A Santa Ana has gusted through Southern California, too, bringing with it 85-degree temps and flocks of butterflies. The air is crispy and ionized, charged with immanence and portent. Of what? Hopefully something good. Keep your eyes peeled for a virgin birth here in SoCal.

For those readers who demand to know my personal tastes, I've jumped from Jai Uttal's "Radhe Govinda" to a Ferry Corsten CD mixed live at Spundae. Who's Ferry Corsten, you ask? He's a fucking trance DJ!

There's this one part in "Digital Punk" when he drops the bass out and you hear the chanting, cheering crowd singing along. Then, as the break roars up, the entire audience sighs as one, a giant, amorphous body with no mind ... Corsten drops the bass and absolutely steamrollers the dancefloor. A room full of people goes absolutely apeshit.

I tell you, there's yoga out there in the clubs and tents, warehouses and dancefloors. It's just that getting to it in that context will wear holes in your soul.

(There was a similarly dramatic moment on that live Fatboy Slim record, when you can hear the crowd go ballistic during that cheesy yet triumphant house break.)

The Volvo is spectacularly dusty and filled with empty water bottles; a snorkel parka sits forlornly in the trunk, waiting for winter.

Today's practice: the Cabana Room. After practice, there were a million toast/croissant/bagel particles stuck to the bottom of my mat, as the Cabana Room is where the Best Western hosts its complimentary morning buffet for guests.

Mmm, toast particles.

Two weeks of the Guruji tour and I felt stronger than ever in practice, although perhaps it's attributable to the late hour (1 PM!), the tile floor (a harder surface), or the fact that an hour or so before I'd consumed my first ever hammerhead.

This variation of what must surely be an American invention---"Caffeine with extra caffeine? Sounds swell!---had two shots of espresso topped with coffee, shot through with condensed milk, and dusted with cinnamon.

Sweet Christ, I almost experienced rapture right there in the coffee shop, and it definitely made the Wittgenstein I'm reading ("Lectures on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religion") go down smooth.

Music-wise, I'm trying to slide back into the death metal, but the black metal just works out so much smoother. This band Isis is killing it! Also copped a few Krishna Das albums, some Bloc Party for that Gang of Four feel, and a Spectrum album for droning guitar pulse.

My shameful secret: Community Resource Center Thrift Store, a couple hundred feet from the old shala. I like to go buy shitty (and I mean absolutely crappy) science fiction and fantasy books for a quarter, and then horror of horrors, read 'em. Then I donate 'em back. Sort of like a Dragonlance catch-and-release program.

But I can never turn down a good Mack Bolan ("The Executioner") or Destroyer book, either.

I ducked into the old shala today. The owner of Detour salon, the joint next door, took over the place, and is primed to knock through the walls to enlarge the salon.

The inside was totally gutted! Walls stripped and carpet gone! In a few places, the old color scheme---tan top, green bottom, bisected by purple---hung in abstract rectangles, but the rest was skeletal. She'd had to pull off the walls to bleach out the wood struts underneath to get rid of all the mold, and the carpet---well, obviously the carpet was headed for incineration.

Apparently the mold has permeated the walls, and was worst under the front windows.

I tell you, to see the studio gutted so brought a wee tear to the eye ... but only for a second, because as I said before, a room is just a room.

I got LA on tap for Tuesday ... and NYC in two weeks.