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?...
