some mellow artworks on the walls...like Alfred Sisley’s Meadow...see above...and it’s where I’m sitting typing this with my laptop on the rug right now...

...if I really wanted to be all cosmic and spiritual about it, I’d point out that the room is at the front of the house, in the middle, on the third (top) floor...and has windows that, if anything was, would have to be called the building’s third eye...

...the idea, really is simply a peaceful space...no work I don’t really want to do, no reading political blogs and leaving ranting comments, no cranking up the old Stones, Clash, or Kings of Leon albums and stomping around...that has probably more to do with what my intentions are before going in than anything else...simply the conscious decision to go into a space that’s specifically set aside for cultivating that ever elusive opposite of angst...

...and, I gotta admit that, today, coming in for the first time since it’s been officially the mellow room rather than simply the one room without boxes and crap piled everywhere, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at what I’ve found...

Cluttered Perspectives (Moving, part three)

...earlier today was surprised at how sad I felt...having parked the moving truck, biked away to yoga class for a break from all that....then, hours later, everything moved but the grime exhausted scrubbing couldn’t seem to make disappear...looking at bare white walls of a place where I’ve lived for two years...no, wait a second...it’s later than that, now...keys are in the building manager’s drop box...need to change tense from present perfect to past: I lived there for two years...but don’t anymore....door’s locked and I no longer have any way of getting in...

...just one in a long series of places...none too spectacular...don’t think I could provide a street address for any of them...which is just as well....places are ephemeral...not good to get too attached to them...not even those given that most greatly revered title of home...

....though I lived in the same house for almost all of my childhood, and off and on during early adulthood...even if I didn’t feel very at home, then...and my mom still lives there....in fact, I’m visiting her as I write this, in my old bedroom...same stuff on the walls...some of it, at least, though it’s decaying fast...a greeting card drawing of a dog that looks like Mittens, our Welsh Corgi, when I was a kid...a yellowed newspaper review of the Who concert I saw in 1982...a postcard with a picture of Gumbi with what looks like a napkin wrapped around him and a caption reading: Mahatma Gumbhi Man of Peace...a program from the production of West Side Story in which I played a small part senior year...tonight, tonight won’t be just any night, tonight there will be no morning star...

...then, places are also perspectives...especially when those places are homes...the ceiling fan I saw and sometimes heard first thing in the morning...the trees and parking lot out the window...the particular distance to bathroom and kitchen...all gone...or soon to be someone else’s...

...the house where I grew up is surrounded by trees...and I can’t imagine what it’d be like to grow up somewhere that wasn't...

...when I was in high school, my family flew in to Mexico City, then drove to Puebla and Oaxaca through the mountains...twisty, narrow mountain roads with trucks that moved so slowly, my dad would have to pass them...a cliff on the other side, if he misjudged....most of the trip was truly beautiful, but what’ll always stick with me most was what we saw on the way out of Mexico City...my attention, I think, first drawn away from whatever I was reading or the music on my Sony Walkman by an incredible rancid odor...and I looked out the window to see a mountain of garbage, and people all over it, foraging for whatever they might find...and, around it, a seemingly endless sea of dingy, crumbling grey in which countless human beings lived....I’d thought I knew what the word slum meant before then but I was mistaken...and as we drove on, it continued, for mile after mile....I really can’t imagine what it’d be like to grow up there....

...lately, my perspective has simply tended to be filled with clutter...papers all over every surface and spilling onto the floor, and other crap lying around everywhere...crumpled things I didn’t feel like picking up all around the corner trash cans...dirty laundry in a pile by the bed....was really somewhat shocked to see the quantity of dust in every corner, along every wall, underneath every piece of furniture....

...and clutter, clearly, is a problem in my perspective...as is junk...and ugly residue that sticks and needs to be washed...and all the tiny motes, fragments of sloughed off skin that should’ve been allowed to blow away long ago...

...my new home is nothing but clutter at this point...and I’m really not sure where exactly I’m gonna put stuff...except for the small room in front, where I told Jason, the friend who kindly helped with the move, not to put anything, and where I lay down only my little moon and stars rug, a couple of small art objects, an incense holder, and a few selected books...an attempt at leaving one small part of my new place largely open and uncluttered...it’s a start...