Bees of the Invisible

You can never get enough of what you don’t really want.
Eric Hoffer

...there’s an old joke about a guy who quit smoking, drinking, and sex, and, as a result, was in perfect health up until the day he killed himself...

...(of course, to be relevant to the twenty-first century yoga crowd, it might be better to rephrase that as quit wheat, gluten, and genetically modified foods)...

...it’s always easy, I think, to talk about other people’s bad habits...if she knows how bad that is for her, why doesn’t she quit?....next time you find yourself saying something like that, it might be a good idea to pick something you love, something small, that, nonetheless, provides countless little moments of pleasure to your life, maybe keeps you going day by day, regardless of whether it’s good for you or not...reality T.V. shows...or junk food...or surfing the internet...or masturbating...and quit cold turkey, starting now....then, after a week or so, ask the same question about that alcoholic/cigarette smoker/crack addict you were talking about before, and see if the answer might be a little bit clearer...

We are the bees of the invisible. We frantically plunder the visible of its honey, to accumulate it in the great golden hive of the invisible.
Rainer Maria Rilke

...reading Rilke, some more...sitting in full lotus...or listening to Beethoven...how very German...wonder where I can get me some good vienerschnitzel in this town...though guess it might be good to find out just exactly what vienerschnitzel is, first...

...been called lazy...by myself, mostly....some people seem to admire my drive in certain pursuits...though those generally don’t involve producing marketable goods and services of easily quantifiable value, and do little to keep the wheels of the great machine of capital churning...

...then, a related problem might be that I’ve never been so good at relaxing, either...despite so much practice...lying propped against cushions with book in hand, wandering in the woods or along a deserted beach, or sitting in a coffee shop....and yet it all seems like an ongoing struggle to achieve the relaxation so badly needed without ever...or, at least, rarely...actually achieving it...

...that was what Dharma Mittra got on me about...couldn’t care less that I couldn’t do full lotus while in head-stand for ten minutes like most of the people in the room, but was the first yoga teacher every to criticize my savasana, specifically the fact that my fingers and hands don’t really relax, most of the time...

...work may be hard, but relaxing may be harder...

The Only Living Yoga Cynic in New York...or, the Yoga Cynic Meets Dharma Mittra

Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where,
We don’t know where...
Paul Simon, The Only Living Boy in New York

...always found Manhattan kind of intimidating...so big, so uptight, arrogant, and loud, so much flagrant wealth and power, so many people so driven, so ambitious and competitive...ain’tchoohungry for success success success success...

...I like to get out on the rich-but-still-incessantly-hungry streets and just walk...

...walked the High Line...lovely, artistic, and green in a post-apocalyptic sorta way...from 14^th to 23^rd, then headed in past 6^th to get to the Master Sadhana yoga class at noon...finding a room full of hardcore New York yogis relaxing with feet behind their heads...if you can reach enlightenment theeeere, you can reach it anywheeeere....and just sat their doing my usual neck rolls, feeling even more intimidated, thinking the famous yoga master we were waiting for was gonna make organic vegan mincemeat outta me...

 ...(gotta admit, when I’ve encountered yoga bigwigs, they’ve been awesome, but, in the area of actually overcoming the ego, have seemed, if anything, generally a step or two behind the rest of us)...

 ...until this unassuming, gentle, and totally unpretentious older dude I barely noticed ‘til he was up at the front of the room started the class...making jokes in a heavy accent, smiling at the little kids running around the room (the kinda thing that drives me nuts, trying to teach yoga at the homeless shelter, but which seemed to be perfectly welcome, here)...as well as giving time to my generally neglected inability to fully relax, the hands that won't fully unclench in savasana...reminding me that, despite all that fast-forward-moving energy down in the streets, the path leads to where I already am, wherever that might be...

The Yoga Cynic Goes Native (Notes from the Magic Mountain #3)

...so far, my proudest accomplishment may be that, during my first practice-teach, somebody fell asleep during savasana....not that nobody ever dozed off back when I was teaching college English, but...

...I’ve been acquiring a reputation for going outside in the mornings in sub-freezing weather, barefoot...

...two weeks ago, parked my car in the upper lot, planning to go up and charge the battery once or twice a week....then, maybe four or five days in, went to get something and found the car so dead the clicker thing wouldn’t even work...thought guess I don’t have to worry about keeping the battery charged...

...after 6:30 am yoga and breakfast, Devarshi Steven Hartman led an morning-long “impolite conversation” of the Bhagavad Gita...following lunch, we undertook, as a group, a deep exploration of our individual pain and self-loathing, before closing out the day with an active vinyasa.....during dinner, ran into somebody from the coffee shop in West Mt. Airy, here just for the day, who asked what the teacher training was like.....I thought for a minute, said I’ll tell ya about it when I get home...

The Paris Hilton of Yoga?

...couple posts ago, made some joking remarks about yoga teachers...specifically involving stuff like the inaudibly soft, ultra-spiritual yoga teacher voice....and, as a long-time believer that, if it’s worth saying at all, it’s worth beating into the ground, have been repeating said jokes all over the place....to the point that I think I may be giving some of my (amazing, wonderful, beloved) teachers complexes.....so, to any who might be reading this, let me make it clear...the jokes aren’t about you..........they’re about those high-falutin’ yoga teachers who write for Elephant Journal...

........just kidding, people...jeezus, aren’t you all supposed to have transcended your egos by now?...

...seriously, I've been going to Facebook lately and finding I'm in demand as a yogi...really...my yoga teacher friends are sending me personal requests to go to their classes...including one that’s supposed to be videotaped for some kind anusara certification or something...(and not, I’ve been assured for World’s Funniest Yoga Bloopers on youtube)...

...not that this is interfering with my totally enlightened egoless state or anything, but it does raise all kindsa pertinent questions...like...could such desirability indicate that the mere presence of the friendly neighborhood yoga cynic now carries such cachet as to confer status and set the yoga world buzzing?...kinda like the way Paris Hilton, I read some time ago, was getting paid fifty thousand bucks just to show up at parties?...could I be the Paris Hilton of yoga?...

...(y’know, like, except for the fifty grand part...but I’m workin’ on that...see below)...

...for all you yoga teachers out there...


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* additional discounts negotiable**

** seriously, we’ll take anything...

Art is anything you can get away with.
Marshall McLuhan

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning, and I’m falling...
The Velvet Underground

...slept something like twelve or thirteen hours...making up for nights of staying up ’til eight in the morning writing blog posts while looking after people in rehab...woke up Sunday morning to find the cupboard was bare...so made a pot o’ coffee...(yes, you hardcore ayurvedic people out there, I know...)...and called some friends in South Philly to see if they were up for brunch...biked ten miles to their house and that hipster Mexican place on Passyunk for tortillas and salsa, along with a couple pitchers of blackberry margaritas...(I’m guessing the serious ayurvedic types have quit reading by this point)...starting out at a sidewalk table before having to move inside because of a sudden downpour...which, surprisingly enough, left things considerably hotter and more humid for the ride home...though, as it turns out, a picnic table by the river can be a perfect place for an impromptu savasana on a sweltering early summer afternoon...

Language has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone.

Paul Tillich

...had a dream somewhere in there in which someone was trying to convince me it was time to get some more therapy...and, in the dream, at least, I agreed...

*thanks to Brandon for the coffee art*

Ripples, Mental and Otherwise....

Rippling is the Way, flowing left and right!
Its tasks completed, its affairs finished,
Still it does not claim them for its own.
Lao Tzu

....I had another one of these kinda psychedelic experiences in yoga class...it was at the end of class and we were in savasana...that, it should be noted, is the one pose that is nearly always given its Sanskrit name in yoga classes, even if everything else is half-moon, sleeping pigeon, radiant warrior, crazed aardvark, etc....that’s because, in English, it’s corpse pose...kinda makes ya appreciate the Sanskrit, doesn’t it? Anyway, I was lying there, eyes closed, minding my own business, and started seeing these ripples in blue water...like in a large creek...just vaguely at first, but then I started to focus in...and no, I didn’t actually think I was outside looking at a creek...but it wasn’t like the way I’d normally imagine something either...more like projected onto the backs of my eyelids...what my hippie freak friend Jedediah calls an eyelid movie...but a bit less colorful and chaotic than what he’s described...so I lay there watching for a little while...then kinda refocused...like I moved back a bit, and suddenly, just for a second or two, was looking at the ocean...and then back to plain old eyelids, somewhat illuminated by the sun coming through the window....I tend to put my mat down in an area of the floor somebody called the beach...as, if there’s any sun at all on a given day, it’s shining there...

The river flows, it flows to the sea, wherever that river flows, that’s where I want to be....
Roger McGuinn

About forty mile south of Rochester, New York, the Genesee River runs through a long and spectacular gorge with a series of waterfalls in a place called Letchworth State Park. I did a lot of hiking there, and found some cool, out-o’-the-way spots, including a high cliff overlooking the largest of the waterfalls. It was off an unofficial trail, so there were no guardrails or anything, just a sheer drop to rocks and blue water rippling in a very shallow stretch of river far below. Most importantly, the cliff was concave, meaning that there’d be nothing to get caught on, nothing to stop you, no matter how the wind might shift, from plummeting to your death—no chance of ending up quadriplegic, nothing but to sleep, perchance to dream. But...as it turned out, a grad. school friend was getting married that weekend. We weren’t that close, so the wedding wouldn’t have been cancelled, but it would definitely have put a bit of a dark cloud over it...and who would want that? Two weeks later, the planes crashed into the towers, and, on September 12th, having gone to the hospital to give blood, only to be turned away, since, apparently, everybody else had the same idea, I considered walking over to the psychiatric ward and having myself committed, but ended up taking a long bike ride along the Erie Canal, instead...more rippling blue water...and so it goes....

Not Exactly Dante...

Heaven is a place
where nothing ever happens
David Byrne

There’s an Opus comic strip with Opus the penguin sitting in a grassy field while Lola Granola does yoga poses nearby, and the two talk about heaven. According to Lola, everyone goes there. Opus, having clearly seen far too much of what passes for religion in our great American public sphere, incredulously asks about liberals, evolutionists, feminists, ACLU lawyers, Kennedy Democrats, French people, and manly women who don’t shave, receiving a yep for each. At last he asks with Jerry Falwell? and receives another yep. Goodness must he be annoyed, he says, to which Lola replies eternally.

A year or so ago, I was working through a lot of stuff, through, among other means, a lot of really intense personal writing. At one point, digging into the past, I started writing out the names of some people I knew a long time ago...and cursing them...damning them...it was a rush...it was cathartic...it felt good...left me kinda wired, though, incredibly edgy...so I started doing some yoga to try and mellow out...and then, not being the kind of advanced yogi who comes even close to stopping those endless waves the Yoga Sutras talk about from flowing in the brain (full disclosure: I thought up this post while lying in savasana in yoga class earlier today), I started thinking about other stuff...also from the past...times when I was mean...cruel...nasty...one or two incidents when I really should’ve had my ass good and kicked...and, not surprisingly, I started feeling really, really bummed out...seeing myself as every bit as damnable as anybody I’d been writing about...and realized that if you don’t want to hate yourself, you can’t hate anybody else either...it’s as simple as that. Jean Paul Sartre famously wrote Hell is other people, and I won’t try to argue with him (it wouldn’t be fair, anyway, with his advantage in being considerably smarter than I far outmatched by his disadvantage in being a whole hell of a lot more dead). However, thinking of Lola Granola and Jerry Falwell, I might wonder if Hell is, in fact, nothing other than hating other people....

My Astrological Sign: Charlie the Three Toed Sloth

Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the internet
unknown (but found, of course, somewhere on the internet)

Would it be hypocritical, or at least disadvantageous, to discuss what an incredible time-waster the internet is in a blog? I met somebody once who started an anti-technology, nominally Luddite organization. She gave me the URL for their website in case I wanted to get involved.

I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass
Walt Whitman

They say savasana is the most important yoga pose, or at least some of they do. That’s “corpse pose” for the uninitiated...so easy a dead person could do it. I actually find it nearly impossible without a yoga teacher present. I can fuck off endlessly but, somehow, am not so good at actually doing nothing.

God knows, it’s sacrilege to waste the talent for idleness which I possess
William Faulkner

There’s a stupid bumper sticker that says “I was going to procrastinate but decided to put it off till later,” or something like that—I’m too lazy to google it. There’s actually something to it: procrastination is much better if done on purpose—go off and do something you actually feel like doing with the knowledge that you’re not gonna do what you’re supposed to be doing anyway, as opposed to pacing around or endlessly web surfing all afternoon under the false pretense that you’re actually gonna be productive.

No one seems to know
How useful it is to be useless.
Chuang Tzu