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...

Flying Words

...with debates raging on about commercialism, body image, and what should and shouldn't be termed “yoga,”* I’m pleased to announce the impending publication of my new translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras...

...re-titled, for the sake of commercial viability, Patanjali's 196 Secrets for Tight Buns and Rock Hard Abs...

...to be followed, early next year, by my interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita...in which Krishna counsels Arjuna on how to use the Law of Attraction™ to lose dhoti fat, meet attractive virgins of appropriate caste, and avoid paying taxes...

Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined oneself over poetry is an honour.
Oscar Wilde

...the longest word in the world is 189,819 letters long.....technically, it’s a chemical formula...it’s not in any dictionaries...and, I would guess, it’s very rarely been written...and, quite possibly never spoken at all...or used in a sentence...almost definitely never used in Scrabble...in fact, after a good bit of google searching, finding only abbreviated versions, I started wondering if it existed only in theory......until I found it here...(at the bottom is a recording of part of it read aloud...sped up...but, apparently, the work of a speech synthesizer...leaving open the question of whether it’s been spoken by a human voice)...I’d like to be the first person to use it in a poem...

…frameworks of the One (derived from mysticism) and the Many (derived from common experience) falsely polarize individuation and merging, which are actually embedded in each other…
Diana Alstad

...might silliness and seriousness be a false dichotomy as well?...isn’t everything we see or do to some extent vitally important and to some other extent ridiculous?...isn’t it all just a matter of degree...or perspective......or could it be that I just ain’t smart enough for none o’ them non-dichotomous paradoxes?...

*see here and here and here...

Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

Rene Magritte, The Human Condition

Is it possible to plagiarize yourself? If so, we’re probably doing it constantly. I know I am...imitating myself, as well as being highly critical of what are often shoddy, dissolute, unconvincing performances. I am not, I’m afraid, anything like my own Tina Fey. Then, isn’t much of life little more than bad acting? And isn’t that understandable, with such nonsensical scripts? Like Liam Neeson playing a Jedi knight with a mullet more appropriate for a monster truck rally than inter-galactic combat, aren’t we simply working with what we’re given? People talk a lot about the importance of being yourself—from Polonius’ to thine own self be true to Mr. Rogers’ you’re special! to Monty Python’s “You’re all individuals!” “Yes! We’re all individuals!” to those lame-ass red and white Be You t-shirts for sale at the Boston University bookstore when I went there....so, whoever the hell you are, it’s obviously pretty damn important. I will not speak lightly of it. Trust me.

I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.
Bob Dylan

A sudden death in the family is upsetting for lots of reasons, of course—a lot more than I’m about to go into here, and, anyway, to communicate any fraction of them effectively would be to tell the complete life stories of all involved, and even then there’d be countless unfillable holes in the plot...the conclusion in particular not making one lick of discernible sense...like if Moby Dick had ended while they were right in the midst of chasing the whale, or the closing credits started running on Gilligan’s Island while it still seemed like they might get off the island this week....All in all, it’s difficult to shake the idea that life isn’t a novel or sitcom, or anything else that might have any chance of obeying the narrative rules we try so hard to lay down....There are a lot of ends, but few satisfying conclusions, and more perfect comebacks are spoken in a single Oscar Wilde play than you’re likely to manage in your entire life....