Fallen Angels, Fallen Leaves

...had a series of dreams in which I was trying to get into or out of L.A...which is weird since, though I’ve been there a few times, it’s not a city I’ve ever felt much connection to...except through movies and T.V....and Joni Mitchell singing so evocatively about the city of the fallen angels, with its specific dance of dreams and disillusionment, opportunity and loss, sunny skies and air pollution....and, now thatcha mention it, Mr. Dreams, that might just be where I am right now...

...started teaching yoga semi-regularly at a shelter for homeless families....the first time, last week, thought I was just sitting in, checking out the scene, until the teacher introduced me...said this is Jay; he’ll be teaching with me tonight, and I thought okay......this week, a lot of noise was coming down the hall at the beginning of class, and one of the students said we can’t do yoga with all that noise....I said, actually, yes we can, that learning to be still with all the noise and chaos around us is part of the practice...


...as it turned out there were also a bunch of people in the room, who weren’t practicing yoga...it’s a busy shelter, and I guess there aren’t a lot of spaces to hang out....I kept having to avoid bumping into a woman reading a magazine, sitting on a couch just behind my mat while I was teaching...and remind myself, this, too, is part of the practice...

Sick! Sick! Sick!

He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.
William Blake

...sickness will surely take the mind where minds can’t usually go...
Pete Townshend

...it should say something about how crappy I’ve been feeling that I’ve barely been able to do my morning yoga thing this week—this despite the fact that I generally put less time into it than most people spend in the bathroom first thing in the morning—this despite my apparent reputation as the on-line yogamaster supreme—really: people keep e-mailing me at this blog to ask about yoga—though I stress that I’m still working on doing basic asanas without hurting myself...and thus am not about to try and teach anybody else....

...though not a doctor of medicine, I nonetheless try to follow that part of the Hippocratic Oath...the only part I know, in fact...that says first, do no harm...which according to a google search I just did, isn’t even in the Hippocratic Oath...so it’s all good...

I have a good friend I call...affectionately...the foul evil bringer of pestilence...that’s because I believe, on good, solid evidence, that she was responsible for passing on to me the two worst colds or flus I’ve suffered in recent years...and, actually, while she was across the country when I contracted this one, in L.A., city of the fallen angels, I did meet up with her husband for lunch in South Philly on Saturday...

...anyway, the illness—apparently a flu bug of some kind—seems to have passed, leaving only the slightest rusty residue of the red nail that was lodged in my forehead for three or four days...and so life begins again...like I’ve just come back from a really crummy vacation...though at least I didn’t have to pay for airfare or hotels...sickness is the crappy vacation you experience in the discomfort of your very own home....

...and, actually, it does have some of the advantages of a trip away...even a crappy one...in terms of knocking a person out of the standard routine, and thereby providing a view of it from somewhat on the outside, allowing one to evaluate it from the standpoint of not-quite-in-it...ask if it’s really a horse anybody’d wanna climb back onto...or if changes need to be made...yeah, I know I’m mixing metaphors...like I said, I’ve still got some lingering symptoms, including being a good bit stupider than usual...so I’ll blame it on that...and wish good health to everybody reading....