Post Holiday Doldrums and Accidental Haiku

I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.

Audrey Hepburn

sluggish, sinuses
on fire, don’t wanna know how
much weight I’ve put on*

* was compiling bodily complaints and realized they came out to exactly seventeen syllables, easily divisible into a traditional five-seven-five structure...making my whining about minor seasonal ailments a completely accidental and spontaneous complaint-haiku...which might be really spiritual...or poetic.......or neither....perhaps funny?...if so, that’s at least as good as either spiritual or poetic...at least to my current state of mind...which let’s face it, is pretty typical for the time of year...minus the all-too-common post-holiday colds or emotional wounds...no fights with family members, this year...not even close...seriously...and, to the best of my knowledge at this point, on the early evening of the 28th, nothing caught from little relatives sneezing on me....the days are getting longer by a couple seconds with every sunrise, and 2011, less than a week ahead, is shaping up already to be a year of momentous events...in my little universe, at least...(but more on those, later)...best wishes, namaste, & all that to all you Floating Glowing Beings of Pure Love out there who give Yoga for Cynics meaning by reading (even when its author's in a crappy mood)...

Tidings of Comfort, Joy, and Weltschmerz

The jewel of modern consciousness is compassion. But its worms will become confusion, world-view overload, self-doubt, and paralyzing narcissism. The purpose of Yoga will be to dig carefully through the worms to extract the jewel.
yoga 2.0

Because if this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus is just as selfish as we are or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.
Stephen Colbert

...wrote something a while ago called Compassion Can Be Complicated...(the title got changed on me)...citing famous Buddhist Pema Chodron on idiot compassion that causes us to do for others only for the sake of making ourselves feel better, without actually helping anybody...

...but things get even more complicated when the goal is to feel worse...(as, contrary to more simplistic views of human nature, is quite often the case)...

weltschmerz {German, from Welt world + Schmerz pain}: mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state
Merriam-Webster

...there’s a often a fine line between feelings of compassion for the whole world’s pain and a self-indulgent wallowing in a sense of unhappiness-greater-than-oneself...comfortable rapture in a miserable sublime...between making an expansive sense of compassion part of a personal spirituality and forging religion out of depression...

the notion of some infinitely gentle,
Infinitely suffering thing
T. S. Eliot

...worshipping an egotistical and infinitely resentful deity fed with continual sacrifices of pleasure...our own and that of those unfortunate enough to be close to us...a simultaneously self-righteous and self-lacerating attitude of how-can-you-enjoy-yourself-with-so-much-suffering-in-the-world...as if refusing joy here will somehow ease suffering elsewhere...

...the dominant idea, I think, even if it’s seldom stated, is that we have very limited capacities for either joy or compassion...that the two are separate, and greedy, and one takes from rather than feeds the other...that happiness necessitates callous indifference to others’ pain, and real compassion inherently involves turning away from happiness and toward our own pain...receiving only a booby prize of self-righteousness...which might, paradoxically, make you feel good, in a way...though, ironically enough, it’s the complete opposite of compassion...(if often mistaken for it, in some circles)...(if you feel strongly about how much more compassionate you are than other people, you’re probably not)...

...if there’s a spiritual mode I can get with, it would have to be one that allows the parallel lines of joy and compassion to merge...a love that, in the face of suffering, grows only stronger...

The Slowly Unfolding Orgasm of Existence

We exult in out extraordinarily responsive central nervous system, which we ever seek to amplify through increasing exposure. We live in order to experience life more, and more closely. We soak up experience at every turn. Our bodyminds have evolved to participate fully in the slowly unfolding orgasm of existence. We have created yoga as a toolbox of participation.
matthew remski & scott petrie, yoga 2.0*

...last weekend took my mother to see Black Swan...(both liked it, though I probably would’ve enjoyed certain scenes without knowing mom was watching in the next seat)...(yeah, that one)...(and that one...definitely that one)...I’ve known lotsa dancers, and people who have dance backgrounds and are now yoga teachers...(almost as many as acid heads who are now yoga teachers)...and there are clear parallels between the traditions...as well as glaring differences...in the movie, somebody destroys herself, mind, body, and spirit, in pursuit of an aesthetic ideal...dying for perfection...which might be one of the better reasons to self-destruct, relatively speaking...like Oscar Wilde said...Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined oneself over poetry is an honour...

...I dunno, though...could be I’m finally coming to a point in my life where I start to see that all as just a lot of depressed romantic overgrown adolescent bullshit...

...not that there’s anything wrong with that...

...it’s cold out...cold enough stuff hurts when I go outside...or maybe I’m just getting old...or maybe both...growing old hurts, but youth, as I remember, can be painful as hell...

...snow’s falling gently outside the cafe window, sticking, first, to cars and benches...now sidewalk and street...not much more than a dusting, really...but enough to make driving ugly...had planned on going from here to run some errands...by car...and go to yoga class...but might be nice to stay put...have some more green tea and watch it fall...

...anyway, to misquote both James Joyce and Grace Slick, I’d rather have perfection die for me...

* this might be the first of possibly a buncha posts kinda sorta maybe having something to do with this book...which I just started.... thanks to Carol, for turning me on to the book with her review at Elephant...

The Critical Importance of Flexibility

Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted.
(attributed to John Lennon, T. S. Eliot, and Bertrand Russell)

...sleep, I find, is a chore when I need it,
but an indescribable luxury when it’s time to get up...

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever—

this is a somewhat new kind of religion.
Albert Einstein

...similarly, nothing makes writing harder
than having good, solid reasons to write...

Almost all of my epiphanies over the previous fifteen years
had been the same one: I don’t know.
Stephen Cope

...the worst thing to do if you’re trying to be more flexible,
it turns out, is to try to be more flexible...

No Comment

...a bunch of friends crammed into my car to go downtown and see another friend play guitar in a record store...(yes, those still exist)...just down the street from where I go to yoga class...and, as it turned out, yet another friend, who’d biked down, was hoping for a ride home, asked if I could put her bike in my trunk....I said I’d see if it’d fit, but wasn’t too optimistic...having thrown all the crap from the backseat in there to make room for everybody....plus, one of those people had gotten off a train and put her luggage in there...but, the biggest problem with making the bike fit, even if the tires both came off, as she said they would, would be the bike rack I keep in the trunk, which takes up half the space...

....it actually took me a couple minutes to realize the bike rack might, in fact, be something other than an obstacle...

Giving Credit Where It's Due...the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
William Blake

...just got back from the eye doctor because my artificial doors of perception are badly scratched...missing a nose piece, and, since I stepped on them on getting out of bed last week, badly mangled enough I decided finally to do something about it...could be there’s a metaphor in that somewhere...


As long as we associate happiness with getting what we want, we’ve associated it with exactly the opposite thing that makes us happy. Getting what we want doesn’t make us happy, not wanting makes us happy.
Adyashanti


...it's easy to envy the bliss we see in little kids, especially when it's brought on by so little...an ice cream cone or a favorite cartoon coming on...but, then, with that, there's the total abject wailing despair when the ice cream cone falls on the sidewalk or mom decides that's enough TV for today....there's definitely something to be said for the kind of quiet equanimity you see in older people...


Some say they can recall a thousand years
Some say they have already visited the next thousand years
On a windy day I am waiting for a bus.
Ko Un (stolen from the legendary Brooks, who got it from Yoga for a World Out of Balance, by Michael Stone)


...for a while now, been biking around Philly taking pictures of some of the amazing street art that’s appeared over the past couple decades, and have quite shamelessly used it to illustrate Yoga for Cynics posts (particularly this one and this one) as well as an Elephant Journal article. It wasn’t ’til recently, though, that I found out where all the art was coming from, and realized I’d been severely remiss about giving credit where it’s due. The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, led by Jane Golden, began as an offshoot of the city’s anti-graffiti network, channeling the talents of graffiti artists to benefit their communities as well as themselves, and is now, as America’s largest public art program, responsible for Philly having more murals on its walls than any city in the world, working with a variety of non-profits, including Philly’s own Yoga Unites, to empower young people through art. I should mention I’ve showcased only a tiny handful of more than 3,000 in the city, and simply the ones I happen to have biked, walked, or driven by and liked with camera handy. In fact, they're everywhere, including neighborhoods where you probably wouldn’t expect to see dazzling public art (and, actually, a few of the photos here were taken very quickly before skedaddling away...making it highly inconvenient to realize suddenly that my back tire was going flat)...

Decaffeinated

Coffee is prana.
Patanjali*

Since every pleasure’s got an edge of pain,
Pay for your ticket and don’t complain...
Bob Dylan

It’s been a week since my last cup of coffee...and you were wondering why this blog’s been so quiet?**

...then, I’m probably quitting the whole yoga thing, anyway...been reading so much about how healthy it is...which is a problem, since I'm currently working on gettin' me a new health insurance plan...and...unlike most people, who end up paying far more than they ever get back...making the insurance industry so profitable it buys senators and congressmen like yoga folk buy expensive crap with Om symbols on it...I wanna profit from the arrangement...

...so, from here on, my health is the insurance company’s problem...no more yoga, no more meditation, no more fruits and vegetables...organic or otherwise...no more biking (except in busy traffic...without a helmet...preferably drunk)....might even change the name of this blog to Sitting in Front of the Tube Eating Ho-Ho’s, Smoking Cigarettes, Drinking Cheap Booze, Snorting Crystal Meth and Letting the Insurance Company Pick Up the Tab for Cynics...but, it occurs to me, that might be a tad redundant...


* yeah, I know, that’s not in your copy of the Yoga Sutras...that’s ‘cause it’s an exceptionally rare out-take, available only as part of the outrageously expensive digitally re-mastered limited edition Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras: the Complete Sessions deluxe boxed set...along with a few alternate takes (Sutra 1.1: “let’s party”) and the legendary, unexpurgated, Vedic Times interview with Patanjali...in which he admits he was joking about celibacy....***

** not to mention that this particular post is, let’s face it, not up to the usual quality standards...loose though they are...really not much more than an excuse for that cheesy Patanjali joke....I recommend skipping the rest and checking out my far more inspirational Thanksgiving post at Elephant Journal...or going back and reading that last one, which was pretty good: One Breath at a Time....namaste & all that...

*** wha??!!... You think I’d make this stuff up???!!!

One Breath at a Time

Beneath the heavenly equator in the valleys where the sweet and saline dew meet, there grows a huge poisonous fungus, and the tasty little edible mushrooms on its cap transform its contaminated blood into sweetness. The deer like to invigorate their masculine strength by nibbling these little mushrooms. But if they are careless and bite down too deep, they ingest some of the big poisonous fungus along with the little mushrooms, and then they die.
Every evening, when I kiss my beloved, I think: it is only natural that one day I will bite down too deep....
Milorad Pavic, Dictionary of the Khazars [ellipsis in original]

...don’t let them fool you with dope and cocaine;
Won’t do no harm to feel your own pain...
John Lennon

...takes a few frustrating details to irreparably alter the most placid description...memories make me ugly, sometimes...I know alcohol’s not an answer, or even much of a question, but knowledge ain’t always all it’s cracked up to be...

...there’s a song called Boulder to Birmingham by Emmylou Harris, about the death of her friend and mentor Gram Parsons...I’ve always liked a line at the beginning of the second verse: well you really got me this time...thought about that a lot after my dad died...after so many years of fucking with each others’ heads...in protracted and largely unconscious psychological warfare...him a licensed shrink...me, the son of a shrink who’d grown up learning to resist anything anybody else wanted me to do or be like my life depended on it...which it kinda did...I’d say we were evenly matched...until he went and threw down the ultimate trump card...

...every couple years I quit coffee...temporarily...like, for a month or two...usually when it gets to the point that excessive caffeine seems to be keeping me awake and bothering my stomach...meaning that, at this point, I’m long overdue...down to one cup a day for the past couple weeks, but it’s still difficult to schedule that three day headache...

...last week somebody at the rehab called me an angel...I was trying to tutor her in writing, and, with just a couple sentences on paper, she put the pen down and vented to me for about an hour about how she missed her kids and how pissed off she was at their father...apparently, I called her to come meet with me just after she’d gotten off the phone with him and was sitting with the other clients, pretending everything was okay...said she felt she could tell me everything precisely because I’m not a therapist...that I was an angel God had sent to her just when she needed me...

...was late to yoga class this morning...hate it when that happens...walked in on everybody else already in yoga class mode while I was in fuck, I’m late to yoga class mode....after fifteen or twenty minutes in the car, getting pissed off at other drivers...speed up goddammit, I’m trying to get to my fuckin’ yoga class...tryin’ to be more open n’ compassionate n’ shit...get outta the fuckin’ way...

...maybe there’s a reason the women at the rehab can relate to me, even if I’ve never been addicted to cocaine or heroin...they’re struggling with the one day at a time thing...I’m working on one breath at a time...and thankful that I get another chance, every second or so...

Life in Motion

...the time change confused me, as usual...spring forward, fall back seems simple enough, but somehow always so complicated...particularly considering the tendency of some, but not all, high tech appliances these days to update on their own...I quit wearing a watch long ago, and, more recently, my old clock radio broke...(actually, it still works, but the knob used to change the time on it doesn’t)...(so, I just need to turn it on at exactly midnight)...(which I’m gonna do...one of these days)...

...(that plan, however, is complicated by my recent efforts to get up earlier)...(while also cutting down on junk food and caffeine)...(which makes the early to bed part easier)...(but also leaves me kinda wandering in a dream)...(like, even more than usual)...(weeks going by like long, highly involved years)...(not that that's a bad thing)...

...have been going to the local meditation studio where people sit, generally, a bit too early for me...or, sometimes, more than a bit...and this is where the time change became an issue...waking up this past Sunday, saw my cell phone and computer both had the same time....so...did that mean they both changed automatically, or neither did?....as I was up, anyway, assumed the former and, since I was too late to walk, headed out to the car, hoping I wouldn’t be an hour early...to find that the car clock was an hour ahead...its wrongness letting me know what time was right...relatively speaking...

...watching Koyaanisqatsi...(wonder what the spell-check's gonna think of that one)...(Hopi for "life out of balance")...Godfrey Reggio’s masterwork of ecological chaos, fancy camerawork and Philip Glass minimalism.....first time I saw it was with a buncha people from the Philly Greenpeace office in the mid-80’s...passed around an eye-dropper, watched it along with The Lorax...("I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues")...and Star Trek IV...(the one where the Starship Enterprise goes back in time to saves the whales)...on somebody’s VCR...kind of a serendipitous psychedelic eco-film festival....certainly, never saw a mushroom cloud quite the same way again...

...time slowing up and speeding down...Hopi prophecies meeting momentous ill-conceived housing developments...embedded in the inherent contradictions of so beautifully using cutting edge technology to make a statement about technology growing out of control...dazzling unspoiled spaces and toxic wastelands...

...there in the midst, though, a kind of third term represented by moving images of people on the street...faces, hair, clothing...caught up in the maelstrom and looking very strange...and yet, they’re us...

Empty Voids or Open Space

It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.
Frank Zappa

...after much excitement, there’s little on the calendar...major holidays, of course...solid letters, in printer’s ink...lacking the passion of my barely-legible scrawl....weekly, bi-weekly, and semi-weekly commitments, of course, though they’re hardly necessary to write down, and some weeks, I don’t bother....what there are are days, lots of them...frightening or inviting...empty voids or open space...depending on how I choose to look at blankness...

The soul is a verb, not a noun.
David Mitchell

...was teaching...or trying to teach the men at the homeless shelter...who were having none of it....how do you give a well-meaning white liberal a hard time?...let me count the ways...

...at one point, my frustration reaching its ebb, a guy I’ll call Derek...(who, I was happy to find, had, since I’d last seen him, managed to get through a court date that might have sent him to prison)...turned to me with a smile, said: you can tell this is a house of pain, right?....I smiled back, grateful, said: yup...

To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.
Stephen Covey

The Slow and Gradual Path to Minor Fame as a Yoga Blogger

...time to say farewell to October, month o' major amounts of yoga...including the Philly yoga festival, trip to Kripalu, and only three days in which I didn’t attend at least one yoga class...including this past Saturday, when I went to the Rally to Restore Sanity...which, I think, was all about walking a line between humor and seriousness, accepting others, toning down the rage, and trying to be mindful rather than reacting out of instinctual fear...and, as such, kinda like a really big yoga class...

...but not requiring a mat...which is good since I've had a tendency to leave my mat at yoga studios lately...like yesterday...and last Tuesday....and the week before that, left my shorts...leaving little doubt that my subconscious mind wants yet more yoga...

...which it’s getting...as I ended up marking the first day of the relatively low-key yoga month of November feeling both mellow and energized...and, first and foremost, concerned with going to get my mat first thing in the morning and, though planning on my usual kundalini class in the evening (which I did end up going to, as well...work? what's that?), staying for a most excellent vinyasa class...in which, for the very first time, I dropped back from wild thing...camatkarasana...to wheel...urdhva dhanurasana...on both sides...even if I couldn’t manage to reverse it...(note to non-yogi readers: this is, like, really really impressive...)...(not that impressively performing advanced transitions between asanas is the point, or anything)...

...(...seriously, like, one thing I've come to realize is that, while a vigorous yoga practice while badly out of shape isn't much fun....trust me, I know...sometimes being in shape is even more of a problem...)...(like, a couple different teachers have told me they can tell runners and cyclists...that's me...by their inability to touch the floor with their heels in downward facing dog...)...(...and then there was the time I was struggling to get into a bind and the teacher explained that the trouble came from my arms and legs being so muscular...and I thought hmmmm...she's saying I'm just too buff and studly for this pose....that's gotta be the best reason not to be able to do something I've ever heard.....I think I can live with it...)...

...anyway, along with the practice, this yoga cynic's fame continues...slowly, very slowly...to grow...even as weird, existential stuff is fed to the masses....people meet me and then send really impressed e-mails saying stuff like whoa, dude! I can’t believe you’re the guy who writes yoga for cynics!!!...seriously...there’s talk of a Yoga for Cynics workshop some time in the new year (or, at least, there's been a brief chat after yoga class a couple weeks ago about meeting for coffee at some unspecified time in the future to talk about the possibility of a Yoga Cynics workshop maybe some time next year)...(...then, that's how democracy got its start, too...)...a couple weeks ago, got my latest blog award from the legendary Laura...and Brooks wrote an article at Elephant Journal featuring not only a picture of myself with herself and the uber-famous Seane Corn, but wrote such lovely stuff about me, I’m almost too embarrassed to link to it...but will...check it out...

...so, now, I sit contemplating possible layouts for the Yoga for Cynics ashram...thinkin’ recycled building materials, floppy-eared dogs roaming the grounds, inspiring inscriptions from the Tao Te Ching, Leaves of Grass, and Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, and a totally laissez faire attitude toward sex...somewhere where the ocean meets the sea and dolphins frolic in the waves...and it occurs to me that I really oughtta be getting back to work...

Dancing Wildly With Your Eyes Closed

...been goin’ to a lotta kundalini yoga classes....kundalini yoga, for them what don’t know, might be the most blatantly religious type o’ yoga...tied intimately to Sikhism...complete with headgear, long flowing robes, titles, and loads and loads of esoteric beliefs....making it not exactly the obvious choice for one so irreligious as your friendly neighborhood yoga cynic...

I can get you high—high on your breath.
Yogi Bhajan

...it’s also might be called the trippiest form of yoga...did I say trippy?!...I meant inward-focused...sometimes involving stuff like dancing wildly with your eyes closed*...which is why so many hippies got into it....personally, I get a solid buzz from yoga in general...but, in a kundalini class, I’m disappointed if I don’t get visuals.......not that, y'know, that's a reason to do it or anything...




* ...think I gained the respect of the drama club in high school simply by showing up for the West Side Story dance audition...I like to be in America okay by me in America everything’s free in America for a small fee in America...like, I was cool just to try in the face of an innate lack of grace, coordination, etc....in the end, getting the role of the guy who comically tries to make the Jets and Sharks dance rather than fight at the dance...without doing any dancing, myself....learned everything I know about the art of dance a year or two later at Grateful Dead shows...chemically infused & almost totally loose....so that trance-dancing in the yoga studio feels almost like coming full circle...

*thanks to Karin for her always amazing artwork*

From the Coffee Shop at Kripalu...

soft foggy morning,

mist, quite the view from here, is

that a metaphor?*

* ...biggest problem with this place is the food's so good, and there's so much of it...and afterwards, you do yoga....then, I suspect there are worse things a person can experience in this world than a touch of indigestion during camel pose....all morning, stuff kept reminding me of a dream last night I can't remember...just strange amorphous resonances....was telling Brooks...(even better in person than on-line)...about it...she asked what the dream felt like....I thought for a minute, said nice...warm...she said that's good...and I think she's probably right...

Today I Wrote About Nothing

All all the trees go piff
all all the rocks go paff
all all of nature poof.
Daniil Kharms (from Today I Wrote Nothing)

If at first an idea isn't absurd, There's no hope for it.
Albert Einstein

...all in all, doing nothing’s a lot easier when I’m supposed to be doing something...particularly if I have a precise idea of what that something's supposed to be...then I know just what to ignore...(even if I can never really ignore it completely)...and if it’s something I really don’t feel like doing...or, better yet, a whole bunch of things I don’t feel like doing...which, alas, is the case most of the time...almost anything can serve as a distraction...and the hours go by like...nothing...

...but seriously doing nothing...focusing on doing nothing...doing nothing with a sense of purpose...with discipline...that’s a different matter entirely...then, suddenly, everything I could possibly be doing instead seems to intrude as if by some kind of deep imperative...check the oil, clean the bathroom, buy some cheese...run for president, get a sex-change, find out what it’s like to eat a whole pocketful of sand...though, of course, if I quit meditating with an imperative to get all of these things done in a timely and efficient manner...most likely I’ll be right back to nothing in no time...

...started meditating again...like, a day or two ago...half an hour a day.......okay, twenty minutes........

Yoga Raving...

...Thursday night at the Do Yoga Philly! festival looked intense: shamanism, Jedi training, three hours of very intense asana practice with yoga legends Ray Crist, John Vitarelli, and Simon Park...and something called a blender bike...not that it stopped me taking a twenty-five mile bike ride in the gorgeous fall weather, beforehand....nearly killed me...but in a good way...

...dreamed that night about yoga...somehow ending up riding in the back of a boxy little red car with a strange blonde haired woman I’d apparently just gotten married to...feeling suddenly terrified, realizing I’d inexplicably gone off the deep end, done something quite possibly irreversible, wondering how I’d gotten myself into something like this...was sitting there about to quietly lose it when realization dawned that it was a dream......felt a peculiar sadness mixed with the relief, though, realizing whatever might have been wouldn’t, and I was never gonna to see her again once I awoke...

Fear says ‘I’ll keep you safe.’
Love says ‘you are safe.’
Mahan Rishi Singh Khalsa

...in the morning found out I was on youtube, making smoothies for the yogic multitudes...that evening went to a class with noted teacher and Yoga Journal cover model Marni Sclaroff, who talked about childhood experiences that cause us to contract...I thought that covers pretty much everything from about age seven to seventeen...then, in the past, I’ve tended to think in terms of damage....and when stuff gets damaged, sometimes all the kings horses and all the king’s men can’t even begin to put it back together again....something that contracts, on the other hand, can, with patience and effort, be inspired to open up again...

...the deeper you go, the higher you fly,
the higher you fly, the deeper you go...
John Lennon

...feel like I’m entering a new phase of the yoga practice...deeper...beyond merely looking good in my Lululemon pants*....did sixteen hours or so of yoga over the long weekend...including seven and a half on Saturday...culminating in something called avatar yoga, complete with black light, pounding yogic techno, and a roomful of people whooping it up decorated in glow-in-the-dark body paint....kinda like a yoga rave...acid without the acid....(it could be argued that, deep down, I’m still some kinda hippie freak)....(but definitely one hardcore yoga dude)...



* note: the author doesn’t actually own and has never worn a pair of Lululemon pants...he’s not even sure they make them for men...

Mindful Irritation, Graceful Wipe-Outs, and Yogardosing in the Crisp Autumn Air

...had this nasty rash all summer...(don’t worry...I’m not providing details)...(or pictures)...actually, longer than that...and still have it...but the high heat and humidity made it unbearable...(except that, obviously, I did bear it)...(and, as such, like most unbearable things, it really wasn’t)...(just really unpleasant)...which made concentration difficult...and uninterrupted sleep nearly impossible...making concentration even more difficult...causing me to write a lot less and find far less enthusiasm for the mindfulness meditation thing....since, y'know, being mindful of irritation gets old fast...

...yeah, yeah, I know what you hardcore yogis out there are thinking...this is exactly the kind of challenge I should welcome....at this very moment, you’re skimming to the bottom of the post to leave a comment about your guru who not only sat meditating on a fire ant nest for fifty years, but had acolytes continually pouring warm honey over his head....I ain’t him...

...as it is, I’ve gained a new appreciation for Autumn, though...the chill coming through windows I refuse to close, though any sane person would...

...the Wissahickon Creek and Schuylkill river bike paths both flooded Friday, leaving a good bit of mud on the pavement in places...cold rain still pitter-pattering along again on Monday, but I just had to get out on the bike...hit a muddy patch and, feeling the bike falling inexorably to the right, pulled my leg out and managed to sit perched on the left edge of the seat, riding gently to a halt....a passing jogger, once having ascertaining I was alright, complimented me on my graceful wipe-out...

...was gonna try to go to yoga class every day in October...ended up making it all the way through October 1st before one thing after another came up on the 2nd...but plan on serious yogardosing* from here on out, including Philadelphia’s first yoga festival, Do Yoga Philly! this weekend, and, two weeks later, a weekend workshop at Kripalu with yoga legends Brooks Hall and Seane Corn (I’m sooooo unworthy...)...and then might be heading down to D.C. for the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity/March to Keep Fear Alive...which might be yogic in its own way...a meeting at the crossroads of idealism and sarcasm...what could be more appropriate?


* defined...in section 11,266 of the Sacred and Venerable 3,197th Commentary on Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 312:474...as: like overdosing, but good for you...

* also just put up a revised version of an older autumn post "Falling" at Elephant Journal

Dancing With the Stars

...fear and love...love and fear...waltzing at the edge....which one leads?...

Bored?

...hiking at high elevations reminds me of advice given to people who get bored following the breath in meditation...

Take the thumb and first finger of either hand, clamp them tightly over your nose, keep your mouth closed, and notice how long it takes before your breathing becomes very interesting to you!
Jon Kabat-Zinn

...ten years or so ago, was sitting on a rocky beach in Maine reading To the Lighthouse, a novel in which the most commonplace situations are described with stunning color and intensity...making for a beautiful reading experience, though it made me think that, if Virginia Woolf actually experienced passing moments of life like that, without any kind of off-switch...as, I suspect, she did...it’s not hard to to understand why she filled her pockets with rocks and took that last fateful walk into the pond...

There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T.S. Eliot

...maybe twenty years ago, was backpacking in the Weminuche Wilderness in southern Colorado, just north of Durango, and, one afternoon, was in kind of an...ummm...ahem...altered state....things got kind of intense...way too much happening in mountains or groves of trees or the sky to keep looking at them....so, decided to simplify things....told myself I’m just gonna look at this rock here...nothin’ too intense or scary, there.....except there was...once I bothered to see...

Look: the sun gods, the gods
of fire, dawn, sky, wind, storm,
wonders that no mortal has ever
beheld...
Bhagavad Gita

...boredom, it occurs to me, is really a defense mechanism...guarding our eyes from the truly dazzling nature of everything around us...

Time Passes Slowly

Time passes slowly up here in the mountains...

...less than three days from my not-too-far-above-sea-level home in Philly, tromping up to 13,223 feet...used to spend a lot more time at heights like this, now try to work a bit harder...usually...at gaining equilibrium wherever I find myself...


Time passes slowly when you’re lost in a dream...

...still, it’s nice to get out to wild places...if only to see through different mirrors than the ones we’re used to...

...continue to idealize these high sylvan landscapes...colorful, quiet, peaceful...appearing like little paradises, off in the distance...always in the distance...though, as becomes particularly clear when barely able to walk up a rocky path in the face of strong icy winds in September, elevation making the lungs burn and mind get fuzzy, they’re about as inhospitable as places get...gorgeous to look at, from a distance, and then go home...

Time passes slowly and then fades away...

Bob Dylan

Yoga Cynic Sutra

...been wishing lately I could do nothing but yoga, all day, every day...not sure, though, if that’s a reflection of devotion or despair...

Flying Words

...with debates raging on about commercialism, body image, and what should and shouldn't be termed “yoga,”* I’m pleased to announce the impending publication of my new translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras...

...re-titled, for the sake of commercial viability, Patanjali's 196 Secrets for Tight Buns and Rock Hard Abs...

...to be followed, early next year, by my interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita...in which Krishna counsels Arjuna on how to use the Law of Attraction™ to lose dhoti fat, meet attractive virgins of appropriate caste, and avoid paying taxes...

Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined oneself over poetry is an honour.
Oscar Wilde

...the longest word in the world is 189,819 letters long.....technically, it’s a chemical formula...it’s not in any dictionaries...and, I would guess, it’s very rarely been written...and, quite possibly never spoken at all...or used in a sentence...almost definitely never used in Scrabble...in fact, after a good bit of google searching, finding only abbreviated versions, I started wondering if it existed only in theory......until I found it here...(at the bottom is a recording of part of it read aloud...sped up...but, apparently, the work of a speech synthesizer...leaving open the question of whether it’s been spoken by a human voice)...I’d like to be the first person to use it in a poem...

…frameworks of the One (derived from mysticism) and the Many (derived from common experience) falsely polarize individuation and merging, which are actually embedded in each other…
Diana Alstad

...might silliness and seriousness be a false dichotomy as well?...isn’t everything we see or do to some extent vitally important and to some other extent ridiculous?...isn’t it all just a matter of degree...or perspective......or could it be that I just ain’t smart enough for none o’ them non-dichotomous paradoxes?...

*see here and here and here...

How You React...(for another Sept 11)

...this blog's been slackin' lately...as its few remaining readers may have noticed...and don't expect this little bit of self-referentiality to be any significant improvement...

...been regretfully neglecting my blog friends, as well...not to mention staying cheerfully irrelevant in the midst of ongoing word-wars over yoga advertising...(though, if any of you yoga advertisers out there might be interested in some nude pictures of me...I can be bought)...(like, seriously...anybody interested?)...

...ahem...

...nonetheless, thought I'd share a link to an edited version of a post from a year ago today, in memory of events nine years ago, at Elephant Journal...and relevant now as then: How You React...(for Sept. 11) ...

shanti shanti shanti

still clear quiet space

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In Dog We Trust

...had a yoga teacher once who talked a lot about the tailbone...as yoga teachers are wont to do...pointing out that it’s an evolutionary vestige...meant to control the tails we no longer have...unfortunately...

...with tails, he said, dishonesty would be impossible...imagine playing hard-to-get with tail wagging vigorously...or, conversely, trying desperately but failing to make it move while emitting false, empty I-love-you’s...

...looking after my friend Bella...pictured, above...for the week...a chance to renew my abiding faith and trust in...dog...

turning out the lights,
I hear a thump thump thumping
on the wooden floor

Mindful Distraction

It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams.
Don DeLillo

...old loneliness unearthed like shattered tablets or multiple-amputee goddesses who don’t seem to notice...photos of long-dead people as smiling children...ladies’ shoes found incongruously on uninhabited south sea islands...coffin lids scraped by desperate fingernails...vampires, figurative and otherwise...legions of slaves buried intentionally if, no doubt, unwillingly, with their kings...organic waste turning gradually to petroleum while petroleum products don’t seem to be turning to anything any time soon...flowers and dreams we hope will bloom again come spring...landmines left over from almost forgotten wars, potent as ever...

...recently read about a guy who spent years in solitary confinement as a political prisoner in...I think...China....when he came out, people were surprised at how calm and centered he seemed following such an ordeal....he credited meditation with getting him through it...though, he said, finding time to meditate was a constant struggle...even stuck as he was by himself in a cell all day, every day...

...of course, these meditative disciplines mostly come from places—India, China, Japan—that, despite romantic pastoral images in western minds, have been really, really crowded and noisy for a long, long time...maybe that’s not a coincidence...

Weirdness Meditation #1

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Hunter S. Thompson

...I think we can ride out the weirdness of it all, said my friend...I’ve been riding out weirdness all my life, I replied...

...try to find an essential balance between thinking things through and getting through thinking...don’t know how an exception can ever actually prove a rule...but guess that, if you really need your rules proven, almost anything can be made to work...may have been out sick the day they taught the standard rules of living within my social and historical context...most don’t make sense to me no matter how meticulously they’re explained...and, almost invariably, by the time I know I’m breaking them they’ve already become habits...

...I don’t understand most of the acronyms people use on the internet...always assume everybody else does, but could be wrong...perhaps everybody’s just been popping klytukl and snzitpui into all their emails, updates, texts, and tweets because that’s what everybody else is doing...not wanting to feel left out...just assuming everybody else knows what they’re talking about...which may be how language started in the first place...maybe everybody just kept coming up with their own words and misunderstanding one another until somehow all the misunderstandings became accepted as truths...and that’s how we got to where we are now...

Nothing is more natural to drunkards than ellipses, for they are the zig-zags of language.
Victor Hugo

....have never really understood the difference between creative writing and writing...got ideas without words, and words without ideas...got friends with dogs, and dogs with friends...got an aquarium full of fish that can swim like Michael Phelps...got body parts that speak abstract poetry I don’t understand...and the reverse seems to be true, as well...am concerned sometimes that people won’t understand what I write, and, other times, that they understand too much...

You know it’s gonna get stranger, so let’s get on with the show...
John Perry Barlow




*for whatever it’s worth, have been writing slightly less strange stuff at Elephant Journal, about gay marriage, world music, Humphrey Bogart doing yoga, and other stuff...

Five Years Gone

You were so tall,
how could you fall?
Billy Bragg, Tank Park Salute

The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,
Now, voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.
W. Whitman

...spent Sunday, August 14, 2005, with friends at the beach...used a broken yellow plastic sand mold found at the water’s edge to dig a hole deep enough their little son could stand up in it...

...back at their place, enjoyed a seafood cookout, and sat reading their copy of the second-to-last Harry Potter book...R.I.P., Dumbledore the wizard...finishing it some time after midnight...

...had left my cell-phone on the bedside table in the guest room that morning....getting ready for sleep, saw there were two messages and a text...each from my older brother...each saying the same thing, repeatedly...call me, tonight...with a sense of urgency that made me want to put the phone back down, go to bed, pretend I knew even less than I did...

...less than a week before, handed in grades for my summer course at Cornell...effectively marking the end of my academic career....without regrets...I’d be getting home the next day, Monday, August 15, 2005, to an editing project a friend hooked me up with, and lots of ideas...day one of the whole new thing just waiting to dawn as I made the call...

...some things we think we know will happen, but really don’t...not until they actually do...and even then, it can take a while...and even when we think we do again, there’s layer upon layer of knowing and unknowing, like a cosmic onion ever-unpeeling...

...a car accident...mom was okay...you were not...

...Saturday morning, August 13th, had breakfast with you and mom at McGlade’s on the boardwalk, then left to drive north, stopping to visit friends for a day or two before heading home...neither of you really clear on my career plans, so I explained, again...was gonna try to do what I’d always wanted, work free-lance, write...venture off into the unknown, the untold want...see what happens...

...mom was apprehensive, but you, surprisingly, weren’t...seeming to step away from habitual pessimism, the criticism and negativity that kept me at such distance...in our last minutes together, you smiled almost boyishly, told me how excited you were about what I was doing...proud...happy...

...thank you...

Roadmaps for the Soul

...the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul to the old folks home and the college...
Bob Dylan

...was teaching this freshman writing class and started talking about the next paper assignment...said something like I’m not sure what the topic’s gonna be...and, before I could continue with but, it’s gonna be along the general lines of...one of the kids said how ‘bout whatever we want?...and was quickly echoed by other voices in the room...yeah, whatever we want!...whatever we want!...

...I, needless to say, was about to smile and say no...like teachers generally do when students express a desire to do whatever they feel like...but paused and thought for a second or two...then said okay...whatever you want....

...the kids, of course, were thrilled to be granted so much freedom...amazed at what a cool teacher they had....

...a week later, though, when I asked how the project was going, there was an uncomfortable silence...until, finally, the same kid who came up with the idea said this is a lot harder...

...I smiled, said yeah, I know...

Truth is a pathless land...
J. Krishnamurti

It's Always Something...

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Mary Oliver

It's been rough and rocky travelin', but I'm finally standin' upright on the ground.

After takin' several readings, I'm surprised to find my mind`s still fairly sound...
Willie Nelson

...the bike had been feeling a little strange...I figured something must be loose, but couldn't tell exactly what it was, so thought I’d take it to the bike shop the next day....then, suddenly, while crossing Broad Street, everything kinda lurched...I stopped and saw the frame looked like it had been run over by a truck...broken nearly in half...

...a week and a half later, was riding a different bike...borrowed from a kind and generous friend...through the park, and my wallet fell out of my pocket...though I didn't realize that 'til a couple miles later...turned around to ride up and down that stretch searching under every leaf, but couldn't find it anywhere...

...as if that wasn't enough, the very next day, a car sideswiped me from behind as I rode along the Spruce Street bike lane...

...the frame, as it turned out, was covered by a manufacturer’s warranty...and, since the company didn’t have that model, or an equivalent one, in stock...and, though I rode that bike hard for two years...(seriously...I’m the kinda person bikes’ parents warn them about)...the always helpful guy who runs my local bike shop got them to send me a brand new one...

...and, after riding up and down that two mile stretch of dirt road three or four times, my cell phone rang...I thought please be an unfamiliar number...and it was...turned out the caller was biking along and saw cash all over the ground...picking everything up, he tried to give it to a cop nearby, who said he’d have to put it into evidence and most likely it’d never be seen again...so, the guy went home and googled me for my number...even returned my change...

...the next day, I was pissed off but unhurt picking myself up from the sidewalk...but the woman in the car was crying, saying I’m so sorry over and over to the point that I ended up consoling her....I got a couple scratches, she’s probably gonna need therapy...(though, considering she hit a cyclist in a bike lane, she can be thankful no cops or personal injury lawyers got involved)...

It’s always something—if it’s not one thing, it’s another...
Roseanne Roseannadanna

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

attributed to Swami Satchidinanda

...in a blog with yoga in the title, this is where you might expect words like karma, grace, or blessings...and wouldn’cha know it, there they are....but I believe in the great mystery of the universe in a very literal sense...i.e. have no idea what’s going on, and try not to pretend otherwise...(though, in the end, suspect it's best to try to be honest and kind)...

...hope you’re doin’ okay, too...

Doors Going Through Doors

...we never really know what’s on the other side of a door...

...we tell ourselves we do...armed with speculations, memories, plans, wishes, and peeking through keyholes...but, even if a door’s open, or transparent, we see only what’s visible within a thin frame...the tiniest sub-section of an ineffable everything...not to mention that ladies can turn out to be tigers, and tigers, ladies...that the simplest decisions turn out, almost invariably, to be the most complicated...

...trust in beliefs, gods, attitudes...come up with what seem to be a likely few out of infinite contingencies...endless facets of the great unknown invariably to be found on that infinitely mysterious other side.....though, let’s face it, that's true of this side, as well...

...so that, sometimes, there’s simply nothing to do but open ourselves and go on through...

Hello, Cleveland?

...I’m thinking about reading some blog stuff at this open mike at a local coffee shop this Saturday*...............................you heard it right...that's:

*****YOGA FOR CYNICS—ABSOLUTELY LIVE!!!!*****

...which means, yes, the cozy anonymity and serene dignity of the yogi blogger’s staid, quiet life, typing away and silently meditating like an aesthetically sensitive urban anchorite, a mystic radical subsisting on prana, stale bread, and the sad solemn songs of the heart in his dusty, book-lined, cheap incense-scented garret...lost, forsaken, repudiated for the tantalizing allure of footlights...the empty glare and ever elusive satiety of fame and glory...

...and who knows where things could go from there...

...screaming fans, endorsement deals, and giant bowls of M&M's...(minus the brown ones)...promoters, bodyguards, and ostentatious sunglasses worn indoors...a life of outrageous, excess, tired tour buses, trashed hotel rooms, jaded groupies, and absurd quantities of booze and dangerous drugs...the hopelessly compromised artist's desperation in trying, at first, to hold on to lofty ideals and integrity in a crazed whirlwind of contracts, parties, frenzied dissipation, and increasingly expensive habits...squandered talents, supermodels, private jets, and paranoia...teenage angst has paid off well, now I’m bored and old...fulfilling an endless round of contractual obligations, only now and then wistfully remembering the days when it meant something more than than a vain struggle to maintain a decadent lifestyle worthy of a Viking chieftain or Borgia pope...

...sounds cool...in a way.................maybe I’ll skip it...



* the High Point at Allen’s Lane, West Mt. Airy, State of Caffeinated Samadhi, USA, sometime between 2:00 and 4:00 PM

That last post was pretty good, I think...

...it's been well over a week, with 103 degree temperatures, pouring rain, and multiple itchy summertime skin rashes since that last Yoga for Cynics post...but, it was pretty good, I think...and still pretty nicely sums up what's happening on my end....so, for now, it works...




...nonetheless, if you want, check out this and this at Elephant Journal...as well as Lindsay's blog, where I recently got an award...namaste until I think of something more to say...

Walking With Waves

...thinking, wondering, imagining...lust, love, loneliness...building, dissolving, receding...this, this, only this...*




*...was walking by myself along this beach in south Jersey, from populated areas to a somewhat wilder one by the wildlife sanctuary—sand above the surf line roped off to protect nesting areas for piping plovers, people allowed to walk through but not stop, sunbathe, or swim, since the shy little birds need to run to and from the water, and won’t if anybody’s in the way...seems reasonable enough, so keep up a steady pace—seeing no plovers...(sorry, that’s not one in the picture)...though can’t deny looking probably more than watchful boyfriends like at women in bathing suits...but, more than that, another, less superficial and piggish aspect of mind caught on someone...far inland...wondering if she thinks about me...imagining, hoping...that old song...tip-toeing a narrow course between solitude and loneliness, dipping precipitously, despite such gorgeous tranquil surroundings, seemingly made for peaceful reflection, toward the latter...trying once again to be mindful...and all that...observe thoughts floating by instead of getting caught up in them...gain that awesome sense of wonder found in pondering the infinite in one’s own breath, sun on skin, cold salt water on the toes, even a bit of pain in one hip from walking so much in the sand...for a sudden moment feeling somewhat jarring comfort in the knowledge that, really, I know nothing else...the rest only thinking, imagining, longing...speculation on reality that’s always something else...and not even that ten minutes later...gettin’ all Krishnamurti-like n’ shit....and then, of course, thinking about writing about it, maybe quoting that famous William Blake line, something like “to see infinity in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour”...( having to work by memory even once the walk is through, since there’s no Collected Poems of William Blake nor consistent internet access at the beach house)...though, by the time I got back, reduced it all to the few simple formulae above...wondering if the wave thing’s too clichéd...as well as whether a cliché’s always such a bad thing....or whether anybody’s gonna get what I’m talking about at all....anyway, it works a whole lot better than all this...doncha think?

Dr. Jay Saves Lives

The other Dr. J

...this year, on the summer solstice, I...(no need to make a big deal about this, folks...I’m sure you all would have done exactly the same thing under the circumstances)...saved a life...

...to be more specific, the life of a young mannequin...like I said, no need to sing my praises for such a selfless and courageous act of heroism, which, no doubt, is exactly the course of action you yourself would have taken, if told to by a qualified CPR instructor...

...nonetheless, anybody so inspired to draw a deep, meaningful poetic connection between the saving of this imitation-life and the summer solstice may feel free to leave it below as a comment...

...more pressing is the matter of my official bio, which, evidently, needs to be changed from

the kind of doctor who, in case of emergency, can explain Faulkner while you die

to

the kind of doctor who, in case of emergency, can stand there for a minute or two looking stupid and thinking “ooooh shiiiittt” before finally stepping to the fore and saying "soooo...ummmm...anybody know CPR?...Like, y’know, other than me?...No? Oh...ummmm...okay...”...then get down on the floor and, we can only hope, remember to pull the head back and squeeze the nose, and recall that it’s two breaths to thirty compressions*...though, if that doesn’t work, we’re of course back to Plan A: “Fragmentation is central to Faulkner’s work. His entire wide and rambling Yoknapatawpha saga may be seen as a collection of fragments attempting some kind of desperate cohesion, themselves often broken up and confused...”**...***

...on second thought, maybe I’ll leave it as is...



* yes, that’s the appropriate ratio...really...get re-certified now...

** actually the first two sentences of Splendid Failures in the Old South, the first section of “One nation: no longer anywhere;” Going Native in Yoknapatawpha, itself the second chapter of my dissertation, “The Painful Task of Unifying:” Fragmented Americas and “The Indian” in the Novels of William Faulkner and N. Scott Momaday...seriously...

*** now that I think of it, change the names and it could also be a pretty reasonable description of this blog...

At a Table on a Sidewalk

...that there is so much we will never, and maybe can't ever, fathom can be comforting and terrifying, but not, usually, both at the same time...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 121:354

...at a table on a sidewalk in front of the Good Karma Cafe...(actual place, 22nd & Pine, downtown Philly, State of Noisy Contemplation, USA)...drinking coffee ’til I’m too wired to sit still...cars and the occasional bike float past...no question which is America’s favorite mode of transportation...then, no question who’s enjoying the ride more, either...

...reading about a woman at a silent vipassana retreat...trying to be silent, peaceful, meditative, and mindful, and not doing such a good job, by her own estimation, at any of the above...makes me wanna give her some encouragement...say at least you’re one up on me...I’m just reading about it...

...borrowed a pen, and actually returned it...which probably makes me prouder than it should...have never consciously stolen a pen, and yet never buy them, but somehow always have lots...am strangely unconcerned about what this means in terms of karma, sin, or ethical behavior...


...even excess can be kept to a reasonable level...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 163:889

The Almost But Not Quite Summer Solstice Post

We all know how important the summer solstice is to a wide and diverse array of traditional and modern cultures...

...(at least I think we all do)...(those of you who don’t, please Google summer solstice)...(then come right back)...(we’ll wait)...

...(everybody else, please breathe mindfully and maybe do a couple sun salutations)...

Awright...now, everybody should know that the summer solstice is not, in fact, till Monday...

Yet, with fireflies abundant as beads of sweat on my forehead...(not to mention, hell, if I can’t go to the store in October without hearing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, three or four days early ain't much)...and in the fervent hope that, like Bob’s Gita Talk, this blog may inspire fruitful and enlightening discussion, I’ve delved into the vast wealth of oral and written traditions, pictographs, and ancient monoliths from around the world to find some ancient, revered, and highly meaningful lines to share on this almost-but-not-quite-summer-solstice...

Callin’ out around the world,
are you ready for a brand new beat?
Summer’s here and the time is right
for dancin’ in the street...
Martha and the Vandellas*

Some thought-provoking questions to get us started:

1) Does the reference to a brand new beat imply a refutation of traditional, cyclical conceptions of seasonal change in favor of a more urban paradigm, as suggested by the evocation of the street as a site for dancing?

2) Should summer’s here and the time is right be understood to assert a prohibitive view toward dancing at other times of the year? Or, are we to understand that it is only during the summer months that the streets are acceptable for dancing, while dancing inside or on the grass are permitted at other times? Might the implication be that streets are the only locations where dancing is condoned during the summer months, indicating a prohibitive view toward dancing anywhere else during this period of the year?

3) Does this emphasis on streets reflect a tension with the then thriving beach party culture (see Funicello, Annette)? If so, can streets be interpreted in a more contemporary context as representing any outdoor area (including, conceivably, the beach)?

4) If we take callin' out around the world literally, should people in the southern hemisphere also dance in the street, even though it's the beginning of winter there, and they might catch a chill?

5) In the lines that follow, particular locations are named:

Dancin’ in Chicago, down in New Orleans,
New York City, All we need is music...

Do these locations embody particular spiritual significance—like Jerusalem, Mysore, Mecca, or the vortexes in Sedona? Should we take this as a call to make pilgrimages to these locations at the solstice?

6) How are we to take the cryptic statement all we need is music? Is the implication that music can sustain life in the absence of other nourishment?

7) Or does it imply that the street dancing here called for is in fact a fertility ceremony, and that, if it is performed properly, at the summer solstice, crops will be abundant and the people’s needs met?

8) Might dancing be taken metonymically to represent merriment in general?

9) Or is it all, really, about sex?

10) William James wrote

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

What happens when common sense dances in the street?


Please try to keep the discussion civil.



* ...while originally passed down to us by the esteemed Martha Reeves, these lines are believed to have originated with William “Mickey” Stevenson, Ivy Jo Hunter, and Marvin Gaye...though known to many primarily through translations, interpretations, and commentaries by the likes of David Bowie, the Grateful Dead, the Carpenters, and Van Halen...(as well as more gnostic readings by Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones in which racing and fighting, respectively, are substituted for dancing)...




*Those readers whose brains aren't completely overloaded by this highly sophisticated discussion might want to check out my latest at Elephant: Compassion is Complicated, or Idiot Compassion or Generosity*