The Slowly Unfolding Orgasm of Existence

We exult in out extraordinarily responsive central nervous system, which we ever seek to amplify through increasing exposure. We live in order to experience life more, and more closely. We soak up experience at every turn. Our bodyminds have evolved to participate fully in the slowly unfolding orgasm of existence. We have created yoga as a toolbox of participation.
matthew remski & scott petrie, yoga 2.0*

...last weekend took my mother to see Black Swan...(both liked it, though I probably would’ve enjoyed certain scenes without knowing mom was watching in the next seat)...(yeah, that one)...(and that one...definitely that one)...I’ve known lotsa dancers, and people who have dance backgrounds and are now yoga teachers...(almost as many as acid heads who are now yoga teachers)...and there are clear parallels between the traditions...as well as glaring differences...in the movie, somebody destroys herself, mind, body, and spirit, in pursuit of an aesthetic ideal...dying for perfection...which might be one of the better reasons to self-destruct, relatively speaking...like Oscar Wilde said...Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined oneself over poetry is an honour...

...I dunno, though...could be I’m finally coming to a point in my life where I start to see that all as just a lot of depressed romantic overgrown adolescent bullshit...

...not that there’s anything wrong with that...

...it’s cold out...cold enough stuff hurts when I go outside...or maybe I’m just getting old...or maybe both...growing old hurts, but youth, as I remember, can be painful as hell...

...snow’s falling gently outside the cafe window, sticking, first, to cars and benches...now sidewalk and street...not much more than a dusting, really...but enough to make driving ugly...had planned on going from here to run some errands...by car...and go to yoga class...but might be nice to stay put...have some more green tea and watch it fall...

...anyway, to misquote both James Joyce and Grace Slick, I’d rather have perfection die for me...

* this might be the first of possibly a buncha posts kinda sorta maybe having something to do with this book...which I just started.... thanks to Carol, for turning me on to the book with her review at Elephant...

When Precious Met Alice: Kind of a Movie Review #9

...went to see the new Alice in Wonderland...3-D, IMAX....guess you could say I’ve joined the twenty-first century...or the psychedelic era...hell, the movie cost more than I used to pay to see a Grateful Dead show...with some similarities...

...beyond trippy visuals, though, the movie offers little chance of expanding consciousness...a wealth of joyfully absurdist poetry sucked out of the story in favor of drably conventional Hollywood fantasy adventure...surrealistic pillows given way to cheesy swords...any feints toward poetic madness rapidly contracted, shriveled and shrunken away with lameass explanations for anything in danger of expanding the viewer’s imaginative scope...(the Mad Hatter gets turned into a boring action hero, for chrissake...like Mel Gibson with Carrot Top’s hairstylist)...

...all in all, more C. S. Lewis than Lewis Carroll...if more liberal-minded....a grown-up Alice making the story a bit less Victorian-pervy, more modern-day female-empowerment........as such, offering, I guess, a better role model for my young nieces than the standard Hollywood princess shrinking away dreaming of a handsome prince/sexy vampire...but that's not saying much...

...one pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small...
Grace Slick

...if not for concerns about subject matter leaving them permanently traumatized, I’d be more likely to recommend sending the kids to see Precious....hell, having read Sapphire’s Push a decade ago, didn’t know if I was ready for it...but, flying from San Jose to George Bush International...relaxed and flexible from all the yoga and beach time...if not enough to make a coach seat comfortable enough to concentrate on reading for three and a half hours...mind relatively open and non-depressed...had a little TV on the seat-back in front of me with fifty-something cinematic pills to choose from...and went for it...

...while the movie only vaguely implies at least one of the novel’s more horrifying aspects, there are lots more where that came from...in an utterly harrowing portrayal of a young woman, Precious, the likes of whom most of us would prefer to ignore...trapped in a rabbit hole of poverty, neglect, rape, incest, illiteracy, and AIDS...told she’s stupid and worthless by a mother who treats her as little more than an object to be used and abused...grown huge on junk food, disappearing inside....

`I can't help it,' said Alice very meekly: `I'm growing.'
`You've no right to grow here,' said the Dormouse.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (not in the movie)

...and yet, the movie’s ultimately about growth...kinda like yoga*...finding possibilities for expansion in unexpected places**...that sacred something remaining, no matter how fucked up and hopeless-seeming a person might appear on the surface...and the importance of having the compassion to see that something even in people it'd be easier not to have to see at all...

I am large. I contain multitudes...
Walt Whitman

...near the end, Precious' mother*** gives a monologue...revealing, even more than before, just how toxic she is to her daughter...and, probably, to just about anyone else likely to come in contact with her...but, also, the far more difficult truth that, in the end, she’s another desperately wounded human being...so twisted and lost in her damaged mind it’s hard to imagine how she could find peace...but one of us, nonetheless...if we can grow large enough to acknowledge her...

* that said, it should be mentioned that Gabourey Sibide, who plays the title character, says she hates yoga...would like to kill it, even....though I suspect that has more to do with airbrushed mass-marketed images than core philosophies...

** hell, it turns out Mariah Carey can act...who could’ve imagined that?...

*** played by Mo’Nique...representing one of the rare instances in which I actually agreed with Oscar...(though, if I had my way, Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep would win practically every year)...(then, if I really had my way, I'd probably be married to Cate Blanchett...but, anyway...)...