Sick Again

...been sick yet again...(necessitating, yes, yet another horrifying Edward Gorey image at the head of the post)...a bad sinus cold, this time, though containing suspicious similarities to whatever that was a month ago...leaving me wasting away indoors during what were likely the last eighty degree days of the year, a perfect weekend for occupations or wandering aimlessly in the park...

...not to mention creating another regrettable gap in the ever-so-close-to-daily yoga practice...yeah, I know, but let’s face it, despite having learned a few timeless truths...(headstand while drunk=bad idea)...I’m simply not yogic enough, at this point, either to practice every day no matter what kinda toxic waste facility it feels like I've got lodged in my sinuses nor to not practice for three or four days and yet feel so centered-and-totally-okay-with-myself-and-the-universe-as-it-is-in-this-totally-sacred-as-fuck-moment as to not feel self-conscious about it...(though, admittedly, by this definition, I was never more yogic than in my first thirty-five years of life, when I never even thought about practicing yoga and, if anything, made fun of people who did)...(oh, these spiritual paradoxes)...

...so, laid the mat out just a little while ago, and got right into it...incense, Miles, and a strikingly satisfying post-neti-pot headstand...and, though, as it turned out, I wasn’t quite up for everything intended, actually found myself feeling better than I had in days, if, still, well below 100%...(yeah, you blissed out yoga hippie types out there, I hear ya...but you’re always 100%! you're always perfectly yogic!! you’re perfect just as you are in this moment, brother!!!...um, yeah, but, in a more practical sense, if I were really 100% right now, I’d have a snappy comeback...instead I just wanna blow my nose...again)...and in the mood to write for the first time since last week...so here we are...

...(meaning that, yeah, this post is ending up like one of those lame-ass movies about some stereotypical writer dork struggling to finish a novel and then, just before the credits, it turns out it’s actually the book the stupid movie’s based on!...bleah...like I said, not yet 100%)...

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*