Fear: It's Not Just For Breakfast, Anymore...

...a friend showed me a yoga prop with colorful lettering along its side....it read: do one thing a day that scares you....I said getting out of bed scares me....mission accomplished...

It is because a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change.
Byron Bunch (William Faulkner, Light in August)

...there’s a popular new and old agey belief about fear...that it’s a bad thing...that, with the right attitude, everything will be okay, so fear is something purely negative, to be overcome....obviously, anyone who thinks that way doesn’t get around a city by bicycle...

...to be an urban cyclist is to have a healthy relationship with fear...to see it as your friend...not your boss, your friend...to listen to, argue with, sometimes respectfully ignore...knowing that it’s there to keep you safe, but you never wanna be too safe...


...and when do you think it will all become clear?
‘cause I’m bein’ taken over by the fear...
Lily Allen

...one thing most people fear is being seen naked...figuratively speaking...(as well as literally)...I see this with yoga teachers, sometimes...acting so blissed out, so overwhelmingly positive, so damned spiritual you wonder how they deal with mundane earthly matters like paying bills or getting the toilet fixed....nice, I think, listening to another fake Rumi quote...(made up, most likely, by some anonymous greeting card company employee)...while transitioning from chaturanga to upward-facing dog, but not someone I’d likely wanna hang out with away from class...but then I run into the teacher in a coffee shop or bar and find a perfectly down to earth person with a snarky sense of humor, who's actually a lot of fun to talk to, once that bogus yoga teacher mask is off...

One day you’ll wake up in the present day,
a million generations removed from expectations
of being who you really want to be...
Ian Anderson

...met a woman who grew up in Poland in the 20’s and 30’s, and, years later, came to the United States...though Jewish, she spent the years of World War II working in a factory in Germany, having, somehow, obtained "fake papers" that identified her as a gentile...and so lived, year after hard year, hiding behind a false identity, knowing she’d be sent to her death if anyone found out who she really was....(when the war was over, she went back home, thinking to find at least someone from her previous life, but every last one had been killed)....

...thankfully, most of us don’t have to live under circumstances like that....though we might act like it, sometimes...


* note: the bike and car in the picture are both mine...no sentient beings were harmed in the production of this blog post...*

Profound Thoughts on Yoga Blogging? (for April Fools...)

Those who know do not speak,
those who speak do not know.
Tao Te Ching 56

...and those who really really don't know
write blog posts about it...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 4.1

Rite of Spring, 2012 (kind of a haiku)

biking, wearing shorts
in March; it stung me on the
thigh—first bee of spring

.,

I'm Not a Buddhist. Am I Still a Buddhist?*

...I find Use Extreme Caution signs strange....I mean, if you’re not huddled ‘neath the covers all day in a fetal position, can your level of caution really be called extreme?...

They always throw around this term ‘the liberal elite.’ And I kept thinking to myself about the Christian right. What’s more elite than believing that only you will go to heaven?
Jon Stewart

...every now and then, I’ll run into former clients from the rehab....usually, they’ll smile, call out my name, maybe give me a hug....except for a couple times, on the sidewalk near a yoga studio I frequent, which just happens to be just around the corner from a methadone clinic....there, eyes avoid me, feet walk rapidly away...ironically enough, telling exactly what they don’t want me to know...revealing through the very act of attempting to hide...

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

...1987, leaning against my backpack on a traffic island outside Rome, my friend and I taking turns sticking our thumbs out, heading down to Pompeii to touch ancient history, admire ancient mosaics, and wander around the place Pink Floyd played....he asked if I wanted to read a book he had...An Introduction to Zen Buddhism, by D. T. Suzuki....thoroughly uninterested in Eastern philosophy, meditation, spirituality, or any of that kinda crap, I was, nonetheless, just bored enough to say yeah, sure....a lot’s happened since then....I meditate every day and recently dug out my old Alan Watts (purchased some time after returning from Europe in ’87 or ’88)...but still have no interest in being a Buddhist...

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding...
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

...letting go of preconceptions makes things a lot more mysterious...beyond labels, stereotypes, and convenient boxes, each person you meet as wondrously and terrifyingly, inscrutably complex as the paradoxes of infinity....and this, of course, is precisely why we come up with all those labels, stereotypes, and boxes....it’s just a lot easier to check off white black liberal conservative Democrat Republican hipster Buddhist Christian yogi cynic or even yoga cynic than to try and fathom a cosmos...


* ...title originally incarnated, humbly enough, as a comment on a Facebook post about an Elephant Journal article titled
I Don’t Believe in Reincarnation. Am I Still a Buddhist?...

Thoughts Like Raindrops

{index of lines from unwritten blog posts}

...dug out my first yoga mat...purple, bought at a Wegmans in Rochester in 2001...more craters than the surface of the moon though none, quite, going all the way through...wasn’t till I got to class that I realized I hadn’t used...or washed...it since the trip to Costa Rica...pungent waves of nostalgia rising with each sharp and mellow scent of suntan lotion, insect repellent, and year-old sweat from hours of vinyasa practice morning and night in tropical weather...

A year indoors is a journey along a paper calendar; a year in outer nature is the accomplishment of a tremendous ritual.
Henry Beston

...a guy I hung out with almost twenty years ago died recently....found out about it on Facebook...where he’s still got a page....according to status updates, he’s still making new friends...

No one respects the flame quite like the fool who’s badly burned...
Pete Townshend

...slow day in the coffee shop...or slow me...the place itself is booming, Steve Reich, Sonic Youth, Ornette Coleman, and early Frank Zappa blasting through earphones a person with a history of serious ear problems shouldn’t be using...both drums surgically reconstructed, and chronic ringing in the left....my older brother a long time ago had a Black Sabbath album called We Sold Our Souls for Rock n’ Roll...can you help me? help me find my brain?...if they can sell their souls, I can at least sacrifice an eardrum or two...

...the desire for community was only strengthened in a month of such yogi-proximity, making the line between solitude and loneliness more hazy than ever...

...any god who is threatened by new truth from any source is clearly dead already.
John Shelby Spong

...it can be fun to have a friend full of juicy gossip and clever cutting remarks about absent people....only trouble is, you know damn well whose dirt’s gonna be dished the minute your back’s turned...

...been told, quite dismissively, that my attitude is very American...and it is...(to be more precise...or pretentious...it’s very Emersonian...very Whitmanian)...in the same sense, that is, that yoga, traditionally, is very Indian and something else is very Chinese, very Italian, or very Brazilian....since anything, ultimately, can be reduced to context...which is exactly what makes taking things out of context so valuable, sometimes...

Whatever we do with our hybridized yoga, the old man in the forest cautions against writing it down. Yoga has always been an oral tradition, fostering intimacy between its speakers and listeners, and resisting the dogma and myopia that fester in words written on anything more substantial than breath.
yoga 2.0

...people who meditate or practice yoga have been known, sometimes, to fall into the trap of feeling superior...ironic as that might be when it comes with claims of overcoming the ego...more grounded, higher-minded, more spiritual than thou....while I often suspect that what leads us to these practices is, in fact, simply being more fucked up than other people, who don’t actually need to sit in quiet rooms for hours on end or learn to feel comfortable with their feet behind their heads...

...I might feel perfectly fulfilled, I thought, glancing surreptitiously across the room, if I could only kiss the inside of that black-stockinged thigh...

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
Anatole France

...and even if I am getting better as I get older...(the cells don’t lie...whatever the attitude or aptitude...if you prick me I still bleed, but it takes a hell of a lot longer for the cut to heal)...I’m also getting older as I get better...

...strangely, sometimes, a refreshing tinge of possibility can be tasted right there in the midst of that deep, crushing sensation...if I can stop and tune in to it...swish the bitter wine around my palate it for a moment instead of gulping or trying to spit the bitterness out...

...the key is, I think, not to strip off the junk only to find different junk...

A genius is the one most like himself.
Thelonious Monk

Playing With Blocks

...all we can really experience, or be truly aware of, is the present moment...the right here and right now...like all those yogis & Buddhists’ll tell ya...(when they’re not going on about past lives or India)....but, at the same time, like any neuroscientist can tell ya, it’s actually impossible to be aware of or experience the present moment...the brain doesn’t work like that...by the time you’re aware of or experience anything, it’s already past...


...spent last Saturday on a weekend bed-and-breakfast yoga retreat way up-state...(I’m now proud owner of a pine-scented eye-pillow...seeing how much I was enjoying it, someone commented that I’m becoming a metrosexual...I said I’d probably have to stop buying my clothes at EMS to make that happen)...woke up for the first of three awesome, healthy meals with good friends, morning yoga class, a couple long walks along the creek and a climb to the top of a mountain (overlooking the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania...which, admittedly, could fit, along with the Grand Canyon of New York at Letchworth, and the various grand canyons of other eastern states, into a small side canyon of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in Arizona...but is lovely nonetheless)...(see pics)...restorative yoga class, and a post-dinner-and-red-wine Thai massage....and it occurred to me that this really wasn’t a day I could complain much about...


...with the women at the rehab, I focus mostly on GED preparation and literacy, but now and then, with someone more advanced in her education, get to work with creative writing and journaling...encouraging letting-loose on the page, freeing-up the creative voice...almost invariably resulting an empowering and enjoyable experience, for everyone involved, when we see what blossoms on the page....but it’s also a difficult, and often daunting, frightening process...giving what can seem a terrifying concreteness on the page to thoughts one would like to push away, no matter how consistent and inevitable the failure to do so...requiring encouragement, gentle prodding, and understanding from the supposedly more-together teacher-person....and, ultimately, it's all about honesty...

...I haven’t written anything this week, she said, head hanging low....that’s okay, said the teacher, neither have I...

Cold February Drizzle, and a few of my favorite things

...driving through cold February drizzle...went to the bank to make a deposit...which, in itself, represents a certain modicum of good news...and the teller asked what plans I have for retirement...I smiled, said probably living on the streets...she smiled back, choosing not to pursue the subject...

...then was at one of those box stores...not gonna identify it, so you won’t have an opportunity to tell me about its evil labor practices, destruction of the environment, and/or support for frighteningly right-wing politicians/horrible record on GLBTG issues, etc....I know what a horribly un-conscientious consumer I am...and knowledge is the first step toward wisdom...or something...or not....anyway, was buying socks...got lots of ‘em, barely any match...and those that do have holes in ‘em...call my socks what ya will, they ain’t unholy....these are the jokes, folks....and a voice came over the loudspeaker announcing that another register was opening, so would the next customer in line proceed to......but, turns out, that led to some disagreement between two customers ahead of me, each at least thirty or forty years old....it went something like this: what the f&*&, b*&@?!...it said next person in line, a&*&)%#!!...f*+% you, b)%$#!!!...you’re a *^%$#!!!!...your mother’s a &*^(%^$#!!!!...my mother’s good!!!!!...I KNOW she's good!!!!!......

...headed back to lovely, organically-grown West Mt. Airy, state of Fiscally Sensible Lovingkindness, U.S.A., and my local coffee shop...where Yoga for Cynics posts are born...noting a pickup truck parked right out front with a blue plastic ballsack hanging from the rear bumper...

...last week, recovering from flu-like symptoms, struggling to focus, drinking too much coffee, and doing my best to ignore the endless scandals of the yoga blogosphere, was watching some old Woody Allen movies on DVD...the sublime Annie Hall and the not-quite-as-good-and-kinda-disturbing-particularly-in-light-of-later-events-yet-still-gorgeously-filmed-and-generally-brilliant Manhattan, in which the protagonist, near the end, raises the question, typical of a Woody Allen character, of why life is worth living, before concluding: Well, there are certain things, I guess, that make it worthwhile, followed by a list...

...and so, on this dreary day, thought I’d give a brief list of my own, just off the top of my head:

...John Coltrane playing My Favorite Things...
...biking along Wissahickon Creek...
...floppy-eared dogs...
...the way the young woman at the homeless shelter who told me she loves Walt Whitman smiled when I quoted him...all truths wait in all things...at the beginning of Tuesday night's yoga class...
...Haruki Murakami...
...Bob Dylan singing she said your debutante just knows what you need, but I know what you want...
...Virginia Woolf...
...an intense practice leaving me feeling like I’ve been to Jupiter and back...
...Bill Murray...
...Jorma Kaukonen...
...Joan Miro...
...successful headstands...
...red rock canyons...
...Vincent Van Gogh...
...Hamlet’s description of deep depression, beginning I have of late but wherefore I know not lost all my mirth....
...the frozen mango margaritas at that place down on Passyunk, especially when it’s nice enough out that I can bike home...
...Sufi grinding...
...a deep pigeon pose...
...that first cup of coffee in the morning...
...Light in August...
...the way Carrie Brownstein pulled off all those classic cheesy rock-hero guitar moves without irony when I saw Wild Flag play this past fall...
...long phone conversations in which nothing of import is said but much is communicated...
...Miles Davis’ solo a couple minutes into Shhh/Peaceful...
...Joni Mitchell singing Free Man in Paris...
...Beethoven’s 9th...
...Gabriel Garcia Marquez...
...The Brothers Karamazov...
...Joe Strummer singing it's up to you not to heed the call-up, you must not act the way you were brought up...
...mindfulness...
...solitude...
...friendship...
...compassion...
...kindness...
...orgasms...
...you...
...the coffee I'm drinking right now...
...Jon Stewart...
...Flannery O'Connor...
...Apocalypse, Now...
...The Big Lebowski...
....Casablanca...
...Keith Richards...
...Billie Holiday...
...people calling out my name and enthusiastically waving across the room though I can’t see who they are because I just took my glasses off just before yoga class...
...sudden surprising revelations I get while peddling...
...and laughing about all the rest...