Be Where You Are, Philly Edition

 

As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life.

Fake Buddha

(actually from Jack Kornfield, Buddha’s Little Instruction Book)

The past keeps knock knock knockin’ on my door

And I don’t want to hear it any more...

Lou Reed

The  greatest events—are not our noisiest, but our stillest hours.

Nietszsche

...been feelin’ discontented with the city again....even this morning and afternoon, sittin’ reading a really interesting book I just got yesterday by Karl Ove Knausgaard with coffee and a smoothie...happy, for the most part, with that...but wishing I could be doing it in a little shack with big windows on an autumnal ridge, or by the ocean...any ocean....got to one place, then, where the author talks about art, specifically Rembrandt, his brushstrokes and themes....with no pictures in the book, really wanted to look at a Rembrandt, myself, try to see what he was describing....not even thinking about Googling for some pixelated reproduction of a photograph of a painting, decided to get on my bike and ride over to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see a real one....and, on the way there, thought: yeah, there really are some cool things about living in the big city...

 

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*top image: Head of Christ, Rembrandt van Rijn, Philadelphia Museum of Art*

Awakening: Compassion, Contentment, Etc.

...saw a group of young guys...looked like college kids...a block or two down Sansom Street from where I live...standing on a corner taking pictures of themselves and laughing...a second look showed what was so funny....a homeless man lying unconscious on the sidewalk, and they, arrayed in their brightly colored polo shirts, tennis shorts, and unexamined privilege, taking selfies with him...

...from my bike, across the intersection, I wanted to yell you stupid assholes!!!!...just to let them know that somebody passing by didn't think they were nearly so clever as they thought...to just maybe make them think about what might be wrong with finding amusement in the suffering of those less fortunate than themselves...possibly thereby awakening apparently dormant compassion in an admittedly roundabout and perhaps contradictory way...but didn't...

...wondered what someone more enlightened than I might've said....not that it was hard....no doubt, there could be all kinds of gentle ways to start a meaningful dialogue, and I'm sure that if Thich Nhat Hanh or Nelson Mandela had been there, that's just what they would have done...

...but...in order to do that, myself, I realized, I'd have to awaken my own sense of compassion...for them...and as it was, couldn't think of any way of doing that short of knocking their heads together...

...maybe the point here is that sometimes you need to work on yourself first...one's own angry, cynical, yet still strangely idealistic self that can't stand the thought of people finding fun in an unconscious homeless person, even though worse things happen every minute...and one might in the moment like to make worse things happen to them...

Sunday morning, and I'm falling...
Lou Reed, Sunday Morning

What is divinity if it can come

Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning

 

...I just dunno...right at this moment, I'm trying to practice contentment...sitting here on a late Sunday morning in the threadbare but ever-comfortable Ikea chair in a filthy apartment in my (clean) underwear, listening to some really really good music, reading and writing stupid shit on Facebook, and alternating between a tall glass of room-temperature water with lemon (the yoga crowd says it's good for me) and some tasty hot coffee (in Sanskrit, they call it prana), having been too lazy from the past couple days' bike rides to get up and ride across town for morning sangha practice...grateful there's nothing much that absolutely has to be done today except to figure out what I'm teaching in my 7 pm Yin Yoga class this evening...and pay some end-of-the-month bills...but eyeing the three books I've started reading in the past couple days (not even mentioning the novel I'm ever-so-slowly writing)...kinda wishing I had a smart, sensitive, beautiful girlfriend with whom to share an endless lazy brunch, but....recognizing that it's all okay...really not bad...not bad at all...pretty good, in fact...practicing that...

Let Freedom Ring

 ...takin’ it easy, with iced coffee, waiting for things to cool down a bit to bike downtown to hear the Roots and watch fireworks on the Ben Franklin Parkway....hot July 4^th Wednesday, West Mt. Airy, State of Mellow Mildly Caffeinated Satori, U.S.A. almost a ghost town, people staying in with the air conditioning, or maybe downtown with the parade...me, still recovering from dehydration and heat exhaustion, spending the weekend walking around D.C., a city built on a swamp, in 104 degree heat, sustained by coffee and margaritas with friends, making my way through the National Gallery for Van Gogh, Picasso, Gerhard Richter and the Mirò exhibit, catching a sunburn walking out to see the new Martin Luther King Memorial...

....(some ago heard a usually-pretty-hip public radio kids’ show identifying King on his birthday as a man who had a dream...nothing more specific to ruffle ideological feathers....all the world loves a dreamer and speaker of positive intentions, right?....and asking kids to call in and say what their dreams were...turned it off after one hearing one too many young voices voices their dreams of having millions of dollars)...

...(then, it was another great American who said very well, then, I contradict myself....this, too, is America)...

Coffee Yoga, Coffee Zen

...not, generally, a morning person, woke and decided to head for the yoga mat...though, as usual, the option of sitting in the Ikea chair, crankin’ up the interwebs, and drinking coffee beckoned, as well...especially the coffee part...

...ever the non-traditional yogi...(though continuing to insist that, if they’d had it in India, at the time, the first yoga sutra would have been preceded by first, some coffee)...wondered if the two might somehow be incorporated...

...lately, been working on sustaining sitting poses, particularly full lotus...padmasana, for you Sanskrit nerds...and hero pose...virasana...leaving open the question of just what to do while in those poses for long periods....yeah, I know, meditate...do some pranayama...stretch the neck and shoulders...but, then, sometimes I also like to read a little Walt Whitman or Zen Flesh, Zen Bones...an activity that goes just beautifully with drinking coffee...

...and there, tops of feet on my thighs, almost immediately upon opening Zen Flesh..., in the final, Centering, section, read...

When eating or drinking, become the taste of the food or drink, and be filled.

...so that’s what I did with my coffee....touching on that sacred matrix between aum and yum....(or somethin’ like that)...

The Yoga Cynic Speaks of Rivers* (and “Real Yoga”)

It’s comin’ on Christmas, they’re cuttin’ down trees
They’re puttin’ up reindeer, singin’ songs of joy and peace,
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on...
Joni Mitchell

I am the river, and, therefore, a connecting thread between the living and the dead, just like the stories that speak to us in the night, I take on the likeness of past times and past events too, I am the river. But the river is just the river. Nothing more.
Javier Marías

...was in the café, post-meditation, imbibing that special kinda prana known as coffee...when this guy at the next table started talking about yoga...specifically, real yoga****...

...if you feel the need to brag about your practice, it’s probably nothing to brag about...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 451:968

...how great, generally, his practice is...how any real yogi is vegetarian...how much better ashtanga is than other kinds of yoga... how much better ashtanga yoga is than sitting meditation...since, y’know, anybody can sit in a dark room*****....somewhere in there, I turned my headphones back on...(one o’ those yamas or niyamas has gotta say something about eavesdropping)...



* apologies to Langston Hughes...**

** and, yeah, I know, apart from the quotes, the post really doesn’t have anything to do with rivers*** (that’s not even a river in the picture...it’s the Wissahickon Creek...though it did get pretty river-like last summer when it flooded)...

*** or maybe it does....whaddaya want me to do?!...explain my metaphors to you?!...

**** real yoga (noun): the kind of yoga I happen to practice. (antonym: whatever kinda yoga you happen to practice) (courtesy, the Yoga Cynic’s Dictionary)

***** leaving me thinking that, given how much difficulty I’d experienced sitting in a semi-lighted room for forty-five minutes, struggling with drowsiness, a laundry-list of physical discomforts, and a, one might say, river of past, present, and future troubles, a mere hour or so before, I may just barely qualify as anybody...******

****** which, now that I think of it, could mean I’m on the threshold of transcending individuation and a realizing ultimate oneness with the universe....have to look that one up...

Headlight On Wet Black Asphalt

...headlight light* on wet black asphalt at the intersection out the window from the coffee shop** on a grey late November morning...there and gone, then replaced, gone again, and there again with the slow movement of cars, controlled by STOP signs and crossing guard...if with a slightly different quality, angle, luminosity, each time...impossible to photograph***...seems all the illumination I’m gonna get, this morning...but, for right now, it’s enough...


* kind of a redundant-sounding, not very mellifluous description, I know...but “glare” really doesn’t do it, and “sparkle” would be way too far in the opposite direction...as, in a different way, would “luminescence” or any o' them there fancy-schmancy highfalutin' words...even “shine” seems a bit much...I’m just talking about a little bit o’ plain ol’ light here, folks, nothin’ more...

** High Point Cafe, Carpenter & Greene, West Mt. Airy, State of Highly Caffeinated Sadhana, U.S.A....

*** at least not with my cell-phone camera...****

**** or, at least not with my cell-phone camera operated by me...*****

***** especially not if I get the angle wrong, so the doorframe’s largely blocking exactly what I’m trying to focus on....looked right from where I was sitting when I took it...******

****** then, the picture’s not the point, anyway...*******

******* then, really, neither are the words...

Big Time Yoga

...got asked to assist at the Philly version of this big worldwide yoga event called Salutation Nation...(9:00 this morning)...(really probably shoulda said something beforehand....but, well, y’know, focus on the present moment, don’t get too hung up on past mistakes, & all that positive life-affirming shit)...a huge outdoor class...(picture above taken when things were still getting set up)...so a major deal for somebody who’s never taught more than three people at a time...particularly since it started & ended with me sitting up on stage with amazing senior teachers on all sides....a friend was impressed...(maybe just a tinge sarcastically)...said you’re playin’ in the big leagues...and it did feel kinda like that...may have to start tellin' people to call me Swami Jay instead of Dr. Jay....well, maybe not quite yet...

...was gonna bike down there, as one eco-minded yoga blogger urged everybody to do...but, still recovering from some strange sickness...(think it may’ve started with smelling two week old garbage that’d been submerged in a flooded trash can since the hurricane)...(seriously)...(yuck)...decided simply showing up and helping people get that dog-tilt might be as much as I could handle...

...so, was drinking coffee in the car on the way down, and...just ‘cause it’s kinda what I do...spilled some on my t-shirt...which was a bummer...like, I’m gonna be one o’ the major yoga dudes at this thing & got brown spots on my duds....started wondering if assisting might merit some schwag...like, specifically, a shirt...

...as it turned out, one was waiting for me, thanks to the event's generous sponsor........meaning that I now own, and have worn, in public, a notably stretchy item of clothing with an ambiguously-spiritual-looking symbol on it....

...yes, friends, the 'til now reliably grungy Yoga Cynic has been spotted wearing Lululemon.......take it as you will...

Building From the Ground Up, Part One

...sitting at the usual coffee shop, drinking the usual coffee, thoughtlessly cogitating the usual misgivings, apprehensions, and regrets...self-judgment, ennui, and mild depression...life as usual seeming like one big obstacle course with no clear path apart from that defined by the obstacles themselves...

To be able to free oneself is nothing; the hard part is being able to live with one’s freedom.
André Gide

...trying to fly away might have been your first mistake.
Bob Mould

...but, idly there in my favorite sunny window seat, the thought comes that I like where I live......(not my apartment, so much...though it’s not bad, really...its problem, for the most part, its messy inhabitant...and the messy thoughts he wakes up with...more internal, that is, than external...though the Upanishads, I think, say that’s all one & the same)...(Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 438:901: ...don't believe everything ya read in the Upanishads...)...coffee gone, irresistible high-calorie toasted buttered cheddar and black pepper biscuit reduced to tasty crumbs I pick up with a dampened fingertip to eat one by one...thinking I really should be getting on with the day but focusing dreamily out at the corner, naturally illuminated...center of my laughably crunchy community...food co-op, meditation studio, alternative bookstore, alternative pet store, alternative whatever the hell that store is, alternative kid's store...run by somebody who’s also a yoga teacher...more certified yoga teachers here than plumbers, certified public accountants, or Republicans...by far...more organic vegan gardeners than people who’d admit to eating fast food or shopping at Wal-Mart...tree lined sidewalks, bicycles with baskets, two churches down the hill, one Unitarian, the other Presbyterian but with a lesbian minister...a community justifiably famous for its effortless integration, though the skin tone in the coffee shop's conspicuously lighter than that in the public school across the street...but, it takes just a beautiful seven mile bike ride following the Wissahickon Creek and Schuylkill River through the park, past the sculpture gardens and Art Museum, to get downtown...residents notably friendly, usually laugh at my jokes about scoring organic crack on the way to yoga class and wanting to call myself a Mt. Airyan but concerned that might give the wrong idea...moved all over the country to live in famous hip communities: Boulder, Olympia, San Francisco, Burlington, Flagstaff, Ithaca, had some fun but couldn’t wait to leave each and every one...then ended up back in this area where I grew up somewhat unwillingly, out of necessity...it's a long story, and kinda personal...to find myself nearly four years later thinking, sea of troubles and all, I wouldn't mind staying for a while....and that’s not a bad place to start...

Before Coffee

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...
T. S. Eliot

...trudged the grey half mile to the coffee shop after an unproductive morning hour or two at home...waiting in line, glanced at the soup of the day...Sacred Lentil with Spinach...felt impressed...though soon realizing it actually said spiced lentils...which was just as well....not sure if I’d actually want to eat sacred lentils...worrying, wondering whether contact with my dentally-challenged mouth would defile hot soup better offered up to a goddess......though that’s a bit metaphysical for me, particularly before coffee...

May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
Robert Frost

....unless it were an earthly goddess...the only kind of goddess I believe in, really...(for that matter, really don’t go much for ideas of the sacred that exclude my crumbling teeth)....and might be nice, I think, to buy her some sacred lentils, sip coffee at our little table by the window, and with her watch the first drops of rain make their way to the sidewalk...

Prepared for Lift-Off...All Systems Go

Now it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare...
David Bowie

...for the next month, Yoga for Cynics, along with its affiliates, partners, and corporate subsidiaries, will be shifting its base of operations from West Mt. Airy, Land of Mellow Sadhana and No Snow Plows, USA, to the mystical highlands of Kripalu...the Berkshires, Massachusetts...cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown...(or, at least, the Google Maps directions are really, really confusing)...where its proprietor, webmaster, chairman, publisher, president, CEO, CFO, Grand Poobah, consigliere, Most Exalted Muckamuck, First Citizen o' Love, minister of information, malcontent-in-residence, spiritual advisor, guru, sensei, Grand Vizier, Imperial Lama, First Among Equals, and most humble author will be attending a 200 hr. Yoga Teacher Training...

...(which, yes, represents a significant step toward laying the groundwork for the long-promised Yoga for Cynics ashram.....anybody out there got a tropical island you’re not using for anything?)...

...was planning on some serious tidying up around the place before I go...but decided spring cleaning’s better left ’til spring....last night my mom gave me an early birthday present a sweater to replace, she said, my old favorite, now full of holes, which she tried to get me to promise to throw out, or, at least, never wear when anybody can see me...I explained that it didn’t matter, because I’ll still be the kinda guy who wears ratty sweaters with holes in them....even if I’m wearing a custom-made, designer-original tuxedo, anybody talking to me will always figure that out in no time...

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise
William Blake

...had coffee three or four...maybe five...times this week, after three months off... which, whether defensible in terms of yamas and niyamas or not, lemme tell ya, felt like three or four big steaming cups o’ happiness...

...which I’ll try to kiss as it flies, before heading up to Kripalu tomorrow, where, most likely I'll spend a month largely without caffeine, junk food, alcohol, T.V...probably a whole bunch of other minor vices, as well...while learning all about yoga...and god-only-knows-what about myself...and beyond that, who knows?...will I come back a Floating Glowing Being of Pure Love?...or at least muster up the energy to clean up that filthy apartment?...throw out that rancid sweater...or perhaps more fully inhabit it?...

...guess we’ll see...

Decaffeinated

Coffee is prana.
Patanjali*

Since every pleasure’s got an edge of pain,
Pay for your ticket and don’t complain...
Bob Dylan

It’s been a week since my last cup of coffee...and you were wondering why this blog’s been so quiet?**

...then, I’m probably quitting the whole yoga thing, anyway...been reading so much about how healthy it is...which is a problem, since I'm currently working on gettin' me a new health insurance plan...and...unlike most people, who end up paying far more than they ever get back...making the insurance industry so profitable it buys senators and congressmen like yoga folk buy expensive crap with Om symbols on it...I wanna profit from the arrangement...

...so, from here on, my health is the insurance company’s problem...no more yoga, no more meditation, no more fruits and vegetables...organic or otherwise...no more biking (except in busy traffic...without a helmet...preferably drunk)....might even change the name of this blog to Sitting in Front of the Tube Eating Ho-Ho’s, Smoking Cigarettes, Drinking Cheap Booze, Snorting Crystal Meth and Letting the Insurance Company Pick Up the Tab for Cynics...but, it occurs to me, that might be a tad redundant...


* yeah, I know, that’s not in your copy of the Yoga Sutras...that’s ‘cause it’s an exceptionally rare out-take, available only as part of the outrageously expensive digitally re-mastered limited edition Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras: the Complete Sessions deluxe boxed set...along with a few alternate takes (Sutra 1.1: “let’s party”) and the legendary, unexpurgated, Vedic Times interview with Patanjali...in which he admits he was joking about celibacy....***

** not to mention that this particular post is, let’s face it, not up to the usual quality standards...loose though they are...really not much more than an excuse for that cheesy Patanjali joke....I recommend skipping the rest and checking out my far more inspirational Thanksgiving post at Elephant Journal...or going back and reading that last one, which was pretty good: One Breath at a Time....namaste & all that...

*** wha??!!... You think I’d make this stuff up???!!!

At a Table on a Sidewalk

...that there is so much we will never, and maybe can't ever, fathom can be comforting and terrifying, but not, usually, both at the same time...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 121:354

...at a table on a sidewalk in front of the Good Karma Cafe...(actual place, 22nd & Pine, downtown Philly, State of Noisy Contemplation, USA)...drinking coffee ’til I’m too wired to sit still...cars and the occasional bike float past...no question which is America’s favorite mode of transportation...then, no question who’s enjoying the ride more, either...

...reading about a woman at a silent vipassana retreat...trying to be silent, peaceful, meditative, and mindful, and not doing such a good job, by her own estimation, at any of the above...makes me wanna give her some encouragement...say at least you’re one up on me...I’m just reading about it...

...borrowed a pen, and actually returned it...which probably makes me prouder than it should...have never consciously stolen a pen, and yet never buy them, but somehow always have lots...am strangely unconcerned about what this means in terms of karma, sin, or ethical behavior...


...even excess can be kept to a reasonable level...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 163:889

Breathe... (A Life Worth Breathing...Kind of a Book Review #2)

I think if we take a look deep within ourselves with piercing honesty, we could agree that we carry around a file of our inadequacies with us—a file that contains many reasons to loathe ourselves...
Max Strom

...for me, it’s probably more like a file cabinet...or storage locker full of file cabinets...but point taken...

Breeeeathe...breathe in the aaaaaair...
Pink Floyd

Somebody from this publishing house said she wanted to send me a book to review...called A Life Worth Breathing...by this famous yoga teacher I’d never, at that point, heard of, named Max Strom...to which I replied if it’s for free, it’s for me...though not in so many words...figuring, if all else failed, I could call it a veritable tour de force...seminal...say it belongs on every yogi’s bookshelf...or it’s perfect for the yogi on your Christmas list....

...or, on the other hand, could actually read the thing...which I did...deciding in the process the book was actually worth writing about...meaning both that it was worth reading and I thought of some stuff to say about it that seemed clever...at least to me....found it at times illuminating...other times irritating....then, it’s the lot of the yoga cynic to rarely read anything that doesn’t have at least a 50/50 irritating/illuminating ratio...particularly when the author talks about subjects like...um...let’s see...God...

...but then, in the words of Ancient and Venerable Yoga Cynic Sutra 35:78...it’s always the really irritating stuff that makes ya think...and, big a deal as Max* makes of the metaphysical side of things, the book’s centered...literally and figuratively...at a far more basic level...on the breath...paying close attention to it...when practicing forearm stands or cutting toenails**...following and listening carefully to what such a simple, elemental process can tell about what’s going on inside...where the real action happens...

No matter how many vinyasas we do, no matter how much wheatgrass juice we drink, no matter how many kirtans we attend, we will not have a happy life if we are carrying resentment and hatred inside us...
Max Strom

...how you gon’ win when you ain’t right within?
Lauryn Hill

...as well as in the minute details of our lives...how we treat the people serving us coffee*** likely more revealing than any formal spiritual practice...

...and ya gotta like a guy who, for all the reverence expressed...and there’s a lot...toward celebrated holy people, says he thinks the only truly enlightened person he’s ever met was a homeless girl who didn’t say a word...

...overall, it’s a book that, in retrospect, had a lot more of an effect on me than was apparent while reading...(though...full disclosure...that might’ve been at least partly because I was thinking about what clever stuff was gonna end up in this post)...(seriously, dontcha love that Lauryn Hill quote?)...in the sense that it’s actually gotten me thinking more about the breath and what I can learn from it...the subtle but deeply important signs that, like most people, I put a lot of effort into dulling or ignoring...so that ya could say the book actually made me a bit more conscious of those little things that are really the big things...

...or, y’know, ya could call it a veritable tour de force...



* the guy’s a yoga teacher...so first names all the way...and, like this blog, his book is probably best experienced barefoot...

** or, conceivably, for really, really adept yogis, cutting toenails while doing forearm stands...though, truthfully, Max really doesn't go into that...

*** Max actually disses coffee...repeatedly...but that’s cool****...

**** while perhaps not quite yogic enough to abstain from coffee, I’m exactly yogic enough not to be bothered by the fact that even-more-yogic types often diss it...


*cross posted at Elephant Journal*

Imperfections R Us

...said sorry, not feeling quite myself today...though knowing that simmering misery is at least as much myself as anything else I might be feeling...

`I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, `because I'm not myself, you see.'
Lewis Carroll

...been reading this book called Just Kids by Patti Smith, about herself and Robert Mapplethorpe as young artists in NY in the 60’s...listening to Blonde on Blonde and Beggars Banquet over and over, but too broke to go and see rock concerts...young artists aware of the legendary Andy Warhol factory scene nearby but lacking the cache to get anywhere near it...kind of funny, in a way...later on, Patti Smith asked should I pursue a path so twisted?...a line I’ve always liked...perhaps because the straight and narrow has only ever tended to get me hopelessly lost...

...one thing none of the yoga books say is that there’s probably no better time for a neti pot than when you’re sick-drunk....or that there’s no better cure for a serious hangover than a really intense vinyasa class...the kind that makes you silently chant what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger...

...another thing they don’t say is that getting sick-drunk might indicate that you’re in a very different...perhaps less placid...state of mind than you might have been telling yourself...

...recently read this book called Letters From the Dhamma Brothers...about a vipassana meditation program for inmates in a southern maximum security prison...(which, like the Dhamma Brothers movie, is worth checking out)....in one place, the point is made, in reference to participants who’ve been addicts, that meditation shouldn't be used as a substitute for drugs...and I get that...these techniques were developed with higher goals than another addictive behavior or a buzz...just like yoga wasn’t invented for killer abs and firm butts...but, at the same time, can’t help thinking if somebody’s looking for a buzz, wouldn’t it be a whole lot better to get it from meditation than from heroin?...or, would it be better if the yoga-as-exercise crowd joined the 40% of Americans who don’t exercise at all?....all in all, am inclined to think that if people are replacing something unhealthy with something healthy, that’s a good thing...even if it’s a watered-down version of a better thing...

...I useta use all kindsa crap to dilute my coffee before finally learning to enjoy it black...

...(yeah, I just compared yoga to coffee)...(but, ya gotta admit, better that than crack)...

...still not so sure, though, about the food co-op employee heard a couple days ago proudly proclaiming that he smokes organic cigarettes...

*cross posted at Elephant Journal*

Venomous Spiders, Handstands, Elephants, and Trying Yet Failing to Move With the Peculiar Grace of a Three-Legged Dog

...you’re the blessed, we’re the spiders from mars...
David Bowie

...bourgeois as this might sound, Yoga for Cynics will soon have a second home...as I’ve been asked to write for Elephant Journal...based in Boulder, Colorado...home to Tibetan Buddhists, organic vegan mountain oysters, and ludicrously expensive real estate inhabited by people who wear socks with sandals...(this blog is, as always, best read barefoot)...

...not sure yet how what ends up there’s gonna differ from what’s here...maybe written under my full name...possibly with proper sentences, without ellipses...perhaps a bit less self-indulgent...meaning you’ll still have to come here to find out why I spent all day Monday in bathrobe, fuzzy pajama-type pants, and the ratty t-shirt I’d had on since Saturday’s eleven o’clock yoga class...(featuring my first American handstand)...(as opposed to those laid-back Costa Rican yoga retreat handstands anybody can do)...after which, as rain continued to fall steadily for the second day in a row, decided there was no more optimal use for the day than sitting around drinking coffee...which I did....yeah, I know, there’s much disagreement about coffee amongst the yoga crowd...pure-living non-(as opposed to anti-, since they’re too positive to be against anything)caffeine types on the one hand, irredeemable bean junkies with their steaming mugs filled to the brim with tasty rationalizations on the other....but I’ve got a far more potent and dangerous issue to discuss...we’re talkin’ spiders, people...

...because, that evening, started feeling pain and noticed swelling in my upper foot/lower ankle...which I promptly blamed on yoga...though couldn’t actually think of exactly how, in this instance, yoga could’ve done it...(alright...can feel the eyes rolling from here....change that to how I could’ve done it by bringing a stupidly competitive attitude to yoga and not listening to my body...are ya happy now?)...or why it took all day for the damage to kick in....

...then, as the weekend wore on, pain and swelling steadily increased...compromising my ability to walk...leaving me staggering, limping, hopping, crawling...trying yet failing to move with the peculiar grace of a three legged dog...as well as feeling strange chills...fever...and noticing a little red mark right in the belly of the swollen area...dismissed, at first, as simply one of countless little red marks left over from the Nicoya Peninsula...but, then, remembered this nasty little spider hanging right by my comfortable-yet-stylish IKEA chair earlier in the day...which, out of a deep commitment to ahimsa...or extreme laziness...I left alone...and the realization dawned that this thoroughly non-ahimsa-practicing spider had, in fact, bitten me*...

...now, Tuesday afternoon, I’m on the mend...even changed out of that ratty t-shirt...went to the doctor...who prescribed antibiotics...without bringing up the word amputate even once...though still probably a few days away from doing any more handstands....anyone so inclined is more than welcome to send healing energies...or cash...

* not, actually, the gigantic Costa Rican banana spider in the photo...though thinking that made the story more interesting, didn't it?

One More Cup of Coffee....

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go
to the valley below...
Bob Dylan

...ran my bike into a concrete fencepost on the way to a yoga class downtown yesterday....actually, if yer gonna run yer bike into a concrete fencepost on the way to somewhere, a yoga class is a pretty good somewhere for that somewhere to be...as you pick yourself up, feeling somewhat dazed and unsure of whether you’re merely a bit scratched up or actually injured...one of the many uses for a yoga class is that you'll work out any minor trauma, and, if there’s anything seriously wrong, you’re probably gonna know it before the class is over ...

...and, as it turned out apart from a couple bits of skin lost on the right pointer finger and a slightly bruised right knee, no harm was done...

...but how, you ask, did this misfortune occur? I’ll give ya three different versions and let you decide which ya like best:

Version A: Going at incredible speed while doing a headstand on the seat, I suddenly hit a patch of black ice. A less skilled cyclist would have been killed.

Version B: There I was riding along when a little girl ran out onto the path. Having to make a split-second decision between possibly injuring this sweet, innocent child and the likelihood of grave injury to my own person, I of course turned valiantly toward the fencepost.

Version C: Riding along with a general lack of mindfulness, I didn't notice I was riding into a concrete fencepost until it was right in front of me.

...to those of you unimaginative and ungenerous enough to choose Version C, allow me to point out that this lack of attention might be attributed to a recent decision to cut down on coffee....as of about three days ago, I’m only having approximately one cup...or, at least, not-much-more-than one cup...per day...and my stomach’s already thanking me for it...

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, morning, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons....
T. S. Eliot

...the people at the coffee shop rolled their eyes and said oh god, not again! when I told them that....I generally quit completely for a month or so every year or two...just to let my insides recover from the general rich, full-bodied, incredibly tasty onslaught...oh god, just writing about coffee makes me want some...though my daily quota was filled hours ago...damn, I can hardly wait for that post-Saturday morning yoga class coffee tomorrow...which is why I have no desire to quit permanently...at this point, at least...some of the good things in life remain good things even when they’re not actually good for you....

I Saw Walt Whitman Strolling Through the Park Today

I saw Walt Whitman strolling through the park today...alive as you and me, like they say...along Forbidden Drive...called that—this is true—because you’re forbidden to drive on it...above the legendary Wissahickon Creek....I’ve seen him along there before...maybe up in Mt. Airy, too...though this was more notable because it was right near the broken bench with the inscription from Song of Myself that they got wrong,
I exist as I am, that is enough,

If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

And if each and all be aware that I sit content
adding that that that doesn’t belong at all though somebody—maybe Walt himself...certainly this sighting makes me suspicious—kind of corrected it with a black magic marker....anyway, he seemed content enough...if a bit worse for wear...which you can’t blame him for...I mean, the guy is closing in on the end of his second century...and the Civil War really seemed to take something out of him...

I am nothing, and therefore I am everything, and all energy
J. Krishnamurti

Energy is Eternal Delight
William Blake

Tonight the bottle let me down, and let your memory come around....
Merle Haggard

It’s raining outside, started while I was in the park, and I brought the rain into the coffee shop. The rain follows me, and I follow the rain, and maybe I am the rain. The rain is in my hair and the rain is inseparable from my hair...though my eyes are two suns...sons absent a father brain, wandering aimlessly from place to place, but never lost because knowing always that lost is where they belong....

Coffee is energy. Then, so is everything else...maybe. Energy is in crisis, always. We fuel the wars we fight for energy with energy, though it’s often lacking when I need to go home but can’t get away from this window seat, looking out at the rain. Coffee fails me sometimes, like Merle Haggard with his inconstant whiskey bottle...like anything, really, but it tastes good, at least...and that’s not like just anything.

Walt Whitman wrote about Nature without check with original energy but he doesn’t come into the coffee shop to talk with me about it, at least not when I’m here. Perhaps he’s made his peace with the rain.

In Which Nothing In Particular Is Said

Man is quite insane. He wouldn't know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.
Michel de Montaigne
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into

fragments

by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms toward

perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its

way into

the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-

widening thought and action—

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my

country

awake.

Rabindranath Tagore

That first quote came from Claire, and the second from Lisa Allender, who got it from Lydia, who got it from...I guess somebody named Rabindranath Tagore...whoever the hell that is...yeah, yeah, yeah, I know who he was...lighten the hell up, folks....Anyway...don’t worry, I’m not gonna use this poem to make any kind of statements about the upcoming election, or anything of the kind...What, me worry? Lately it seems like every conversation I have turns into an argument, including those that have nothing to do with politics—that sense of vicious competition, accusation, shameless lying, and overweening indignation is simply coursing through the lifeblood of the culture as we stumble through our days, always a little bit more edgy, anger fueling engines, now that it’s so much cheaper than gasoline. Last night I went to yoga class, which, like the past few Monday nights, kept crossing amazingly back and forth the line between intense workout and psychedelic experience....I suggested to my teacher, the legendary Jennifer Schelter, that we have a non-stop class for the next eight days, but I don’t think she took me seriously....

So what’s left but to drink coffee and steal poem fragments from other people’s websites? Anyway, what interests me is that one bit up there: Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; which, y’know, as my old hippie freak friend, and noted poetry critic, Jedediah, might say in between bong hits: duuuuude...that’s some intense shit...but that’s not, actually, what I’m gonna say about it...then, maybe I’ll just leave it to speak for itself...thereby, I hope, avoiding that desert sand, myself, and instead thank my blogger friend Christa for bestowing another award on this humble blog before wandering back out in the rain....

Things to Do While Drinking Coffee #5

I’ll be your mirror, reflect what you are, in case you don’t know....
Lou Reed

...in my usual window seat...though they still haven’t gotten me the promised nameplate... at the near-mythical High Point Cafe, located conveniently on the mean streets of downtown West Mt. Airy, State of Near-Erotic Caffeination, USA, having just passed the usual sardonic remarks back and forth with the counter staff—who I need to go bug for a refill now...and maybe a piece of that damn pumpkin bread I can’t seem to resist...can I make it through the darker, colder months of the year without gaining thirty pounds? Time and the tightness of pants will tell....aaaah, but coffee, my dark mistress, how you taunt me with your fine aroma and chilling warmth...and that guy just came in—the guy who I call Jerry ten years from now—though I’ve never met him—Jerry’s a friend from various places...it’s a long story...and not a very interesting one...so I won’t tell it here...but I’m pretty much positive that, due to some kind of time warp, this guy is him ten years from now...this neighborhood exists in between city and woods...is known for its seemingly effortless yet imperfect integration...is Philadelphia and yet not...listening to Thelonious Monk and the Velvet Underground and Nico through headphones that make my left eardrum ring incessantly...I may not have gotten to be a rock star, yet, but at least I’ve got rock star ear problems...and, if I manage to get through this entire post without saying anything of consequence whatsoever, at least I didn’t mention the election....

One day in the marketplace Mullah Nasrudin encountered an old friend who was about to get married. The friend asked the Mullah if he had ever considered marriage. Nasrudin replied that years ago he had wanted to marry and set out to find the perfect woman. First he traveled to Damascus, where he found a perfectly gracious and beautiful woman but discovered she was lacking a spiritual side. Then his travels took him further to Isfahan, where he met a woman who was deeply spiritual yet comfortable in the world and beautiful as well, but unfortunately they did not communicate well together. “Finally in Cairo I found her,” he said, “she was the ideal woman, spiritual, gracious, and beautiful, at ease in the world, perfect in every way.” “Well,” asked the friend, “did you then marry her?” “No,” answered the Mullah, “unfortunately, she was looking for the perfect man.”
traditional Sufi tale, recounted by Jack Kornfield (and edited very slightly for clarity by me)

Much as I try to create a space of grumpy negativity, twisted screeds born of hurt feelings and too much cheap w(h)ine, barbed whispers, gnarly pissed-off elegies of unfettered nihilism and endless caustic sarcasm here in my grey, isolated, misanthropic corner of the worldwide web, people keep seeing goodness and light in it...what can ya do when people like your best efforts at being disagreeable? So, I’ve been given blog awards by blogger friends Svasti and Lea—though accepted in classic curmudgeonly style, for which the former verbally kicked my ass (had it coming anyway, after all the kangaroo jokes) and also been called upon by Dano, another blogger friend—what’s with all this sense of community, anyway?—apparently lurking somewhere else in this strange metropolitan era—can I muster up some enthusiasm to cheer the Phils to victory? Probably not—to give another one of those seven things about me lists...but right now all I can think of is that I want lunch...and what a goofy lookin’ mutt that is out there on the sidewalk...dogs are pretty much like people—not as intelligent, for the most part, but with better personalities...oh, and check out After Stillness, created by my yoga friend who’s too shy to tell anybody about it (now she’ll probably wanna kick my ass, too)....

Is That Supposed To Be Funny??!!

The secret source of humor is not joy, but sorrow; there is no laughter in heaven.
Mark Twain

Did I really promise in that last post that I was gonna be funny in this one? Damn...there’s nothing worse than telling people you’re gonna be funny...that’s why I hate most stand-up comedy...especially, the I’m just a regular guy who’s gonna stand here and talk to you regular people and make some funny observations that you can relate to about regular day-to-day life kind of stand-up comedy...bleah...it’s much better to be angry-funny like Chris Rock, or horrified-by-the-outrageousness-of-what’s-going-on-in-America-funny like Jon Stewart, or severely-manic-if-not-coked-to-the-gills-funny like Robin Williams (not to be confused with the so-desperate-to-make-you-love-him-that-he’s-not-funny Robin Williams, the actor)...I, generally speaking, only find out I’m being funny when people tell me...see the predicament?

It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.
David St. Hubbins, This is Spinal Tap

I was talking to somebody about my personal favorite Yoga for Cynics post...god, I also hate it when bloggers are self-referential...then, I kinda can’t stand that in general...even though I’m a huge fan of one of the seminal texts of postmodern metafiction, There’s a Monster at the End of This Book, starring Lovable Furry Old Grover (also a penetrating exploration of modern man—or, y’know, monster—in confrontation with his own id—kinda like Heart of Darkness for kids, and what could be more avant-garde than that?) (never mind that it’s been disgracefully overlooked by the literary critical establishment; so was William Blake)...and now, I’m being, like, meta-self-referential...and horribly ironic in the most pretentious postmodern kind of way...somebody could write a goddamn dissertation on this post...good god...the horror, the horror....

And, if I have been a little malicious, well, one must amuse oneself.
Madame Merteuil, Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Anyway...it was the one called Probably Not the Best Example of Loving Kindness, in which I talked about cursing somebody out—in a bit of rather obviously ill-advised bicycle-on-car road rage—on the way to yoga class. People have suggested that I probably wouldn’t have done that on the way home from yoga class...and they’re probably right. In fact, I may be able to provide an illustrative anecdote...jeeezus, did the pretentious academic in me just pipe up again? Never mind...this one time, I think it was last winter, I’d just gotten home from a class with legendary yoga teacher Jennifer Schelter, and walked, with a spring in my step, feeling optimistic and full of good feeling toward my fellow human beings...really...up to my local coffee shop, the High Point Cafe...now, this place is kind of a center of my friendly little community (West Mt. Airy, State of Caffeinated Stupor, USA). The place was packed. However, just as I got my coffee, two older women were standing, putting coats on and clearing dishes away from the table where they’d been sitting. I asked if they were leaving, and one of them said “yes” as they moved away from the table and I set my coffee down. Seeing a couple of crumpled up napkins left on the table, I decided to be helpful and throw them out. Upon turning back to the table however, I was confronted by the other woman, who, in a voice more like a low, mentally unbalanced hiss, said “you’re a bit of an asshole, aren’t you?” I said “excuse me?” “Putting your coffee down on the table before we’ve left...” she intoned, almost shaking with rage. “But...you had your coats on...you said you were leaving...you were walking away from it...” I sputtered as she turned her back, perhaps with a final muttered asshole for good luck. My good mood kinda dissipated. While my friends behind the counter more than sympathized, and joked about it, I was really really upset—all the more so because I’d been in such a good mood before this little incident happened. Why the hell, I thought, did this have to happen when I was feeling so good?

Then, however, I asked myself the question: how might I have reacted if I hadn’t been in such a peaceful, positive mood? Let’s just say it’s a good thing I went to yoga class that morning....