Somewhere Between the Hotel Chelsea and Nirvana...

...who knew that Dharma Mittra has his home base a mere block or two from the legendary Hotel Chelsea...home to great authors and musicians, alcoholics, junkies, great alcoholic and junkie authors and musicians, and, no doubt, lots of not-so-great authors and musicians, alcoholics, junkies, and otherwise...where Dylan Thomas may or may not have raged raged before succumbing to the dying of the light, Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sid Vicious murdered Nancy Spungen, and Bob Dylan pined for the woman he’d marry, bear children with, and, through a process detailed over three or four truly classic rock n’ roll albums, divorce...

...stayin’ up for days in the Chelsea Hotel, writin’ Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for you...

Bob Dylan

...in Dharma’s class even the pranayama kicks my ass....a truly yogic exercise, perhaps, is learning to be cool about the fact that everybody else in the room is doing handstands in full lotus and I’m just kinda squatting there ‘cause it’s the best I can do....after the two-hour class, Dharma recommends lunch at the vegan place across the street....got a thai “chicken” wrap and an ultra-natural but still tasty cupcake....but somehow not enough to get me all the way back to lower Manhattan, an hour walk along Broadway where I can’t help but grab a couple slices of cheap pizza...

...whiskey bottle over Jesus, not forever, just for now...

Uncle Tupelo

...couple glasses o’ wine and a beer, with mom in the fancy assisted living apartment watching Netflix, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf...based on the Edward Albee play...now those people are fucked up....been writing with a fever this past week or two, like I haven’t in way too long...makes me wanna move into the Chelsea Hotel with a beaten up old manual Smith Corona and a crate full o' whiskey bottles..and how convenient it’d be to be right down the street from Dharma’s yoga studio...

...He never supposed divine
Things might not look divine, nor that if nothing
Was divine then all things were, the world itself,
And that if nothing was the the truth, then all
Things were the truth, the world itself was the truth.

Wallace Stevens

Bees of the Invisible

You can never get enough of what you don’t really want.
Eric Hoffer

...there’s an old joke about a guy who quit smoking, drinking, and sex, and, as a result, was in perfect health up until the day he killed himself...

...(of course, to be relevant to the twenty-first century yoga crowd, it might be better to rephrase that as quit wheat, gluten, and genetically modified foods)...

...it’s always easy, I think, to talk about other people’s bad habits...if she knows how bad that is for her, why doesn’t she quit?....next time you find yourself saying something like that, it might be a good idea to pick something you love, something small, that, nonetheless, provides countless little moments of pleasure to your life, maybe keeps you going day by day, regardless of whether it’s good for you or not...reality T.V. shows...or junk food...or surfing the internet...or masturbating...and quit cold turkey, starting now....then, after a week or so, ask the same question about that alcoholic/cigarette smoker/crack addict you were talking about before, and see if the answer might be a little bit clearer...

We are the bees of the invisible. We frantically plunder the visible of its honey, to accumulate it in the great golden hive of the invisible.
Rainer Maria Rilke

...reading Rilke, some more...sitting in full lotus...or listening to Beethoven...how very German...wonder where I can get me some good vienerschnitzel in this town...though guess it might be good to find out just exactly what vienerschnitzel is, first...

...been called lazy...by myself, mostly....some people seem to admire my drive in certain pursuits...though those generally don’t involve producing marketable goods and services of easily quantifiable value, and do little to keep the wheels of the great machine of capital churning...

...then, a related problem might be that I’ve never been so good at relaxing, either...despite so much practice...lying propped against cushions with book in hand, wandering in the woods or along a deserted beach, or sitting in a coffee shop....and yet it all seems like an ongoing struggle to achieve the relaxation so badly needed without ever...or, at least, rarely...actually achieving it...

...that was what Dharma Mittra got on me about...couldn’t care less that I couldn’t do full lotus while in head-stand for ten minutes like most of the people in the room, but was the first yoga teacher every to criticize my savasana, specifically the fact that my fingers and hands don’t really relax, most of the time...

...work may be hard, but relaxing may be harder...

The Only Living Yoga Cynic in New York...or, the Yoga Cynic Meets Dharma Mittra

Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where,
We don’t know where...
Paul Simon, The Only Living Boy in New York

...always found Manhattan kind of intimidating...so big, so uptight, arrogant, and loud, so much flagrant wealth and power, so many people so driven, so ambitious and competitive...ain’tchoohungry for success success success success...

...I like to get out on the rich-but-still-incessantly-hungry streets and just walk...

...walked the High Line...lovely, artistic, and green in a post-apocalyptic sorta way...from 14^th to 23^rd, then headed in past 6^th to get to the Master Sadhana yoga class at noon...finding a room full of hardcore New York yogis relaxing with feet behind their heads...if you can reach enlightenment theeeere, you can reach it anywheeeere....and just sat their doing my usual neck rolls, feeling even more intimidated, thinking the famous yoga master we were waiting for was gonna make organic vegan mincemeat outta me...

 ...(gotta admit, when I’ve encountered yoga bigwigs, they’ve been awesome, but, in the area of actually overcoming the ego, have seemed, if anything, generally a step or two behind the rest of us)...

 ...until this unassuming, gentle, and totally unpretentious older dude I barely noticed ‘til he was up at the front of the room started the class...making jokes in a heavy accent, smiling at the little kids running around the room (the kinda thing that drives me nuts, trying to teach yoga at the homeless shelter, but which seemed to be perfectly welcome, here)...as well as giving time to my generally neglected inability to fully relax, the hands that won't fully unclench in savasana...reminding me that, despite all that fast-forward-moving energy down in the streets, the path leads to where I already am, wherever that might be...