Imperfections R Us

...said sorry, not feeling quite myself today...though knowing that simmering misery is at least as much myself as anything else I might be feeling...

`I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, `because I'm not myself, you see.'
Lewis Carroll

...been reading this book called Just Kids by Patti Smith, about herself and Robert Mapplethorpe as young artists in NY in the 60’s...listening to Blonde on Blonde and Beggars Banquet over and over, but too broke to go and see rock concerts...young artists aware of the legendary Andy Warhol factory scene nearby but lacking the cache to get anywhere near it...kind of funny, in a way...later on, Patti Smith asked should I pursue a path so twisted?...a line I’ve always liked...perhaps because the straight and narrow has only ever tended to get me hopelessly lost...

...one thing none of the yoga books say is that there’s probably no better time for a neti pot than when you’re sick-drunk....or that there’s no better cure for a serious hangover than a really intense vinyasa class...the kind that makes you silently chant what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger...

...another thing they don’t say is that getting sick-drunk might indicate that you’re in a very different...perhaps less placid...state of mind than you might have been telling yourself...

...recently read this book called Letters From the Dhamma Brothers...about a vipassana meditation program for inmates in a southern maximum security prison...(which, like the Dhamma Brothers movie, is worth checking out)....in one place, the point is made, in reference to participants who’ve been addicts, that meditation shouldn't be used as a substitute for drugs...and I get that...these techniques were developed with higher goals than another addictive behavior or a buzz...just like yoga wasn’t invented for killer abs and firm butts...but, at the same time, can’t help thinking if somebody’s looking for a buzz, wouldn’t it be a whole lot better to get it from meditation than from heroin?...or, would it be better if the yoga-as-exercise crowd joined the 40% of Americans who don’t exercise at all?....all in all, am inclined to think that if people are replacing something unhealthy with something healthy, that’s a good thing...even if it’s a watered-down version of a better thing...

...I useta use all kindsa crap to dilute my coffee before finally learning to enjoy it black...

...(yeah, I just compared yoga to coffee)...(but, ya gotta admit, better that than crack)...

...still not so sure, though, about the food co-op employee heard a couple days ago proudly proclaiming that he smokes organic cigarettes...

*cross posted at Elephant Journal*

Difficult Times Six

So...I’ve been called upon to share six (6) random things about myself...or something like that...but, listen, first I’m gonna tell something not-so random about me...that anyone who knows me at all knows well...which is that I’m notoriously difficult...very much so...so, for instance, since getting into this blogging thing, I’ve found myself a part of this blogger community...and, thus, I’ve made some lovely blogger friends...but also found that this community has its own strange language, customs, rituals, and unique sexual positions...okay, maybe not that last part...at least, nobody’s told me about them...anyway, among those blogger friends are Seeing-Eye Chick who “tagged” me for the six things thing...even though she knows I never follow the rules of these things...as well as Lea, who’s given me two blogging awards I’ve forgotten even to acknowledge, much less follow the rules of...and, dare I forget, my good friend Svasti, who’s once again gonna call me on recycling stuff I’ve said elsewhere...but I’ve done worse things...really...

1. 1966—the year I was born, as well as the year Bob Dylan came out with the Blonde on Blonde album, which features both the best pick-up line ever—she said ‘your debutante knows what you need, but I know what you want’—as well as the best after-it’s-all-fallen-to-pieces line—when we meet again, introduced as friends, please don’t let on that you knew me when, I was hungry, and it was your world....

2. 6 is the first digit in the address of the house where I grew up, and where my mother still lives. However, if you look my mom up in the phone book, you’ll see only the street name, without the number. The reason for that is that, shortly before we moved out from the city, when I was three, my dad, a psychiatrist, ran into someone he’d had committed, a fellow psychiatrist, actually, on the street. The guy said “I know where your children play.” My dad asked “where’s that?” The guy said “Rittenhouse Square,” which, as it turned out, was exactly right.

3. 6 is also the first digit of my phone number when I was a kid, and, thanks to cell phones, it’s the only number other than my own (which also contains a 6) that I still have memorized—I can, however, still remember what, according to the Guinness Book of World’s Records when I was a kid, was the world’s hardest tongue twister: the sixth sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.

4. 666 is, of course, the Number of the Beast according to the Book of Revelations in the New Testament. I tend to associate it, however, with the heavy metal bands that massively overused it in my youth, who I always hated, though now I realize that this was mostly because that was the music most popular with the bullies in my high school. I still don’t like heavy metal much, but will admit that the Paranoid album by Black Sabbath isn’t bad.

5. That 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing was never much of a challenge for me...he lived around the corner from the house where I lived until I was three...the one from which, apparently, that crazy shrink followed us to the park....

6. I could tell ya about the 6 Branches of Yoga...but you’d be better off asking somebody who can do twists and inversions without hurting him(or her)self...like Brooks or Linda or the aforementioned Svasti....