Lost My Sacred Mala Beads Last Night at a Hipster Pool Party

Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away.
Aitken Roshi

...everything you gather is just more that you can lose...
Robert Hunter

...lost my sacred mala beads last night at a hipster pool party...yeah, I hear ya: what’s a yoga cynic doing with sacred mala beads in the first place?!...is he perhaps being ironic?....actually, no....got ‘em at Kripalu on one of first nights of the teacher training, passed out with a mantra...om namo bhagavate vasudevaya...even if I can’t say what exactly that means to me....then, a night or two before leaving, passed them around ceremonially through the group...as, you might say, a means of tying us and our experience together like sacred beads on a string...to be taken metaphysically or metaphorically...and I’ve worn them every day since, feeling that connection, in some way or other...but now they’re gone, dropped somewhere, apparently, when I was changing my clothes before or after going in for a swim...

...biked over there first thing after coffee this morning...found nothing but empty plastic cups and broken pool toys in the trampled grass...

...headed downtown to yoga class soon after...felt a drop or two a few blocks from home but didn’t think that was anything...then a light sprinkle along the Wissahickon path....turning to a not so light sprinkle and then a steady rain by the time I got to the Schuylkill...not thrilled to show up soaked and muddy, but no desire to turn around and go home, either...hell, you don’t hear those old school yogis saying dude, I was gonna go meditate naked in the charnel ground with rocks hanging from my junk but checked the weather on-line and looks like it might be a tad inclement...and, really, it's not bad, biking through the rain...

Moving, part one

...I’m moving...not far, just a few blocks, a bit deeper into West Mt. Airy, State of Heavily Caffeinated Sadhana, USA....nonetheless, it causes me a lot of anxiety...not that there’s really that much to do...just packing crap up...dealing with the fact that Comcast cut off my internet service five days early, so that I have to go to the pizza place around the corner to get on-line....no, despite what you may have heard, the blogger’s life is not always glamorous....getting the new place ready and gradually lugging stuff over, then renting a truck for the bigger things, then cleaning up the old place....shouldn’t be too much work...I don’t own that much...certainly a lot less than most people I know, particularly those anywhere near my age...though, actually, I’d like to own less...or, at least, to feel like there’s less that owns me...

...everything you gather is just more than you can lose...
Robert Hunter

...I’m feeling the need to let go of a lot of stuff...much of which doesn’t require a moving van...and requires more than a toss into a dumpster to really be rid of....though I’ve got ideas, my brain's been feeling all gummed up...stuck...weighed down by seemingly endless clutter....wouldn’t even be making this move if a friend hadn’t talked me into checking out the new place...owned by his soon to be mother-in-law...and, even then, only if it was still available once my lease was up...

...even some recent posts here have felt rather obligatory...from my perspective, at least...as if the energy’s shifted somewhat from got this amazing stuff I gotta share with the world toward shit, it’s been three days since the last post, time to crank another one out....then, without a doubt my worst discovery as a blogger has been that of the omnipresent stat counter...carrying with it the poisonous idea that a thousand unique visitors—most of them winding up here thanks to misleading google searches and leaving quickly once they find there are no mp3’s of Dylan and Lou Reed songs I’m always quoting, or instructional diagrams for eka pada kapotasana or supta baddha konasana—are somehow more important than a handful who’ve actually connected in some meaningful way with something or other written here...and, apparently, based on comments, there've been a couple of those...so, fuck numbers...better to write from the heart, or else write nothing...

...my point is to make a move that involves doors opening to more than just a different couple of physical rooms...to go from stagnation to clear flowing vitality...to slip gently out of old patterns, let go of used-up perspectives, old thoughts and feelings that might’ve been useful once but now would best be left in the dumpster with all that styrofoam crap from all those boxes I’ve been digging out to pack up my books...

...though that, of course, is easier said than done...