Time Passes Slowly

Time passes slowly up here in the mountains...

...less than three days from my not-too-far-above-sea-level home in Philly, tromping up to 13,223 feet...used to spend a lot more time at heights like this, now try to work a bit harder...usually...at gaining equilibrium wherever I find myself...


Time passes slowly when you’re lost in a dream...

...still, it’s nice to get out to wild places...if only to see through different mirrors than the ones we’re used to...

...continue to idealize these high sylvan landscapes...colorful, quiet, peaceful...appearing like little paradises, off in the distance...always in the distance...though, as becomes particularly clear when barely able to walk up a rocky path in the face of strong icy winds in September, elevation making the lungs burn and mind get fuzzy, they’re about as inhospitable as places get...gorgeous to look at, from a distance, and then go home...

Time passes slowly and then fades away...

Bob Dylan

Yoga Cynic Sutra

...been wishing lately I could do nothing but yoga, all day, every day...not sure, though, if that’s a reflection of devotion or despair...

Flying Words

...with debates raging on about commercialism, body image, and what should and shouldn't be termed “yoga,”* I’m pleased to announce the impending publication of my new translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras...

...re-titled, for the sake of commercial viability, Patanjali's 196 Secrets for Tight Buns and Rock Hard Abs...

...to be followed, early next year, by my interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita...in which Krishna counsels Arjuna on how to use the Law of Attraction™ to lose dhoti fat, meet attractive virgins of appropriate caste, and avoid paying taxes...

Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined oneself over poetry is an honour.
Oscar Wilde

...the longest word in the world is 189,819 letters long.....technically, it’s a chemical formula...it’s not in any dictionaries...and, I would guess, it’s very rarely been written...and, quite possibly never spoken at all...or used in a sentence...almost definitely never used in Scrabble...in fact, after a good bit of google searching, finding only abbreviated versions, I started wondering if it existed only in theory......until I found it here...(at the bottom is a recording of part of it read aloud...sped up...but, apparently, the work of a speech synthesizer...leaving open the question of whether it’s been spoken by a human voice)...I’d like to be the first person to use it in a poem...

…frameworks of the One (derived from mysticism) and the Many (derived from common experience) falsely polarize individuation and merging, which are actually embedded in each other…
Diana Alstad

...might silliness and seriousness be a false dichotomy as well?...isn’t everything we see or do to some extent vitally important and to some other extent ridiculous?...isn’t it all just a matter of degree...or perspective......or could it be that I just ain’t smart enough for none o’ them non-dichotomous paradoxes?...

*see here and here and here...

How You React...(for another Sept 11)

...this blog's been slackin' lately...as its few remaining readers may have noticed...and don't expect this little bit of self-referentiality to be any significant improvement...

...been regretfully neglecting my blog friends, as well...not to mention staying cheerfully irrelevant in the midst of ongoing word-wars over yoga advertising...(though, if any of you yoga advertisers out there might be interested in some nude pictures of me...I can be bought)...(like, seriously...anybody interested?)...

...ahem...

...nonetheless, thought I'd share a link to an edited version of a post from a year ago today, in memory of events nine years ago, at Elephant Journal...and relevant now as then: How You React...(for Sept. 11) ...

shanti shanti shanti

still clear quiet space

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In Dog We Trust

...had a yoga teacher once who talked a lot about the tailbone...as yoga teachers are wont to do...pointing out that it’s an evolutionary vestige...meant to control the tails we no longer have...unfortunately...

...with tails, he said, dishonesty would be impossible...imagine playing hard-to-get with tail wagging vigorously...or, conversely, trying desperately but failing to make it move while emitting false, empty I-love-you’s...

...looking after my friend Bella...pictured, above...for the week...a chance to renew my abiding faith and trust in...dog...

turning out the lights,
I hear a thump thump thumping
on the wooden floor

Mindful Distraction

It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams.
Don DeLillo

...old loneliness unearthed like shattered tablets or multiple-amputee goddesses who don’t seem to notice...photos of long-dead people as smiling children...ladies’ shoes found incongruously on uninhabited south sea islands...coffin lids scraped by desperate fingernails...vampires, figurative and otherwise...legions of slaves buried intentionally if, no doubt, unwillingly, with their kings...organic waste turning gradually to petroleum while petroleum products don’t seem to be turning to anything any time soon...flowers and dreams we hope will bloom again come spring...landmines left over from almost forgotten wars, potent as ever...

...recently read about a guy who spent years in solitary confinement as a political prisoner in...I think...China....when he came out, people were surprised at how calm and centered he seemed following such an ordeal....he credited meditation with getting him through it...though, he said, finding time to meditate was a constant struggle...even stuck as he was by himself in a cell all day, every day...

...of course, these meditative disciplines mostly come from places—India, China, Japan—that, despite romantic pastoral images in western minds, have been really, really crowded and noisy for a long, long time...maybe that’s not a coincidence...