Fallen Angels, Fallen Leaves

...had a series of dreams in which I was trying to get into or out of L.A...which is weird since, though I’ve been there a few times, it’s not a city I’ve ever felt much connection to...except through movies and T.V....and Joni Mitchell singing so evocatively about the city of the fallen angels, with its specific dance of dreams and disillusionment, opportunity and loss, sunny skies and air pollution....and, now thatcha mention it, Mr. Dreams, that might just be where I am right now...

...started teaching yoga semi-regularly at a shelter for homeless families....the first time, last week, thought I was just sitting in, checking out the scene, until the teacher introduced me...said this is Jay; he’ll be teaching with me tonight, and I thought okay......this week, a lot of noise was coming down the hall at the beginning of class, and one of the students said we can’t do yoga with all that noise....I said, actually, yes we can, that learning to be still with all the noise and chaos around us is part of the practice...


...as it turned out there were also a bunch of people in the room, who weren’t practicing yoga...it’s a busy shelter, and I guess there aren’t a lot of spaces to hang out....I kept having to avoid bumping into a woman reading a magazine, sitting on a couch just behind my mat while I was teaching...and remind myself, this, too, is part of the practice...

Surfacing...with Court and Spark, Enlighten Up, and my new chair from IKEA..

He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.
Lao Tzu

...I have very little to say...so this is gonna go on for a while...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 1:1

...have always loved Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark album...despite always disliking that really slick L.A. production kinda sound....but, then, that’s kinda what Court and Spark’s about: she trades her guitar player boyfriend with the madman’s soul for the city of the fallen angels...as her friend David Geffen gives up feeling unfettered and alive in gay Paris for stroking the star maker machinery behind the popular songs...turning to surfaces because depths and ideals have gotten too painful....and yet, it turns out the superficial life sucks, too...since, even at the most stylish and faceless people’s parties, the old emotions and desperate search for love and contentment keep welling up....so, in the end, she ends up with jazz and the therapist’s couch....I can relate...

...speaking of surfaces...finally saw Enlighten Up!...okay, actually, I’m watching it as I write this...while also eating my dinner...yeah, I know, not mindful at all...though, for what it’s worth, my dinner’s vegetarian...unlike my lunch....so it goes....anyway, this filmmaker sends this guy who has no particular interest in spirituality on a spiritual quest...which, to me, seems somewhat self-evidently silly...and—big surprise—he doesn’t end up having a spiritual experience...not even after sampling this vast yogic smorgasbord, ranging from your most fundamentalist religious kinda scenes to your most crassly superficial gym class kinda scenes to your most totally style-conscious new agey kinda scenes...not to mention all the disagreements about the history and definition of yoga, as well as the ubiquity of practitioners who don’t seem to know or care....raising, I'm told, all kinds of major, troubling questions...

...whatever...personally, I got into the yoga thing because I thought practicing in ways that made sense to me, and avoiding those that didn't, might have a positive affect on my life...and, as it turns out, it has...in some ways I didn’t anticipate, even...so I’m gonna keep doing it...no big whoop...

...gotta admit, though, in recent months I've mostly been trying to counteract the effects of sitting on the crummy beaten up futon couch in my apartment...lumpy as a gigantic, lopsided bag of potatoes on top of a bent frame...but, what the hell, it was there when I moved in...and filled a need, as I’d just returned the easy chair I’d been using in my last place to the dumpster where I found it....seriously, there was nothing wrong with it, then, other than a stain...and my chair before that one was this old recliner, which was basically okay except that I kept finding nuts and bolts and things every time I cleaned under it...I mean, lots of them...like more than you’d think would even be part of a chair in the first place...so, it seemed like only a matter of time before it collapsed, causing untold injury...and, when I saw the one with the stain out by the dumpster...which couldn’t’ve been placed there more than a few hours earlier...y’know....anyway, it started falling apart, as well, and most likely wouldn’t have survived the trip to the new place, and so began the physically abusive relationship between the old futon couch and me, which lasted until...

...one rainy Saturday morning...when I got in the car and drove to..............................................IKEA...yes, dear friends and readers...IKEA...and, before I left, made a vow never again to shop anywhere other than IKEA....if they don’t sell it at IKEA, I don’t want it....am even quitting the yoga thing in favor of whatever traditional Swedish equivalent to yoga they offer at IKEA....this blog will soon be renamed Whatever Traditional Swedish Equivalent to Yoga They Offer at IKEA for Cynics...which, I believe, will make it the first and only whatever traditional Swedish equivalent to yoga they offer at IKEA blog on the interwebs....and, thus, more cutting edge than ever...not to mention written...like this post right now...while sitting in my new IKEA chair...with matching IKEA footrest...and ooooooh is it a cool chair...and really not difficult to assemble at all...

....only trouble is, now I gotta make the rest of the room worthy of the chair...which could take a while...

Sick! Sick! Sick!

He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.
William Blake

...sickness will surely take the mind where minds can’t usually go...
Pete Townshend

...it should say something about how crappy I’ve been feeling that I’ve barely been able to do my morning yoga thing this week—this despite the fact that I generally put less time into it than most people spend in the bathroom first thing in the morning—this despite my apparent reputation as the on-line yogamaster supreme—really: people keep e-mailing me at this blog to ask about yoga—though I stress that I’m still working on doing basic asanas without hurting myself...and thus am not about to try and teach anybody else....

...though not a doctor of medicine, I nonetheless try to follow that part of the Hippocratic Oath...the only part I know, in fact...that says first, do no harm...which according to a google search I just did, isn’t even in the Hippocratic Oath...so it’s all good...

I have a good friend I call...affectionately...the foul evil bringer of pestilence...that’s because I believe, on good, solid evidence, that she was responsible for passing on to me the two worst colds or flus I’ve suffered in recent years...and, actually, while she was across the country when I contracted this one, in L.A., city of the fallen angels, I did meet up with her husband for lunch in South Philly on Saturday...

...anyway, the illness—apparently a flu bug of some kind—seems to have passed, leaving only the slightest rusty residue of the red nail that was lodged in my forehead for three or four days...and so life begins again...like I’ve just come back from a really crummy vacation...though at least I didn’t have to pay for airfare or hotels...sickness is the crappy vacation you experience in the discomfort of your very own home....

...and, actually, it does have some of the advantages of a trip away...even a crappy one...in terms of knocking a person out of the standard routine, and thereby providing a view of it from somewhat on the outside, allowing one to evaluate it from the standpoint of not-quite-in-it...ask if it’s really a horse anybody’d wanna climb back onto...or if changes need to be made...yeah, I know I’m mixing metaphors...like I said, I’ve still got some lingering symptoms, including being a good bit stupider than usual...so I’ll blame it on that...and wish good health to everybody reading....