Playing With Blocks

...all we can really experience, or be truly aware of, is the present moment...the right here and right now...like all those yogis & Buddhists’ll tell ya...(when they’re not going on about past lives or India)....but, at the same time, like any neuroscientist can tell ya, it’s actually impossible to be aware of or experience the present moment...the brain doesn’t work like that...by the time you’re aware of or experience anything, it’s already past...


...spent last Saturday on a weekend bed-and-breakfast yoga retreat way up-state...(I’m now proud owner of a pine-scented eye-pillow...seeing how much I was enjoying it, someone commented that I’m becoming a metrosexual...I said I’d probably have to stop buying my clothes at EMS to make that happen)...woke up for the first of three awesome, healthy meals with good friends, morning yoga class, a couple long walks along the creek and a climb to the top of a mountain (overlooking the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania...which, admittedly, could fit, along with the Grand Canyon of New York at Letchworth, and the various grand canyons of other eastern states, into a small side canyon of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in Arizona...but is lovely nonetheless)...(see pics)...restorative yoga class, and a post-dinner-and-red-wine Thai massage....and it occurred to me that this really wasn’t a day I could complain much about...


...with the women at the rehab, I focus mostly on GED preparation and literacy, but now and then, with someone more advanced in her education, get to work with creative writing and journaling...encouraging letting-loose on the page, freeing-up the creative voice...almost invariably resulting an empowering and enjoyable experience, for everyone involved, when we see what blossoms on the page....but it’s also a difficult, and often daunting, frightening process...giving what can seem a terrifying concreteness on the page to thoughts one would like to push away, no matter how consistent and inevitable the failure to do so...requiring encouragement, gentle prodding, and understanding from the supposedly more-together teacher-person....and, ultimately, it's all about honesty...

...I haven’t written anything this week, she said, head hanging low....that’s okay, said the teacher, neither have I...

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...

Walking With Waves

...thinking, wondering, imagining...lust, love, loneliness...building, dissolving, receding...this, this, only this...*




*...was walking by myself along this beach in south Jersey, from populated areas to a somewhat wilder one by the wildlife sanctuary—sand above the surf line roped off to protect nesting areas for piping plovers, people allowed to walk through but not stop, sunbathe, or swim, since the shy little birds need to run to and from the water, and won’t if anybody’s in the way...seems reasonable enough, so keep up a steady pace—seeing no plovers...(sorry, that’s not one in the picture)...though can’t deny looking probably more than watchful boyfriends like at women in bathing suits...but, more than that, another, less superficial and piggish aspect of mind caught on someone...far inland...wondering if she thinks about me...imagining, hoping...that old song...tip-toeing a narrow course between solitude and loneliness, dipping precipitously, despite such gorgeous tranquil surroundings, seemingly made for peaceful reflection, toward the latter...trying once again to be mindful...and all that...observe thoughts floating by instead of getting caught up in them...gain that awesome sense of wonder found in pondering the infinite in one’s own breath, sun on skin, cold salt water on the toes, even a bit of pain in one hip from walking so much in the sand...for a sudden moment feeling somewhat jarring comfort in the knowledge that, really, I know nothing else...the rest only thinking, imagining, longing...speculation on reality that’s always something else...and not even that ten minutes later...gettin’ all Krishnamurti-like n’ shit....and then, of course, thinking about writing about it, maybe quoting that famous William Blake line, something like “to see infinity in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour”...( having to work by memory even once the walk is through, since there’s no Collected Poems of William Blake nor consistent internet access at the beach house)...though, by the time I got back, reduced it all to the few simple formulae above...wondering if the wave thing’s too clichéd...as well as whether a cliché’s always such a bad thing....or whether anybody’s gonna get what I’m talking about at all....anyway, it works a whole lot better than all this...doncha think?

Dreaming.....................

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Alfred Lord Tennyson

...was taking a walk, trying to figure out why I’m writing so little, lately...but mostly got lost in daydreams, as I have quite a lot, of late...which, I thought, might be exactly why I’m writing so little...

Dreams are like paper. They tear so easily...
Gilda Radner

...to really get down to it, there’s probably very little I’ve spent more of my life doing than daydreaming...if usually while also doing something else...find it’s difficult, otherwise...even if it’s easier than just about anything else....told somebody a few days ago that walking is my absolute favorite thing to do...and biking’s high on the list, as well...but both, really, along with kayaking, cross-country skiing, or driving on open road, are, more than anything, highly effective vehicles for daydreams...all involving simple motions...allowing lots of space to let the mind roam...

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
John Lennon

...daydreaming, as such, could be seen as the opposite of mindfulness...but, then, it also might be essential for creativity...

...art, maybe, is what happens when you’re mindful about your daydreaming...





*my latest at Elephant Journal: Dharma Cats*

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

...had to acknowledge, while snowbound at my mom’s house for the weekend...by the time I’d shoveled all the way to the road, was too tired to go anywhere...that an all too familiar and highly inconvenient wintertime guest had most definitely arrived, and was making itself at home...

...a good blogger friend made a request...
...if aaah leeeeave heeere tomooooorrrooowww,
wouldjoo stilllll rememmmber meee...
...actually, that wasn’t it...she suggested the titles and scattered themes of that previous post reflected the snowstorm outside...and might each be allowed to stop and grow...perhaps when the sky calmed down....but, as tends to be the case this time of year, my mind seems stuck in a different kind of weather pattern...more a persistent, turbulent mass of grey...occasionally letting loose a bit of sleet, hail, or drizzle in hopes of refreshing the landscape so something might take root...perhaps opening now and then to tantalizing glimmers of light...but not for long...making coherence difficult....though metaphors mix freely...maybe hoping for some hybrid vigor...

...then, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all the yoga and mindfulness stuff, it’s to see all that more clearly...as not so much some mythical all-consuming force of darkness, but a lonely, wounded ghost...like Bruce Willis in that movie...and one perhaps I need to learn to talk to...

...using that Simon & Garfunkel lyric to title this post took about as much cleverness as I can muster at this point...really...but can’t look at it without the mind wandering off toward Dustin Hoffman walking through that barren airport at the beginning of The Graduate...homeward bound, to suffer endless questions about his future for which he has no answers...as well as to receive priceless advice...

...I just wanna say one word to you...just one word...are you listening? Plastics. There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it...

...forty-two years into that future, there’s an island of plastic trash the size of Texas floating somewhere in the north Pacific...countless gallons of a substance wars are fought over crafted into a near infinite variety of colorful, disposable items...making me wonder just how many plans were executed, how much human effort went into creating this incredible mass of worthless and increasingly toxic crap...

...in more lucid moments...the spaces between lengthy periods of utterly pointless web surfing...have been reading, for something like the fourth time, one of the best novels ever written...in which a whole lot happens, almost all of which, ultimately, turns out to be pointless....Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth...

...if there’s a point to all that...and I think there is...it’s that there are many paths from nowhere to nowhere...that striving and productivity have no inherent value...and what matters most...what forms the difference between cultivating abundant life and cranking out worthless crap...is from where, inside of us, our thoughts and actions grow...

Idyll with Static

...my head, lately, seems jammed...awash in static...

interference...like I’m caught between frequencies....not the low crackling heard on long drives, out in the country...barely more disturbing than white noise, indicative of a relative calm in the realm of electric current...more like deep metropolitan dissonance...the loud cacophony of signals reducing particular subject matter to a thick grey noise...occasional bursts tantalizingly reminiscent of clarity disappearing as rapidly as they emerge...consciousness following, finding itself only more lost in the dense sticky fog...

...makes that mindfulness thing difficult...

kpmo,otcje;;
bwcwevyt BTRGUBFQURGVIRG XGWWAW bs dRDEWW UBRGW

Bnw=======iranMW
ftmksur-ii

...always usedta to spend time in yoga class longing for the day when it’d get easy...all the good parts...the cool mellow feelings...dance-like sensations...trippy intervals...without those sore, sweaty moments when I forget about all that and wonder why the hell I subject myself to this....then, one day, went to this class where just about everybody was either a senior citizen or significantly overweight...or both...and, we lifted knees...put hands in the air...bent over, as best we could....and, all in all, it wasn’t a bad way to spend the hour...in fact, it left me perfectly warmed up...rarin’ to practice some yoga...but it was over...and I realized I don’t actually like easy...

A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
William James

...two weeks after the bike accident, the orthopedist looked at x-rays...said the pieces of my first and second metacarpals were moving further apart, rather than back together...then asked, quite nonchalantly, got any plans for tomorrow?....and I had to admire the dry sense of humor of someone who could let me know in such a clever, off hand way that she needed to perform surgery on me as soon as possible....I asked if, once the surgery was done, and my hand healed, I’d be able to play the violin...she, without missing a beat, responded could you play the violin before you broke it?....which was good...don’t know how much confidence I’d have in a surgeon who’d fall for a line like that...

Surfacing...with Court and Spark, Enlighten Up, and my new chair from IKEA..

He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.
Lao Tzu

...I have very little to say...so this is gonna go on for a while...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 1:1

...have always loved Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark album...despite always disliking that really slick L.A. production kinda sound....but, then, that’s kinda what Court and Spark’s about: she trades her guitar player boyfriend with the madman’s soul for the city of the fallen angels...as her friend David Geffen gives up feeling unfettered and alive in gay Paris for stroking the star maker machinery behind the popular songs...turning to surfaces because depths and ideals have gotten too painful....and yet, it turns out the superficial life sucks, too...since, even at the most stylish and faceless people’s parties, the old emotions and desperate search for love and contentment keep welling up....so, in the end, she ends up with jazz and the therapist’s couch....I can relate...

...speaking of surfaces...finally saw Enlighten Up!...okay, actually, I’m watching it as I write this...while also eating my dinner...yeah, I know, not mindful at all...though, for what it’s worth, my dinner’s vegetarian...unlike my lunch....so it goes....anyway, this filmmaker sends this guy who has no particular interest in spirituality on a spiritual quest...which, to me, seems somewhat self-evidently silly...and—big surprise—he doesn’t end up having a spiritual experience...not even after sampling this vast yogic smorgasbord, ranging from your most fundamentalist religious kinda scenes to your most crassly superficial gym class kinda scenes to your most totally style-conscious new agey kinda scenes...not to mention all the disagreements about the history and definition of yoga, as well as the ubiquity of practitioners who don’t seem to know or care....raising, I'm told, all kinds of major, troubling questions...

...whatever...personally, I got into the yoga thing because I thought practicing in ways that made sense to me, and avoiding those that didn't, might have a positive affect on my life...and, as it turns out, it has...in some ways I didn’t anticipate, even...so I’m gonna keep doing it...no big whoop...

...gotta admit, though, in recent months I've mostly been trying to counteract the effects of sitting on the crummy beaten up futon couch in my apartment...lumpy as a gigantic, lopsided bag of potatoes on top of a bent frame...but, what the hell, it was there when I moved in...and filled a need, as I’d just returned the easy chair I’d been using in my last place to the dumpster where I found it....seriously, there was nothing wrong with it, then, other than a stain...and my chair before that one was this old recliner, which was basically okay except that I kept finding nuts and bolts and things every time I cleaned under it...I mean, lots of them...like more than you’d think would even be part of a chair in the first place...so, it seemed like only a matter of time before it collapsed, causing untold injury...and, when I saw the one with the stain out by the dumpster...which couldn’t’ve been placed there more than a few hours earlier...y’know....anyway, it started falling apart, as well, and most likely wouldn’t have survived the trip to the new place, and so began the physically abusive relationship between the old futon couch and me, which lasted until...

...one rainy Saturday morning...when I got in the car and drove to..............................................IKEA...yes, dear friends and readers...IKEA...and, before I left, made a vow never again to shop anywhere other than IKEA....if they don’t sell it at IKEA, I don’t want it....am even quitting the yoga thing in favor of whatever traditional Swedish equivalent to yoga they offer at IKEA....this blog will soon be renamed Whatever Traditional Swedish Equivalent to Yoga They Offer at IKEA for Cynics...which, I believe, will make it the first and only whatever traditional Swedish equivalent to yoga they offer at IKEA blog on the interwebs....and, thus, more cutting edge than ever...not to mention written...like this post right now...while sitting in my new IKEA chair...with matching IKEA footrest...and ooooooh is it a cool chair...and really not difficult to assemble at all...

....only trouble is, now I gotta make the rest of the room worthy of the chair...which could take a while...

Whelk Procession

...a line of broken whelks placed like some holy procession the day before Thanksgiving...where, a couple weeks ago, water whooshing back to sea created a kind of sand ridge intersecting the shoreline....some say anything can be a sacred object....I don’t know, but see no particular reason to disagree...

...too cold to go barefoot...battered hiking books press down in wet cold sand...some seepage through worn out soles...but hardly more than the idea of wetness and cold... though that might change if I don’t keep moving....barely anybody else out but the metal detector guys...one in Bermuda shorts, though I’m wearing three layers, and the strong icy wind makes me doubt I’ll get anywhere near the point...but no worn out soul, as yet...still walking... dark tumultuous, thoroughly ominous cloud roof looming above yet ending in a straight but bumpy line just a foot or so above the horizon, where there’s no blue but an odd species of luminescence...clouds, still...but glowing...bare gilded outlines in white light....rotten wooden pilings so dark against the water lapping down below...all that light and dark in sharp distinction but what lines are in between gradually fading...

...had a deep sad thought last night...like someone wrapping me in a chilly, damp quilt...but then watched it dissipate, like a winter rainstorm...

...in better moments I think I’m on the road to enlightenment...then drop the pretense, think maybe I’m just not depressed...though, really, at this point, I can’t say the distinction matters to me much...

Seriously Pushing the Boundaries of Acceptable Outthereness

If you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills,
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you their time,
If you can overlook when people take things out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
Then you’re probably a dog.
Quoted by Tara Brach, from an unknown source

...so...drove up to the Berkshires for a weekend at Kripalu...did some yoga, got lost in the woods a couple times, hot tubbed, and took part in this radical acceptance thing led by famous mindfulness person Tara Brach...in which I had a series of really really intense experiences...like, the kind where, attempting to describe them to people back home, I appear to be seriously pushing the boundaries of acceptable outthereness....then, I’ve kinda been doing that my whole life...

...biking downtown for a yoga class Monday morning, though, I was surprised at how easy and enjoyable it all was...the yoga class itself as well as the ride....though only my intention was particularly different...

....setting an intention is something yoga teachers like to talk about at the beginnings of yoga classes...at which point grumpy yoga students whose names won't be mentioned grumble silently about some bullshit positive affirmation I’m supposed to come up with...often ending up with something along the lines of hopefully feeling just a little bit less crappy so I can make it through the rest of the day...which is perhaps closer to desperation, if undeniably real....this time, I was simply there because I felt like it...nothing to do but enjoy...

*photo of my friend Fargo (who has no blog of his own, but is okay with that) gratefully stolen from my friend Aviva*

The Only Kind of Spirituality I Have Any Interest In...

...so...as has been reflected here...I’ve been doing a lot of yoga...and a lot of meditation...and reading a lot about mindfulness...and have been writing about it...which might, in the eyes of some, make me a really spiritual dude...

...anyway, tonight, I went out and got really, really trashed...obnoxiously so, in fact...which, to some, might seem a bit of a contradiction...in fact, I’ve been known to see things that way, myself...walk the walk if you’re gonna talk the talk, as they say...

...truth be told, though, I really never meant to indicate that I’m into into any of this yoga or meditation or mindfulness shit because I’m any more spiritual or peaceful than anyone else....to the contrary it’s because I’m just as...if not more...fucked up as you are...

...and ultimately, this is the only kind of spirituality I have any interest in...the kind that says we’re all struggling...you, me, and the Dalai Lama...and we’re all trying, and we’re all worthy of compassion even as we fuck up...and no matter how many times we fuck up...and that, ultimately, that’s what that namaste thing people say at the end of yoga classes means...in addition to indicating that you can roll up your mat and go home...that we’re all worthy...that anybody’s as holy or sacred as anybody else...no matter what...no exceptions...whatever we believe in...or don’t...and however we might behave at any given time...

...and, with that, namaste to all...

*thanks to my blogger artist friend Ed T. gave me permission to use that Buddha image up there a long time ago*

This Cool Thich Nhat Hanh Quote I Found

...found this cool Thich Nhat Hanh quote, and almost immediately decided it was gonna be in the next Yoga for Cynics post....since then, have spent a helluva lotta time trying to write stuff to go with it...which hasn’t been working out so well...

...two nights ago, the weather changed, bringing cold, persistent rain, and an equally persistent pain in the forehead...and I wasn’t feeling all too motivated or inspired before that, either....so, then, maybe half an hour ago, decided to just use the quote, make it the entire post...but maybe throw in a photo so there’d at least be some original content...and, actually, found two I thought would work....one, of a flower, combined with the quote, would’ve ended up looking like a motivational poster...

...truth be told, I hate those things....better, I think, to be honestly negative than dishonestly positive....then, the other one, kind of a still life with my bare foot, would’ve come off more like one of those cynical demotivational posters that’ve been cropping up on the interwebs lately like fart jokes at a drunken wake...and that really wasn’t what I was going for, either....after all the postmodern irony of the past few decades, I sometimes wonder if we mightn’t need to be painfully sincere for at least an epoch or two to right the balance...though, admittedly, I’m not gonna be the one to start that movement...

...right now I’m lying on the floor...typing with one hand whilst my head rests on the other...really oughtta be getting to bed...but ate dinner too late...though that was the result of going to a jazz concert at the Art Museum...Sonny Fortune...used to play sax and flute with Miles Davis...which isn’t bad for a cold, rainy night...

...lately, I’ve been studying mindfulness...but I keep getting distracted...which is not to say that it isn’t all worthwhile...

If you truly want to be at peace, you must be at peace right now.
Thich Nhat Hanh

Stuff That's In the Way

...went out to take pictures of a sunset a week or so ago...like people with cameras and artsy-fartsy pretensions do...was kinda frustrated by the opportunities offered by my neighborhood for a good clear wide-open cloudscape...too many things in the way of open sky...so, walked around a bit trying to find a better vantage point....then, looking at the photos last night, ended up deciding the ones I liked best were those with the most interference...

...in the end, we’re always somewhere...always someone...always immersed in context...much as we might, sometimes, like it to be otherwise...

To say we are all God is well and good, but not at the cost of denying our humanity with all its seeming foibles.
Joel Kramer/Diana Alstad

...a week or two ago, got up Saturday morning, did some yoga and meditated, then went kayaking with a friend on a lake I’d forgotten was such a short drive away, then lay on a float in a pool reading a book on mindfulness...and, a bit later, started a completely pointless argument with people I care about...

There are no holy places and no holy people, only holy moments, only moments of wisdom.
Jack Kornfield


...in sixth grade, we read this story by Ray Bradbury...about a shoe store owner and a kid who wants a pair of sneakers but can’t afford to pay for them...the kid pleads, talks about what it would mean to him to have the sneakers, evoking antelopes and gazelles and, for a moment, kinda bringing back the shoe store guy’s own lost youth....in the end, they make a deal...the kid can have them but will have to work off the cost...the kid says thanks, and the shoe store guy says something like you’ve given me so much more...which, the teacher explained, referred to the kid giving his time to work in the store after school...which struck me, even then, as an incredibly shallow reading....up to that point, I’d had disagreements with teachers...but they generally involved matters of behavior....that, I think, was the first time I realized that teachers can’t always be trusted to understand what they’re teaching...

...though, of course, just how clueless a teacher can be didn’t quite hit me 'til I became one myself...