Sutras on the Half Shell

...the duality of fat free and cheese is absolute...nothing can be both...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 123:95

...have been so touched by the many good wishes & kind expressions of concern inspired by that bit in the last post about my bike accident, broken hand, and operation, that I’m tempted to turn this whole post into a big thank you note...with my mailing address and hints about what kindsa home-baked cookies I like best very subtly slipped in there somewhere....however, ethical concerns about truthfulness and integrity and all that...as well as the likelihood somebody'd narc me out before I got any of the aforementioned cookies...implore me to point out that it all happened five years ago...as described, with pictures and a few clever lines, here...and I’ve long healed up, which is good...as one thing you learn fast with one hand out of commission is that you generally use both of them for everything...and, though the mind always moves a lot faster than fingers can type, we get used to a certain ratio of thoughts to words...and when that ratio gets screwed up by the temporary loss of half of the usual fingers, the keyboard becomes a site of great frustration...which, most likely, would lead me to end this blog post right about here...

...in the most dysfunctional families, the dog still gets along with everybody...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 46:72

...somebody just asked me to help her write a recommendation for a mediocre student...the classic he’s not an axe-murderer kinda letter...for which, in the past, I’ve utilized handy phrases like she fulfilled course requirements...or he shows great potential for improvement...or her writing was grammatically sound, for the most part...or I enjoyed having him in my class...which, essentially, is another way of saying she seemed like a reasonably pleasant human being...or he’s not a total a-hole....so maybe it’d be better to drop all that, and go with a simple, all purpose she’s a human being who struggles and suffers and whose life can be difficult sometimes, so that, though she tries to succeed...as well as to find love and happiness and be as good a person as she can...she doesn’t always succeed...I recommend that we all try to be as understanding and compassionate as we can, now and always...but doubt that’s really what the admissions committee’s looking for...

...when truth is unknowable, it’s up to us to create meaning...or, failing that, to at least come up with some good jokes...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 101:78

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...

Another 108 Sun Salutations...with a side order of that curried cauliflower and potato stuff...

...this is the 216th Yoga for Cynics post...making it...kinda, sorta...like finishing a second set of the 108 sun salutations that make up a yoga mala.....which means...yeah...some o’ that esoteric yogacentric kinda content...which, no doubt, is utterly baffling, irritating, anachronistic, alienating, stupid-seeming, and/or simply boring to the 47.3 %* of readers who know eka pada rajakapotasana only as that curried cauliflower and potato stuff at the local Indian buffet place...

...then, I can relate...it was twenty or so years ago when I first met people who talked about yoga...along with positive attitudes, compassionate lifestyles and related topics...and was massively turned off by all of it...particularly as this more enlightened consciousness tended to be expressed through passive aggressive rage and harsh judgments toward anybody whose lifestyle was deemed less compassionate...which, as it turned out, was just about everybody...

...it’s only recently, though, having met lotsa people who do a bit better with that living your yoga thing...including my very nice blog friends**....that I’ve starting to see that all my grousing...see above...about granola nazis isn’t exactly dripping with compassion, openness, or positivity, either...

...yoga studios tend to have special deals for new students...so, I’ve tried pointing out that, thanks to my Zen-like cultivation of beginner’s mind, I’m always a new student...dying as an old student with every out-breath and reborn as a new student with every in-breath... which gets laughs...but has yet to garner me an actual discount...


* statistics are made up

** such as Brooks, on whose blog much of this post started out as a comment...

The Limits of Good Behavior

...recently banned myself, for the second time, from one of those social networking sites...also known as virtual communities...frequented by bloggers...renowned for controversy, arguments, ad hominem attacks, general rudeness, underhandedness, melodramatic exits, passive aggression, not-so-passive aggression, not-at-all-passive aggression, cyber-bullying, trolling, political, religious, and ironic extremism, behavior that could be seen as indicative of anti-social disorders, ordinary madness, extraordinary madness, Tourette’s syndrome, and/or extreme boredom...and for people getting banned by the management...tending, ironically enough, to cause only more of the above...

...banning myself, however, causes none of that...which is the point...

...generally speaking I’m with Rodney King...and the Buddha...and Karen Carpenter...and others whose names I can’t think of at the moment...though I'm almost positive they exist...in thinking it’s a good idea to try and get along with people...practice loving kindness...radiate compassion for all beings...namaste, and all that warm huggy shit....trouble is, I’m not always particularly good at it...particularly when people piss me off...by, for instance, writing self-righteous crap that’s so stupid and offensive that their despicable lack of loving kindness and compassion and open accepting yogic attitude makes me wanna smack ‘em upside the...you get the idea...

...thus, while transcending bad behavior to be a Floating Glowing Being of Pure Love remains the long-term goal, it occurs to me that, sometimes, acknowledging limitations and removing myself from the situation might be a more prudent course...particularly when it comes the impulse, in certain circumstances, when sorely provoked...usually...to act like a dick...

...which, to further complicate things, I tend to be good at...as becomes clear when, giving heartfelt, highly penitent confessions to close friends about shameful incidents from the past in which I playfully messed with people’s heads in horrible, sadistic ways, I’m rewarded with uproarious laughter and compliments on my clever, sharp-as-the-head-of-a-pin-no-self-respecting-angel-would-be-caught-dead-dancing-on wit...

...then, on the other hand...last week, I was dogsitting...enthusiastic greetings, happy walks, warm companionship...it’s all good...except, one day, my doggie friend had some...ahem...gastro-intestinal problems...and, to make matters worse, I slept in...finally wandering out to see her not, as per usual, enthusiastically stretching for her morning walk in a truly authentic downward facing dog pose, but lying on her doggie cushion with a very sheepish doggie look on her face....see, the thing about this particular doggie friend is that she behaves notoriously well...where the typical domestic canine will whine loudly, bark even more loudly, scratch at the bedroom door, and whine and bark and scratch some more until the resident human, unable to remain sleeping or anything else, gets up to let her out, this fully realized Adorable Furry Being of Pure Sweetness is so well behaved that she suffers in silence ’til she can take no more and quietly tromps down the stairs to crap on the basement carpet...demonstrating, I think, that even good behavior has its limits...

Decades of Me

...a yoga teacher I know said something about the tendency, this time of year in particular, to set intentions...resolutions...that are essentially negative...centered around parts of ourselves we want to be rid of...suggesting that instead we might try focusing on good things that have grown in us over the past year or decade...ways we’ve become kinder, healthier...things like that...which I don’t find difficult...

...though I still have a bit of trouble with this whole big whoop about new year’s eve new year’s day start of a new decade thing...and not just because of that string of miserable New Year’s Eve party experiences that caused me to forsake them years ago...

...some writers have suggested that this almost-past-decade-nobody-could-come-up-with-a-decent-name-for began, actually, not with the flipping of calendar digits and immensely anticlimactic Y2K...(I mean, seriously, even if we can’t have the Apocalypse, is a worldwide digital breakdown really too much to ask for?)...but with 9/11....bringing an abrupt, if late, close to a decade of relative peace and prosperity that started early with the fall of the Berlin Wall...just like the 30’s began with the stock market crash, and the 60's ended with Watergate...or Altamont...or Disco....okay, clearly, this system isn't perfect, either...

...nonetheless, I found myself applying its logic a bit more personally...even if rushing to do so and get this post up before midnight...(yeah, I know)...

...starting in 1966...or so I’m told...there was a relatively innocent decade called childhood...

...followed, somewhere around 1978, by one that lasted only ’til '83 or so, even if it felt like an eternity in whatever circle of hell’s reserved for the lonely and despised...

...leading to what I’ve dubbed my psychedelic era...which could also be called the really really confused decade....which might be the same thing...

...and it lasted approximately ’til 1994 or so...eventually giving way to the (semi-)respectable decade...or the trying to put it all behind me decade...or the deep denial decade...

...which crash landed some time in 2001 in a period of depression so deep and dark that everything, it seemed, needed to be reevaluated...and, in order to do that, nothing could be denied...everything had to be seen and explored...opened up in a gradual process...commencing what might be called my second psychedelic era...without the artificial sweeteners...

...and I really don’t see that ending tonight...nor, truth be told, do I really think I’d want it to...

Nidra

I’ll be your mirror, reflect what you are in case you don’t know...
Lou Reed

People are always calling me a mirror, and if a mirror looks into a mirror, what is there to see?
Andy Warhol

...toes fuzzy and pink...remember dipping into cold water on the Oregon coast 1987...a mellow place, even if not feeling that way inside...scents of incense, wet bark, and self-righteousness...brightly colored star fish and those long green whips of seaweed...bright blue anemones in profusion on the rocks along the shoreline where I walked...

...knees harbor nostalgia for early childhood...when they touched the earth with every movement...dumb feet dragging behind...

...like a globe representing a tortured world...churning and rumbling at the most inopportune times...my stomach is prone to self-dramatizing...

...spine like an old soldier, too long stuck on guard duty...soldiering on, nonetheless...dreaming of learning to dance, like a snake...

...fingers have a regrettable tendency to get into trouble...well, a tendency, at least...can’t say I always regret it...

...shoulders tense, hard...impregnable bulwarks...or so they’d like to think...against dangers real and imagined...past and present...and far too often unable to tell the difference...

...throat feels lonely...too much struggling to express what needs to be said...to establish connections...victim of post nasal drip and whatever crap enters through the mouth...and yet, tirelessly bringing the breath in and out...I’m learning to pay more attention to my throat...

...nose often irritated...kinda like it’s the angry talk-radio host of my face...but open to whatever comes around...taking in as much as it throws out...hard to say what its politics are...

...right forehead, this morning, from the eye on up, a dark grey cloud...though dissipating as warmth and light gradually filter through...



...artwork stolen from Karin.......okay, so she gave me permission to steal it...which if yer gonna insist on bein' all literal n' shit means that, in a purely technical sense, it wasn’t actually stolen...but just lemme feel like an outlaw, awright?...

This Actually Happened...

...there was this woman I was feeling really attracted to, and she was sitting near me...not conventionally beautiful, I don’t think...but not notably unconventional...or unusual, looking, either...though I certainly wouldn’t want to say she looked ordinary...because she didn’t....and, beyond that, I can’t say much...since I didn’t have my glasses on...and the room was kinda dim...so, really, I could hardly see her at all...don’t know for sure if I’d recognize her if I saw her again...though I’ve been thinking about her ever since...

...anyway, she was talking somewhat loudly to this other woman across the way...can’t say much of anything at all about her...but they were talking in this strange language...kinda clipped, choppy-sounding, somewhat guttural and staccato, like an early new wave song...and I wondered for a minute or two just what language it was...until, after a little while, I recognized it...realized it was English...though I still didn’t understood a word they said...