Reptiles of the Mind

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake

...thinking about stuff is generally easier than actually doing it, but less satisfying...unless, of course, you’re thinking about doing something really stupid...
Ancient and Venerable Yoga Cynic Sutra 16:731/2

...just wrote this review for Elephant Journal of a book called Writing Yoga...and, in the process, got kinda self-indulgent...which is what I do...without apology...(I mean, seriously, it’s not like I get paid for this shit)...(and, anyway, like to think I’m working in the tradition of the late great Lester Bangs)...(remember reading Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung while in grad. school, and thinking “why can’t I write literary criticism like this?”...probably shoulda known my days in academia were numbered right then)...

Some years ago, my yoga teacher told me about a retreat she was leading on a beach in Mexico, involving instruction in not just yoga but writing.** The yoga and beach-in-Mexico parts sounded awesome, but thought I’d probably skip out on the other in favor of more wandering-on-the-beach time—I mean, I got me a PhD in English, done taut reedin’ n’ ritin’ at the college level, for chrissake, completed a novel, and published all kinds o’ crap; so y’know, what could be more fun on a trip to the tropics than having somebody correcting my split infinitives and instructing me not to end my sentences with prepositions?**** As it turned out, the writing teacher, Ann Randolph, was more holy lunatic than didactic schoolmarm. Right from the get-go, she had us radically stretching, pushing boundaries, moving beyond comfort zones into all kinds of places I really wasn’t expecting to go.***** At the end of the week, when asked how I felt about the balance of yoga and writing, I said I didn’t feel it was a combination, per se. Rather, it felt to me like it was all yoga, the writing as much as the asana practice. And this, along with, according to what I’d read, a desperate need for writers these days to have something called a web presence, led me to create my semi-famous blog, Yoga for Cynics…(mentioned in Yoga Journal and yada yada yada).****** (And, when people point out that, often, the content isn’t really about yoga, I point out that writing the blog is yoga…and, at least fifty percent of the time, I mean it).

...(yes, in this blog where, in better times, I’ve shared the words of Whitman, Shakespeare, and Kinky Friedman, I’m now quoting myself...at length)...(you’ll have to read the actual article to see the hilarious snarky footnotes, as well as get to the point where I move beyond shameless self-promotion and actually mention the book I’m reviewing)...(and yes, this is also shameless self-promotion)...

Oh, help me in my weakness, I heard the drifter say...
Bob Dylan

...so, anyway, running through this bit of personal history, particularly the cryptic web presence thing, reminded me that part of what got me into the blogging thing...in addition to, y'know, becoming one with the blogosphere and spreading peace and contentment throughout the interwebs...was a need to market my writing...(for which I also need to work on the shameless self promotion thing...as I’m doing in this post)...specifically the novel I put the finishing touches on nearly four years ago, but still haven’t gotten published, Drifter’s Escape...(yes, the title comes from that Dylan song)....(what are songs and poems good for if not to provide titles?)...(note how well that Blake line fits with the pic from my trip to Costa Rica, up there...even if it doesn't have all that much to do with the content of the post....can't have it all)...

...though, as it turns out, Yoga for Cynics has kind of taken on a life of its own...and perhaps the strategy of continually planning on getting back to the process of querying agents really soon but never actually doing it might be reevaluated...though whether that means actually getting back to querying agents, or developing a different strategy...(and, y’know, actually implementing it)...is up to question.....more on this, perhaps, as it develops...

...trying to get shit published might be yoga, too...but we're not too sure about that...
Ancient and Venerable Yoga Cynic Sutra 121:97

Seven Veils

...Yoga for Cynics is once again feelin’ the blog love...with a whopping three (3) (III) blog awards coming to its lowly self from a trio of vastly superior...okay, I’ll cut the self-loathing/false humility...also-really-good bloggers...Roseanne of It’s All Yoga, Baby, Brooks of Yoga, the Mind and Culture, and Eco Yogini of...ummm...Eco Yogini...

...as is probably clear to anyone who’s read this blog for a while, I’m not so good with rules...like, for instance, I actually do know how to write complete, properly punctuated sentences...but don’t...nonetheless, I think there was something about seven things...

1)...which reminds me of that obscure Bob Dylan song Seven Curses which is totally stolen from at least one old folk song...or at least retells a classic folktale...also appropriated, at various times, by Leadbelly, Led Zeppelin, and the Marquis de Sade...about a young girl who agrees to sleep with a crusty old judge if he’ll spare her father’s life, only to wake in the morning to find out that the judge lied, and her father’s been hung after all...and it ends with seven curses on a judge so cruel...which are that one doctor cannot save him, that two healers cannot heal him, that three eyes cannot see him, that four ears cannot hear him, that five walls cannot hide him, that six diggers cannot bury him, and that seven deaths shall never kill him...

2)...I realize that the previous entry wasn’t about me, and in fact had nothing to do with anything other than the number seven, and will try harder with the rest...

3)...had a weird sensation in yoga class, doing bridge pose, with eyes closed...felt strangely small...which, in the way people generally use the expression feeling small doesn’t sound so good...but it’s different when one tends to think of oneself as large and ungainly...

4)...ironically enough, it often seems that those who are most nostalgic and resistant to change have miserable pasts...which, I suspect grows from of a feeling that something essential was lost back then...and that, the further away then gets, the less chance there is to retrieve it...

5)...my first attempt at a blog was called It’s Rough Inside Your Head...its name something a shrink said to me once, after I’d gotten her completely exasperated by expertly shooting down every attempt she made to get me to think about my life in a more positive way...as such, the blog, which I think I wrote four posts for, never telling anybody about its existence and then killing it when I started this one, some time later, was an outpouring of unreserved vitriol about whatever pissed me off so much I felt I had to express it but couldn’t in most social circumstances for fear of offending or frightening people...

6)...was actually planning on digging out some sample paragraph or two from that unmourned virtual entity...but, somehow, in between the laptop it was created on and the one I’m typing on now, the file that stuff was saved on seems to have been lost...

7)...the goal of this blog, on the other hand...or, at least, one I can think of right now...is to try and cultivate somewhat more open, less combative aspects...not to deny those other parts, but, virtually, at least, to create a relatively peaceful, quiet space where they can be allowed to rest for a while...like a yoga practice, but in words...kinda...