The Clinically Depressed Trickster Figure

You know, I'm sick of following my dreams, man. I'm just going to ask where they're going and hook up with 'em later...
Mitch Hedberg

...turning leaves, blankets and warmer clothing, and lotsa tasty stuff made from various forms of squash...shifting from that edgy, anxious spring-and-summertime depression to the more cozy, lethargic fall-and-winter variety...

We can as easily become a prisoner of so-called positive thinking as of negative thinking. It too can be confining, fragmented, inaccurate, illusory, self-serving, and wrong.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

a mystic looks at the universe and sees mystery...an existentialist looks at the universe and sees absurdity...I look at the universe and see absurd mystery...or mysterious absurdity...

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
Chuang Tzu

...would like to start a non-religion based around a clinically depressed trickster figure...offering annual, year-long retreats at the long-awaited Yoga for Cynics ashram...where the mountains kiss the sea and floppy-eared dogs wander among recycled building materials inscribed with inspiring words from Chuang Tzu, William Blake, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Mitch Hedberg....all specific commandments, sutras, and holy dogma written on any available outdoor surface in colored chalk, to be seen, or changed, or ignored, by anyone at any time, or simply washed away by the rain...

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
William Blake



*was looking for an image for this post and googled “trickster figure”...and what did I see but the cover of this obscure book of literary criticism called Trickster Lives, published a full decade ago, now, and happening to feature a chapter on a poet named Thylias Moss, written—in semi-fluent academic jargon—by none other than your humble author in PhD-student mode...never woulda imagined that was still in print...*

Difficult Yoga/Difficult Yogis (Building From the Ground Up, Part Two)

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
Donald Barthelme

...my 84 year old mom and I have our own little yoga ritual...goes kinda like this:


Mom: I’m so stiff!

me: Y’know what’d really help with that, mom?

Mom [anticipating, correctly, that I’m gonna say yoga]: Shut up.


...then, such an attitude isn't exactly unique within my family...I'm one of a long line of difficult people...and, while there are lots of reasons I practice yoga, because family members pestered me to is quite certainly not one of them....so, as it's turned out...call it karma or the luck of the draw, as you will...somehow, at some point, I went from too difficult to practice yoga to becoming a difficult yogi...

Whatever it is you are craving at the moment, to be driven by such impulses means that, on a deep level, you don’t believe that you are whole as you are.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

...ultimately, if all ya can do is have arguments in your head no matter how many asanas and attempts at meditative states, what can ya do but have arguments in your head?....it used to be when I was in a crappy mood in yoga class I felt like that was a problem...since, y’know, all these serious yoga types were so mellow and peaceful, filling up with bliss like wealthy SUV owners at the gas pump...halfway between yoga studio and astral plane...positive energy bouncing off 'em like beads of slobber from a Saint Bernard’s gooey lips...even if none of it landed on me....now, however, having become somewhat of a serious yoga type myself, instead of becoming like them, I’ve realized they’re not so different from myself...and if I’m feeling crappy practicing yoga, then I can practice practicing yoga feeling crappy...

Bored?

...hiking at high elevations reminds me of advice given to people who get bored following the breath in meditation...

Take the thumb and first finger of either hand, clamp them tightly over your nose, keep your mouth closed, and notice how long it takes before your breathing becomes very interesting to you!
Jon Kabat-Zinn

...ten years or so ago, was sitting on a rocky beach in Maine reading To the Lighthouse, a novel in which the most commonplace situations are described with stunning color and intensity...making for a beautiful reading experience, though it made me think that, if Virginia Woolf actually experienced passing moments of life like that, without any kind of off-switch...as, I suspect, she did...it’s not hard to to understand why she filled her pockets with rocks and took that last fateful walk into the pond...

There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T.S. Eliot

...maybe twenty years ago, was backpacking in the Weminuche Wilderness in southern Colorado, just north of Durango, and, one afternoon, was in kind of an...ummm...ahem...altered state....things got kind of intense...way too much happening in mountains or groves of trees or the sky to keep looking at them....so, decided to simplify things....told myself I’m just gonna look at this rock here...nothin’ too intense or scary, there.....except there was...once I bothered to see...

Look: the sun gods, the gods
of fire, dawn, sky, wind, storm,
wonders that no mortal has ever
beheld...
Bhagavad Gita

...boredom, it occurs to me, is really a defense mechanism...guarding our eyes from the truly dazzling nature of everything around us...

In From the Storm

If we are honest with ourselves, most of us will have to admit that we live out our lives in an ocean of fear.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

To be awake is to be alive.
Henry David Thoreau

...was talking about how I sometimes feel nostalgic for the most tragic and horrible times in my life....when, for a while, the mind stopped drifting so haphazardly...attention overwhelmed...focused, whether it wanted to be or not, on a gaping and unavoidable pain...every unhappy moment felt so deeply and intensely as to burn with a flame that continues to glow in memory....but this isn’t a story about that...

...went backpacking in the Rockies twenty years or so ago...Indian Peaks Wilderness, near Boulder, with a friend who’d never backpacked before...and probably never did again....we hiked about six miles, mostly up, and were way above treeline when dark storm clouds appeared off above the ridgeline....I thought better get the tent up...which is what we did...this old fashioned pup tent found in my dad’s attic...and managed to clamber in just as the first raindrops started to fall, which seemed to us like perfect timing...though it couldn’t’ve been more than a minute or two before wanton winds coursing across the alpine tundra unearthed flimsy metal tent stakes, bringing thin orange material down on us like a wet cowl....which, as best we could, we held up with arms outstretched like twin Jesuses as the scene through the open flap resembled the Apocalypse as much as anything I’d ever seen...lightning dancing and exploding everywhere, wind raging in countless directions at once, cold rain hammering down....my friend said, at one point, I don’t know if I can deal with this....and I said I don’t think we have much choice...

...not that I wasn’t terrified, too...I was, of course...but also felt a curious exhilaration...crouching in the midst of this all...the insane, spectacular lightning, the wind and rain rampaging at us from all sides...the inescapable knowledge that we could die at any moment, easily...but that, right there, right then, blood was pulsing through us with a ferocity rivaling that of the storm...

...at some point, we decided it'd be a good idea to get away from the useless metal tent poles, and went to crouch by a rock that kinda sorta almost gave us some shelter until the storm passed...which it did, after a while...but by then it was dark, though the moon shone limply through the clouds, and we went back to the tent, found it completely waterlogged, sleeping bags and everything else utterly soaked and cold...and, even if I’d had the backwoods know-how and fortitude to get a fire going, there was no wood up there....then, if I’d had any backwoods know-how at all, we would’ve turned around and run for treeline as soon as we saw those dark clouds....so, with hands numb from the cold, we crammed sleeping bags into backpacks, leaving the tent stuffed between two rocks, where I retrieved it, along with various other items strewn around the area, two days later, and started the long climb down...

...not sure where it came from...except that I shared it with Mittens, our otherwise fearless Welsh Corgi...but I had a phobia about thunderstorms from early on...by my mid-twenties, it was subtle...just a dark cold feeling somewhere inside whenever I heard that ominous rumbling...but very real nonetheless....after that experience in Indian Peaks, though, the fear was gone....my friend Jeff came out to Colorado and we spent much of the rest of that summer backpacking high in the mountains...often setting up camp just below treeline so that, when the inevitable afternoon thunderstorm came, we could go and watch it from close up....and even today, when I get caught on my bike in a storm...which happens at least once a summer, usually somewhere between downtown and home...I try to avoid it, but not always very hard...it can feel like a crisp, unruly baptism...

Autumn Rivulet #1

I’m in the here and now and I’m meditating, and
still I’m sufferin’, but that’s my problem...
Van Morrison

...as long as you’re breathing, there’s more right with you than wrong with you...
Jon Kabat-Zinn

felt a cool autumn
breeze upon waking, though no
window was open

Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Direct your eye right inward, and you’ll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered....
Henry David Thoreau

...I tend to meditate on the desire to do just about anything other than meditating...it’s easy to ascribe that to boredom...but, then, it seems unlikely I’d be a writer if I really found my thoughts so boring that I couldn’t stand sitting with them for half an hour...

We can as easily become a prisoner of so-called positive thinking as of negative thinking. It too can be confining, fragmented, inaccurate, illusory, self-serving, and wrong.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

...have said in the past that taking antidepressants without therapy...or otherwise deeply working on yourself...is like turning up the radio so you can’t hear the noise your engine’s making...

...now wonder if maybe most things we do, or own, or strive for, or tell ourselves, are simply an infinite variety of upward motions aimed at subtly manipulating internal volume knobs...ways to avoid the noise we know is there but don’t want to hear...

...not to mention the silence...

Summertime...and the Bloggin' is Lazy...

Summertime, and the livin' is easy...
Dubose Heyward

...anybody can get an ulcer working sixteen hour days on Wall Street...it take real skill to get one without doing much at all...been reading books by people like Chogyam Trungpa and Jon Kabat-Zinn...all about non-doing...which sounds good to me...though, despite all the time I’ve spent being lazy and not gettin' shit done, have never been too good at it...

...Kabat-Zinn says non-doing can arise within action as well as in stillness. The inward stillness of the doer merges with the outward activity to the extent that the action does itself...I tend to do the opposite...outer stillness merging with inward turmoil...which really doesn’t work out so well...so now I’m trying to meditate every morning...pre-coffee...and it’s been workin’ out...kinda...so far...wish me luck...

...right now sittin' on the front porch swing...we're finally getting some real heat this summer, though there's a nice intermittent breeze, at least...sweating and typing and listening to Summertime performed by Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin), Chet Baker, Herbie Hancock (featuring Joni Mitchell), John Coltrane, Miles Davis/Gil Evans, and Billie Holiday & Her Orchestra, as well as both live and studio versions of Summertime Blues by the Who, In the Summertime by Bob Dylan and Summertime Rolls by Jane’s Addiction...

...supposed to be getting work done, actually...but this weather makes me feel lazy...or, at least, that’s my excuse, today...

...been writing fewer blog posts lately...but that’s okay...couple months ago almost quit...wrote a rough draft of the final Yoga for Cynics post...had been putting an awful lot of time and effort into forcing myself to get one out at least every other day, only to look back at some really good earlier posts and think the blog was starting to suck...not to mention obsessing about blog stats that didn’t seem to go up no matter what I did...

...in the end, decided to quit checking stats and only write new posts when I feel inspired...or just happen to feel like it...or, like today, am too lazy to do anything else...and it's a lot better this way...

Is It Time?

...some time ago, when I decided to start doing the yoga thing everyday, was really gung-ho...impatient...so really started pushin’ it...and, in a couple weeks got myself to a point where I pretty much had to avoid anything involving knees or lower back, or twists...which, as it turned out, didn’t leave much...

...the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one...
Albert Einstein

To find our way, we will need to pay more attention to this moment. It is the only time that we have in which to live, grow, feel, and change. We will need to become more aware of and take precautions against the incredible pull of the Scylla and Charybdis of past and future, and the dreamworld they offer us in place of our lives.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

Time is making fools of us again.
J. K. Rowling

...more recently went to this class in West Philly with this teacher named Dhyana...getting a bit frustrated, as I tend to do...after all this time spent workin’ on this yoga shit...almost hurting my neck trying to force a tripod headstand...and the teacher started telling this old story....this guy goes to see a Zen master and asks him how long it’ll take to reach enlightenment...the Zen master says thirty years...the guy says I can’t wait that long...listen, I’ll do anything...just tell me how I can get it now...and the Zen master says okay then, seventy years...