Thursday, October 6, 2011

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...*

4 comments:

Meredith LeBlanc said...

I like the visual of this place. I'm a sucker for floppy dog ears and ideals that are flexible making room for new ones.

earthtoholly said...

In light of Steve Jobs' passing, I think I see some parallels here, drjay. You seem to have such unique views on yoga...maybe the yoga community needs a studio with a Y4C (is that obsolete now?) twist. Or would you be run outta town with pitchforks?

Wow...published stuff...how cool!

Unknown said...

Call me woo woo, but I think that Googling "trickster figure" and coming up with a graphic representing your own writing is a sign. Of what, I'm not sure, but surely something good.

Brooks Hall said...

I remember seeing that book in an independent bookstore on Clark Street years ago...