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*

It Can Take a Long, Long Time

It’s so easy to slip, it’s so easy to fall
and let your memory drift and do nothing at all...
Lowell George

...life is more an art than a science.
Ganga White

reading yoga books
listening to Miles Davis
and sipping red wine

...have had a relatively steady daily meditation practice for the past few months...after many failed attempts over the years...and suspect my relative success this time is due, largely, to ignoring most of what I’ve read or been taught...for now simply working on the ability to sit still and resist temptations to go and do something else...

I practice compassion towards friends and enemies

but all these motherfuckers tryin’ to hate on my serenity...
Arj Barker

...and yet, somehow, even with all this meditation and yoga, everybody’s pissing me off lately...particularly myself...but everybody else, too...excluding, of course, people who read this blog...usually...and, of course, I’m far more bothered by people who don’t...who, clearly, have failed to study the ancient and revered Yoga Cynic Sutras sufficiently...particularly Sutra 53.657: Those who do not read the Yoga for Cynics blog* will endure one billion incarnations as dung beetles**...but that's really not my point...

...ancient wisdom (fake and otherwise) aside, pissed-offness doesn’t come from nowhere...and only festers when pushed back in...though tending to breed when let out in company...so it’s gotta be faced, and dealt with...which can take a long, long time...namaste for now...

* The use of the word blog in this sutra, millennia before the invention of the internet, has made interpretation quite difficult for scholars. Until recently, the term was usually loosely translated as harsh etchings on rocks.

** Various third, fourth, and fifth century commentaries (as well as a couple of sixth century commentaries, but they’re crap) point out that the billion incarnations refers only to those who fail to read the blog at all. Those who read it occasionally average far fewer dung beetle incarnations. Regular readers, of course, are rarely more than a post or two away from transcending form completely and becoming Floating Glowing Beings of Pure Love...

Broadcasting Live from the Mellow Room...

...I’ve got all my yoga books arranged on a windowsill...I’ve read a whole bunch...and most have a lotta good stuff in ‘em...even if they also, sometimes, include stuff that makes me gag...and, no, I’m not talking about that vastra dhauti thing where you swallow the twenty-foot-long cloth...though, yeah, that’d probably make me gag, too...

...one instruction you see commonly in books on yoga and/or meditation is practice in a part of your house that you don’t use for anything else...to which I tend to reply, with, uncharacteristic as it might seem for one so pious and reverent as myself, some sarcasm: why just a part of my house? Why not tell the servants to clear out one of my guest cottages?

...nonetheless, in my new place, small as it is, I’ve managed to reserve a tiny room to be, if not technically a yoga room, as I’m not gonna be using it exclusively for practicing yoga, at least a relatively yogic room....that’s where the aforementioned books are, along with some poetry, and various art objects, that big round piece of coral I found kayaking in St. Lucia, a couple candles people gave me, and an incense burner, arranged on the broad windowsill...and there’s no furniture, just some cushions on the floor, and my small moon and stars rug and purple yoga block and yoga mat...and some mellow artworks on the walls...like Alfred Sisley’s Meadow...see above...and it’s where I’m sitting typing this with my laptop on the rug right now...

...if I really wanted to be all cosmic and spiritual about it, I’d point out that the room is at the front of the house, in the middle, on the third (top) floor...and has windows that, if anything was, would have to be called the building’s third eye...

...the idea, really is simply a peaceful space...no work I don’t really want to do, no reading political blogs and leaving ranting comments, no cranking up the old Stones, Clash, or Kings of Leon albums and stomping around...that has probably more to do with what my intentions are before going in than anything else...simply the conscious decision to go into a space that’s specifically set aside for cultivating that ever elusive opposite of angst...

...and, I gotta admit that, today, coming in for the first time since it’s been officially the mellow room rather than simply the one room without boxes and crap piled everywhere, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at what I’ve found...