Somewhere Between the Hotel Chelsea and Nirvana...

...who knew that Dharma Mittra has his home base a mere block or two from the legendary Hotel Chelsea...home to great authors and musicians, alcoholics, junkies, great alcoholic and junkie authors and musicians, and, no doubt, lots of not-so-great authors and musicians, alcoholics, junkies, and otherwise...where Dylan Thomas may or may not have raged raged before succumbing to the dying of the light, Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sid Vicious murdered Nancy Spungen, and Bob Dylan pined for the woman he’d marry, bear children with, and, through a process detailed over three or four truly classic rock n’ roll albums, divorce...

...stayin’ up for days in the Chelsea Hotel, writin’ Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for you...

Bob Dylan

...in Dharma’s class even the pranayama kicks my ass....a truly yogic exercise, perhaps, is learning to be cool about the fact that everybody else in the room is doing handstands in full lotus and I’m just kinda squatting there ‘cause it’s the best I can do....after the two-hour class, Dharma recommends lunch at the vegan place across the street....got a thai “chicken” wrap and an ultra-natural but still tasty cupcake....but somehow not enough to get me all the way back to lower Manhattan, an hour walk along Broadway where I can’t help but grab a couple slices of cheap pizza...

...whiskey bottle over Jesus, not forever, just for now...

Uncle Tupelo

...couple glasses o’ wine and a beer, with mom in the fancy assisted living apartment watching Netflix, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf...based on the Edward Albee play...now those people are fucked up....been writing with a fever this past week or two, like I haven’t in way too long...makes me wanna move into the Chelsea Hotel with a beaten up old manual Smith Corona and a crate full o' whiskey bottles..and how convenient it’d be to be right down the street from Dharma’s yoga studio...

...He never supposed divine
Things might not look divine, nor that if nothing
Was divine then all things were, the world itself,
And that if nothing was the the truth, then all
Things were the truth, the world itself was the truth.

Wallace Stevens