Maybe it’s been too long a time since I was scramblin’ down in the street...

...still midwinter...following weeks of writing about misery and nostalgia for happy teenaged years that never happened...see recent posts...and not much else...had a conversation with somebody about a not-too-expensive trip to Costa Rica...involving a week...(coinciding, coincidentally enough, with my forty-fourth birthday)...at a distant Pacific beach...lounging out, doing yoga, letting wintry eyes get lost in tropical skies...five hour bus rides across the Central American countryside, nights hosteling in San Jose...and brief layovers at George Bush International Airport...yeah, really...at each end...just a matter of weeks away...but still way beyond my budget...

...I said okay, I’ll go...

...given the details, seems like travelin' light's gonna be the way...perhaps limiting myself to one bag...toothbrush, a few shirts, changes of underwear, a book or two...and...here it comes...seriously...no c.o.m.p.u.t.e.r...

...though working my habit-driven mind around that concept may take a while....have avoided these crazy interwebs on yoga retreats in the past...mostly...but...to forsake this metal and plastic block containing my writing, music, pictures, etc., entirely...haven’t done that for so much as a day in a long, long time....which, actually, makes it seem all the more a good idea...

...maybe it’s been too long a time since I was scramblin’ down in the street...
Joni Mitchell

...used to go for months living out of a backpack...no ipod or cellphone, either...(for that matter, they weren’t even invented yet)...leaving the pack with everything in it in an almost complete stranger’s unlocked van to go see a rock band, harboring little doubt it was worth the risk...sitting on the rocks by a little Greek village in Paros, finding a strange contentment in being so far from anything familiar, anyone who knew my name...scrawling life is good all along the northern reaches of the Appalachian Trail, happy with being warm and well fed, nothing too blatantly feeding on me... unencumbered...relatively speaking...

...not to suggest running away as a solution to anything...nor to romanticize poverty...or a rootless life based on amassing frequent flyer miles like George Clooney in that movie....what’s important, I suspect, isn’t to escape from anything...or even to refuse oneself that new i-Pad thing everybody suddenly needs...(I’m certainly not about to preach asceticism a mere couple paragraphs down from saying I'm gonna go jetting off for a week of downward facing dog in the tropics)...

...voluntary simplicity is a wonderful thing...so long as you remember that, for most of the world, there’s nothing voluntary...or simple...about it...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Sutra 333:76

...but to realize you’re complete with or without all that...non-attachment not in the sense of breaking off from anything...but realizing none of it was ever truly essential to you in the first place...

...thanks to April for the photo of some unidentified individual standing in a Rocky Mountain meadow...

After the Fall...

...somebody told me that, back in the 60’s, when fabled rock band Iron Butterfly tried to record a song called In the Garden of Eden, the singer was too wasted to pronounce the words, so it came out In A Gadda Da Vida....which is a good story...if, most likely, completely dubious....then, that's true of most creation stories...and why they tend to be ruined when taken literally...

...around that same time Joni Mitchell sang we are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden about a fabled rock festival she didn’t actually get to attend, though many of her friends did, and she’d wanted to...so, really, she wasn’t singing so much about that legendary communal gathering, or even the longing for the fabled garden that, according to that 33 rpm myth, the festival was about....but longing for that longing...hoping for that hope...impossibly dreaming of holding that impossible dream...

The Paradise is in the desire, not in the imperfection of accomplishment...
Allen Ginsberg

...some years ago was sitting in a coffee shop...there was this kid...mid-teens, or so...not bad looking...kinda gawky...he was there a lot...usually alone...like me...but, this one afternoon, there was a girl...about the same age, kinda cute, clever smile, long hair tied back in a child’s ponytail...kinda gawky, too...sitting across from him at a tiny table...and looking every bit as nervous and awkward as he....though anyone could tell they liked each other...a lot...and that they themselves knew...even if they weren’t really sure how to proceed from there...and I couldn’t help thinking goddamn, what I wouldn’t give to be that kid right now...

...(don’t worry...this isn’t some sick Allen/Polanski/Humbert kinda story about a pervy middle aged guy going after little girls....more a sad, wistful middle-o'-the-wintertime kinda one, about wishing one could turn bad memories in for good)...(even if it’s better to follow what the bumpersticker says and give up all hope for a better past...like all the yogis and Buddhists say, live in the here and now...even if so many of them seem so hung up on mythical pasts...when perfectly enlightened words were written by perfectly enlightened sages...which, I guess, shows just how hard it is...and why we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves for now and then wallowing in our self-indulgent might have beens)...

...to be in his seat, zits, confusion, and all...with the boundless fears that go hand in hand with boundless hopes...countless strange discomforts, all fresh and new...but also the knowing that, deeply disturbing as this clash of innocence and experience called adolescence might be, for this moment at least, he wasn’t alone in it...and that he and she could only imagine what flowers might grow out of their confusion...

...harsh as the end of that story in Genesis was...prospects of mortality and death, angels with flaming swords, and all that...at least Adam & Eve had each other...

Philly Street Art Revisited...

...biked out last Thursday from West Mt. Airy...state of illuminated discombobulation...for the first time since last month’s blizzard-like-storm...(that’s what the Associated Press called it...just in case anybody was confused by the all day whiteout conditions and nearly two feet of snow and thought it was an actual blizzard)...into the harder streets downtown...

...ended up riding about ninety-five miles over the past week...which is a lot after not being on the bike at all for a month...and, yesterday, while doing some of that hip-opening, hamstring stretching, bending over the bent legs kinda yoga stuff, noticed that my legs hurt...like, a lot...

...nonetheless, managed to make use of the sunny weather to take some pictures around the city...street art...and the places where I find it...including the stuff that tends inevitably to be in front of it, blocking a clear shot...which, I’ve come to think, is essential, kinda like the random noises John Cage incorporated into his music...

...and often enhances rather than taking away from it...like the painted cloud mixing in with the real one, and tree whose small branches seem in danger of being set afire by the guy’s fingers...

...or the KEEP OUT! spray painted in white right next to the dreaming girl...like a strange, discordant caption...

...movement’s always felt comfortable to me...as countless friends and acquaintances have learned that my idea of walking distance doesn’t necessarily correspond with theirs...maybe part of that is the constantly changing contexts...and the constantly changing meanings attached to myself that go with them...

...of course, sometimes ya just wanna disappear...or, at least, make other people disappear...

...Laura compared meditation to being a passenger...simply watching and enjoying the ride rather than feeling the need to always be in the driver’s seat...I said I guess that's also part of what makes meditation difficult...feeling like I need to get up and put my foot on the gas pedal to drive my life forward...as if it’s not gonna keep going, anyway..

Bridges to Somewhere...

...been grumpy and miserable...and experiencing moments of peculiar contentment and clarity...

...ran into a friend last week who told me she was going to this weekend yoga thing...with this major yoga celebrity...an hour north of Philly in the post-hippie mecca of New Hope....no, I’m not gonna make some cute inspirational pun about that geographical designation and how appropriate it is for a transformational blah blah blah...did I mention I’ve been grumpy?...

...anyway, decided to go for part of it, friday night...which gave me some focus...woke that morning from dreams of incessant conflict...remembering before and after coffee the so many things I somehow got the idea life was supposed to be, but isn’t right now...so what could be more appropriate than a journey toward new hope?...bleah...got some stuff done, but, still sluggish by late afternoon, could’ve just as easily gone nowhere...had I not already paid fifty bucks for the thing...so went...straight into rush hour and descending dark....scanning the ipod for something mellow and yogic to get me in the mood...before deciding the last thing I wanted to hear was anything mellow or yogic...cranked the Clash...let fury have the hour...which actually had me feeling pretty good for most of the drive...

...'til I missed the exit, crossed the bridge into New Jersey...got off at the first off-ramp, hoping for a corresponding on-ramp...which wasn’t there...so thought I’d stop and ask somebody directions...before realizing, quickly, that I was in a part of Trenton where stopping and asking anybody anything was most likely a really bad idea...

...anyway, after a bunch of turns, made it back across the bridge...bridges...another lameass obvious metaphor...crossing from anger and pain to new hope for...meh...and, with somewhat aggressive driving on two-lane country roads, made it to the thing not quite on time but close enough...

...so...to provide a snidely mocking review of Seane Corn would fit neatly within this grouchy idiom....fulfilling the sacred office of the yoga cynic...going back through the mists of antiquity to the ancient and revered cynical sages...to poke fun of yoga megastars with magazine smiles and near-halos of golden ringlets....but, really, she was cool...and basically welcomed any negative thoughts anybody might be having into the room...which kinda takes the fun outta mockery...and, by the end, though nearly wiped out, I admit to basking in that very un-cynical trippy glowy feeling that comes as misery melts at least momentarily into the floorboards....all the best yoga studios use Karmic Cleanser™ to clean clinging misery out of their floorboards....and, chatting briefly afterwards about working with crack addicts, found her strikingly friendly and unpretentious...able to be refreshingly light and intense at the same time, with little apparent effort...

...which is something I strive for...diverse aspects of personality that can mingle casually over cocktails rather than glaring at one another from opposite sides of the swollen, churning river...finding it generally easier to be like a Lyle Lovett album...or, at least, the one Lyle Lovett album I have...half the songs lighthearted, absurd, about one-eyed girlfriends and cowboy hats...the others deep and intense, about longing, loneliness, and pain...but never both at the same time....which can be kind of a social problem...people who enjoy the irreverent humor and devil-may-care attitude say let’s get coffee, only to find themselves sitting across a table from this intense dude rambling on about the apparent limitlessness of human suffering and how Anne Frank is proof that a positive attitude doesn't guarantee anything....while those impressed by the deep and sensitive monologues don’t know what to think when, after a couple beers, they start hearing jokes about televangelists and sheep...


...much that’s valuable can be lost in the smoothing away of rough edges...bridging gaps effectively can be tricky...the essential difference between a middle way and mediocrity difficult to find...lines between completeness, communion, and confusion rippling like water and light below...but, on bridges worth crossing, the other side is rarely easy to see...

If A Shameless Plug Is For A Worthy Cause, Is It Still Shameless?

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
Martin Luther King

...have been led by circumstances to put cynicism, irreverent yoga jokes, and gratuitous calls for cookies aside...for the moment...in favor of shameless plugs...raising the age old question if a shameless plug is for a worthy cause, is it still shameless?...

...signed up to join a bunch o’ coffee shop compatriots to volunteer at a homeless shelter this coming Monday...nothin’ like an opportunity to harass friends while helping the needy....it’s a beautiful thing....and thought I'd drop a suggestion that anyone out there not already committed to the Martin Luther King Day of Staying Home and Drinking Beer in Front of the Tube or the Martin Luther King Day of Grumbling About Having to Work on a Holiday can check out the Martin Luther King Day of Service* website for ways to get involved locally...

...while those feeling less motivated can help out victims of the earthquake in Haiti from the comforts of their own easy chairs in front o’ the tube...perhaps maxing out the old credit card with a donation to Doctors Without Borders to help pay for one o’ those inflatable hospitals...really, they got inflatable hospitals...check em' out...and, as slammin’ some beers tends to loosen up the wallet, this socially conscious blogger says drink up before making your contribution...or practice some yoga...whatever works...


...this post has not, technically, been approved by either Martin Luther King or Thich Nhat Hanh...pictured above...but I think they'd be cool with it...

*thanks to April for pointing out that my MLK Day link didn't work...it does now...

Sutras on the Half Shell

...the duality of fat free and cheese is absolute...nothing can be both...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 123:95

...have been so touched by the many good wishes & kind expressions of concern inspired by that bit in the last post about my bike accident, broken hand, and operation, that I’m tempted to turn this whole post into a big thank you note...with my mailing address and hints about what kindsa home-baked cookies I like best very subtly slipped in there somewhere....however, ethical concerns about truthfulness and integrity and all that...as well as the likelihood somebody'd narc me out before I got any of the aforementioned cookies...implore me to point out that it all happened five years ago...as described, with pictures and a few clever lines, here...and I’ve long healed up, which is good...as one thing you learn fast with one hand out of commission is that you generally use both of them for everything...and, though the mind always moves a lot faster than fingers can type, we get used to a certain ratio of thoughts to words...and when that ratio gets screwed up by the temporary loss of half of the usual fingers, the keyboard becomes a site of great frustration...which, most likely, would lead me to end this blog post right about here...

...in the most dysfunctional families, the dog still gets along with everybody...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 46:72

...somebody just asked me to help her write a recommendation for a mediocre student...the classic he’s not an axe-murderer kinda letter...for which, in the past, I’ve utilized handy phrases like she fulfilled course requirements...or he shows great potential for improvement...or her writing was grammatically sound, for the most part...or I enjoyed having him in my class...which, essentially, is another way of saying she seemed like a reasonably pleasant human being...or he’s not a total a-hole....so maybe it’d be better to drop all that, and go with a simple, all purpose she’s a human being who struggles and suffers and whose life can be difficult sometimes, so that, though she tries to succeed...as well as to find love and happiness and be as good a person as she can...she doesn’t always succeed...I recommend that we all try to be as understanding and compassionate as we can, now and always...but doubt that’s really what the admissions committee’s looking for...

...when truth is unknowable, it’s up to us to create meaning...or, failing that, to at least come up with some good jokes...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 101:78

Idyll with Static

...my head, lately, seems jammed...awash in static...

interference...like I’m caught between frequencies....not the low crackling heard on long drives, out in the country...barely more disturbing than white noise, indicative of a relative calm in the realm of electric current...more like deep metropolitan dissonance...the loud cacophony of signals reducing particular subject matter to a thick grey noise...occasional bursts tantalizingly reminiscent of clarity disappearing as rapidly as they emerge...consciousness following, finding itself only more lost in the dense sticky fog...

...makes that mindfulness thing difficult...

kpmo,otcje;;
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...always usedta to spend time in yoga class longing for the day when it’d get easy...all the good parts...the cool mellow feelings...dance-like sensations...trippy intervals...without those sore, sweaty moments when I forget about all that and wonder why the hell I subject myself to this....then, one day, went to this class where just about everybody was either a senior citizen or significantly overweight...or both...and, we lifted knees...put hands in the air...bent over, as best we could....and, all in all, it wasn’t a bad way to spend the hour...in fact, it left me perfectly warmed up...rarin’ to practice some yoga...but it was over...and I realized I don’t actually like easy...

A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
William James

...two weeks after the bike accident, the orthopedist looked at x-rays...said the pieces of my first and second metacarpals were moving further apart, rather than back together...then asked, quite nonchalantly, got any plans for tomorrow?....and I had to admire the dry sense of humor of someone who could let me know in such a clever, off hand way that she needed to perform surgery on me as soon as possible....I asked if, once the surgery was done, and my hand healed, I’d be able to play the violin...she, without missing a beat, responded could you play the violin before you broke it?....which was good...don’t know how much confidence I’d have in a surgeon who’d fall for a line like that...

Another 108 Sun Salutations...with a side order of that curried cauliflower and potato stuff...

...this is the 216th Yoga for Cynics post...making it...kinda, sorta...like finishing a second set of the 108 sun salutations that make up a yoga mala.....which means...yeah...some o’ that esoteric yogacentric kinda content...which, no doubt, is utterly baffling, irritating, anachronistic, alienating, stupid-seeming, and/or simply boring to the 47.3 %* of readers who know eka pada rajakapotasana only as that curried cauliflower and potato stuff at the local Indian buffet place...

...then, I can relate...it was twenty or so years ago when I first met people who talked about yoga...along with positive attitudes, compassionate lifestyles and related topics...and was massively turned off by all of it...particularly as this more enlightened consciousness tended to be expressed through passive aggressive rage and harsh judgments toward anybody whose lifestyle was deemed less compassionate...which, as it turned out, was just about everybody...

...it’s only recently, though, having met lotsa people who do a bit better with that living your yoga thing...including my very nice blog friends**....that I’ve starting to see that all my grousing...see above...about granola nazis isn’t exactly dripping with compassion, openness, or positivity, either...

...yoga studios tend to have special deals for new students...so, I’ve tried pointing out that, thanks to my Zen-like cultivation of beginner’s mind, I’m always a new student...dying as an old student with every out-breath and reborn as a new student with every in-breath... which gets laughs...but has yet to garner me an actual discount...


* statistics are made up

** such as Brooks, on whose blog much of this post started out as a comment...

The Limits of Good Behavior

...recently banned myself, for the second time, from one of those social networking sites...also known as virtual communities...frequented by bloggers...renowned for controversy, arguments, ad hominem attacks, general rudeness, underhandedness, melodramatic exits, passive aggression, not-so-passive aggression, not-at-all-passive aggression, cyber-bullying, trolling, political, religious, and ironic extremism, behavior that could be seen as indicative of anti-social disorders, ordinary madness, extraordinary madness, Tourette’s syndrome, and/or extreme boredom...and for people getting banned by the management...tending, ironically enough, to cause only more of the above...

...banning myself, however, causes none of that...which is the point...

...generally speaking I’m with Rodney King...and the Buddha...and Karen Carpenter...and others whose names I can’t think of at the moment...though I'm almost positive they exist...in thinking it’s a good idea to try and get along with people...practice loving kindness...radiate compassion for all beings...namaste, and all that warm huggy shit....trouble is, I’m not always particularly good at it...particularly when people piss me off...by, for instance, writing self-righteous crap that’s so stupid and offensive that their despicable lack of loving kindness and compassion and open accepting yogic attitude makes me wanna smack ‘em upside the...you get the idea...

...thus, while transcending bad behavior to be a Floating Glowing Being of Pure Love remains the long-term goal, it occurs to me that, sometimes, acknowledging limitations and removing myself from the situation might be a more prudent course...particularly when it comes the impulse, in certain circumstances, when sorely provoked...usually...to act like a dick...

...which, to further complicate things, I tend to be good at...as becomes clear when, giving heartfelt, highly penitent confessions to close friends about shameful incidents from the past in which I playfully messed with people’s heads in horrible, sadistic ways, I’m rewarded with uproarious laughter and compliments on my clever, sharp-as-the-head-of-a-pin-no-self-respecting-angel-would-be-caught-dead-dancing-on wit...

...then, on the other hand...last week, I was dogsitting...enthusiastic greetings, happy walks, warm companionship...it’s all good...except, one day, my doggie friend had some...ahem...gastro-intestinal problems...and, to make matters worse, I slept in...finally wandering out to see her not, as per usual, enthusiastically stretching for her morning walk in a truly authentic downward facing dog pose, but lying on her doggie cushion with a very sheepish doggie look on her face....see, the thing about this particular doggie friend is that she behaves notoriously well...where the typical domestic canine will whine loudly, bark even more loudly, scratch at the bedroom door, and whine and bark and scratch some more until the resident human, unable to remain sleeping or anything else, gets up to let her out, this fully realized Adorable Furry Being of Pure Sweetness is so well behaved that she suffers in silence ’til she can take no more and quietly tromps down the stairs to crap on the basement carpet...demonstrating, I think, that even good behavior has its limits...