The Interweb Quote of the Year!!!

One thing this blog’s kinda been known for is the quotations peppered through its posts...often making its original writing pale in comparison, but, then, so it goes...(Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five). Of course, in this, it's taking part in that greatest of postmodern practices, which has flowered so fully on the interwebs: using other people's stuff for lack of anything original to express. So, in honor of all that, the staff here would like to share the first (and probably last) annual Yoga for Cynics Interweb Quotation of the Year!

Certainly, in the year 2011, nothing else came close to the profundity, timeliness, or sheer ubiquity of:

Something I never actually said.
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thank you, thank you.

Runners Up include:

The timeless:

Something kinda new-agey I certainly didn’t say, and that probably wouldn’t really fit with my philosophy or beliefs, either...
Rumi, the Buddha, and/or Albert Einstein

And more topical:

Something I did say, but taken so far out of context that it seems to mean the complete opposite of what it meant in-context.
Barack Obama

And, finally, who could forget:

Of course we’re going to riot....What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o’clock that they fired our football coach?
Student, Penn State, November 9, 2011

Happy new year, folks...

The Yoga Cynic Speaks of Rivers* (and “Real Yoga”)

It’s comin’ on Christmas, they’re cuttin’ down trees
They’re puttin’ up reindeer, singin’ songs of joy and peace,
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on...
Joni Mitchell

I am the river, and, therefore, a connecting thread between the living and the dead, just like the stories that speak to us in the night, I take on the likeness of past times and past events too, I am the river. But the river is just the river. Nothing more.
Javier Marías

...was in the café, post-meditation, imbibing that special kinda prana known as coffee...when this guy at the next table started talking about yoga...specifically, real yoga****...

...if you feel the need to brag about your practice, it’s probably nothing to brag about...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 451:968

...how great, generally, his practice is...how any real yogi is vegetarian...how much better ashtanga is than other kinds of yoga... how much better ashtanga yoga is than sitting meditation...since, y’know, anybody can sit in a dark room*****....somewhere in there, I turned my headphones back on...(one o’ those yamas or niyamas has gotta say something about eavesdropping)...



* apologies to Langston Hughes...**

** and, yeah, I know, apart from the quotes, the post really doesn’t have anything to do with rivers*** (that’s not even a river in the picture...it’s the Wissahickon Creek...though it did get pretty river-like last summer when it flooded)...

*** or maybe it does....whaddaya want me to do?!...explain my metaphors to you?!...

**** real yoga (noun): the kind of yoga I happen to practice. (antonym: whatever kinda yoga you happen to practice) (courtesy, the Yoga Cynic’s Dictionary)

***** leaving me thinking that, given how much difficulty I’d experienced sitting in a semi-lighted room for forty-five minutes, struggling with drowsiness, a laundry-list of physical discomforts, and a, one might say, river of past, present, and future troubles, a mere hour or so before, I may just barely qualify as anybody...******

****** which, now that I think of it, could mean I’m on the threshold of transcending individuation and a realizing ultimate oneness with the universe....have to look that one up...

The More Un-Yogic, the Better?

What is here is elsewhere; what is not here is nowhere.
Vishva-Sara-Tantra

Folks, you know I’ve never been a fan of yoga. If I wanted to spend all day on the ground sweating in a contorted position, I would eat another gas station hot dog.
Stephen Colbert

...sometimes I arrive at yoga class in what might not be considered the most, y’know, yogic mood...at some strange juncture in a difficult day, full of anxiety, anger, and/or general misery, exacerbated by the trip to yoga class, driving through traffic in the rain or nearly getting plowed into by a truck on my bike...or nearly getting plowed into by a truck on my bike in the rain, the guy who nearly killed me though I had the right of way having the nerve to yell at me...you get the idea...leaving me tromping in and rolling out my mat in a an utterly wired and generally negative frenzy....really, there couldn't be a better time to practice yoga...

...making me especially grateful for these kind, calm, and centered teachers who help me to let go...

...though, of course, as I’m learning, now, it’s a bit more complicated...or maybe simpler, but more difficult...if, ultimately, more rewarding for that...when I am the yoga teacher...

The Winter of Yoga's Discontent?

...the Vatican’s chief exorcist...yeah, apparently, they still have one o’ those...has called yoga satanic...meaning that, if there’s one thing fundamentalist Protestants, fundamentalist Muslims, and, now, the high orders of the Roman Catholic church can agree on, it’s that this ancient practice is bad, bad, BAD...and that’s not even mentioning the fundamentalist Hindus in India who object to westerners practicing yoga, or the many western yogis...at least in the blogosphere...who disapprove of most other western yogis....what was that about yoga meaning union???....Lululemon’s hawking handbags celebrating selfishness, a good friend and one of the best yoga teachers I know just made the #1 spot in a list of “locals we’d like to see naked” in Philadelphia magazine, and winter’s comin’ on....whatever...I gotta practice...

,

...can’t complain too much about going barefoot on the beach the day before Thanksgiving...even in long pants, t-shirt and sweater under rain jacket, knit cap under hood...just a few drops falling, blown by wind that, along with the tides, has so dramatically shaped hills and runnels in the sand...clouds light, dark, and in between, seeming to move in all directions at once...a bundle of half deflated party balloons floating past unintentional driftwood sculpture into the waves as I move slowly along....finally deciding to turn, head inland, put shoes and socks back on to walk the road back....some kinds of beauty can only be taken in for so long...

Headlight On Wet Black Asphalt

...headlight light* on wet black asphalt at the intersection out the window from the coffee shop** on a grey late November morning...there and gone, then replaced, gone again, and there again with the slow movement of cars, controlled by STOP signs and crossing guard...if with a slightly different quality, angle, luminosity, each time...impossible to photograph***...seems all the illumination I’m gonna get, this morning...but, for right now, it’s enough...


* kind of a redundant-sounding, not very mellifluous description, I know...but “glare” really doesn’t do it, and “sparkle” would be way too far in the opposite direction...as, in a different way, would “luminescence” or any o' them there fancy-schmancy highfalutin' words...even “shine” seems a bit much...I’m just talking about a little bit o’ plain ol’ light here, folks, nothin’ more...

** High Point Cafe, Carpenter & Greene, West Mt. Airy, State of Highly Caffeinated Sadhana, U.S.A....

*** at least not with my cell-phone camera...****

**** or, at least not with my cell-phone camera operated by me...*****

***** especially not if I get the angle wrong, so the doorframe’s largely blocking exactly what I’m trying to focus on....looked right from where I was sitting when I took it...******

****** then, the picture’s not the point, anyway...*******

******* then, really, neither are the words...

Fallen Angels, Fallen Leaves

...had a series of dreams in which I was trying to get into or out of L.A...which is weird since, though I’ve been there a few times, it’s not a city I’ve ever felt much connection to...except through movies and T.V....and Joni Mitchell singing so evocatively about the city of the fallen angels, with its specific dance of dreams and disillusionment, opportunity and loss, sunny skies and air pollution....and, now thatcha mention it, Mr. Dreams, that might just be where I am right now...

...started teaching yoga semi-regularly at a shelter for homeless families....the first time, last week, thought I was just sitting in, checking out the scene, until the teacher introduced me...said this is Jay; he’ll be teaching with me tonight, and I thought okay......this week, a lot of noise was coming down the hall at the beginning of class, and one of the students said we can’t do yoga with all that noise....I said, actually, yes we can, that learning to be still with all the noise and chaos around us is part of the practice...


...as it turned out there were also a bunch of people in the room, who weren’t practicing yoga...it’s a busy shelter, and I guess there aren’t a lot of spaces to hang out....I kept having to avoid bumping into a woman reading a magazine, sitting on a couch just behind my mat while I was teaching...and remind myself, this, too, is part of the practice...