The Interweb Quote of the Year!!!

One thing this blog’s kinda been known for is the quotations peppered through its posts...often making its original writing pale in comparison, but, then, so it goes...(Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five). Of course, in this, it's taking part in that greatest of postmodern practices, which has flowered so fully on the interwebs: using other people's stuff for lack of anything original to express. So, in honor of all that, the staff here would like to share the first (and probably last) annual Yoga for Cynics Interweb Quotation of the Year!

Certainly, in the year 2011, nothing else came close to the profundity, timeliness, or sheer ubiquity of:

Something I never actually said.
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thank you, thank you.

Runners Up include:

The timeless:

Something kinda new-agey I certainly didn’t say, and that probably wouldn’t really fit with my philosophy or beliefs, either...
Rumi, the Buddha, and/or Albert Einstein

And more topical:

Something I did say, but taken so far out of context that it seems to mean the complete opposite of what it meant in-context.
Barack Obama

And, finally, who could forget:

Of course we’re going to riot....What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o’clock that they fired our football coach?
Student, Penn State, November 9, 2011

Happy new year, folks...

The Yoga Cynic Speaks of Rivers* (and “Real Yoga”)

It’s comin’ on Christmas, they’re cuttin’ down trees
They’re puttin’ up reindeer, singin’ songs of joy and peace,
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on...
Joni Mitchell

I am the river, and, therefore, a connecting thread between the living and the dead, just like the stories that speak to us in the night, I take on the likeness of past times and past events too, I am the river. But the river is just the river. Nothing more.
Javier Marías

...was in the café, post-meditation, imbibing that special kinda prana known as coffee...when this guy at the next table started talking about yoga...specifically, real yoga****...

...if you feel the need to brag about your practice, it’s probably nothing to brag about...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 451:968

...how great, generally, his practice is...how any real yogi is vegetarian...how much better ashtanga is than other kinds of yoga... how much better ashtanga yoga is than sitting meditation...since, y’know, anybody can sit in a dark room*****....somewhere in there, I turned my headphones back on...(one o’ those yamas or niyamas has gotta say something about eavesdropping)...



* apologies to Langston Hughes...**

** and, yeah, I know, apart from the quotes, the post really doesn’t have anything to do with rivers*** (that’s not even a river in the picture...it’s the Wissahickon Creek...though it did get pretty river-like last summer when it flooded)...

*** or maybe it does....whaddaya want me to do?!...explain my metaphors to you?!...

**** real yoga (noun): the kind of yoga I happen to practice. (antonym: whatever kinda yoga you happen to practice) (courtesy, the Yoga Cynic’s Dictionary)

***** leaving me thinking that, given how much difficulty I’d experienced sitting in a semi-lighted room for forty-five minutes, struggling with drowsiness, a laundry-list of physical discomforts, and a, one might say, river of past, present, and future troubles, a mere hour or so before, I may just barely qualify as anybody...******

****** which, now that I think of it, could mean I’m on the threshold of transcending individuation and a realizing ultimate oneness with the universe....have to look that one up...

The More Un-Yogic, the Better?

What is here is elsewhere; what is not here is nowhere.
Vishva-Sara-Tantra

Folks, you know I’ve never been a fan of yoga. If I wanted to spend all day on the ground sweating in a contorted position, I would eat another gas station hot dog.
Stephen Colbert

...sometimes I arrive at yoga class in what might not be considered the most, y’know, yogic mood...at some strange juncture in a difficult day, full of anxiety, anger, and/or general misery, exacerbated by the trip to yoga class, driving through traffic in the rain or nearly getting plowed into by a truck on my bike...or nearly getting plowed into by a truck on my bike in the rain, the guy who nearly killed me though I had the right of way having the nerve to yell at me...you get the idea...leaving me tromping in and rolling out my mat in a an utterly wired and generally negative frenzy....really, there couldn't be a better time to practice yoga...

...making me especially grateful for these kind, calm, and centered teachers who help me to let go...

...though, of course, as I’m learning, now, it’s a bit more complicated...or maybe simpler, but more difficult...if, ultimately, more rewarding for that...when I am the yoga teacher...

The Winter of Yoga's Discontent?

...the Vatican’s chief exorcist...yeah, apparently, they still have one o’ those...has called yoga satanic...meaning that, if there’s one thing fundamentalist Protestants, fundamentalist Muslims, and, now, the high orders of the Roman Catholic church can agree on, it’s that this ancient practice is bad, bad, BAD...and that’s not even mentioning the fundamentalist Hindus in India who object to westerners practicing yoga, or the many western yogis...at least in the blogosphere...who disapprove of most other western yogis....what was that about yoga meaning union???....Lululemon’s hawking handbags celebrating selfishness, a good friend and one of the best yoga teachers I know just made the #1 spot in a list of “locals we’d like to see naked” in Philadelphia magazine, and winter’s comin’ on....whatever...I gotta practice...

,

...can’t complain too much about going barefoot on the beach the day before Thanksgiving...even in long pants, t-shirt and sweater under rain jacket, knit cap under hood...just a few drops falling, blown by wind that, along with the tides, has so dramatically shaped hills and runnels in the sand...clouds light, dark, and in between, seeming to move in all directions at once...a bundle of half deflated party balloons floating past unintentional driftwood sculpture into the waves as I move slowly along....finally deciding to turn, head inland, put shoes and socks back on to walk the road back....some kinds of beauty can only be taken in for so long...

Headlight On Wet Black Asphalt

...headlight light* on wet black asphalt at the intersection out the window from the coffee shop** on a grey late November morning...there and gone, then replaced, gone again, and there again with the slow movement of cars, controlled by STOP signs and crossing guard...if with a slightly different quality, angle, luminosity, each time...impossible to photograph***...seems all the illumination I’m gonna get, this morning...but, for right now, it’s enough...


* kind of a redundant-sounding, not very mellifluous description, I know...but “glare” really doesn’t do it, and “sparkle” would be way too far in the opposite direction...as, in a different way, would “luminescence” or any o' them there fancy-schmancy highfalutin' words...even “shine” seems a bit much...I’m just talking about a little bit o’ plain ol’ light here, folks, nothin’ more...

** High Point Cafe, Carpenter & Greene, West Mt. Airy, State of Highly Caffeinated Sadhana, U.S.A....

*** at least not with my cell-phone camera...****

**** or, at least not with my cell-phone camera operated by me...*****

***** especially not if I get the angle wrong, so the doorframe’s largely blocking exactly what I’m trying to focus on....looked right from where I was sitting when I took it...******

****** then, the picture’s not the point, anyway...*******

******* then, really, neither are the words...

Fallen Angels, Fallen Leaves

...had a series of dreams in which I was trying to get into or out of L.A...which is weird since, though I’ve been there a few times, it’s not a city I’ve ever felt much connection to...except through movies and T.V....and Joni Mitchell singing so evocatively about the city of the fallen angels, with its specific dance of dreams and disillusionment, opportunity and loss, sunny skies and air pollution....and, now thatcha mention it, Mr. Dreams, that might just be where I am right now...

...started teaching yoga semi-regularly at a shelter for homeless families....the first time, last week, thought I was just sitting in, checking out the scene, until the teacher introduced me...said this is Jay; he’ll be teaching with me tonight, and I thought okay......this week, a lot of noise was coming down the hall at the beginning of class, and one of the students said we can’t do yoga with all that noise....I said, actually, yes we can, that learning to be still with all the noise and chaos around us is part of the practice...


...as it turned out there were also a bunch of people in the room, who weren’t practicing yoga...it’s a busy shelter, and I guess there aren’t a lot of spaces to hang out....I kept having to avoid bumping into a woman reading a magazine, sitting on a couch just behind my mat while I was teaching...and remind myself, this, too, is part of the practice...

Autumn Spandana

THE soothing sanity and blitheness of completion,
The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done;
Now triumph! transformation! jubilate!
Walt Whitman

Life is both dreadful and wonderful.
Thich Nhat Hanh

...was inspired to pick up a book called Adventures of Maqroll, by Alvaro Mutis, after seeing it mentioned in Yoga Bitch...(though, as it turns out, I got the wrong book...a sequel, I think, but that’s okay)...(everything’s a sequel and prequel to something or other, I suspect)...about an old-time wandering adventurer, doing’ his thing in the modern world.....inspiring, predictably enough a wanderlust in me...

...but, then, that’s typical for this time of year...the time for hunkering down, preparing to hibernate...a resistance to natural cycles I suspect may be every bit as natural as the cycles themselves...

...right now feeling ponderous and creative, if not with any particular object...wanting to be an adventurer of the mind, but with mundane work that needs to be done, in the service of bills that need to be paid......always that conflict between practical matters and the passions...vocations and avocations...and how easy to get stuck in the middle, not doing much of anything, stagnating...though that, too, might be one essential half of a pulse...spandana...

... have some tentative plans to get away this winter, along with the requisite financial insecurities making those inadvisable...and, anyway, right now they all seem so tame...not like working on tramp steamers of dubious legality or in haunted coal mines where I’ll have traumatic experiences that’ll leave me in the kind of deep, romantic despair nobody describes quite like those great Latin American writers, who understand so well that life is unspeakably funny and unbearably sad at the same time...

Imaginary Dogs

...Winston Churchill called depression his black dog....couldn’t relate to that at all when I first read it...thought what I was feeling, there in my mid-20’s, must be something far worse...more like an unstoppable white whale, swallowing, mutilating whatever tried to stand against it...nothing, certainly, small and domesticated enough to be held in a lap or walked on a leash...

...my metaphors have come a long way since then...no rainbows or unicorns, but still don’t quite get the black dog thing....depression’s more like a cat I'm highly allergic to, but know well...this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine....shedding all over clothes and furniture...dropping dead birds and mice to be found when I least expect them...that I push gently out the door but always seems to find its way back inside...

...sometimes, to calm my mind, I imagine a dog...when consciousness madly flips through topics, surfs fantasies, tells itself outrageous jokes, working with such frenzy that any attempt at following the breath or simply drifting away seems like tilting at windmills....

...floppy eared and friendly, gamboling calmly into the room...an older, wiser dog, most likely...perhaps sniffing around just a little bit before resting...seeking only quiet companionship and warmth...unconcerned with any of that...

In Which Dr. Jay Weighs in on the Anusara Controversy (Kinda, Sorta), and then Goes into a Most Entertaining Digression Involving His Head & Neck

...as mentioned a little while ago, I’m doing this anusara-inspired Align & Flow training*...in which I'm learning all about, among other things, principles of alignment...

...like, for instance, the way the skull loop interacts with the shoulder loop...(anusara lingo)...the latter beginning all the way at the upper palate, and including the neck....human anatomy, it turns out, is quite distinct from that of the bobble head doll...

...twenty years ago, in Boulder*******, long before I even thought about getting into yoga*********...(and, anyway, at that point far more interested in attaining higher consciousness by other means***********)...went to a meditation class with a visiting Zen master at Naropa, and somebody asked him about posture....he said something like it’s important to keep the head on top of the neck, and people laughed...but, I’ve since learned, he was actually describing something profound and difficult...particularly for those of us who’ve spent most of our lives walking around with a Charlie Brown droop in the neck*************...


*just as, it turns out, controversy erupts in and around the anusara yoga world**...

** when, already, certain yoga friends were warning me not to drink the kula-aid or lookin' at me like I said I was joining the Westboro Baptist Church, or something...which I don’t fully understand, nor, to be honest, care all that much about***...at this point, I’m learning lotsa valuable stuff, from people I like and for whom I have nothing but praise****...

*** and, yes, that was the official statement of this blog, its management, writing staff, shareholders, legal representatives, clowns, concubines, and corporate affiliates...

**** and not that creepy, semi-lobotomized dogma-reciting too-far-gone-to-see-the-contradictions “my guru tells me to think for myself” kinda praise, either*****...

***** as long-time readers know, I get creeped out by that kinda stuff far more easily than most yogis******...

****** so, trust me, when somebody offers me the profound honor of licking the holy perspiration off John Friend’s feet, I’ll head for the door...but, at this point, it seems highly unlikely anything like that's gonna happen...

******* right, that Boulder, home to Elephant Journal and all those self-important yoga hippies...though I was there when it was cool********...

******** not that there’s anything wrong with being a self-important yoga hippie, or anything...namaste, Boulder brothers and sisters...

********* and, thus, blissfully unaware of the all-important high-falutin' conflicts & controversies of the yoga world**********...

********** a state of innocence to which I’d quite happily return....I mean, seriously, I work part-time at this residential rehab for women, y'know, tutoring in reading and writing, and, sometimes, clients like to kind of rant to me about their frustrations...they say they feel they can talk to me precisely because I'm not a therapist...which is cool...some weeks ago, though, I got a bit irritated with one client who kept ragging on the other women there...I said something like come on...you're supposed to be here helping one another through your recovery and all you do is snipe at each other...I think it kinda applies...

*********** a state of experience best, I think, left behind************...

************ notably also preceding my lengthy academic period, when I learned the value of foot-notes, about which readers can make their own judgments...

************* also explored in a notable Arrested Development episode**************...

************** unrelated to which, but I wanted to mention it somewhere, the title of this post was originally a good deal longer, like a classic Tom Jones-ish 19th century-type chapter title, but it turns out there's a limit to how many characters can be in a blog title...thanks for squelchin' my creativity, Blogger...

You Can Tell the Troublemakers by Their Yoga Mats

...seriously, earlier this evening I was refused entrance to a prominent Philadelphia hotel, apparently because my yoga mat made me look like an undesirable radical trouble maker...

...there I was, having biked downtown earlier for yoga class, mat strapped neatly beneath my knapsack, heading to meet friends at a bar with what they told me was a surprisingly affordable Happy Hour ensconced inside a venerable hotel bordering Philadelphia’s lovely Rittenhouse Square...(where I was apparently stalked by a psychopath as a young child in the late 60’s, but that’s another story)...

...got there to find the place surrounded by cops, with a crowd of Occupy Philly people protesting the presence, apparently at some auditorium within, of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney...carrying signs reading Greed Is Good: Romney/Gekko 2012 (which, for what it’s worth, with no offense intended to any readers' well thought-out social and political sensibilities, I thought was clever) and repeatedly yelling REVOLUTION!!! (which, for what it’s worth, with no offense intended to any reader’s well thought-out social and political sensibilities, I thought was stupid)...

...so, I head for the front door, only to find a member of the hotel’s security personnel moving over to bar my way....he asked if I was a hotel guest, I explained that I was going to meet some friends in the bar, and he let me know it was restricted, and maybe I could come back in an hour...

...so, figuring that meant nobody was allowed in, apart from registered guests, and the location for our meet-up would have to be changed, if it hadn’t been already, I called one of my friends, Marge, who, as it turned out, was just around the corner, only to see another friend, approaching through the park...

...Marge said that she’d talked to yet another friend who was already in the bar...said maybe it was your yoga mat...a possibility she found amusing...so decided to go try her luck at the door...where the same guy who’d physically prevented me from entering, mere minutes earlier, ushered both her and our other friend in, without asking if they were guests, only to turn angrily to remind me that I'd already been denied entrance....I said I’m with them...and, apparently not wanting to offend my respectable non-yoga-mat-carrying companions, he let me in...

...notably, a bit later, after I’d told this story to people at the bar, a nicely dressed older woman walked up and said that she, actually, was one of the protesters, and had no problem getting in....then, she didn’t have a yoga mat...

Is This the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius? (Kind of a different perspective)

...got some big news, folks...courtesy of my ever-out-there-but-unfailingly-lovable kundalini friends....yes, even bigger than whatever the hell the Mayans predicted is gonna happen in 2012....I’m talkin’ about...are ya ready for this?...

...the Dawning of the Motherfuckin' Age of Aquarius!!!...

...like, seriously...

...no more patriarchy...

...no more wars...

...no more racism, sexism, or homophobia...

...cooperation taking the place of competition and strife...

...harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding, no more falsehoods or derision, something-something dreams of vision, mystic crystal revelation and the mind’s true liberation...blissed out people dancing around naked...kind bud growing abundantly along the sides of endless networks of well-tended bike paths...unlimited free downloads of Grateful Dead and Phish shows...all that good shit...

Acid, incense, and balloons...
the Jefferson Airplane

...(yeah, I know, I thought that all happened back in the ‘60’s, too....guess that’s what happens when ya get yer news from pop songs instead of more reliable authorities)...(like Facebook)...

...so, anyway, it’s all supposed to start on November 11th...which all sounds cool, except............

...let’s face it: if yer gonna kick some ass, ya better do it now....seriously, people, if this thing's for real, that means there’s barely more than a week left to enjoy telling, flipping, or pissing people off...because, after 11/11/11, that shit’s gonna be totally uncool...

....may have to cut this blog post short, for that matter, so I can go elsewhere on the web and leave some gratuitously meanspirited political comments, since there's obviously gonna be no more of that...(hell, I don't even know if there are gonna be any political situations worth getting nasty about...just intimate circles of kind, open-minded earth-mother types gently reaching consensus on the best ways to love and nurture the general population)...

...namasmotherfuckingte, people...(oh, man, am I gonna miss saying that...)...

Confessions of a Yoga Cynic?

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Carl Sagan

Loneliness is not a problem. Loneliness is nothing to be solved.
Pema Chodron

...was briefly...(perusing the interweb news in a grouchy moment)...thinkin’ it might be time to start a new, less-yogic type o’ blog...specifically, one just to piss off people who piss me off....which I guess would be kinda like Cynicism for Cynics........whereas, here, I try more to simply acknowledge the negativity...give it its due, credit its often quite solid reasoning, rather than trying to dismiss it with empty feel-good sentiments...(that’s called repression, people—it only looks like positive thinking)...then, y'know, try to grow something reasonably funny out of it...(um, yeah...that is kinda like a lotus flower, now thatcha mention it)...

...I understand the ahimsa of biking- rather than driving-drunk...possess the self-awareness necessary to realize that running on a treadmill, loudest music I can find blasting through headphones, eyes wavering between magazine and TV screen, pushing myself to burn as many calories as humanly possible within the hour while doing everything imaginable to distract myself from the experience, is the complete antithesis of yoga, even if I sometimes do it anyway...just as I get that all these time-wasters I put so much energy into are merely flimsy, ultimately ephemeral, and ineffective bulwarks against a deep loneliness that’s always still there no matter how many empty distractions I throw at it, and yet, I love me some good distractions...

...at the same time, gotta admit my cynicism towards yoga tends to manifest itself more in theory than on the mat....teachers and others have, in fact, left me dumbfounded, remarking on my apparently prodigious energy...dedication...even the positive attitude they see manifested in my practice...like, seriously....sure, I might disagree with some, or a lot, or even most, of what they say...(see that totally snarky empty feel-good sentiments remark, above)...but, then, they mostly know that and don’t mind, so why should I?...(hell, the only real yoga arguments I ever get in are on-line...generally with people I've never seen up close, sitting in chairs and typing on computers)...and while, true, I don’t revere my teachers in any classic, Eastern hierarchical kind of sense, and don’t plan on starting any time soon, I do like them an awful lot...

Reptiles of the Mind

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake

...thinking about stuff is generally easier than actually doing it, but less satisfying...unless, of course, you’re thinking about doing something really stupid...
Ancient and Venerable Yoga Cynic Sutra 16:731/2

...just wrote this review for Elephant Journal of a book called Writing Yoga...and, in the process, got kinda self-indulgent...which is what I do...without apology...(I mean, seriously, it’s not like I get paid for this shit)...(and, anyway, like to think I’m working in the tradition of the late great Lester Bangs)...(remember reading Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung while in grad. school, and thinking “why can’t I write literary criticism like this?”...probably shoulda known my days in academia were numbered right then)...

Some years ago, my yoga teacher told me about a retreat she was leading on a beach in Mexico, involving instruction in not just yoga but writing.** The yoga and beach-in-Mexico parts sounded awesome, but thought I’d probably skip out on the other in favor of more wandering-on-the-beach time—I mean, I got me a PhD in English, done taut reedin’ n’ ritin’ at the college level, for chrissake, completed a novel, and published all kinds o’ crap; so y’know, what could be more fun on a trip to the tropics than having somebody correcting my split infinitives and instructing me not to end my sentences with prepositions?**** As it turned out, the writing teacher, Ann Randolph, was more holy lunatic than didactic schoolmarm. Right from the get-go, she had us radically stretching, pushing boundaries, moving beyond comfort zones into all kinds of places I really wasn’t expecting to go.***** At the end of the week, when asked how I felt about the balance of yoga and writing, I said I didn’t feel it was a combination, per se. Rather, it felt to me like it was all yoga, the writing as much as the asana practice. And this, along with, according to what I’d read, a desperate need for writers these days to have something called a web presence, led me to create my semi-famous blog, Yoga for Cynics…(mentioned in Yoga Journal and yada yada yada).****** (And, when people point out that, often, the content isn’t really about yoga, I point out that writing the blog is yoga…and, at least fifty percent of the time, I mean it).

...(yes, in this blog where, in better times, I’ve shared the words of Whitman, Shakespeare, and Kinky Friedman, I’m now quoting myself...at length)...(you’ll have to read the actual article to see the hilarious snarky footnotes, as well as get to the point where I move beyond shameless self-promotion and actually mention the book I’m reviewing)...(and yes, this is also shameless self-promotion)...

Oh, help me in my weakness, I heard the drifter say...
Bob Dylan

...so, anyway, running through this bit of personal history, particularly the cryptic web presence thing, reminded me that part of what got me into the blogging thing...in addition to, y'know, becoming one with the blogosphere and spreading peace and contentment throughout the interwebs...was a need to market my writing...(for which I also need to work on the shameless self promotion thing...as I’m doing in this post)...specifically the novel I put the finishing touches on nearly four years ago, but still haven’t gotten published, Drifter’s Escape...(yes, the title comes from that Dylan song)....(what are songs and poems good for if not to provide titles?)...(note how well that Blake line fits with the pic from my trip to Costa Rica, up there...even if it doesn't have all that much to do with the content of the post....can't have it all)...

...though, as it turns out, Yoga for Cynics has kind of taken on a life of its own...and perhaps the strategy of continually planning on getting back to the process of querying agents really soon but never actually doing it might be reevaluated...though whether that means actually getting back to querying agents, or developing a different strategy...(and, y’know, actually implementing it)...is up to question.....more on this, perhaps, as it develops...

...trying to get shit published might be yoga, too...but we're not too sure about that...
Ancient and Venerable Yoga Cynic Sutra 121:97

There Could Be Worse Ways To Spend My Time

...tonight the women at the rehab were in the living room, that legendary Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon mash-up playing on the T.V....I told ‘em you may be the most sober group of people who’ve ever watched this...

God knows, it’s sacrilege to waste the talent for idleness which I possess.
William Faulkner

...to get busy, first get organized...(sounds like something Sun Tzu would've said...or maybe it was me)...made myself a big to-do list...a series of bulleted goals to be accomplished...with, one hopes, a sense of optimism, hard work, and perseverance...in the coming days....and then, within an hour or two, started feeling a dry, crusty, utterly nasty feeling from the back of the throat to the sinuses, along with an overwhelming need to bundle up, lie down, and close my eyes at two-thirty on a sunny Saturday afternoon...

...that was more than week ago...the nasty sinus cold still lingering just a bit, but mostly, it seems, off on its way....that to-do list serving as a bookmark in the novel I tried to read in between blinding headaches, desperate noseblowing, endless games of FreeCell, and the latest seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Breaking Bad, watched from start to finish on the computer....so now, I’m starting over...

...and I went down to the demonstration,
to get my fair share of abuse,
singin’ we’re gonna vent our frustration...
Mick Jagger

...at least managed to get some yoga in, if far less than usual...including a vinyasa class on Friday, where, actually, not having biked for a week, I noticed a refreshing lack of soreness in the leg muscles...and, then, ever the glutton for punishment, got back on the bike for a ride downtown on Saturday....a pretty day along the river, except where I had to detour around a gathering of aryan nations-type people blocking the path....seriously....maybe ten beefy, angry-looking, Gothic-tattooed, generally goonish-looking skinhead guys holding flags, one speaking into a bullhorn...though whatever he was saying...(apparently something having do with the statue, there by the path, of Viking explorer Thorfinn Karlsefeni...no doubt muttering can’t you please just leave me out of this crap? in some ancient Norse tongue, somewhere beyond the grave, at that very moment)...was drowned out by a slightly larger, equally angry-looking, group of dudes, perhaps fifteen or so, dressed head-to-toe in anarchist black chanting “nazis suck,” while a couple of cops stood in between, simply looking miserable...

...and it occurred to me, thinking back on over a week of relative inactivity in the face of a long list of important shit to do, there could be worse ways to spend my time...

Sick Again

...been sick yet again...(necessitating, yes, yet another horrifying Edward Gorey image at the head of the post)...a bad sinus cold, this time, though containing suspicious similarities to whatever that was a month ago...leaving me wasting away indoors during what were likely the last eighty degree days of the year, a perfect weekend for occupations or wandering aimlessly in the park...

...not to mention creating another regrettable gap in the ever-so-close-to-daily yoga practice...yeah, I know, but let’s face it, despite having learned a few timeless truths...(headstand while drunk=bad idea)...I’m simply not yogic enough, at this point, either to practice every day no matter what kinda toxic waste facility it feels like I've got lodged in my sinuses nor to not practice for three or four days and yet feel so centered-and-totally-okay-with-myself-and-the-universe-as-it-is-in-this-totally-sacred-as-fuck-moment as to not feel self-conscious about it...(though, admittedly, by this definition, I was never more yogic than in my first thirty-five years of life, when I never even thought about practicing yoga and, if anything, made fun of people who did)...(oh, these spiritual paradoxes)...

...so, laid the mat out just a little while ago, and got right into it...incense, Miles, and a strikingly satisfying post-neti-pot headstand...and, though, as it turned out, I wasn’t quite up for everything intended, actually found myself feeling better than I had in days, if, still, well below 100%...(yeah, you blissed out yoga hippie types out there, I hear ya...but you’re always 100%! you're always perfectly yogic!! you’re perfect just as you are in this moment, brother!!!...um, yeah, but, in a more practical sense, if I were really 100% right now, I’d have a snappy comeback...instead I just wanna blow my nose...again)...and in the mood to write for the first time since last week...so here we are...

...(meaning that, yeah, this post is ending up like one of those lame-ass movies about some stereotypical writer dork struggling to finish a novel and then, just before the credits, it turns out it’s actually the book the stupid movie’s based on!...bleah...like I said, not yet 100%)...

The Clinically Depressed Trickster Figure

You know, I'm sick of following my dreams, man. I'm just going to ask where they're going and hook up with 'em later...
Mitch Hedberg

...turning leaves, blankets and warmer clothing, and lotsa tasty stuff made from various forms of squash...shifting from that edgy, anxious spring-and-summertime depression to the more cozy, lethargic fall-and-winter variety...

We can as easily become a prisoner of so-called positive thinking as of negative thinking. It too can be confining, fragmented, inaccurate, illusory, self-serving, and wrong.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

a mystic looks at the universe and sees mystery...an existentialist looks at the universe and sees absurdity...I look at the universe and see absurd mystery...or mysterious absurdity...

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
Chuang Tzu

...would like to start a non-religion based around a clinically depressed trickster figure...offering annual, year-long retreats at the long-awaited Yoga for Cynics ashram...where the mountains kiss the sea and floppy-eared dogs wander among recycled building materials inscribed with inspiring words from Chuang Tzu, William Blake, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Mitch Hedberg....all specific commandments, sutras, and holy dogma written on any available outdoor surface in colored chalk, to be seen, or changed, or ignored, by anyone at any time, or simply washed away by the rain...

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
William Blake



*was looking for an image for this post and googled “trickster figure”...and what did I see but the cover of this obscure book of literary criticism called Trickster Lives, published a full decade ago, now, and happening to feature a chapter on a poet named Thylias Moss, written—in semi-fluent academic jargon—by none other than your humble author in PhD-student mode...never woulda imagined that was still in print...*

Learnin' n' Unlearnin'

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

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

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

Two Reasons to Practice Yoga

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

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

Not Enlightened Yet

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

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

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

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

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

Creative Enough?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


* cool book...see my review here

Big Time Yoga

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

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

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

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

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

Under the Weather

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

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

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

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

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

In From the Storm

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

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

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

Waiting for the Hurricane

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Day Before the Earthquake Hit

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Yoga Cynic Has Issues

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

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

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

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

BALD heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.
William Butler Yeats, The Scholars

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

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

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

...they open and close you, and talk like they know you,
they don’t know you, they’re friends and they’re foes, too...
Joni Mitchell, Trouble Child

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

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

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

Your business is watching my words. But I
admit nothing.
Anne Sexton, Said the Poet to the Analyst

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

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

Rehab and Elsewhere

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

We’re all doing time.
Bo Lozoff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Running Into Mirrors (Part One)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where I Actually Live...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Subjectivity of Light

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

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

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

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

Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1.2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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