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

Reptiles of the Mind

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake

...thinking about stuff is generally easier than actually doing it, but less satisfying...unless, of course, you’re thinking about doing something really stupid...
Ancient and Venerable Yoga Cynic Sutra 16:731/2

...just wrote this review for Elephant Journal of a book called Writing Yoga...and, in the process, got kinda self-indulgent...which is what I do...without apology...(I mean, seriously, it’s not like I get paid for this shit)...(and, anyway, like to think I’m working in the tradition of the late great Lester Bangs)...(remember reading Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung while in grad. school, and thinking “why can’t I write literary criticism like this?”...probably shoulda known my days in academia were numbered right then)...

Some years ago, my yoga teacher told me about a retreat she was leading on a beach in Mexico, involving instruction in not just yoga but writing.** The yoga and beach-in-Mexico parts sounded awesome, but thought I’d probably skip out on the other in favor of more wandering-on-the-beach time—I mean, I got me a PhD in English, done taut reedin’ n’ ritin’ at the college level, for chrissake, completed a novel, and published all kinds o’ crap; so y’know, what could be more fun on a trip to the tropics than having somebody correcting my split infinitives and instructing me not to end my sentences with prepositions?**** As it turned out, the writing teacher, Ann Randolph, was more holy lunatic than didactic schoolmarm. Right from the get-go, she had us radically stretching, pushing boundaries, moving beyond comfort zones into all kinds of places I really wasn’t expecting to go.***** At the end of the week, when asked how I felt about the balance of yoga and writing, I said I didn’t feel it was a combination, per se. Rather, it felt to me like it was all yoga, the writing as much as the asana practice. And this, along with, according to what I’d read, a desperate need for writers these days to have something called a web presence, led me to create my semi-famous blog, Yoga for Cynics…(mentioned in Yoga Journal and yada yada yada).****** (And, when people point out that, often, the content isn’t really about yoga, I point out that writing the blog is yoga…and, at least fifty percent of the time, I mean it).

...(yes, in this blog where, in better times, I’ve shared the words of Whitman, Shakespeare, and Kinky Friedman, I’m now quoting myself...at length)...(you’ll have to read the actual article to see the hilarious snarky footnotes, as well as get to the point where I move beyond shameless self-promotion and actually mention the book I’m reviewing)...(and yes, this is also shameless self-promotion)...

Oh, help me in my weakness, I heard the drifter say...
Bob Dylan

...so, anyway, running through this bit of personal history, particularly the cryptic web presence thing, reminded me that part of what got me into the blogging thing...in addition to, y'know, becoming one with the blogosphere and spreading peace and contentment throughout the interwebs...was a need to market my writing...(for which I also need to work on the shameless self promotion thing...as I’m doing in this post)...specifically the novel I put the finishing touches on nearly four years ago, but still haven’t gotten published, Drifter’s Escape...(yes, the title comes from that Dylan song)....(what are songs and poems good for if not to provide titles?)...(note how well that Blake line fits with the pic from my trip to Costa Rica, up there...even if it doesn't have all that much to do with the content of the post....can't have it all)...

...though, as it turns out, Yoga for Cynics has kind of taken on a life of its own...and perhaps the strategy of continually planning on getting back to the process of querying agents really soon but never actually doing it might be reevaluated...though whether that means actually getting back to querying agents, or developing a different strategy...(and, y’know, actually implementing it)...is up to question.....more on this, perhaps, as it develops...

...trying to get shit published might be yoga, too...but we're not too sure about that...
Ancient and Venerable Yoga Cynic Sutra 121:97

Springtime Ebbs and Flows...

April is the cruelest month...
T. S. Eliot

...or maybe it’s just me...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 126:97

...when spring first hit...felt an awful lot like summer...went out and overexerted myself, ending up exhausted, sore, and sunburned...banged up my knees after catching a bike wheel in an old trolley track that still exists, far as I can tell, for the sole purpose of catching bike wheels...

...more lately it’s been wetter and colder, if greener...been feeling uninspired...not writing much...apart from being virtually eco-conscious by revising, refurbishing and reincarnating old Yoga for Cynics posts*...

...do I understand your question man, is it hopeless and forlorn?
Bob Dylan (in as crappy a mood, apparently, as T. S. Eliot)

...then, perhaps it’s really all a matter of ebb & flow—old-school well-worn zen-like metaphor in progress—and the only trick is to realize it...meaning not just in the sense of hey, maybe it’s all just a matter of ebb & flow—think I’ll write something about that on my blog...but to really realize it...take it in...accept it...stop expecting the world to stand still long enough to make sense...

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide

...but, maybe the not being able to believe in that...the suspecting it’s all bullshit...is simply part of that ebb...faith and doubt not pulling in a tug-o-war, but operating more smoothly in a kind of dialectic tide...unceasing movement avoiding the stagnation of self righteous surety, fanaticism and fundamentalism, as well as the dry sand of fatalism and despair...nothing definite...except that wherever ya end up, ya won’t be there for long...


*...like this one...about the haiku Allen Ginsberg wrote for me...which I then spilled something on...posted earlier today...

Yogi Don’t Surf! (El Yogi Cynico en Costa Rica Parte Cinco)

He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy.
He who kisses the joy as it flies,
Lives in eternity's sunrise.
William Blake

...someone told me the forecast for Philly for the following week, when we’d be home, had highs in the upper forties...which’ll feel just balmy, said she....or would if we hadn’t just spent ten days down here, said I...


Charlie don’t surf!
Colonel Kilgore, Apocalypse, Now

...the Pacific coast of the Nicoya Peninsula is renowned as a major surf haven, attracting incredibly buff wave riders from around the world...including most everybody else on our little retreat...and yet...alas...this cynical yogi...(with a history of ear problems...culminating in chronically infected scar tissue from operations meant to remove other chronically infected scar tissue resulting from previous operations meant to stop chronic ear infections)...(all of which makes water sports that involve submerging the head highly inadvisable)...does not surf...

...and, anyway, there are an awful lot of underwater rocks, there...so ya never know, when floating about the surf, just what might be lurking underneath....and this is starting to sound like yet another metaphor...

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
attributed to Swami Satchidinanda

...there’s a book called In Search of Captain Zero, about a couple of surfers and ex-weed smugglers who, earlier in their lives, decided that someday they’d find the perfect beach with the perfect surf break...paradise...to spend the rest of their lives...

The Paradise is in the desire, not in the imperfection of accomplishment...

Allen Ginsberg

...in time, though, they lost one another...and the author, Allan C. Weisbecker, has the idea that his friend, Christopher...Captain Zero...may have finally found it...so heads down through Mexico into Central America...doing lots of surfing along the way...

That ‘s how thick the wave was and how deep within it I found myself. I was in a crouch, which is pretty much instinctive in that sort of situation, but I could have stood up and still not gotten my hair wet. For the three, maybe four seconds before that wave spit me back out into the sunlight with my feet still planted firmly on my board, I was exactly and without doubt where I wanted to be on the surface of the planet earth. And there was not a drop of water in my universe that was out of place.

...eventually finding Christopher, and it, on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica...only to learn that, having found his paradise, Captain Zero’s developed an addiction to crack....sometimes, it seems, there’s nothing more dangerous than finding your ideal...especially if the plan is to try and hold on to it for good instead of simply enjoying the perfect moments you get before letting them go...

...back in slowly-melting-snowy Philadelphia, found my difficult adjustment to cold weather after ten days struggling to stay cool, itchy skin flaking off from sunburn, arms and legs so bug bitten they've been compared to Saint Sebastian, garnered little sympathy...

...and, anyway, here’s where I am now...and, with temperatures reaching up toward the low sixties, and purple flowers blooming where snow was days ago, it's probably best to let go of that beach...for now...

Got My Mind On My Monkeys And My Monkeys On My Mind (El Yogi Cynico en Costa Rica Parte Cuatro)

...everything we do is music...
John Cage

... returning from Casa Zen to Punta Coco on the last afternoon, heard unmistakable barbaric yawping of howler monkeys in the trees by the tiny escuela across the street...unmistakable not because I recognized or had heard them before...but since, having heard of them, could imagine no other answer to the inevitable what the hell is that??!!...like a roaring hippo mixed with a cement mixer and filtered through a wah-wah pedal...


...though it wasn’t on the official agenda, managed to wander out every morning straight from bed to sit, legs crossed, back relatively straight, on a folded up towel on the rocks, peering hazily out to the sea for half an hour...though morning yoga was at the ungodly-for-me hour of 7:00 AM...sometimes was out even before the sun rose at around 6:00...on the last morning, when we needed to catch an early morning bus, it was closer to 4:30...with a bright red moon and a shooting star...made somewhat easier by the near-unimpeachable logic that peering out to sea while the moon goes down and the sun comes up is better than sleeping, anyway....

...Zen Buddhists...when not talking about the pointlessness of talking about anything...talk about something called monkey mind...a term which describes the way thoughts go leaping through the leaves and branches of consciousness...so quickly...in seemingly random motions...that convincing them to be still seems close to impossible...and even to calmly follow and watch takes great skill...

...ended up taking nearly seventy pictures up into those trees, in crappy light, of creatures that, like my thoughts, won’t seem to keep still...hoping one or two might come out okay...(now that I think of it, this rather forced metaphor might relate more to writing than meditation...whatever works)...and, like denizens of the deeper recesses, don’t, apparently, want to be seen very clearly...though ever ready to leap out and disturb any seeming calm...

...back home, I’ve managed so far to keep the morning meditation thing going...if a bit later...and just so long as I’m willing to let the monkeys howl...

Yoga, Surfing, and Pot (El Yogi Cynico en Costa Rica Parte Tres)

If dogs run free, why not we, across the swamp of time?
Bob Dylan

...ubiquitous surfboards, dreadlocks, thongs, and tattoos...far more yoga teachers and artists than cops, doctors, or clergy...as many bikes as cars...t-shirt shops full of flagrant, fragrant smoke...Argentines, Israelis, and Americans intermingling with the almost invariably warm and friendly locals...a mellow postmodern trinity of, as my friend put it, yoga, surfing, and pot...


...of which, it should be mentioned, I indulged only in the first...along with so many of those less-than-$1 empanadas at the tiny bakeries...carne, pollo, frijole, queso...Bimbo chocolate cookies, and as much fresh tropical fruit as a body can safely digest....one thing about Latin America in general: you don’t go there to lose weight...and the crummiest little convenience store can be counted on for a produce section to make the northern jaw drop....and that’s not even mentioning that this is the culture that gave the world hot pants...


...they got the fun, they got the palm trees,
they got the weed, they got the taxis...
Joe Strummer, Safe European Home

...it’s always important, I think, for Americans proud of living simply out of their backpacks to remember that they’re probably sinking more money into their week-long vacations than most of the locals see in a year...and yet, Costa Rica can make one feel a bit less the great white imperialist...seeing little of the overwhelming poverty, trash, and heavily armed cops and soldiers impossible to avoid in much of the region...which, actually, has something to do with the country going without a standing army for more than half a century....relative prosperity deriving, to a significant extent, from putting funds that might otherwise go toward the military into education...

...that said, gotta confess to having made an attitude of semi-blissful semi-oblivion toward world events an essential aspect of my retreat....got on-line once early in the trip to give family members contact info in case of emergency, and then again in the bed and breakfast near the airport the night before flying home to clear junk accumulations from in-boxes, but that was it....and, except for stray bits picked up here and there...like last week’s snow in Philly we all hoped would delay our flights home...heard and saw nothing about the world beyond our beach...realizing when I got home that I hadn’t so much as thought about Tea Partiers, Sarah Palin, or the health care debate in over a week...and, with that, finding myself quite reticent about getting re-informed...spending far less time on-line now than before the trip...even if that’s meant unconscionably neglecting many of my blog friends, along with the news....sorry...I’ll be back...

...have always believed in keeping informed...taking part...little interest in being the kinda yogi who holds up non-attachment to justify non-engagement or the greater scheme of things as an excuse for apathy...but there comes a point when engaging with the wide world out there...particularly when doing so by surfing the interwebs ’til the early hours of the morn...becomes simply a mode of escape from the world nearer-by...and, perhaps most of all, just another of the infinite futile ways of trying to push away the vast universe inside...

...and sometimes, it seems, ya hafta go somewhere far away to see what’s really goin’ on with ya back home...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 12:291

Sutras While the Sun Sets (El Yogi Cynico en Costa Rica Parte Dos)

...it really says something about this town that a big hairy guy can get picked up hitch-hiking in the dark by a girl in a bikini...or so I announced, manic frenzied energy bursting into the improvised yoga studio on the cabana’s front porch facing the ocean as everyone else prepared quietly for candle-lit kundalini...and I think I was misunderstood...

...getting lost is often essential in getting where you need to go...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 18:339

...first day or so in Santa Teresa found me gravitating between a kind of elated relief and lingering dread carried over from home...shedding layers of clothing and watching the mountains and jungle go by on the six hour bus and ferry ride to the Nicoya Peninsula, buying armloads of fresh papayas and mangoes, avocados and bananas...body where I wanted it to be, but another part remaining, as if caught in a web of ice, elsewhere...

...but working on it, getting up to sit on the rocks as the sun came up, morning yoga and running out into the waves to wash off the sweat...setting out to make a meditation of wandering through the day...

...culminating in a long afternoon walk, about as far down the beach toward the south as bare feet could comfortably take me, before turning around, expecting time to kick back a while, maybe take another swim, before evening yoga...just had to turn right into the trees at the rocks in front of Punta Coco...purple i-pod playing Buenavista Social Club, Peter Tosh, Astrid Gilberto, and Cowgirl in the Sand...(Fillmore East version)...orange sun fading from sky to sea...

...and yet, after some distance, nothing, apparently, but thin sandy high tide beach up ahead...seeming to go on and on...sun now red, continuing its descent as I moved faster, fueled by just a bit of anxiety in paradise...thinking, after a while, I must have gone too far but certainly didn’t recall seeing those rocks...then worrying I was gonna miss yoga class, and racing into the descending darkness...adrenaline coursing through every capillary even with the realization that I was likely running away from instead of toward home...feet padding rapidly on wet sand as light diminished...

...it’s not an adventure unless, as some point along the way, it really sucks...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 532:42

...and yet, the beach only seemed to get more narrow, unfamiliar...just about ending....no doubt about it, I’d gone too far...possibly way too far....turned off on the first dirt and gravel passageway, finding a strange collection of houses connected by wooden walkways, followed by a steep rocky hill...though things were completely flat where we were staying...meaning I was way off...shit...not wanting to go back to the beach, though, with little reason to think I’d have any more success finding Punta Coco going the other way, with even less light...so continued trudging upward...barefoot, on gravel...finding this little jaunt had stopped being fun some time ago and showed little promise of getting anything but worse...at last reaching the road, now in full dark, turning knowing I had quite a way to go on it, though still not at all sure exactly where in this strange foreign land I was...and my feet were already sore...

...saw an SUV coming...not many cars other than SUV’s and ORV’s in those parts...the roads are too rough...and, just for the hell of it, stuck out my thumb...hoping, from past experience, for some big burly guy...typically the only kind of person who picks up big burly guy hitch-hikers...though even they generally don’t so in the dark...

...instead, the Spanish speaking surfer girl in the green bathing suit calmly pulled over upon sight of my upraised thumb....even if she seemed a bit nonplussed when her dirty, barefoot passenger seemed unclear on where he was or where he was going...and what I could explain she couldn’t understand...finally managing to sputter out perdido...en la playa...she smiled and said aaaah...fully aware, it was clear, of the intoxicating nature of the Costa Rican sunset...

...all in all, take a poet over a guru any day...intrepid searchers make far better conversation than those who claim to have found...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 561:87

...seemed at least two miles before the sign for the little hamburguesa joint near the gate to Punta Coco...and so, after another barefoot jaunt down the short jungle gravel road to the cabanas, made it to yoga class on time...heart pumping, crazily invigorated...there, completely...

Pressure Drop (El Yogi Cynico en Costa Rica Parte Uno)

When it drop, oh ya gotta feel it...

Toots Hibbert

...she said I know as little about it as you do...and I thought, but didn't say, you have no idea how little I know...

...sitting, unable, sometimes, to tell rocks from reflections of rocks...

...and nothing in this world was more difficult than love...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Maybe it’s been too long a time since I was scramblin’ down in the street...

...still midwinter...following weeks of writing about misery and nostalgia for happy teenaged years that never happened...see recent posts...and not much else...had a conversation with somebody about a not-too-expensive trip to Costa Rica...involving a week...(coinciding, coincidentally enough, with my forty-fourth birthday)...at a distant Pacific beach...lounging out, doing yoga, letting wintry eyes get lost in tropical skies...five hour bus rides across the Central American countryside, nights hosteling in San Jose...and brief layovers at George Bush International Airport...yeah, really...at each end...just a matter of weeks away...but still way beyond my budget...

...I said okay, I’ll go...

...given the details, seems like travelin' light's gonna be the way...perhaps limiting myself to one bag...toothbrush, a few shirts, changes of underwear, a book or two...and...here it comes...seriously...no c.o.m.p.u.t.e.r...

...though working my habit-driven mind around that concept may take a while....have avoided these crazy interwebs on yoga retreats in the past...mostly...but...to forsake this metal and plastic block containing my writing, music, pictures, etc., entirely...haven’t done that for so much as a day in a long, long time....which, actually, makes it seem all the more a good idea...

...maybe it’s been too long a time since I was scramblin’ down in the street...
Joni Mitchell

...used to go for months living out of a backpack...no ipod or cellphone, either...(for that matter, they weren’t even invented yet)...leaving the pack with everything in it in an almost complete stranger’s unlocked van to go see a rock band, harboring little doubt it was worth the risk...sitting on the rocks by a little Greek village in Paros, finding a strange contentment in being so far from anything familiar, anyone who knew my name...scrawling life is good all along the northern reaches of the Appalachian Trail, happy with being warm and well fed, nothing too blatantly feeding on me... unencumbered...relatively speaking...

...not to suggest running away as a solution to anything...nor to romanticize poverty...or a rootless life based on amassing frequent flyer miles like George Clooney in that movie....what’s important, I suspect, isn’t to escape from anything...or even to refuse oneself that new i-Pad thing everybody suddenly needs...(I’m certainly not about to preach asceticism a mere couple paragraphs down from saying I'm gonna go jetting off for a week of downward facing dog in the tropics)...

...voluntary simplicity is a wonderful thing...so long as you remember that, for most of the world, there’s nothing voluntary...or simple...about it...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Sutra 333:76

...but to realize you’re complete with or without all that...non-attachment not in the sense of breaking off from anything...but realizing none of it was ever truly essential to you in the first place...

...thanks to April for the photo of some unidentified individual standing in a Rocky Mountain meadow...