Dear Ashtanga Yoga Blogger,
Thank you for subscribing to Ashtanga Yoga BlogBot™!
We’re the automated ashtanga yoga blog creation service that makes it a snap to generate those exhausting blog entries, leaving you with more valuable free time to do your yoga practice, think about your yoga practice, talk about your yoga practice, and obsess about those difficult asanas.
We ask you a few simple questions to determine your blog’s overall content, tone, and look, and then we feed your answers to our Blog-O-Matic™ supercomputer, which generates candid, interesting, and utterly unique blog entries that are specifically tailored to you!
Let’s get started! We’ve enclosed a blog entry form for you to fill out and return via e-mail. In addition, we require you to answer a few simple introductory questions.
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Welcome aboard!
—The Ashtanga Yoga BlogBot™ Crew
Introductory Questions
1. I would like the overall tone of my blog to be:
(Choose at least 3 but not more than 5.)
Serious
Whimsical
Catty
Devout
Fun
Churlish
Filled with doubt and self-loathing
Reverent
Irreverent
Abstruse
Self-absorbed
Profanity-laden
Filled with gratuitous drug references
2. I would like my blog to appear:
Daily
3 times per week
4 times per month
(Please note: If you upgrade to our Ultimate Ashtanga Yoga BlogBot® plan, you have the option to publish 4 times per week!)
3. I would like the look and feel of my blog to be:
Futuristic
Retro
Slick
Classic
Commodore 64
4. I would like the personal pronoun “I” to appear in my blog:
10 times
25 times
No limit
Sample Blog Template
We’ve included a sample blog template below to help get you started! Simply choose the most descriptive words and publish!
1. Oh my god, I had so much _____ getting out of bed today!
1. difficulty
2. energy
2. It was so _____ in the house!
1. nipple-hardeningly cold
2. heat-rash inducingly hot
3. It was so _____ at the yoga studio this morning!
1. nipple-hardeningly cold
2. heat-rash inducingly hot
4. My body felt so _____.
1. stiff
2. open
3. sore
4. achey
5. strong
6. weak
5. The _____ practicing next to me was so _____.
Noun
1. guy
2. girl
Adjective
1. stiff
2. flexible
3. bendy
4. floaty
6. Their _____ looked very _____.
Asana name
1. jump-backs
2. janu sirsasana C
3. marichyasana D
4. supta kurmasana
Adjective
1. floaty
2. bendy
3. stiff
7. I did _____ and it was so _____.
Asana name
1. jump-backs
2. janu sirsasana C
3. marichyasana D
4. supta kurmasana
Adjective
1. floaty
2. bendy
3. stiff
8. My _____ felt _____, and my _____ are so _____.
Body part
1. hips
2. hamstrings
3. knees
Adjective
1. tight
2. sore
3. open
Body part
1. hips
2. hamstrings
3. knees
Adjective
1. tight
2. sore
3. open
9. (_____ is when you _____.)
Asana name
1. Jump-backs
2. Janu sirsasana C
3. Marichyasana D
4. Supta kurmasana
Asana description
1. pick up off the floor and jump your legs back to a push-up position---without touching down
2. twist one foot and put the arch against the inside of the thigh on the other leg
3. put one foot in half-lotus, flex the other leg, twist, and wrap the arms.
10. My teacher came by to help me, and said _____.
1. “Better luck next year.”
2. “Having a fat day?”
3. “Body flexible, mind stiff.”
11. My teacher is so _____.
1. wise
2. mean
3. inscrutable
4. not interested in my personal story.
12. I am so _____ to be able to _____.
Adjective
1. excited
2. happy
3. self-involved
Asana description
1. press up into handstand
2. put my leg behind my head
3. grab my calves in backbend
13. After practice, I was talking to some _____ and I realized how _____ ashtanga must sound to people who don’t do it!
Noun
1. co-workers
2. friends
3. family
Adjective
1. crazy
2. stupid
3. cult-like
4. narcissistic
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Sports Therapy
The idea of a spiritual experience as a peak performance in a sport is hardly a new one, as you can read in accounts about mountain climbing, skiing, snowboarding, even the more mundane sports such as football (both Euro and US varieties), baseball, basketball, golf, et cetera, et cetera.
(The novel The Legend of Bagger Vance, for example, is a mind-numbing, ham-fisted Bhagavad Gita on the golf links. Stephen Pressfield, there will be an accounting.)
I’m culturally marooned in a surf town, so at this point, articles, books, movies, and videos that center on the spirituality of surfing (“I’m, like, at one with the wave!”) now trigger projectile vomiting.
But the unexpected encounter of a fresh take on a physical experience that transcends the physical to become something other, something spiritual, something, dare we say, yogic, is still an exceptional moment.
“I can’t determine precisely the instant in which my thought escapes its object to become a thought of pure effort,” writes avid cyclist and author Paul Fournel in Need for the Bike.
“The moment the rhythm speeds up, the moment the slope becomes steep, the moment fatigue gets the upper hand, thought doesn’t fade away before the ‘animal spirits;’ on the contrary, it’s reinforced and diffused throughout my entire body, becoming thigh-thought, back-intelligence, calf-wit. This unconscious transformation is beyond me, and I only become aware of it much later, when the lion’s share of the effort is over and thought flows back, returning to what is ordinarily considered its place.”
Perhaps “superconscious transformation” would be more fitting.
So the class’ homework assignment, typed two-page minimum due Monday, is to answer the following question: How does a form of stretching that features synchronized breathing and proscribed gazing points differ from gymnastics, calisthenics or aerobics? Or, for that matter, golf, football (both Euro and US versions), and cycling?
Ye Olde Musick Downloade
Geinoh Yamashiro, Akira OST
Jacques Lu Cont, Fabriclive 09
Eagles of Death Metal, Death by Sexy
The Flaming Lips, At War with the Mystics
Mozzer, Ringleader of the Tormentors
Editors, The Back Room
Neil Young, Prairie Wind
The idea of a spiritual experience as a peak performance in a sport is hardly a new one, as you can read in accounts about mountain climbing, skiing, snowboarding, even the more mundane sports such as football (both Euro and US varieties), baseball, basketball, golf, et cetera, et cetera.
(The novel The Legend of Bagger Vance, for example, is a mind-numbing, ham-fisted Bhagavad Gita on the golf links. Stephen Pressfield, there will be an accounting.)
I’m culturally marooned in a surf town, so at this point, articles, books, movies, and videos that center on the spirituality of surfing (“I’m, like, at one with the wave!”) now trigger projectile vomiting.
But the unexpected encounter of a fresh take on a physical experience that transcends the physical to become something other, something spiritual, something, dare we say, yogic, is still an exceptional moment.
“I can’t determine precisely the instant in which my thought escapes its object to become a thought of pure effort,” writes avid cyclist and author Paul Fournel in Need for the Bike.
“The moment the rhythm speeds up, the moment the slope becomes steep, the moment fatigue gets the upper hand, thought doesn’t fade away before the ‘animal spirits;’ on the contrary, it’s reinforced and diffused throughout my entire body, becoming thigh-thought, back-intelligence, calf-wit. This unconscious transformation is beyond me, and I only become aware of it much later, when the lion’s share of the effort is over and thought flows back, returning to what is ordinarily considered its place.”
Perhaps “superconscious transformation” would be more fitting.
So the class’ homework assignment, typed two-page minimum due Monday, is to answer the following question: How does a form of stretching that features synchronized breathing and proscribed gazing points differ from gymnastics, calisthenics or aerobics? Or, for that matter, golf, football (both Euro and US versions), and cycling?
Ye Olde Musick Downloade
Geinoh Yamashiro, Akira OST
Jacques Lu Cont, Fabriclive 09
Eagles of Death Metal, Death by Sexy
The Flaming Lips, At War with the Mystics
Mozzer, Ringleader of the Tormentors
Editors, The Back Room
Neil Young, Prairie Wind
Sunday, April 23, 2006
"After long enough, you abandon your masterpiece to sink into the real masterpiece."
---Leonard Cohen
---Leonard Cohen
Friday, April 21, 2006
Tokyo Sento Versus the Encinitas YMCA
The Japanese are generally very reserved, and so in the sento (or sauna) I visited in Tokyo, I sat and sweated in silence with my fellow sauna-goers, not least because I couldn’t speak Japanese, and if anyone spoke English, they hid it well.
I visited the Encinitas YMCA last week to recreate the sento experience and sweat out the jet lag. The dingy and under-lit wood-walled sauna at the Y is a closet-sized room just off the showers in the men’s locker-room. And o, sweet heavens, there was no piped-in Muzak! I sat in blissful silence for about 10 minutes---before being blindsided by Leonard Baxter.
Leonard entered, climbed to the top bench, and introduced himself. He appeared to be in his late 60s or early 70s. “I was watching the Masters on TV,” he told me. “I’m a golf pro.”
With what seemed to me to be a blatant lie, he immediately grabbed the conversational rudder and proceeded to steer the ship into the deep, uncharted waters of madness.
We talked about golf. Actually, Leonard talked while I listened and nodded. I don’t know shit about golf.
“I was the California Golden Gloves champ!” Leonard then declared, changing tack with a subtle non sequitur. “But I had to retire---you ever seen an old boxer? They’re practically retarded!”
“But I still got it, though. Once a boxer, always a boxer!” Leonard climbed to face me and assumed a boxer’s stance.
The sauna floor at the Encinitas Y is about two-feet square, so as a result, I had a rather intimate view, from about 6 inches away and at eye-level, of the helmeted nub of Leonard’s penis, which sprouted mushroom-like from a tuft of white pubic hair.
Any concerns I had over my sudden and unexpected proximity to Leonard’s antediluvian reproductive organs vanished, however, when he began to fire off a series of one-two punches that stopped just short of my face.
I did a fair-to-middling Spiderman impression and clambered backwards and upwards, as one does when confronted by a nude septuagenarian demonstrating his boxing prowess.
I put my hands up. “Yeah, yeah. Pretty good, man, pretty good.”
At that point, Leonard took in my tattoos and assumed I was a Self-Realization Fellowship devotee. Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship has been a fixture in Encinitas since at least the 1930s. Accordingly, Leonard pulled the pin on another non-sequitur hand-grenade and rolled it into the conversation.
“I did all that meditation shit back in the 60s!” he said, glancing up and down my arms. “I had a girlfriend at the time, this wild broad, she was into all that TM stuff. I can do samadhi if I take five long, deep breaths!” He pronounced it “sa-ma-dee.”
“Wow,” I said, “that’s incredible!”
“Yeah,” said Leonard, “it’s pretty easy.”
I stretched out on the top bench and feigned death.
Leonard was still standing, and began telling me how he felt about religion in general and the Old Testament specifically (he didn’t like either).
“Jonah!” he said.
“What a crock!” he said.
“You get eaten by a whale, you know what happens?” he said. “You die!”
He hopped from foot to foot and gesticulated wildly. Rivers of sweat streamed down his face and body. I couldn’t tell if the fluid spraying from his lips was frothy saliva---he was pretty worked up about the Old Testament---or if it was sweat that had run down his face.
The beauty of sauna polemics is that the heat will wilt even the staunchest zealot. But still, Leonard held on with the tenacity of the cockroach.
I thanked my lucky stars I’d spent time in Tokyo building up tolerance to the heat. Plus I figure that the sauna’s heat-level had been set to a temperature determined by the YMCA’s lawyers to be “safe,” and therefore I found that the room wasn’t close to the thermonuclear heat of a Japanese sento.
So my heart leapt when Leonard placed one hand on the sauna door handle: Here was a sure sign he was about to pull the ripcord! I wasn’t quite on the verge of blacking out, although I’d been pinned in the sauna for more than 45 minutes.
Leonard wasn’t quite done. “Some guy wrestling with an angel!” he said.
“You think anyone ever wrestled an angel? What a load of B.S.!”
And on that note, he opened the door and ducked off to the showers.
For the next 15 minutes, Leonard would walk over from his shower, all soaped up, open the sauna door, stick his head in, and let me know how he felt about various other stories in the Old Testament.
I waited another long 10 minutes before emerging.
When I did, Leonard Baxter was in the locker room, shaving and arguing with another man about Governor Arnold Shwarzenegger.
My total cost: the $10 day-use pass, 5 pounds of water weight, and a strange homesick longing for the tattooed and silent yakuza of my local Tokyo sento.
The Japanese are generally very reserved, and so in the sento (or sauna) I visited in Tokyo, I sat and sweated in silence with my fellow sauna-goers, not least because I couldn’t speak Japanese, and if anyone spoke English, they hid it well.
I visited the Encinitas YMCA last week to recreate the sento experience and sweat out the jet lag. The dingy and under-lit wood-walled sauna at the Y is a closet-sized room just off the showers in the men’s locker-room. And o, sweet heavens, there was no piped-in Muzak! I sat in blissful silence for about 10 minutes---before being blindsided by Leonard Baxter.
Leonard entered, climbed to the top bench, and introduced himself. He appeared to be in his late 60s or early 70s. “I was watching the Masters on TV,” he told me. “I’m a golf pro.”
With what seemed to me to be a blatant lie, he immediately grabbed the conversational rudder and proceeded to steer the ship into the deep, uncharted waters of madness.
We talked about golf. Actually, Leonard talked while I listened and nodded. I don’t know shit about golf.
“I was the California Golden Gloves champ!” Leonard then declared, changing tack with a subtle non sequitur. “But I had to retire---you ever seen an old boxer? They’re practically retarded!”
“But I still got it, though. Once a boxer, always a boxer!” Leonard climbed to face me and assumed a boxer’s stance.
The sauna floor at the Encinitas Y is about two-feet square, so as a result, I had a rather intimate view, from about 6 inches away and at eye-level, of the helmeted nub of Leonard’s penis, which sprouted mushroom-like from a tuft of white pubic hair.
Any concerns I had over my sudden and unexpected proximity to Leonard’s antediluvian reproductive organs vanished, however, when he began to fire off a series of one-two punches that stopped just short of my face.
I did a fair-to-middling Spiderman impression and clambered backwards and upwards, as one does when confronted by a nude septuagenarian demonstrating his boxing prowess.
I put my hands up. “Yeah, yeah. Pretty good, man, pretty good.”
At that point, Leonard took in my tattoos and assumed I was a Self-Realization Fellowship devotee. Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship has been a fixture in Encinitas since at least the 1930s. Accordingly, Leonard pulled the pin on another non-sequitur hand-grenade and rolled it into the conversation.
“I did all that meditation shit back in the 60s!” he said, glancing up and down my arms. “I had a girlfriend at the time, this wild broad, she was into all that TM stuff. I can do samadhi if I take five long, deep breaths!” He pronounced it “sa-ma-dee.”
“Wow,” I said, “that’s incredible!”
“Yeah,” said Leonard, “it’s pretty easy.”
I stretched out on the top bench and feigned death.
Leonard was still standing, and began telling me how he felt about religion in general and the Old Testament specifically (he didn’t like either).
“Jonah!” he said.
“What a crock!” he said.
“You get eaten by a whale, you know what happens?” he said. “You die!”
He hopped from foot to foot and gesticulated wildly. Rivers of sweat streamed down his face and body. I couldn’t tell if the fluid spraying from his lips was frothy saliva---he was pretty worked up about the Old Testament---or if it was sweat that had run down his face.
The beauty of sauna polemics is that the heat will wilt even the staunchest zealot. But still, Leonard held on with the tenacity of the cockroach.
I thanked my lucky stars I’d spent time in Tokyo building up tolerance to the heat. Plus I figure that the sauna’s heat-level had been set to a temperature determined by the YMCA’s lawyers to be “safe,” and therefore I found that the room wasn’t close to the thermonuclear heat of a Japanese sento.
So my heart leapt when Leonard placed one hand on the sauna door handle: Here was a sure sign he was about to pull the ripcord! I wasn’t quite on the verge of blacking out, although I’d been pinned in the sauna for more than 45 minutes.
Leonard wasn’t quite done. “Some guy wrestling with an angel!” he said.
“You think anyone ever wrestled an angel? What a load of B.S.!”
And on that note, he opened the door and ducked off to the showers.
For the next 15 minutes, Leonard would walk over from his shower, all soaped up, open the sauna door, stick his head in, and let me know how he felt about various other stories in the Old Testament.
I waited another long 10 minutes before emerging.
When I did, Leonard Baxter was in the locker room, shaving and arguing with another man about Governor Arnold Shwarzenegger.
My total cost: the $10 day-use pass, 5 pounds of water weight, and a strange homesick longing for the tattooed and silent yakuza of my local Tokyo sento.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
As those who read my weekly column “Yoga Hustla” know, I have the thumb, index, middle, ring and pinkie fingers of my left hand grasped firmly around the carotid artery of the yoga world. There is not the slightest tremor on Indra’s many-jeweled net that is not picked up and published by yours truly, and even as you read this, I’m working the right arm around the head for a crushing sleeper hold.
So doubtless all will be as excited as I am with this week’s veritable treasure find---the contract rider of one of the world’s biggest celebrity yoga teachers!
A contract rider accompanies a performing artist’s or celebrity’s contract to appear in public, and includes specifications on stage design, sound systems, lighting rigs, as well as the artist's wish list---from transportation and billing to dressing room accommodations and meals.
What does this big-time yoga celebrity, who I shall call “YOGA TEACHER” for fear of both legal and physical retribution, require to show up at your shala to teach the kids downward dog? And who could it possibly be? I'll never tell, so read on, o yogi …
ARTIST RIDER AGREEMENT
This rider to the contract date _____ by and between YOGA TEACHER (hereinafter referred to as "THE ARTIST") and _____ (hereinafter referred to as "THE YOGA SHALA") for the engagement is made part of the setting-forth of additional terms and conditions to attached contract.
1. One LARGE BASKET of WHITE FLOWER PETALS (any genus) to be strewn at ARTIST’S feet during the “Grand Entrance.” Shala owners responsible for flower petal clean up.
2. One NEW LARGE MANDUKA BLACK MAT, to be laid at front of shala, surrounded by AMBER-SCENTED CANDLES and wiped down with scented SANDALWOOD OIL.
3. Photographs and videos will be allowed in special "MEDIA AREA" to be set up facing ARTIST'S LEFT SIDE. All photos or video must be approved by ARTIST’S PUBLICITY AGENT.
4. Pyrotechnic requirements during ARTIST’S bandha demonstration to be paid for by shala owners and to include:
One smudge pot
Three M-80 firecrackers
Smoke machine with dry ice
5. Workshop accommodation requirements include a dressing room separated from main yoga shala by a door with lock (henceforth to be referred to as “VIP ROOM.”)
6. TOUR MANAGER to be supplied with five “VIP PASSES” to permit entry to “VIP ROOM.”
7. At ARTIST’S discretion, select workshop attendees may be invited to “VIP ROOM” for specific and individual bandha adjustments and to participate in various Tantric practices.
8. VIP ROOM craft services table to include:
One bowl of M&Ms---all red M&Ms to be removed!!! [Sic]
One vat Tiger Balm, large
12 bottles de-ionized, charcoal-filtered, glacier-drip water served at room temperature
6 unbleached organic hypo-allergenic cotton towels with thread count of 500 or greater
One large bowl (two cups) brown rice
One bowl steamed veggies, to include broccoli, chard, burdock root, carrots, beets, kale
One extra-large bag of chocolate chocolate chip cookies
One extra-thick bar of Toblerone dark chocolate
8. Workshop organizers will arrange an autograph signing to take place immediately after workshop and not to exceed 15 minutes.
9. Workshop organizers will provide 100 prints of ARTIST’S headshot, to be purchased at $5 per photo prior to workshop, and 100 copies of ARTIST’S 2006 calendar, to be purchased at $10 per copy.
10. The following items are the ONLY that ARTIST will sign:
Yoga mats
ARTIST’S head shot
The current month’s LULULEMON ad featuring ARTIST (Note: But NOT any previous months'!)
ARTIST’S 2006 calendar
ARTIST’S DVD
ARTIST’S book.
11. Questions NOT TO BE ASKED of ARTIST at any time during workshop:
“Are you Certified?”
“Are you still teaching Madonna?”
“Can you do kapotasana?”
So doubtless all will be as excited as I am with this week’s veritable treasure find---the contract rider of one of the world’s biggest celebrity yoga teachers!
A contract rider accompanies a performing artist’s or celebrity’s contract to appear in public, and includes specifications on stage design, sound systems, lighting rigs, as well as the artist's wish list---from transportation and billing to dressing room accommodations and meals.
What does this big-time yoga celebrity, who I shall call “YOGA TEACHER” for fear of both legal and physical retribution, require to show up at your shala to teach the kids downward dog? And who could it possibly be? I'll never tell, so read on, o yogi …
ARTIST RIDER AGREEMENT
This rider to the contract date _____ by and between YOGA TEACHER (hereinafter referred to as "THE ARTIST") and _____ (hereinafter referred to as "THE YOGA SHALA") for the engagement is made part of the setting-forth of additional terms and conditions to attached contract.
1. One LARGE BASKET of WHITE FLOWER PETALS (any genus) to be strewn at ARTIST’S feet during the “Grand Entrance.” Shala owners responsible for flower petal clean up.
2. One NEW LARGE MANDUKA BLACK MAT, to be laid at front of shala, surrounded by AMBER-SCENTED CANDLES and wiped down with scented SANDALWOOD OIL.
3. Photographs and videos will be allowed in special "MEDIA AREA" to be set up facing ARTIST'S LEFT SIDE. All photos or video must be approved by ARTIST’S PUBLICITY AGENT.
4. Pyrotechnic requirements during ARTIST’S bandha demonstration to be paid for by shala owners and to include:
One smudge pot
Three M-80 firecrackers
Smoke machine with dry ice
5. Workshop accommodation requirements include a dressing room separated from main yoga shala by a door with lock (henceforth to be referred to as “VIP ROOM.”)
6. TOUR MANAGER to be supplied with five “VIP PASSES” to permit entry to “VIP ROOM.”
7. At ARTIST’S discretion, select workshop attendees may be invited to “VIP ROOM” for specific and individual bandha adjustments and to participate in various Tantric practices.
8. VIP ROOM craft services table to include:
One bowl of M&Ms---all red M&Ms to be removed!!! [Sic]
One vat Tiger Balm, large
12 bottles de-ionized, charcoal-filtered, glacier-drip water served at room temperature
6 unbleached organic hypo-allergenic cotton towels with thread count of 500 or greater
One large bowl (two cups) brown rice
One bowl steamed veggies, to include broccoli, chard, burdock root, carrots, beets, kale
One extra-large bag of chocolate chocolate chip cookies
One extra-thick bar of Toblerone dark chocolate
8. Workshop organizers will arrange an autograph signing to take place immediately after workshop and not to exceed 15 minutes.
9. Workshop organizers will provide 100 prints of ARTIST’S headshot, to be purchased at $5 per photo prior to workshop, and 100 copies of ARTIST’S 2006 calendar, to be purchased at $10 per copy.
10. The following items are the ONLY that ARTIST will sign:
Yoga mats
ARTIST’S head shot
The current month’s LULULEMON ad featuring ARTIST (Note: But NOT any previous months'!)
ARTIST’S 2006 calendar
ARTIST’S DVD
ARTIST’S book.
11. Questions NOT TO BE ASKED of ARTIST at any time during workshop:
“Are you Certified?”
“Are you still teaching Madonna?”
“Can you do kapotasana?”
Thursday, April 6, 2006
Sakura
The cherry blossom trees uncurled their gnarled winter fingers during the last week of March, offering Tokyo the delicate pink and white flowers of the sakura, or cherry blossoms.
Japanese friends had talked about the apparition of the cherry blossoms with a zeal bordering on the religious. Now I see why.
Snow-banks of the gauze-thin white blossoms draped across the green banks of the moat at the Imperial Palace. On some streets, the trees lining the sidewalks were bent and bowed under the weight of the hanging cherry blossoms, or shidarezakura, so that entire city blocks were enclosed in thick pink tunnels. One day, I rounded the corner to my flat to find the neighborhood playground dwarfed by a cherry blossom tree that had sprouted a towering corona of white flowers.
The appearance of the cherry blossoms is an event in Japan that nearly everyone eagerly tracks, as news programs feature daily bloom forecasts like weather reports. The flowers’ appearance in Tokyo marks the start of spring, at which point the Japanese go on hana-mi outings. “Hana-mi” means “flower watching,” although a more adequate definition would be “drunk picnic.”
Last Saturday, a few of us gaijin ("white devils") walked through Yoyogi Park, a massive public park in Tokyo that sprawls through Shibuya and neighborhoods beyond. Certain areas are thick with sakura trees, and when the flowers bloom, hana-mi-goers picnic under a dense snow-white canopy.
That Saturday, thousands of Tokyo dwellers unrolled plastic tarps under the trees, unloaded cases of sake and beer, and removed their shoes to sit down and get to business. The air was electric with an intoxicated anarchic madness, the beautiful sense that anything could happen. People talked, laughed, sang songs, and stumbled into each other, and on one blue picnic tarp, a group of friends took turns donning and then capering about in a strange blue bear outfit, complete with giant blue bear head.
It was the cathartic heaving off of the heavy mantle of winter, and I swear I saw Bacchus, wearing a red Adidas warm-up jacket, winking at me from behind a tree. Although it may just have been a drunk Irishman.
Part of the beauty of the cherry blossoms arises from their sudden appearance after months and months of soul-freezing winter weather, and part of their beauty arises from their fleeting life-span: the flowers only last a few days, until the rain and heavy winds scour clean the branches. Their end is as stunning as their appearance, though---the wind drives the flowers off the trees, and for a time it snows pink and white.
Such a wind blew through Shibuya's Hachiko Square on Monday, and the cherry blossom tree by the Hachiko statue shed its blossoms, which spiraled and immelmanned onto the commuters rushing about below its branches.
That wind carried me out of Tokyo. April 3 was my last day in Japan.
Katsu
The farewells were much more difficult than I anticipated; three months is a long time to visit a place. I also bid a fond farewell to Katsu. His passion and intensity are humbling and beautiful, and remind me of, well, me, when I first began ashtanga.
“You never know what is enough,” said William Blake, “unless you know what is more than enough.” I hope Katsu can build the practice into his life in a more wholesome manner. When I left, he said, in broken English, “I will see you in Mysore!”
I hope so, Katsu. I hope so.
The cherry blossom trees uncurled their gnarled winter fingers during the last week of March, offering Tokyo the delicate pink and white flowers of the sakura, or cherry blossoms.
Japanese friends had talked about the apparition of the cherry blossoms with a zeal bordering on the religious. Now I see why.
Snow-banks of the gauze-thin white blossoms draped across the green banks of the moat at the Imperial Palace. On some streets, the trees lining the sidewalks were bent and bowed under the weight of the hanging cherry blossoms, or shidarezakura, so that entire city blocks were enclosed in thick pink tunnels. One day, I rounded the corner to my flat to find the neighborhood playground dwarfed by a cherry blossom tree that had sprouted a towering corona of white flowers.
The appearance of the cherry blossoms is an event in Japan that nearly everyone eagerly tracks, as news programs feature daily bloom forecasts like weather reports. The flowers’ appearance in Tokyo marks the start of spring, at which point the Japanese go on hana-mi outings. “Hana-mi” means “flower watching,” although a more adequate definition would be “drunk picnic.”
Last Saturday, a few of us gaijin ("white devils") walked through Yoyogi Park, a massive public park in Tokyo that sprawls through Shibuya and neighborhoods beyond. Certain areas are thick with sakura trees, and when the flowers bloom, hana-mi-goers picnic under a dense snow-white canopy.
That Saturday, thousands of Tokyo dwellers unrolled plastic tarps under the trees, unloaded cases of sake and beer, and removed their shoes to sit down and get to business. The air was electric with an intoxicated anarchic madness, the beautiful sense that anything could happen. People talked, laughed, sang songs, and stumbled into each other, and on one blue picnic tarp, a group of friends took turns donning and then capering about in a strange blue bear outfit, complete with giant blue bear head.
It was the cathartic heaving off of the heavy mantle of winter, and I swear I saw Bacchus, wearing a red Adidas warm-up jacket, winking at me from behind a tree. Although it may just have been a drunk Irishman.
Part of the beauty of the cherry blossoms arises from their sudden appearance after months and months of soul-freezing winter weather, and part of their beauty arises from their fleeting life-span: the flowers only last a few days, until the rain and heavy winds scour clean the branches. Their end is as stunning as their appearance, though---the wind drives the flowers off the trees, and for a time it snows pink and white.
Such a wind blew through Shibuya's Hachiko Square on Monday, and the cherry blossom tree by the Hachiko statue shed its blossoms, which spiraled and immelmanned onto the commuters rushing about below its branches.
That wind carried me out of Tokyo. April 3 was my last day in Japan.
Katsu
The farewells were much more difficult than I anticipated; three months is a long time to visit a place. I also bid a fond farewell to Katsu. His passion and intensity are humbling and beautiful, and remind me of, well, me, when I first began ashtanga.
“You never know what is enough,” said William Blake, “unless you know what is more than enough.” I hope Katsu can build the practice into his life in a more wholesome manner. When I left, he said, in broken English, “I will see you in Mysore!”
I hope so, Katsu. I hope so.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
My Nemesis!
Tokyo Yoga is on the fourth floor of a building in the neighborhood of Shibuya, which is just like the city in Blade Runner, only cleaner and more organized. The front entrance is locked until 8, so students use the rear entrance.
On Tuesday morning I cruised around the back to see a Maserati, an all-white Brabus G-Wagon, and a Ferrari Testarosa parked on the curb. Across the street, a crowd of wasted Japanese kids screeched and hollered in the blue neon light and heavy bass that spilled from the doorway of the newly opened Club Camelot.
Motherfuckers were still partying at 4:30 in the morning on a Monday night!
Hardcore.
Katsu was already practicing when I got up to the studio. He finished by 5 and laid down for savasana. It was a deep, deep savasana, as he began snoring. Katsu slept for a whole hour.
(I was in the middle of practice at 5:30 when Club Camelot closed, a fact I deduced from the sounds of 100 wasted people milling around on the street below.)
Part of the reason Katsu got a key to the joint was because Chama hired him to work the front desk, a good deal for Katsu because he gets a key to the studio and gets to practice for free.
After I finished, he asked if he could talk to me.
"I practice twice yesterday," he said, "and today I am tired and sore! What can I do?" He's finding that banging out the double practices takes quite a physical toll. He asked me how often I practiced. "Once a day is enough!" I said.
I told him to keep practicing, and either the soreness and exhaustion would go away or he'd have a complete mental meltdown.
I don't know how much he understood.
I got home later to find my flatmates huddled around their laptops. "You told Katsu you practice once a day?" they asked.
"How do you guys know that?" I said, and peaked at their screens---only to find that Katsu has a blog! He's blogging about me in Japanese!
Ye gods, what is this strange mirror universe into which I've fallen?
Katsu is my doppleganger, a Japanese Bizarro-Jason.
He must be destroyed.
My Least Favorite Authors, Musicians, Artists and Iconic Marxist Guerrillas
In no particular order.
Aleister Crowley
William Burroughs
Jack Kerouac
Charles Bukowski
Salvador Dali
M.C. Escher
Bob Marley
The Greatful Dead
Che Guevara
A Baby Angel Dies
Did you know that a baby angel dies every time Paul McCartney releases a record or the Rolling Stones take the stage and launch into "Start Me Up"?
It's true.
Tokyo Yoga is on the fourth floor of a building in the neighborhood of Shibuya, which is just like the city in Blade Runner, only cleaner and more organized. The front entrance is locked until 8, so students use the rear entrance.
On Tuesday morning I cruised around the back to see a Maserati, an all-white Brabus G-Wagon, and a Ferrari Testarosa parked on the curb. Across the street, a crowd of wasted Japanese kids screeched and hollered in the blue neon light and heavy bass that spilled from the doorway of the newly opened Club Camelot.
Motherfuckers were still partying at 4:30 in the morning on a Monday night!
Hardcore.
Katsu was already practicing when I got up to the studio. He finished by 5 and laid down for savasana. It was a deep, deep savasana, as he began snoring. Katsu slept for a whole hour.
(I was in the middle of practice at 5:30 when Club Camelot closed, a fact I deduced from the sounds of 100 wasted people milling around on the street below.)
Part of the reason Katsu got a key to the joint was because Chama hired him to work the front desk, a good deal for Katsu because he gets a key to the studio and gets to practice for free.
After I finished, he asked if he could talk to me.
"I practice twice yesterday," he said, "and today I am tired and sore! What can I do?" He's finding that banging out the double practices takes quite a physical toll. He asked me how often I practiced. "Once a day is enough!" I said.
I told him to keep practicing, and either the soreness and exhaustion would go away or he'd have a complete mental meltdown.
I don't know how much he understood.
I got home later to find my flatmates huddled around their laptops. "You told Katsu you practice once a day?" they asked.
"How do you guys know that?" I said, and peaked at their screens---only to find that Katsu has a blog! He's blogging about me in Japanese!
Ye gods, what is this strange mirror universe into which I've fallen?
Katsu is my doppleganger, a Japanese Bizarro-Jason.
He must be destroyed.
My Least Favorite Authors, Musicians, Artists and Iconic Marxist Guerrillas
In no particular order.
Aleister Crowley
William Burroughs
Jack Kerouac
Charles Bukowski
Salvador Dali
M.C. Escher
Bob Marley
The Greatful Dead
Che Guevara
A Baby Angel Dies
Did you know that a baby angel dies every time Paul McCartney releases a record or the Rolling Stones take the stage and launch into "Start Me Up"?
It's true.
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Mantra of the Day
Today's mantra comes courtesy of Brooklyn-based rapper Fabolous:
"I'm on the parkway, see me at the Knick game
Probably seen this tatted on your chick frame:
F-A-B-O-L-O-U-S."
Fabolous is saying here that he is a player of such incomprehensible magnitude that your girlfriend, and in fact all men's girlfriends everywhere, have tattooed his name somewhere on their bodies.
Your directions: repeat mantra throughout practice, and for the rest of day. For is this not god inscribing god's name on the flesh of god, all for the delight of god?
Perhaps it's just a hook from a catchy song.
Next week's mantra will come courtesy of Queensbridge rapper Jadakiss.
Extreme Decisions of a Biblical Magnitude
The new Final Fantasy video game was released to shitloads of fanfare on the sixteenth here in Tokyo, the culmination of weeks of promotional hype. There have been mega-story billboards on buildings througout the city, posters wheatpasted on every building, and the giant jumbotron building monitors have been running commercials non-stop. On weekends, the exits of the major subways were patrolled by scantily clad girls dressed as characters from the game.
The only way to top the last bit would be if the heavens opened and comic books fell from the sky. But anyway, at 6:30 in the morning of the release day, I trucked past the Shibuya Tsutaya to see 50 people lined up and waiting to purchase the game. My nerd heart swelled with emotion.
I love this country's overwelming love and support of all things nerd-related, and when a role-playing videogame is accorded the pomp and circumstance of a major cultural event, it brings tears to a grown nerd's eyes. There are now Final Fantasy point-of-purchase displays at the front counter of every 7-11. The staples: Milk, bread, rice-balls ... and Final Fantasy.
Which brings me to my current and related dilemma, on par with Abraham's from the Old Testament: I have to choose between attending a Chuck and Maty workshop this coming weekend ... or the Tokyo International Anime Fair.
Today's mantra comes courtesy of Brooklyn-based rapper Fabolous:
"I'm on the parkway, see me at the Knick game
Probably seen this tatted on your chick frame:
F-A-B-O-L-O-U-S."
Fabolous is saying here that he is a player of such incomprehensible magnitude that your girlfriend, and in fact all men's girlfriends everywhere, have tattooed his name somewhere on their bodies.
Your directions: repeat mantra throughout practice, and for the rest of day. For is this not god inscribing god's name on the flesh of god, all for the delight of god?
Perhaps it's just a hook from a catchy song.
Next week's mantra will come courtesy of Queensbridge rapper Jadakiss.
Extreme Decisions of a Biblical Magnitude
The new Final Fantasy video game was released to shitloads of fanfare on the sixteenth here in Tokyo, the culmination of weeks of promotional hype. There have been mega-story billboards on buildings througout the city, posters wheatpasted on every building, and the giant jumbotron building monitors have been running commercials non-stop. On weekends, the exits of the major subways were patrolled by scantily clad girls dressed as characters from the game.
The only way to top the last bit would be if the heavens opened and comic books fell from the sky. But anyway, at 6:30 in the morning of the release day, I trucked past the Shibuya Tsutaya to see 50 people lined up and waiting to purchase the game. My nerd heart swelled with emotion.
I love this country's overwelming love and support of all things nerd-related, and when a role-playing videogame is accorded the pomp and circumstance of a major cultural event, it brings tears to a grown nerd's eyes. There are now Final Fantasy point-of-purchase displays at the front counter of every 7-11. The staples: Milk, bread, rice-balls ... and Final Fantasy.
Which brings me to my current and related dilemma, on par with Abraham's from the Old Testament: I have to choose between attending a Chuck and Maty workshop this coming weekend ... or the Tokyo International Anime Fair.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Cell Phones
They’re everywhere in Tokyo, no shit. Yoga students tuck ‘em under their mats and check for text messages during practice.
That Crazy Bastard Katsu
My buddy Katsu, he of double-practice hamburger-flipping fame, is trying to out-zealot me! The crazy bastard! He connived a key to the studio and I arrived at 4:30 this morning to find he’d already started his practice! (Presumably his first.) I’ll show him who’s crazier …
Tokyo Defamiliarization
I walk or bike everywhere in Tokyo and live at the top of a fourth-floor walk-up. What’s a lazy man to do? I keep cashing out my calorie bank account, and consequently I’m so hungry at all times of the day that, if pressed, I could devour my own foot. (I've thought a lot about it: the left one goes first.) I cannot stop eating.
I walked by a Subway sandwich store the other day and ducked inside to hork down some carbohydrates. Ah, the generic familiarity of the global chain stores! One is always automatically oriented to the colors, the menu, and the layout.
Tokyo Subways are the same as the ones in the U.S.---the wallpaper features nineteenth-century newspaper headlines and subway blueprints, the palette is the reassuring yellow and green, and the employees stand behind the same glassed-off sandwich assembly line.
Fabolous’ “You Can’t Deny It,” featuring Nate Dogg, bumps from the overhead speakers, volume at eight. The Japanese woman behind the counter, resplendent in her Subway uniform and visor, inquires about the bread I desire for my 8cm carb-laden treat.
I am about to answer when Fabolous interrupts to say, “And if you duck cheese I'ma fuck her---duck these, motherfucker! Ghetto fabulous nigga, I ride 'til I die!”
I am stunned into immobility. Apparently big corpo chains don’t require radio edits! I recover my composure enough to ask for wheat. The Subway woman and I slide down the counter, and she asks me in open-faced earnestness which vegetables I want. Nate Dogg pipes in from the speakers: “Y’all can’t deny it, I’m a fuckin’ rider---you don’t wanna fuck with me!”
My mission is now to pay for my sandwich with a straight face.
It is difficult.
Fabolous hijacks the familiar in Tokyo! What’s the word? “Ostranenie:” to make the familiar strange. The Russian Formalists, the Situationists, Fabolous, and maybe even Brecht would be doing cartwheels.
I wolfed my Veggie Delite, head bobbing. Fabolous says, “Still don't know me, still jump in a Lex---the chain so icy I got chill bumps on my neck!”
Speaking of Bumping
The girl behind the counter at the corporate yoga studio bumped Enya at volume 10 this morning, doubtless because Enya is on the corporate “Approved Music for Yoga Studios” list. I force her to swab my vomit from the hardwood floor. “There’s a good lass,” I tell her. “You couldn’t have known.” There's nothing worse than Enya, except maybe Enya and power crystals and pewter dragons.
... And Just to Keep it Chemical!
On the heels of the popular phencyclidine posts comes another must-read!
Unfortunately I cannot lay claim to genuine experiential participation in the following event, given my hatred of cigarettes, which seems to be genetically encoded. In addition to dipping their coffin nails in liquid phencyclidine, John and a few homies used to dip 'em in Wite-Out. You know, Liquid Paper?
There was another cross-town crew who reputedly dipped theirs in embalming fluid, but that might've been rumor. Where the fuck does one get embalming fluid? Then again, where does one lay hands on liquid PCP?
I wasn't on-hand the day Eddie flopped over and had a seizure as a result of smoking the Wite-Out-coated cigarette, but I did see him after he'd recovered. One side of his face was paralyzed and looked like lumpy clay: the left side of his mouth drooped and leaked drool and his left eyelid sagged closed. Eddie had to worry about the eyeball drying out because he couldn't blink.
They’re everywhere in Tokyo, no shit. Yoga students tuck ‘em under their mats and check for text messages during practice.
That Crazy Bastard Katsu
My buddy Katsu, he of double-practice hamburger-flipping fame, is trying to out-zealot me! The crazy bastard! He connived a key to the studio and I arrived at 4:30 this morning to find he’d already started his practice! (Presumably his first.) I’ll show him who’s crazier …
Tokyo Defamiliarization
I walk or bike everywhere in Tokyo and live at the top of a fourth-floor walk-up. What’s a lazy man to do? I keep cashing out my calorie bank account, and consequently I’m so hungry at all times of the day that, if pressed, I could devour my own foot. (I've thought a lot about it: the left one goes first.) I cannot stop eating.
I walked by a Subway sandwich store the other day and ducked inside to hork down some carbohydrates. Ah, the generic familiarity of the global chain stores! One is always automatically oriented to the colors, the menu, and the layout.
Tokyo Subways are the same as the ones in the U.S.---the wallpaper features nineteenth-century newspaper headlines and subway blueprints, the palette is the reassuring yellow and green, and the employees stand behind the same glassed-off sandwich assembly line.
Fabolous’ “You Can’t Deny It,” featuring Nate Dogg, bumps from the overhead speakers, volume at eight. The Japanese woman behind the counter, resplendent in her Subway uniform and visor, inquires about the bread I desire for my 8cm carb-laden treat.
I am about to answer when Fabolous interrupts to say, “And if you duck cheese I'ma fuck her---duck these, motherfucker! Ghetto fabulous nigga, I ride 'til I die!”
I am stunned into immobility. Apparently big corpo chains don’t require radio edits! I recover my composure enough to ask for wheat. The Subway woman and I slide down the counter, and she asks me in open-faced earnestness which vegetables I want. Nate Dogg pipes in from the speakers: “Y’all can’t deny it, I’m a fuckin’ rider---you don’t wanna fuck with me!”
My mission is now to pay for my sandwich with a straight face.
It is difficult.
Fabolous hijacks the familiar in Tokyo! What’s the word? “Ostranenie:” to make the familiar strange. The Russian Formalists, the Situationists, Fabolous, and maybe even Brecht would be doing cartwheels.
I wolfed my Veggie Delite, head bobbing. Fabolous says, “Still don't know me, still jump in a Lex---the chain so icy I got chill bumps on my neck!”
Speaking of Bumping
The girl behind the counter at the corporate yoga studio bumped Enya at volume 10 this morning, doubtless because Enya is on the corporate “Approved Music for Yoga Studios” list. I force her to swab my vomit from the hardwood floor. “There’s a good lass,” I tell her. “You couldn’t have known.” There's nothing worse than Enya, except maybe Enya and power crystals and pewter dragons.
... And Just to Keep it Chemical!
On the heels of the popular phencyclidine posts comes another must-read!
Unfortunately I cannot lay claim to genuine experiential participation in the following event, given my hatred of cigarettes, which seems to be genetically encoded. In addition to dipping their coffin nails in liquid phencyclidine, John and a few homies used to dip 'em in Wite-Out. You know, Liquid Paper?
There was another cross-town crew who reputedly dipped theirs in embalming fluid, but that might've been rumor. Where the fuck does one get embalming fluid? Then again, where does one lay hands on liquid PCP?
I wasn't on-hand the day Eddie flopped over and had a seizure as a result of smoking the Wite-Out-coated cigarette, but I did see him after he'd recovered. One side of his face was paralyzed and looked like lumpy clay: the left side of his mouth drooped and leaked drool and his left eyelid sagged closed. Eddie had to worry about the eyeball drying out because he couldn't blink.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Ah, Phencyclidine
My buddy John had an unspecified number of older brothers, unspecified because they were on steady rotation in and out of jail. They were all in some East Coast biker gang. John's refrigerator at home had one entire shelf stacked with Elmer's glue jars, the kind with the glue-brush stuck on the inside of the top. The glue jars were filled with liquid phencyclidine. We used to take parsley, dip it in the jars, wrap it in tin-foil to soak, then smoke it, releasing a very singular chemical-laced parsley smell.
Once, one of John's brothers was due to be released, so John and his other brothers packed a car and picked him up from jail for a celebratory fishing trip. How many jars of Elmer's were in the car? Who knows, but I'd guess a lot, because as they sped down the freeway, the brother fresh from lock-up opened the car door and stepped out for some fresh air.
He went to the hospital and then straight back to the clink, released Friday and back on Monday. John laughed when he told me the story, like, "Hey, what the fuck? He's a dumbfuck. Shit happens." John was pretty fucked up.
Profanity-laced Phrases That Have No Japanese Equivalent When Shouted In Moving Traffic From A Speeding Bicycle
1. "Loogout homie."
2. "Watch it there, tubby."
3. "Stay in your lane, fuckface."
4. "Gah!
5. "Your left, your left, your left! Your left! Shit."
6. "Hey there chief."
7. "Oops."
8. "Whoops."
9. "Fucktard!"
10. "I am sure your BMW is not scratched."
Katsu
In broken English, Katsu tells me he quit his job as a graphic designer in order to practice ashtanga. He wanted a job that freed up his mornings so he could practice ashtanga. He now "makes hamburgers" from 10 to 10 everyday. That is to say, he works a 10-hour shift at a fast-food restaurant.
He also practices twice a day. I asked him if he was trying to get "there" twice as fast, but he didn't understand me.
We've become friends as Katsu is the first human I see every morning. He arrives at the studio to begin his first practice just when I'm finishing at around 6 a.m. He hasn't abandoned graphic design, however---he has just designed some banging shirts for my friend Chama's studio, tokyo-yoga.com.
Books
"Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius"
"Freakonomics"
"Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman
"60 Stories" by Donald Barthelme
"Kundalini: Aghori II" by Bobby Svoboda
"The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe
The number-one Tokyo banger, however, has been "Who Cares?!" by Ramesh Balsekar
Cartoons, Or, Why I Loved Bittorrent Until Our ISP Choked Our Service
Dragon Ball Z
Yu Yu Hakusho
Hellsing
Gundam: War in the Pocket
Gundam: Starlight Express
My buddy John had an unspecified number of older brothers, unspecified because they were on steady rotation in and out of jail. They were all in some East Coast biker gang. John's refrigerator at home had one entire shelf stacked with Elmer's glue jars, the kind with the glue-brush stuck on the inside of the top. The glue jars were filled with liquid phencyclidine. We used to take parsley, dip it in the jars, wrap it in tin-foil to soak, then smoke it, releasing a very singular chemical-laced parsley smell.
Once, one of John's brothers was due to be released, so John and his other brothers packed a car and picked him up from jail for a celebratory fishing trip. How many jars of Elmer's were in the car? Who knows, but I'd guess a lot, because as they sped down the freeway, the brother fresh from lock-up opened the car door and stepped out for some fresh air.
He went to the hospital and then straight back to the clink, released Friday and back on Monday. John laughed when he told me the story, like, "Hey, what the fuck? He's a dumbfuck. Shit happens." John was pretty fucked up.
Profanity-laced Phrases That Have No Japanese Equivalent When Shouted In Moving Traffic From A Speeding Bicycle
1. "Loogout homie."
2. "Watch it there, tubby."
3. "Stay in your lane, fuckface."
4. "Gah!
5. "Your left, your left, your left! Your left! Shit."
6. "Hey there chief."
7. "Oops."
8. "Whoops."
9. "Fucktard!"
10. "I am sure your BMW is not scratched."
Katsu
In broken English, Katsu tells me he quit his job as a graphic designer in order to practice ashtanga. He wanted a job that freed up his mornings so he could practice ashtanga. He now "makes hamburgers" from 10 to 10 everyday. That is to say, he works a 10-hour shift at a fast-food restaurant.
He also practices twice a day. I asked him if he was trying to get "there" twice as fast, but he didn't understand me.
We've become friends as Katsu is the first human I see every morning. He arrives at the studio to begin his first practice just when I'm finishing at around 6 a.m. He hasn't abandoned graphic design, however---he has just designed some banging shirts for my friend Chama's studio, tokyo-yoga.com.
Books
"Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius"
"Freakonomics"
"Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman
"60 Stories" by Donald Barthelme
"Kundalini: Aghori II" by Bobby Svoboda
"The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe
The number-one Tokyo banger, however, has been "Who Cares?!" by Ramesh Balsekar
Cartoons, Or, Why I Loved Bittorrent Until Our ISP Choked Our Service
Dragon Ball Z
Yu Yu Hakusho
Hellsing
Gundam: War in the Pocket
Gundam: Starlight Express
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Post-it Note Stuck to Cerebellum
Pee first, then the Tiger Balm.
Extra-wide Sharpie Tattoo on Back of Hand
(For Walking Around Tokyo)
Buy Nothing
The Best Part of Cappucino
The sludge cloud at the bottom of the cup, cut with espresso and sugar.
The Ol’ Truck Door in the Face Trick
A classic! I bike with the flow of traffic. Sometimes passengers get out of trucks stopped at traffic lights. I caught the door right in the face! Actually, I took most of it on the shoulder. Surprised hell out of the guy climbing out, too.
Chilling with Yakuza in the Sento
There’re just three of us, and we sit and sweat in the wood-walled steam room. A speaker on the ceiling pipes in the Muzak version of Van Morrison’s “Moondance” and comes very close to killing my soul.
The old yakuza guy on my left has the full-body tattoo hook-up. Arms, shoulders, back, thighs---his body is fully covered in tattoos but for a vertical stretch on his chest. All his skin is covered but for the parts that would be revealed when he wears a kimono. He smiles a genial grandfather smile and nods at me, then cracks open a manga comic about yakuza.
The younger kid now sitting on my right is the older man’s underling. He held the door open for the guy and waited a full respectful minute before entering the steam room. He’s since sprinted out twice with comic over-enthusiasm for the older man’s ringing cell phone. Comic because we’re all buck-ass naked, and there’s nothing funnier than a buck-ass naked man attempting to sprint on a wet tile floor with his dick flapping.
He’s got the beginnings of what will be the full-body tattoo hook-up, and he’s shooting sideways glances at the ink on my arm. It’s enough that I baldly stare back at him---man, I fucking hate being stared at like I’m not there, especially when I’m sitting six inches away from someone and we’re both naked.
I smile and point at his tattoos and say, “Nice.” He smiles and points at mine and says, “Very good!” We give each other the thumbs-up---two buck-ass naked guys giving each the thumbs-up and grinning like idiots. It’s not as comic as watching Junior hop around the corner at high speed on a wet floor. But it’s close.
Rice Ball Roulette
I’m not just subsisting on muesli and bananas---I’m also eating a shit-ton of hockey puck-shaped rice balls from the local Sunkus, AM/PMs, and 7-11s. Generally, I’m fairly sure what I’m getting---I prefer the sesame seed and red-bean rice ball---but when that’s not available ... spin the wheel, try your luck.
Lessons in Tokyo iPod Detournement
Directions: wander until lost. Set iPod on stun. Create dream-state meaning. Strip personal biography from the city; hijack Tokyo’s geography and history. Become an alien, make the city a strange and wondrous lunar landscape.
Round One: Leonard Cohen Versus Tokyo
“Famous Blue Raincoat” on the Metro; body pushed and pulled by the tidal wash of the crowds and the ebb and flow of the train; an ocean of humanity; “Did you ever go clear?”
Round Two: Krishna Das Versus Shibuya
4 a.m. bike ride to studio; Krishna Das’ bass-chord voice, perfectly struck, thrumming “Puja”; masked, helmeted, vinyl-suited astronaut construction worker waves me to practice with his twin orange flashlights; cold, cold, empty studio, don’t think, just do.
Round Three: Metallica Versus Akihabara
“Back to the Front”; jaw-clenching phencyclidine disconnection; “You will die/ When I say/ You will die”; technology in all its shapes and sizes; flickering, strobing, pulsing; raw wash of too much, too much.
Pee first, then the Tiger Balm.
Extra-wide Sharpie Tattoo on Back of Hand
(For Walking Around Tokyo)
Buy Nothing
The Best Part of Cappucino
The sludge cloud at the bottom of the cup, cut with espresso and sugar.
The Ol’ Truck Door in the Face Trick
A classic! I bike with the flow of traffic. Sometimes passengers get out of trucks stopped at traffic lights. I caught the door right in the face! Actually, I took most of it on the shoulder. Surprised hell out of the guy climbing out, too.
Chilling with Yakuza in the Sento
There’re just three of us, and we sit and sweat in the wood-walled steam room. A speaker on the ceiling pipes in the Muzak version of Van Morrison’s “Moondance” and comes very close to killing my soul.
The old yakuza guy on my left has the full-body tattoo hook-up. Arms, shoulders, back, thighs---his body is fully covered in tattoos but for a vertical stretch on his chest. All his skin is covered but for the parts that would be revealed when he wears a kimono. He smiles a genial grandfather smile and nods at me, then cracks open a manga comic about yakuza.
The younger kid now sitting on my right is the older man’s underling. He held the door open for the guy and waited a full respectful minute before entering the steam room. He’s since sprinted out twice with comic over-enthusiasm for the older man’s ringing cell phone. Comic because we’re all buck-ass naked, and there’s nothing funnier than a buck-ass naked man attempting to sprint on a wet tile floor with his dick flapping.
He’s got the beginnings of what will be the full-body tattoo hook-up, and he’s shooting sideways glances at the ink on my arm. It’s enough that I baldly stare back at him---man, I fucking hate being stared at like I’m not there, especially when I’m sitting six inches away from someone and we’re both naked.
I smile and point at his tattoos and say, “Nice.” He smiles and points at mine and says, “Very good!” We give each other the thumbs-up---two buck-ass naked guys giving each the thumbs-up and grinning like idiots. It’s not as comic as watching Junior hop around the corner at high speed on a wet floor. But it’s close.
Rice Ball Roulette
I’m not just subsisting on muesli and bananas---I’m also eating a shit-ton of hockey puck-shaped rice balls from the local Sunkus, AM/PMs, and 7-11s. Generally, I’m fairly sure what I’m getting---I prefer the sesame seed and red-bean rice ball---but when that’s not available ... spin the wheel, try your luck.
Lessons in Tokyo iPod Detournement
Directions: wander until lost. Set iPod on stun. Create dream-state meaning. Strip personal biography from the city; hijack Tokyo’s geography and history. Become an alien, make the city a strange and wondrous lunar landscape.
Round One: Leonard Cohen Versus Tokyo
“Famous Blue Raincoat” on the Metro; body pushed and pulled by the tidal wash of the crowds and the ebb and flow of the train; an ocean of humanity; “Did you ever go clear?”
Round Two: Krishna Das Versus Shibuya
4 a.m. bike ride to studio; Krishna Das’ bass-chord voice, perfectly struck, thrumming “Puja”; masked, helmeted, vinyl-suited astronaut construction worker waves me to practice with his twin orange flashlights; cold, cold, empty studio, don’t think, just do.
Round Three: Metallica Versus Akihabara
“Back to the Front”; jaw-clenching phencyclidine disconnection; “You will die/ When I say/ You will die”; technology in all its shapes and sizes; flickering, strobing, pulsing; raw wash of too much, too much.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Ask Cereal Boy
Once again, Cereal Boy is here to answer your cereal- and yoga-related questions.
Dear Cereal Boy,
Is muesli considered cereal, and do you eat it?
Joseph Pasquale
Ramona, CA
Joseph,
Since muesli consists of uncooked rolled oats and fruit, it is frightfully less sugary than cereal, and therefore not as good for you as regular cereal. I blame the sawdust palates of the Swiss, who invented the stuff in 1900. Muesli is, however, part of the cereal food group. It meets all the vital criteria: it is packaged in bags or boxes, is prepared with milk in a bowl, and as Jerry Seinfeld famously noted, it can be eaten with one hand, while one is doing something else. Therefore I eat the shit out of it.
Dear Cereal Boy,
Does your well-known hatred of hippies extend to granola?
Franklin Rochester
Dubuque, IA
Franklin,
My hatred of hippies extends to many of their accoutrements---Birkenstocks, hackie sacks, patchouli, alpaca wool, folk singers---but stops short of granola. Granola, which consists of a baked concoction of fruit, rolled oats, nuts and honey, became part of the cereal food group in the mid-1800s---well before the hippie co-opted it so famously at Woodstock. I do, however, consider it one of last century's great tragedies that such a glorious breakfast treat has become a slang term for those unshaven sandal-shod cretins.
Dear Cereal Boy,
Is it true you subsist solely on cereal?
Anne-Marie Plodnitz
Redford, MA
No. I pour milk on the cereal. I also consume coffee, dark chocolate, and bananas by the branch-load.
Dear Cereal Boy,
Will cereal help my yoga practice?
Sean Fillmore
Vestal, VA
Fuck yes.
Dear Cereal Boy,
In your column in last month's Light Connection, you quoted a passage from the Shiva Samhita, a 17th century yogic text, as listing the many-fold benefits of cereal consumption. I've re-read the text, and I can't find any reference to cereal. I also couldn't find any reference to espresso as "the blood of the gods." What gives?
Lisa Woodrow, DDS
Blaine, VA
You are obviously reading an outdated and culturally myopic translation. I suggest you find a better one.
Once again, Cereal Boy is here to answer your cereal- and yoga-related questions.
Dear Cereal Boy,
Is muesli considered cereal, and do you eat it?
Joseph Pasquale
Ramona, CA
Joseph,
Since muesli consists of uncooked rolled oats and fruit, it is frightfully less sugary than cereal, and therefore not as good for you as regular cereal. I blame the sawdust palates of the Swiss, who invented the stuff in 1900. Muesli is, however, part of the cereal food group. It meets all the vital criteria: it is packaged in bags or boxes, is prepared with milk in a bowl, and as Jerry Seinfeld famously noted, it can be eaten with one hand, while one is doing something else. Therefore I eat the shit out of it.
Dear Cereal Boy,
Does your well-known hatred of hippies extend to granola?
Franklin Rochester
Dubuque, IA
Franklin,
My hatred of hippies extends to many of their accoutrements---Birkenstocks, hackie sacks, patchouli, alpaca wool, folk singers---but stops short of granola. Granola, which consists of a baked concoction of fruit, rolled oats, nuts and honey, became part of the cereal food group in the mid-1800s---well before the hippie co-opted it so famously at Woodstock. I do, however, consider it one of last century's great tragedies that such a glorious breakfast treat has become a slang term for those unshaven sandal-shod cretins.
Dear Cereal Boy,
Is it true you subsist solely on cereal?
Anne-Marie Plodnitz
Redford, MA
No. I pour milk on the cereal. I also consume coffee, dark chocolate, and bananas by the branch-load.
Dear Cereal Boy,
Will cereal help my yoga practice?
Sean Fillmore
Vestal, VA
Fuck yes.
Dear Cereal Boy,
In your column in last month's Light Connection, you quoted a passage from the Shiva Samhita, a 17th century yogic text, as listing the many-fold benefits of cereal consumption. I've re-read the text, and I can't find any reference to cereal. I also couldn't find any reference to espresso as "the blood of the gods." What gives?
Lisa Woodrow, DDS
Blaine, VA
You are obviously reading an outdated and culturally myopic translation. I suggest you find a better one.
Thursday, February 2, 2006
Tokyo, city of narcoleptics: Trains shuttle to and fro, every third or fifth person slack-jawed and unconscious, either slumped over on their seat or suspended on their feet by fellow passengers and force of habit. Chin-chested hunchbacks have taken over the corner seats in coffee shops. The coffee remains untouched until waking.
Yesterday on the train, the woman next to me slumped over onto my shoulder. Four women sat across from our unlikely coupling. Three of them nodded out during the ride, heads all bowed in the same direction and gently rocking in time with the train’s rhythms.
Mind you, this is mid-day, not early morning or late night.
Tokyo is a raw rush of the most intense stimulus on the planet---visual, auditory, sensory. Its inhabitants work ungodly hours, say 10 or 11 in the morning to 10 at night. Their long work days are often book-ended by hour-and-a-half commutes.
When they don’t work, they play. The karaoke houses are 10-story neon citadels. My daily 4:30 a.m. bike ride to yoga takes me past a karaoke center, and every morning, without fail, I pass drunk clusters of people emerging and heading home … doubtless to catch an hour or two of sleep before heading back to work.
The city seems in the grips of a sleeping sickness epidemic, a story from Calvino: People fall asleep in greater and greater numbers, on the trains and in the coffee shops, to be sure, but also in cars and in supermarkets, at their desks and on street corners, in plazas and skyscraper elevators, in parks and building foyers, until one is stepping over gently snoring bodies as one walks down the sidewalk. The three-story video displays, flashing neon signs and lambent window displays go unseen and unheard, their messages blinking and echoing down silent streets. One navigates once-busy train stations on tiptoes, careful not to wake those slumbering. The city’s ever-present background noise, its dull din, becomes the drone of millions of people, gently snoring.
Tokyo Yoga
Tokyo is the same as anywhere else. People struggle to fit a practice into their daily lives, juggling jobs, families, commutes, traffic, and winter weather. The yoga explosion in Japan, specifically the ashtanga explosion, mirrored its counterpart in the west, and there are many yoga students. They are passionate, driven, and hungry for information; in typical Japanese fashion, they adopted and adapted at hyper-speed.
There is a glut of yoga teachers, too, many foreigners here as well as budding Japanese teachers who have come to the yoga in the last two or three years. Smelling the money, corporations stepped in and sewed their dollars like dragon-teeth, from which have sprouted across Japan fully formed and ultra-modern yoga studio franchises.
Rents are hideous in Tokyo, so studio maximize all hours of the day. Yoga teachers are on the grind as they are in every big city, many traveling to different yoga studios throughout the day in order to teach two or three people. My flatmate Chama owns and runs his own studio. For a while, he was teaching 25 classes a week. He’s since cut back to 15. His studio opens its doors at 6:30 a.m. and has classes throughout the entire day, sometimes until 10:30 at night. I usually only see Chama in the mid-afternoon when he stops by the flat to eat a bowl of noodles. He then passes out until it’s time to teach the evening’s class.
It would be more unsettling---"the yoga trend," like all trends or fads, will end---if ashtanga weren't so difficult to undertake and so powerful in its results. It will never be too popular because it's simply too fucking hard. It doesn't rely on star teachers to encourage the opening of one's heart chakra. Its effects are immediate and bone-deep; you just have to do it.
Yesterday on the train, the woman next to me slumped over onto my shoulder. Four women sat across from our unlikely coupling. Three of them nodded out during the ride, heads all bowed in the same direction and gently rocking in time with the train’s rhythms.
Mind you, this is mid-day, not early morning or late night.
Tokyo is a raw rush of the most intense stimulus on the planet---visual, auditory, sensory. Its inhabitants work ungodly hours, say 10 or 11 in the morning to 10 at night. Their long work days are often book-ended by hour-and-a-half commutes.
When they don’t work, they play. The karaoke houses are 10-story neon citadels. My daily 4:30 a.m. bike ride to yoga takes me past a karaoke center, and every morning, without fail, I pass drunk clusters of people emerging and heading home … doubtless to catch an hour or two of sleep before heading back to work.
The city seems in the grips of a sleeping sickness epidemic, a story from Calvino: People fall asleep in greater and greater numbers, on the trains and in the coffee shops, to be sure, but also in cars and in supermarkets, at their desks and on street corners, in plazas and skyscraper elevators, in parks and building foyers, until one is stepping over gently snoring bodies as one walks down the sidewalk. The three-story video displays, flashing neon signs and lambent window displays go unseen and unheard, their messages blinking and echoing down silent streets. One navigates once-busy train stations on tiptoes, careful not to wake those slumbering. The city’s ever-present background noise, its dull din, becomes the drone of millions of people, gently snoring.
Tokyo Yoga
Tokyo is the same as anywhere else. People struggle to fit a practice into their daily lives, juggling jobs, families, commutes, traffic, and winter weather. The yoga explosion in Japan, specifically the ashtanga explosion, mirrored its counterpart in the west, and there are many yoga students. They are passionate, driven, and hungry for information; in typical Japanese fashion, they adopted and adapted at hyper-speed.
There is a glut of yoga teachers, too, many foreigners here as well as budding Japanese teachers who have come to the yoga in the last two or three years. Smelling the money, corporations stepped in and sewed their dollars like dragon-teeth, from which have sprouted across Japan fully formed and ultra-modern yoga studio franchises.
Rents are hideous in Tokyo, so studio maximize all hours of the day. Yoga teachers are on the grind as they are in every big city, many traveling to different yoga studios throughout the day in order to teach two or three people. My flatmate Chama owns and runs his own studio. For a while, he was teaching 25 classes a week. He’s since cut back to 15. His studio opens its doors at 6:30 a.m. and has classes throughout the entire day, sometimes until 10:30 at night. I usually only see Chama in the mid-afternoon when he stops by the flat to eat a bowl of noodles. He then passes out until it’s time to teach the evening’s class.
It would be more unsettling---"the yoga trend," like all trends or fads, will end---if ashtanga weren't so difficult to undertake and so powerful in its results. It will never be too popular because it's simply too fucking hard. It doesn't rely on star teachers to encourage the opening of one's heart chakra. Its effects are immediate and bone-deep; you just have to do it.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
The Future is Now
One
Our washing machine washes, rinses, spins and dries clothes---all in one. You put the clothes in, push a button, and return two hours later to a load of clean, dry clothes.
Two
Our microwave is also a toaster---you pull off the revolving plate and a grill is underneath. There's a toast button on the front.
Three
Kranti bought the most futuristic cell phone in the world for ¥1. It's a Star Trek tricorder that takes photos and videos, recieves and sends e-mails, browses the Web, and makes excellent wet cappucinos. You can also swipe the phone on the electric sensors at subway turnstiles to ride the train. You can swipe it on many vending machines, which, in Tokyo, contain soda, juices, water, coffee, sandwiches, beer, mixed drinks, cigarettes, cigars, school-girl underpants, et cetera et cetera. There are a growing number of restaurants where you can swipe your phone to pay the bill.
Other
Every day, yoga studios in Tokyo provide fresh wet-wipes to students, with which they wipe down their mats.
Public Bath Blues
I am denied entry to a public bath due to my tattoos; a sign in front of the building features an "x" over an icon of a man covered in dragon tattoos. I try to explain to the employees that I am not yakuza, but to no avail.
Recipe for Coma
Ingredients
1. Wake at 3 a.m. to practice yoga at 4.
2. Stay awake all day.
3. That evening, swallow 1,000mgs of Robaxin (generic name: Methocarbamol).
4. Follow that with two hours in a Japanese bath. "Bath" includes sauna, hot tub, ice dip, and steam room. (Note: "hot" tub more accurately called "core of the fucking sun" tub.)
5. After bath, drink half of one shot-glass-sized hot sake.
Directions:
Slide off the restaurant booth into a puddle on the floor, unable to move your limbs. Blink "SOS" in Morse code to alert friends that you are in fact a sentient puddle of water, and that you need to be levered into a taxi with your home address pinned to your lapel.
Drukqs
Psilocybin mushrooms were legal in Japan until three years ago; head shops used to sell baggies of them. In contrast, marijuana is very illegal. People are brought up on criminal charges for failing urine tests.
DMT is still legal and available; I have not inquired about ketamine.
The GG Allin Challenge
Consumer culture has reached its apogee in Tokyo. Fashion has been deconstructed down to the molecular level and codified accordingly; fashion is followed with a rigor and zeal that, as William Gibson says in Pattern Recognition, has become an act of worship.
All of which has pushed me to the other and no less extreme end of the spectrum, the GG Allin Challenge, or the Scum Fuck Possession Fast, which involves giving up material possessions and only living with whatever fits in a brown paper bag.
GG Allin, as I'm sure everyone is aware, was a punk-rock car accident, a perpetual man on fire who wrote classic songs like "Drink, Fight and Fuck," and who hurled obscenities, fists, excrement, and other bodily effluvia on audience members. He swore he was going to kill himself on stage, but overdosed and died before he could make good.
GG had a simple philosophy on life. He had the jacket on his back and could fit everything else he owned in a brown paper bag, in case he needed to blow town, which he often did. The brown paper bag also presumably contained a six-pack and a carton of cigs.
Proposal: 10-day fast with only access to the clothing and toiletries that one is wearing and and one can fit in one regulation-sized brown paper shopping bag. No layering of clothes like girls who cheat at spin the bottle, and no department store bags! (Those are considered sacks.)
Things that are not considered "clothing" and "toiletries," and are as such outside of the fast: books, music, comic books.
You can't use your credit card, either. It's all cash-on-hand. So withdraw some money and live on a budget. You think fucking GG Allin, who wrote an album called Live Fast, Die Fast, had a fucking credit card, college boy? Fuck no.
Ten days? Make it a month.
You could do this no problem in India ... Tokyo, however, as with most places in the West: much harder---not least because it's freezing in Japan right now and you'd fill up the bag with just one sweater.
Okay, so we make it a seasonal fast---spring and summer only.
Which lets me off the hook ... for now.
One
Our washing machine washes, rinses, spins and dries clothes---all in one. You put the clothes in, push a button, and return two hours later to a load of clean, dry clothes.
Two
Our microwave is also a toaster---you pull off the revolving plate and a grill is underneath. There's a toast button on the front.
Three
Kranti bought the most futuristic cell phone in the world for ¥1. It's a Star Trek tricorder that takes photos and videos, recieves and sends e-mails, browses the Web, and makes excellent wet cappucinos. You can also swipe the phone on the electric sensors at subway turnstiles to ride the train. You can swipe it on many vending machines, which, in Tokyo, contain soda, juices, water, coffee, sandwiches, beer, mixed drinks, cigarettes, cigars, school-girl underpants, et cetera et cetera. There are a growing number of restaurants where you can swipe your phone to pay the bill.
Other
Every day, yoga studios in Tokyo provide fresh wet-wipes to students, with which they wipe down their mats.
Public Bath Blues
I am denied entry to a public bath due to my tattoos; a sign in front of the building features an "x" over an icon of a man covered in dragon tattoos. I try to explain to the employees that I am not yakuza, but to no avail.
Recipe for Coma
Ingredients
1. Wake at 3 a.m. to practice yoga at 4.
2. Stay awake all day.
3. That evening, swallow 1,000mgs of Robaxin (generic name: Methocarbamol).
4. Follow that with two hours in a Japanese bath. "Bath" includes sauna, hot tub, ice dip, and steam room. (Note: "hot" tub more accurately called "core of the fucking sun" tub.)
5. After bath, drink half of one shot-glass-sized hot sake.
Directions:
Slide off the restaurant booth into a puddle on the floor, unable to move your limbs. Blink "SOS" in Morse code to alert friends that you are in fact a sentient puddle of water, and that you need to be levered into a taxi with your home address pinned to your lapel.
Drukqs
Psilocybin mushrooms were legal in Japan until three years ago; head shops used to sell baggies of them. In contrast, marijuana is very illegal. People are brought up on criminal charges for failing urine tests.
DMT is still legal and available; I have not inquired about ketamine.
The GG Allin Challenge
Consumer culture has reached its apogee in Tokyo. Fashion has been deconstructed down to the molecular level and codified accordingly; fashion is followed with a rigor and zeal that, as William Gibson says in Pattern Recognition, has become an act of worship.
All of which has pushed me to the other and no less extreme end of the spectrum, the GG Allin Challenge, or the Scum Fuck Possession Fast, which involves giving up material possessions and only living with whatever fits in a brown paper bag.
GG Allin, as I'm sure everyone is aware, was a punk-rock car accident, a perpetual man on fire who wrote classic songs like "Drink, Fight and Fuck," and who hurled obscenities, fists, excrement, and other bodily effluvia on audience members. He swore he was going to kill himself on stage, but overdosed and died before he could make good.
GG had a simple philosophy on life. He had the jacket on his back and could fit everything else he owned in a brown paper bag, in case he needed to blow town, which he often did. The brown paper bag also presumably contained a six-pack and a carton of cigs.
Proposal: 10-day fast with only access to the clothing and toiletries that one is wearing and and one can fit in one regulation-sized brown paper shopping bag. No layering of clothes like girls who cheat at spin the bottle, and no department store bags! (Those are considered sacks.)
Things that are not considered "clothing" and "toiletries," and are as such outside of the fast: books, music, comic books.
You can't use your credit card, either. It's all cash-on-hand. So withdraw some money and live on a budget. You think fucking GG Allin, who wrote an album called Live Fast, Die Fast, had a fucking credit card, college boy? Fuck no.
Ten days? Make it a month.
You could do this no problem in India ... Tokyo, however, as with most places in the West: much harder---not least because it's freezing in Japan right now and you'd fill up the bag with just one sweater.
Okay, so we make it a seasonal fast---spring and summer only.
Which lets me off the hook ... for now.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Subtle and Insidious
The allure to "teach," to be a "teacher." To tell it like it "is." To see the hunger for knowledge in a slight tilt of head and to seize upon it. To enjoy the role of authoriity figure. To enjoy being listened to and taken seriously. To shrug on the coat of gravitas, worldliness, experience. To hesitate at the thought of practicing with students.To hesitate to be seen as anything less than perfect.
Recipe for Antidote
Practice, practice, practice. Practice. Listen more, talk less. Pause before speaking. Inhale, exhale. Always question, yet move spontaneously. Is this about me? Or them? The worst vice is advice. Your truth is not their truth. Your truth is not even your truth. Remember Siddartha Gautama on his deathbed, to his monks: "Be a lamp unto yourselves."
Respect Due
Tim Miller would no doubt laugh, but one of the things I most respect about him is that he practices with his students three times a week. He unrolls his mat just as they (we) do and then puts in the work, gifts and impediments bare for all to see, sattvic and tamasic days alike.
The allure to "teach," to be a "teacher." To tell it like it "is." To see the hunger for knowledge in a slight tilt of head and to seize upon it. To enjoy the role of authoriity figure. To enjoy being listened to and taken seriously. To shrug on the coat of gravitas, worldliness, experience. To hesitate at the thought of practicing with students.To hesitate to be seen as anything less than perfect.
Recipe for Antidote
Practice, practice, practice. Practice. Listen more, talk less. Pause before speaking. Inhale, exhale. Always question, yet move spontaneously. Is this about me? Or them? The worst vice is advice. Your truth is not their truth. Your truth is not even your truth. Remember Siddartha Gautama on his deathbed, to his monks: "Be a lamp unto yourselves."
Respect Due
Tim Miller would no doubt laugh, but one of the things I most respect about him is that he practices with his students three times a week. He unrolls his mat just as they (we) do and then puts in the work, gifts and impediments bare for all to see, sattvic and tamasic days alike.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
What the hell? Where have I been? Why haven't I posted in ages? And why am I in Tokyo?
The Rain Bit
It rained non-stop for seven of our ten-day stay in Auroville last October. It was Indra's fury at the Bay of Bengal manifest as an unending apocalyptic torrent of water, which poured forthl from the sky to blot out the universe. All roads were muddy brown lakes that we forded on motorcylce, ankle-deep. The very walls of our guesthouse exhaled water that soaked through our bed.
Everywhere, everything was mold, mud and grit. And always the fucking rain. After three straight days it had penetrated our skins and skulls and souls.
The murder marked the low point. A young man, a member of one of two local village gangs, was stabbed to death by rival gang-members. For the remainder of our stay, the air was filled with tension and grief and the dull roar of the grey rain.
The Cockroach Bit
Fuck a two-hour car ride from Auroville to Chennai, follwed by a nine-hour train ride home to Mysore. We strapped into seats on Air Deccan for a one-hour flight.
Just before take-off, a fat brown roach skittered over the headrest of the seat in front of me. It waved its antennae and then disappeared, continuing its cabin circumambulations.
Jet Lag
For my money, the best drug on the market. Your circadian rhythms are like, totally fucked, man. As William Gibson says, jet lag is like sending your body someplace, and then waiting a few days for it to reel in your soul.
Two or Three Things About in Tokyo
1. People don't lock up bikes. They just park 'em on the sidewalk, hit the kick-stand, and leave 'em.
2, Don't cross against the light at crowded intersections. Lemming-like, everyone will follow you across the street; even into the face of oncoming traffic.
3. The mouth of Takeshita Street slopes gradually downhill. Hundreds of shoppers clog the street and sidewalk, wall to wall. All twirl, maneuver and otherwise pilot umbrellas to fend off the snow pouring forth from the heavens. It is a delicate dance. I am a full head taller than most everyone, and tower over a sea of bobbing plastic Technicolor domes, red, green, white, black, blue, clear, camouflage; plain or monogrammed. It is a Busby Berkeley set waiting for someone to cry "Action!" to cue synchronized song and dance.
The Power Nap Bit
Mid-day: the kid next to me at the coffee-shop is studying, highlighting a page in a book and taking notes, doubtless preparing himself for the critical entrance exam into eleventh grade. Twenty minutes pass. The kid leans back in his chair, closes his eyes, and slides down in the booth, dead asleep.
A friend told me that many Japanese students get very little sleep due to school, after-school tutoring school (called "cram" school), and then more studying.
Waitresses passed too and fro and batted nary an eye. After an hour the kid gave a little snort, woke up, and resumed studying.
The Rain Bit
It rained non-stop for seven of our ten-day stay in Auroville last October. It was Indra's fury at the Bay of Bengal manifest as an unending apocalyptic torrent of water, which poured forthl from the sky to blot out the universe. All roads were muddy brown lakes that we forded on motorcylce, ankle-deep. The very walls of our guesthouse exhaled water that soaked through our bed.
Everywhere, everything was mold, mud and grit. And always the fucking rain. After three straight days it had penetrated our skins and skulls and souls.
The murder marked the low point. A young man, a member of one of two local village gangs, was stabbed to death by rival gang-members. For the remainder of our stay, the air was filled with tension and grief and the dull roar of the grey rain.
The Cockroach Bit
Fuck a two-hour car ride from Auroville to Chennai, follwed by a nine-hour train ride home to Mysore. We strapped into seats on Air Deccan for a one-hour flight.
Just before take-off, a fat brown roach skittered over the headrest of the seat in front of me. It waved its antennae and then disappeared, continuing its cabin circumambulations.
Jet Lag
For my money, the best drug on the market. Your circadian rhythms are like, totally fucked, man. As William Gibson says, jet lag is like sending your body someplace, and then waiting a few days for it to reel in your soul.
Two or Three Things About in Tokyo
1. People don't lock up bikes. They just park 'em on the sidewalk, hit the kick-stand, and leave 'em.
2, Don't cross against the light at crowded intersections. Lemming-like, everyone will follow you across the street; even into the face of oncoming traffic.
3. The mouth of Takeshita Street slopes gradually downhill. Hundreds of shoppers clog the street and sidewalk, wall to wall. All twirl, maneuver and otherwise pilot umbrellas to fend off the snow pouring forth from the heavens. It is a delicate dance. I am a full head taller than most everyone, and tower over a sea of bobbing plastic Technicolor domes, red, green, white, black, blue, clear, camouflage; plain or monogrammed. It is a Busby Berkeley set waiting for someone to cry "Action!" to cue synchronized song and dance.
The Power Nap Bit
Mid-day: the kid next to me at the coffee-shop is studying, highlighting a page in a book and taking notes, doubtless preparing himself for the critical entrance exam into eleventh grade. Twenty minutes pass. The kid leans back in his chair, closes his eyes, and slides down in the booth, dead asleep.
A friend told me that many Japanese students get very little sleep due to school, after-school tutoring school (called "cram" school), and then more studying.
Waitresses passed too and fro and batted nary an eye. After an hour the kid gave a little snort, woke up, and resumed studying.
Saturday, October 1, 2005
Straight from the Tap
The milk boy delivers fresh milk---still warm from the udder---every day at 4:30 p.m. for the sum of 7 rupees. We’ve bought a milk pail expressly for the purpose. He pours out a half-liter, then dips back into the bucket with his cup and tops it off with a well-practiced flourish, a graceful mobius swirl of the wrist. The boy does, however, walk into our living room sans knocking, which is quite unnerving. He doesn’t stand in the hallway, doorway or even inside the general front door area: the door will suddenly swing wide and he’ll troop right into the living room. Andrew boils the milk for 2 to 3 minutes; it usually ends up foamed for cappuccino although I’ve been known to pour a bowl for cereal.
We Regret the Passing …
Let me take a moment of silence, head down and on bended knee, for the passing of my position at Cosmodemonic Shoe Co, Inc. My job ended not with the usual ritual pomp and circumstance---the farewell lunch endured, smiles and handshakes apportioned to every cubicle, and the yoga-India monologue recited---but by a gradual and somewhat confused un-entanglement. I worked remotely from India for the last two weeks, responding to certain e-mails, disregarding others, and detaching a little more every day.
Mysore’s Subtle Tyranny
Be free from the idea that you must only read books about yoga! Liberate yourself from the creeping anxiety that your free time must consist of chanting, Sanskrit and Sutra classes! Read John Grisham, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum! Rent and watch films you would never dream of watching! “American Pie 3!” “40-Year-Old Virgin!” “Orgazmo!”
Casual Piracy
Video Tech is on Kalidasa Road, across from the petrol station. I have to duck my head to enter its open garage-door storefront. Hundreds of VCDs line the racks on the four walls, the DVDs are tucked in a three-foot-tall recessed alcove behind the front counter.
I’m sure I pay Westerner prices---30Rs per DVD!---so they let me sort through the good shit behind the counter. I squat and sit on a stool in confessional and the kid turns on an overhead bulb: “Wedding Crashers,” “Fantastic Four,” “War of the Worlds,” “Red Eye;” incongruously, Renoir’s “The Grand Illusion.”
There’s a 1-in-10 chance my laptop simply won’t read the DVD as existing, and many copies are filmed directly off the screen. We’ve been fortunate, though, as none of the copies we’ve rented have included filmgoers’ heads. “Wedding Crashers” did have an extra audience laugh-track.
I sorted through a basket of music CDs on the counter yesterday. I left with three, for the sum of 15Rs each per day. One CD contained 15 Pink Floyd albums, one contained 11 Metallica albums, and the last contained 13 of the latest pop albums (Backstreet Boys, Jennifer Lopez, Black Eyed Peas, The Scorpions, Richard Marx, and … Nelly?) Tara wanted the two Black Eyed Peas albums, although I swooped the Backstreet Boys album (“Never Gone”) for myself.
Courtesy of Video Tech, last Tuesday I downloaded onto my computer 21 episodes from the third season of “Seinfeld,” and on Sunday the entire first season of “Sex and the City.” Decadent? Maybe. Downright sybaritic? One could make the case ...
The milk boy delivers fresh milk---still warm from the udder---every day at 4:30 p.m. for the sum of 7 rupees. We’ve bought a milk pail expressly for the purpose. He pours out a half-liter, then dips back into the bucket with his cup and tops it off with a well-practiced flourish, a graceful mobius swirl of the wrist. The boy does, however, walk into our living room sans knocking, which is quite unnerving. He doesn’t stand in the hallway, doorway or even inside the general front door area: the door will suddenly swing wide and he’ll troop right into the living room. Andrew boils the milk for 2 to 3 minutes; it usually ends up foamed for cappuccino although I’ve been known to pour a bowl for cereal.
We Regret the Passing …
Let me take a moment of silence, head down and on bended knee, for the passing of my position at Cosmodemonic Shoe Co, Inc. My job ended not with the usual ritual pomp and circumstance---the farewell lunch endured, smiles and handshakes apportioned to every cubicle, and the yoga-India monologue recited---but by a gradual and somewhat confused un-entanglement. I worked remotely from India for the last two weeks, responding to certain e-mails, disregarding others, and detaching a little more every day.
Mysore’s Subtle Tyranny
Be free from the idea that you must only read books about yoga! Liberate yourself from the creeping anxiety that your free time must consist of chanting, Sanskrit and Sutra classes! Read John Grisham, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum! Rent and watch films you would never dream of watching! “American Pie 3!” “40-Year-Old Virgin!” “Orgazmo!”
Casual Piracy
Video Tech is on Kalidasa Road, across from the petrol station. I have to duck my head to enter its open garage-door storefront. Hundreds of VCDs line the racks on the four walls, the DVDs are tucked in a three-foot-tall recessed alcove behind the front counter.
I’m sure I pay Westerner prices---30Rs per DVD!---so they let me sort through the good shit behind the counter. I squat and sit on a stool in confessional and the kid turns on an overhead bulb: “Wedding Crashers,” “Fantastic Four,” “War of the Worlds,” “Red Eye;” incongruously, Renoir’s “The Grand Illusion.”
There’s a 1-in-10 chance my laptop simply won’t read the DVD as existing, and many copies are filmed directly off the screen. We’ve been fortunate, though, as none of the copies we’ve rented have included filmgoers’ heads. “Wedding Crashers” did have an extra audience laugh-track.
I sorted through a basket of music CDs on the counter yesterday. I left with three, for the sum of 15Rs each per day. One CD contained 15 Pink Floyd albums, one contained 11 Metallica albums, and the last contained 13 of the latest pop albums (Backstreet Boys, Jennifer Lopez, Black Eyed Peas, The Scorpions, Richard Marx, and … Nelly?) Tara wanted the two Black Eyed Peas albums, although I swooped the Backstreet Boys album (“Never Gone”) for myself.
Courtesy of Video Tech, last Tuesday I downloaded onto my computer 21 episodes from the third season of “Seinfeld,” and on Sunday the entire first season of “Sex and the City.” Decadent? Maybe. Downright sybaritic? One could make the case ...
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Lakshmipuram Organic Market
From Gokulam, we scooter through the Mysore University grounds on our way to Lakshmipuram. Tara wears the baby in a frontal sling. Rowan is a tiny pushpin in a fluorescent Styrofoam helmet that engulfs her baby head. The helmet slips down over her eyes, so she uses her delicate baby hands to hold it up so she can survey the scenery. Andrew pilots the other scooter, Allison on back, blonde hair trailing in the wind. We’re an eye-catching bunch.
The intensity ratchets upwards during the drive. Lakshmipuram is more compact, tighter, louder, more intense than Gokulam. It’s more concentrated India.
Andrew has found the new location of the organic market he frequented on his first trip in 2001. It’s now in a rundown, mould-covered house, in which the “market” takes up one walk-in closet-sized room. Weevils sit in sacks of dal and spiders leap from underneath bunches of bananas. Andrew buys organic mung dal, liquid jaggery, organic coffee, some honey. Allison stocks up on greens.
Tara and I take baby out front. Her blonde hair and translucent skin are an instant hit with the Indian men sitting around the entrance. One man is an endless fount of folk medicine: One drop of honey on the baby’s tongue per morning, he says, will make her learn to talk better, faster. For teething pain, rub sugar on her gums.
We show baby Rowan to the cow grazing across the street. “Woof, woof,” says Rowan; it’s what she now says when she sees any animal. A two-foot piece of rope ties the cow’s neck collar to its front foreleg. It can’t raise its head more than two feet from the ground.
The folk-medicine man tells us the cow is so dumb that it will walk into and through cars, people, and glass windows. Therefore its gaze is roped down. Somehow it seems cruel. I’d never seen a live farm animal until India, though, so I’m very much out of my depth.
Andrew and Allison finish shopping, and we scooter back to Gokulam. Later, Andrew uses his new coffee in my stovetop espresso maker. When it begins hissing, Andrew lifts the lid. “Look,” he says, “it’s boiling out like cream!” And it’s true: the organic coffee is foaming through the slit like cream.
Getting Internet
Andrew bought two Apple iSight cameras prior to coming to India, one for my Mac, one for his wife’s Mac; he would be able to see and talk to her and his 2-year-old son.
We fished two Internet contact names from the Internet place around the corner and called them. “No connection is possible in your neighborhood,” the first place told us.
We met with a representative from the second place. They wanted a 10,000 Rupee deposit. They had hooked up broadband for a Western yoga student before and the student had made 30,000 Rupees-worth of long-distance calls before vanishing back to the West.
Our landlady’s son intervened. They are putting the connection in their name---no deposit, no installation fee.
We returned from yoga practice one day last week to find an amorphous swarm of workers, numbering not less than eight and not more than 11, chopping up the street to lay the cable for our Internet connection.
On our way to breakfast, in front of the house, and in front of the line of workers, I loaned Andrew 100 Rupees, separating the bill from the others in my wallet, realizing too late I had flippantly flashed a week’s wages to the dark, sun-creased, squat men pick-axing the dirt.
The small army worked for four or five hours, then vanished as they’d appeared.
The cable is laid, but the Internet is still not functioning as we’re now circumnavigating the language barrier and Byzantine Indian business practices to have the wires connected.
The Yoga?
The shala numbers dwindle; perhaps 20 people waited out front last Thursday? Tara and I have been leaving Rowan with Nirmala, our landlady, who has agreed to watch Rowan six days a week, two hours a day, for 1,000 Rupees a month. Guruji has told us to arrive at 5:30, and the last week-and-a-half we’ve entered the studio to an ever-increasing number of floor vacancies.
The density in my back and shoulders, which accreted during six weeks of crisscrossing the U.S. via planes, trains and automobiles, has started to melt. My body unkinked from the flight sometime last week. I had been having strong, light practices, and then one day I felt grounded, strong and light.
Guruji is 90 and fiery. He pads about the room, squat and powerful, shouting, eyes twinkling. Last week he suffered from a deep, wet cough, but it seems to have cleared.
Tara, Andrew and I (and Rowan) registered together, and Guruji demanded to know when our teacher Tim would be arriving, to which I lamely replied, “December?” It seemed a fair guess.
Guruji shuffled our stacks of money into his latest accessory, an electronic money counter, which immediately conjured images of the last few places I’d seen the device, namely at the homes of my drug-dealer acquaintances and in the movie “Scarface.” The machine whirred and beeped when it had processed our 54 500-Rupee notes. Gangster!
What else? Show up early, breathe, move. There are moments of an emptiness so full, a silence so loud I only notice them when they’ve passed.
I did not bow my head to Guruji’s feet on my last trip. Not once. This time it is different. There is a swelling, expansive, sternum-cracking gratitude that puts tears in my eyes---how fortunate I am to inhabit this body! To have found this practice!---and Guruji laughs and says, “Tankew, tankew,” as though I’m doing him a favor.
Fever and Slapstick
The baby today shed the last vestiges of a two-day fever; in June she was much, much more sick---wan and listless, shrouded on our bed, chest fluttering like a baby-bird---but it was still nerve-wracking.
I slipped on a throw rug in our living room and sprained my wrist pursuing a mosquito. Ha! I’ve been performing vinyasa on fists and fingertips.
From Gokulam, we scooter through the Mysore University grounds on our way to Lakshmipuram. Tara wears the baby in a frontal sling. Rowan is a tiny pushpin in a fluorescent Styrofoam helmet that engulfs her baby head. The helmet slips down over her eyes, so she uses her delicate baby hands to hold it up so she can survey the scenery. Andrew pilots the other scooter, Allison on back, blonde hair trailing in the wind. We’re an eye-catching bunch.
The intensity ratchets upwards during the drive. Lakshmipuram is more compact, tighter, louder, more intense than Gokulam. It’s more concentrated India.
Andrew has found the new location of the organic market he frequented on his first trip in 2001. It’s now in a rundown, mould-covered house, in which the “market” takes up one walk-in closet-sized room. Weevils sit in sacks of dal and spiders leap from underneath bunches of bananas. Andrew buys organic mung dal, liquid jaggery, organic coffee, some honey. Allison stocks up on greens.
Tara and I take baby out front. Her blonde hair and translucent skin are an instant hit with the Indian men sitting around the entrance. One man is an endless fount of folk medicine: One drop of honey on the baby’s tongue per morning, he says, will make her learn to talk better, faster. For teething pain, rub sugar on her gums.
We show baby Rowan to the cow grazing across the street. “Woof, woof,” says Rowan; it’s what she now says when she sees any animal. A two-foot piece of rope ties the cow’s neck collar to its front foreleg. It can’t raise its head more than two feet from the ground.
The folk-medicine man tells us the cow is so dumb that it will walk into and through cars, people, and glass windows. Therefore its gaze is roped down. Somehow it seems cruel. I’d never seen a live farm animal until India, though, so I’m very much out of my depth.
Andrew and Allison finish shopping, and we scooter back to Gokulam. Later, Andrew uses his new coffee in my stovetop espresso maker. When it begins hissing, Andrew lifts the lid. “Look,” he says, “it’s boiling out like cream!” And it’s true: the organic coffee is foaming through the slit like cream.
Getting Internet
Andrew bought two Apple iSight cameras prior to coming to India, one for my Mac, one for his wife’s Mac; he would be able to see and talk to her and his 2-year-old son.
We fished two Internet contact names from the Internet place around the corner and called them. “No connection is possible in your neighborhood,” the first place told us.
We met with a representative from the second place. They wanted a 10,000 Rupee deposit. They had hooked up broadband for a Western yoga student before and the student had made 30,000 Rupees-worth of long-distance calls before vanishing back to the West.
Our landlady’s son intervened. They are putting the connection in their name---no deposit, no installation fee.
We returned from yoga practice one day last week to find an amorphous swarm of workers, numbering not less than eight and not more than 11, chopping up the street to lay the cable for our Internet connection.
On our way to breakfast, in front of the house, and in front of the line of workers, I loaned Andrew 100 Rupees, separating the bill from the others in my wallet, realizing too late I had flippantly flashed a week’s wages to the dark, sun-creased, squat men pick-axing the dirt.
The small army worked for four or five hours, then vanished as they’d appeared.
The cable is laid, but the Internet is still not functioning as we’re now circumnavigating the language barrier and Byzantine Indian business practices to have the wires connected.
The Yoga?
The shala numbers dwindle; perhaps 20 people waited out front last Thursday? Tara and I have been leaving Rowan with Nirmala, our landlady, who has agreed to watch Rowan six days a week, two hours a day, for 1,000 Rupees a month. Guruji has told us to arrive at 5:30, and the last week-and-a-half we’ve entered the studio to an ever-increasing number of floor vacancies.
The density in my back and shoulders, which accreted during six weeks of crisscrossing the U.S. via planes, trains and automobiles, has started to melt. My body unkinked from the flight sometime last week. I had been having strong, light practices, and then one day I felt grounded, strong and light.
Guruji is 90 and fiery. He pads about the room, squat and powerful, shouting, eyes twinkling. Last week he suffered from a deep, wet cough, but it seems to have cleared.
Tara, Andrew and I (and Rowan) registered together, and Guruji demanded to know when our teacher Tim would be arriving, to which I lamely replied, “December?” It seemed a fair guess.
Guruji shuffled our stacks of money into his latest accessory, an electronic money counter, which immediately conjured images of the last few places I’d seen the device, namely at the homes of my drug-dealer acquaintances and in the movie “Scarface.” The machine whirred and beeped when it had processed our 54 500-Rupee notes. Gangster!
What else? Show up early, breathe, move. There are moments of an emptiness so full, a silence so loud I only notice them when they’ve passed.
I did not bow my head to Guruji’s feet on my last trip. Not once. This time it is different. There is a swelling, expansive, sternum-cracking gratitude that puts tears in my eyes---how fortunate I am to inhabit this body! To have found this practice!---and Guruji laughs and says, “Tankew, tankew,” as though I’m doing him a favor.
Fever and Slapstick
The baby today shed the last vestiges of a two-day fever; in June she was much, much more sick---wan and listless, shrouded on our bed, chest fluttering like a baby-bird---but it was still nerve-wracking.
I slipped on a throw rug in our living room and sprained my wrist pursuing a mosquito. Ha! I’ve been performing vinyasa on fists and fingertips.
Sunday, September 4, 2005
Kuala Lumpur Jump-off
A tenuous thread binds consciousness to its vehicle, this body.
That thread is fraying, unraveling around the edges. What time is it? What day is it? Somewhere in the last 19 hours of flying I lost a day, or gained one.
My brain is a balloon floating over my body, and there is a fractional second of time delay between thought and motor response, command and movement.
Andrew, Tara and Baby Rowan are upstairs, sleeping in our courtesy rooms at the Pan-Pacific Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. I write this in the Business Center, staring at the monitor as though down a long, dark tunnel.
Jetlag is fucked, but I kind of like it when things get loopy.
Baby Rowan is one mellow toddler, her disposition in stark contrast to the India couple with whom we shared a row---every time their 2-year-old opened her eyes, she began screaming.
I've heard sunlight is great for the 'lag, so I'm now hustling to the hotel pool---waterfall! hot tub!---to soak the sun and unknot from the plane.
Pre-Mysore Numbers
Height: 6-feet-1-and-a-half inches
Weight: 143 pounds
Disposition: Sunny, tired, yet hyper-caffeinated
A tenuous thread binds consciousness to its vehicle, this body.
That thread is fraying, unraveling around the edges. What time is it? What day is it? Somewhere in the last 19 hours of flying I lost a day, or gained one.
My brain is a balloon floating over my body, and there is a fractional second of time delay between thought and motor response, command and movement.
Andrew, Tara and Baby Rowan are upstairs, sleeping in our courtesy rooms at the Pan-Pacific Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. I write this in the Business Center, staring at the monitor as though down a long, dark tunnel.
Jetlag is fucked, but I kind of like it when things get loopy.
Baby Rowan is one mellow toddler, her disposition in stark contrast to the India couple with whom we shared a row---every time their 2-year-old opened her eyes, she began screaming.
I've heard sunlight is great for the 'lag, so I'm now hustling to the hotel pool---waterfall! hot tub!---to soak the sun and unknot from the plane.
Pre-Mysore Numbers
Height: 6-feet-1-and-a-half inches
Weight: 143 pounds
Disposition: Sunny, tired, yet hyper-caffeinated
Kuala Lumpur Jump-off
A tenuous thread binds consciousness to its vehicle, this body.
That thread is fraying, unraveling around the edges. What time is it? What day is it? Somewhere in the last 19 hours of flying I lost a day, or gained one.
My brain is a balloon floating over my body, and there is a fractional second of time delay between thought and motor response, command and movement.
Andrew, Tara and Baby Rowan are upstairs, sleeping in our courtesy rooms at the Pan-Pacific Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. I write this in the Business Center, staring at the monitor as though down a long, dark tunnel.
Jetlag is fucked, but I kind of like it when things get loopy.
Baby Rowan is one mellow toddler, her disposition in stark contrast to the India couple with whom we shared a row---every time their 2-year-old opened her eyes, she began screaming.
I've heard sunlight is great for the 'lag, so I'm now hustling to the hotel pool---waterfall! hot tub!---to soak the sun and unknot from the plane.
Pre-Mysore Numbers
Height: 6-feet-1-and-a-half inches
Weight: 143 pounds
Disposition: Sunny, tired, yet hyper-caffeinated
A tenuous thread binds consciousness to its vehicle, this body.
That thread is fraying, unraveling around the edges. What time is it? What day is it? Somewhere in the last 19 hours of flying I lost a day, or gained one.
My brain is a balloon floating over my body, and there is a fractional second of time delay between thought and motor response, command and movement.
Andrew, Tara and Baby Rowan are upstairs, sleeping in our courtesy rooms at the Pan-Pacific Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. I write this in the Business Center, staring at the monitor as though down a long, dark tunnel.
Jetlag is fucked, but I kind of like it when things get loopy.
Baby Rowan is one mellow toddler, her disposition in stark contrast to the India couple with whom we shared a row---every time their 2-year-old opened her eyes, she began screaming.
I've heard sunlight is great for the 'lag, so I'm now hustling to the hotel pool---waterfall! hot tub!---to soak the sun and unknot from the plane.
Pre-Mysore Numbers
Height: 6-feet-1-and-a-half inches
Weight: 143 pounds
Disposition: Sunny, tired, yet hyper-caffeinated
Monday, August 15, 2005
We leave for Bangalore September 3.
My first trip to India crested on a giant wave of anticipation built from more than five months of waiting, planning, calculating and clock-watching at work. This trip has leapt from an alley-mouth to sucker-punch me in the kidney.
It's fucking two weeks away, man!
Unlike my first trip, I'm traveling with three other people, two full-sized humans (albeit one Australian) and an adorable one-year-old diaper-filler.
The baby's mother voiced strenuous objections to my rather ingenious idea to stow said nipper in a steamer trunk under the plane with some juice boxes, a blanket or two and several well-concealed air-holes.
My other idea, which also met with vociferous disapproval, stemmed from my life-long passion for falconry, and involved fashioning a black light-tight hood for the baby. Slip the hood over the knee-biter's head, she thinks it's sleepy-time, and whammo, instant 20-hour nap.
As it stands, my provisions list involves one gross ear plugs, one blindfold, one bottle of the sleeping pill/coma-inducing Ambien, and two liters vodka.
There are several conditions, or combinations thereof, that will determine when I return:
1. I run out of money.
2. I go out of my gourd.
3. I get severely homesick.
4. My back snaps in half.
My first trip to India crested on a giant wave of anticipation built from more than five months of waiting, planning, calculating and clock-watching at work. This trip has leapt from an alley-mouth to sucker-punch me in the kidney.
It's fucking two weeks away, man!
Unlike my first trip, I'm traveling with three other people, two full-sized humans (albeit one Australian) and an adorable one-year-old diaper-filler.
The baby's mother voiced strenuous objections to my rather ingenious idea to stow said nipper in a steamer trunk under the plane with some juice boxes, a blanket or two and several well-concealed air-holes.
My other idea, which also met with vociferous disapproval, stemmed from my life-long passion for falconry, and involved fashioning a black light-tight hood for the baby. Slip the hood over the knee-biter's head, she thinks it's sleepy-time, and whammo, instant 20-hour nap.
As it stands, my provisions list involves one gross ear plugs, one blindfold, one bottle of the sleeping pill/coma-inducing Ambien, and two liters vodka.
There are several conditions, or combinations thereof, that will determine when I return:
1. I run out of money.
2. I go out of my gourd.
3. I get severely homesick.
4. My back snaps in half.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
New Espresso Bean of Choice
Giro d'Italia
Not Washing the Stove-top Espresso Maker
Apparently the bacteria build-up adds to the flavor.
The New "Battlestar Galactica"
The mini-series and entire first season on DVD for $40 at San Diego Comic-con. O Lord, you are a just and benevolent God.
Downloading Limewire Porn Clips
I'm perfectly sure I don't know what you're talking about.
Mysore Packing Strategy
One backpack filled with clothes, toiletries, stove-top espresso maker, and other essentials. One steamer trunk filled with books.
Inhale
Hanuman.
Exhale
Shiva.
Summer Weekend in Milwaukee
It really seems to be true: Americans are lard-asses!
Saying Goodbye to Grandma for Maybe the Last Time
Breathing, breathing. Pain is going.
My Buddhist Friend Said, "Would You Be Sad to See a Sunset?"
No. But that does nothing for the lump of grief in my chest.
The Baby Cries in the Other Room
So it goes.
Giro d'Italia
Not Washing the Stove-top Espresso Maker
Apparently the bacteria build-up adds to the flavor.
The New "Battlestar Galactica"
The mini-series and entire first season on DVD for $40 at San Diego Comic-con. O Lord, you are a just and benevolent God.
Downloading Limewire Porn Clips
I'm perfectly sure I don't know what you're talking about.
Mysore Packing Strategy
One backpack filled with clothes, toiletries, stove-top espresso maker, and other essentials. One steamer trunk filled with books.
Inhale
Hanuman.
Exhale
Shiva.
Summer Weekend in Milwaukee
It really seems to be true: Americans are lard-asses!
Saying Goodbye to Grandma for Maybe the Last Time
Breathing, breathing. Pain is going.
My Buddhist Friend Said, "Would You Be Sad to See a Sunset?"
No. But that does nothing for the lump of grief in my chest.
The Baby Cries in the Other Room
So it goes.
Friday, July 8, 2005
I love Saul-to-Damascus stories, and Lillian's is one of the best: she came to Ashtanga yoga standing in the bathroom of a dive bar at 4 a.m., coked up and staring at herself in the mirror, a bloody chunk of septum in her right hand.
Not everyone is pitched from horseback by the voice of god. Sometimes the call is loud and overpowering, but sometimes it's a faint, ghostly echo, barely heard over the roar of the party and the music from the jukebox.
Lil had partied Wednesday and Thursday nights with little sleep in between. Friday night flickered into early Sunday morning as the party train hit all stops: bar to club, club to house, house to bar. Last stop: Gentleman Jack's, a downtown San Diego dive, small, cramped, dark, seedy.
The bartenders swept out the crowds at 2 a.m. They locked the front door, pulled the blinds, killed the lights, fired up the jukebox, and dumped thick white rocks of coke on the bar. A guy pulled out a hand coffee-grinder and started churning the rocks into powder. Everyone took turns hoovering finger-width lines off the bar.
At 4 a.m. Lil was in the bathroom wiping the drip from her nose. The coke had revved her heart's RPMs so high she could feel the fist-sized muscle thumping into her breastbone, threatening to tear free from its moorings.
And her nose! It itched so bad! She had this booger that just would not quit. Lil closed off one nostril and with a firm snort, blew a thick, blood-red chunk of scab into her hand. It was a piece of her septum.
"Beyond a certain point there is no return," said Kafka. "This point has to be reached." A piece of her nose in hand, Lil had a coke-fueled flash-panic anxiety attack. At that point---her point of no return---three clear thoughts whispered through the din: "I need to stop partying," "I need to get healthy or I'm going to die," and "I need to start doing yoga."
She doesn't know where the last thought came from---maybe she'd read about yoga in Vogue? Regardless, the seed had been planted somewhere. She sifted those three thoughts like a prospector panning for gold, and after a bit of trial and error, found Ashtanga vinyasa.
That was four years ago. Today Lillian is strong, healthy and most importanly, alive.
Not everyone is pitched from horseback by the voice of god. Sometimes the call is loud and overpowering, but sometimes it's a faint, ghostly echo, barely heard over the roar of the party and the music from the jukebox.
Lil had partied Wednesday and Thursday nights with little sleep in between. Friday night flickered into early Sunday morning as the party train hit all stops: bar to club, club to house, house to bar. Last stop: Gentleman Jack's, a downtown San Diego dive, small, cramped, dark, seedy.
The bartenders swept out the crowds at 2 a.m. They locked the front door, pulled the blinds, killed the lights, fired up the jukebox, and dumped thick white rocks of coke on the bar. A guy pulled out a hand coffee-grinder and started churning the rocks into powder. Everyone took turns hoovering finger-width lines off the bar.
At 4 a.m. Lil was in the bathroom wiping the drip from her nose. The coke had revved her heart's RPMs so high she could feel the fist-sized muscle thumping into her breastbone, threatening to tear free from its moorings.
And her nose! It itched so bad! She had this booger that just would not quit. Lil closed off one nostril and with a firm snort, blew a thick, blood-red chunk of scab into her hand. It was a piece of her septum.
"Beyond a certain point there is no return," said Kafka. "This point has to be reached." A piece of her nose in hand, Lil had a coke-fueled flash-panic anxiety attack. At that point---her point of no return---three clear thoughts whispered through the din: "I need to stop partying," "I need to get healthy or I'm going to die," and "I need to start doing yoga."
She doesn't know where the last thought came from---maybe she'd read about yoga in Vogue? Regardless, the seed had been planted somewhere. She sifted those three thoughts like a prospector panning for gold, and after a bit of trial and error, found Ashtanga vinyasa.
That was four years ago. Today Lillian is strong, healthy and most importanly, alive.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
My June Itinerary
I spent five days in Los Angeles at the Downtown Standard hotel, followed that up with two days in Encinitas, then hit Dayton, Ohio for four days.
Someone once asked Tim how a trip went; to paraphrase his answer: too much skateboarding, vodka, and dessert. Not enough yoga.
Highlights
(Among others): meeting "Inside the Actor's Studio's" James Lipton, asking him about his most difficult interviewees (Barbara Streisand, Robert De Niro), tripping out on LA ("Isn't that Hillary Duff?"), telling Anthony Michael Hall "That's a good look for you, buddy" in a dressing room, seeing a kid get choked to unconsciousness for $20 in a hotel bar, and watching two friends get car-jacked at a gas station.
(Don't sleep on Dayton! Thug life!)
Christ.
All I can say is it's good to be home and settled.
I've written my first play.
It's not actually a play. It's actually conversations to which I was privy that I then wrote down. I wish I could take credit, but reality is so much more unbelievable than anything I could think up.
Three Vignettes from the Downtown Los Angeles Standard Hotel
Out front of the hotel; a WOMAN behind a podium scans a sheaf of papers attached to a clipboard. A BEEFY BOUNCER, ear bud tucked in ear, holds a flashlight. A CUTE GIRL (early 20s) stands behind a velvet rope.
BEEFY BOUNCER: … so there it is, you're not on the list. Sorry about that.
CUTE GIRL: (Playing coquettishly with pearl necklace, head cocked.) There must be something I can do to get in … can we go somewhere to talk about this?
End scene.
Two faceless CLERKS stand behind the reception desk. A short-haired WASTED WOMAN droops on the bench in front of the desk.
WASTED WOMAN: (Into cell-phone) Baby, c'mon baby---don't say that baby, please, I love you. Just come get me. Baby! Please. Just come pick me up. Please pick me up.
(Slides off bench to floor.)
End scene.
Three SLICK DUDES ride the elevator to the ultra-exclusive roof-top bar.
DUDE 1: Did you hear that fucking bitch? All I said was hi, she was all, "Who the fuck are you?" What a skank.
DUDE 2: Did you hear what TJ said to that one bitch at the bar the other night? She gave him some attitude and he was like, "You're not that pretty and you're kind of thick, too, so why don't you fuck off with that fake Hollywood shit?"
(To DUDE 3) Dude you totally fucking gave it to her, man!
DUDE 3: (Eyes self in elevator mirror, adjusts hair.) Fuckin a.
Elevator doors open.
Curtain.
Why I Hate Rilke
Dense black obsidian verse that reflects all light.
Verse impenetrable to burrowing, chewing, digestion.
Best approached laterally, obliquely.
The lightning will strike in peripheral vision like a balled-fist haymaker in an unfamiliar alley.
In due time meaning detonates, but only in those parts of consciousness inaccessible during the light of day or under the microscope of logic.
I spent five days in Los Angeles at the Downtown Standard hotel, followed that up with two days in Encinitas, then hit Dayton, Ohio for four days.
Someone once asked Tim how a trip went; to paraphrase his answer: too much skateboarding, vodka, and dessert. Not enough yoga.
Highlights
(Among others): meeting "Inside the Actor's Studio's" James Lipton, asking him about his most difficult interviewees (Barbara Streisand, Robert De Niro), tripping out on LA ("Isn't that Hillary Duff?"), telling Anthony Michael Hall "That's a good look for you, buddy" in a dressing room, seeing a kid get choked to unconsciousness for $20 in a hotel bar, and watching two friends get car-jacked at a gas station.
(Don't sleep on Dayton! Thug life!)
Christ.
All I can say is it's good to be home and settled.
I've written my first play.
It's not actually a play. It's actually conversations to which I was privy that I then wrote down. I wish I could take credit, but reality is so much more unbelievable than anything I could think up.
Three Vignettes from the Downtown Los Angeles Standard Hotel
Out front of the hotel; a WOMAN behind a podium scans a sheaf of papers attached to a clipboard. A BEEFY BOUNCER, ear bud tucked in ear, holds a flashlight. A CUTE GIRL (early 20s) stands behind a velvet rope.
BEEFY BOUNCER: … so there it is, you're not on the list. Sorry about that.
CUTE GIRL: (Playing coquettishly with pearl necklace, head cocked.) There must be something I can do to get in … can we go somewhere to talk about this?
End scene.
Two faceless CLERKS stand behind the reception desk. A short-haired WASTED WOMAN droops on the bench in front of the desk.
WASTED WOMAN: (Into cell-phone) Baby, c'mon baby---don't say that baby, please, I love you. Just come get me. Baby! Please. Just come pick me up. Please pick me up.
(Slides off bench to floor.)
End scene.
Three SLICK DUDES ride the elevator to the ultra-exclusive roof-top bar.
DUDE 1: Did you hear that fucking bitch? All I said was hi, she was all, "Who the fuck are you?" What a skank.
DUDE 2: Did you hear what TJ said to that one bitch at the bar the other night? She gave him some attitude and he was like, "You're not that pretty and you're kind of thick, too, so why don't you fuck off with that fake Hollywood shit?"
(To DUDE 3) Dude you totally fucking gave it to her, man!
DUDE 3: (Eyes self in elevator mirror, adjusts hair.) Fuckin a.
Elevator doors open.
Curtain.
Why I Hate Rilke
Dense black obsidian verse that reflects all light.
Verse impenetrable to burrowing, chewing, digestion.
Best approached laterally, obliquely.
The lightning will strike in peripheral vision like a balled-fist haymaker in an unfamiliar alley.
In due time meaning detonates, but only in those parts of consciousness inaccessible during the light of day or under the microscope of logic.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Shane was tall, taller than me at 6-2, thinning hair swept up in a rockabilly pompadour and babyish good looks slowly losing the war against fat. He would show up at the studio in white V-neck T-shirts and always smelled strongly, pleasantly of coffee. I want to say he had a bunch of Sailor Jerry tattoos, too, bright and optimistic, the Bettie Page pin-up girls, swallows, stars, and hearts reminding me of forties funny pages with their raw pulp-color brilliance and nostalgia.
I had committed to a daily morning Mysore practice at the yoga studio, a move that had jimmied open a whole new perspective on the yoga and introduced me to a whole new cast of characters: the morning shift.
My girlfriend and I were living in the Mission in San Francisco, on 27th and Guerrero, in a slant-floored firetrap. The flat's amenities included splinters from the peeling wood floor and, living in the building's common basement, an uncountable and ever-changing mass of illegals sleeping on sweat-stained mattresses. On weekends the group of small, sun-darkened men would drink cases of beer and listen to what sounded to me like Mexican polka music, the bomp-bomp of the drum and nerve-grating whine of accordion turned up as loud as it would go. I never felt in any physical danger, but the men on the street would hiss and sometimes grab at Tiffany, so I feared what the men in the basement might do, nerves galvanized by cases of beer.
The yoga studio, Ahimsa, was only a few blocks away on foot. Alice, with her fierce full-back tattoo of Kali, had turned an old storefront into a warm and inviting yoga studio tucked between a grocery and a storefront church.
Shane was gregarious, friendly, quick to laugh. He was inconstant in his practice because, as I soon found out, he was a member of the dock-worker's union. A few mornings a week he would head to the union office to put his number in the lottery for work. I imagined the job hard and exhausting, calloused men in peacoats and beanies cursing in the cold and fog, wrestling giant crates, twisting crowbars, banging, slamming, heaving, and groaning.
Months passed. My girlfriend and I moved to a better apartment in order to better unravel, and Alice eventually closed the studio to have a baby. Shane joined a long and ever-growing list of people I idly wonder about---people I knew only in passing, yet with whom I was profoundly intimate, peope I saw every day, six days a week, for months on end, all of us sweaty and half-naked, moments of poise and grace alternated with shaky struggling and ragged vulnerability. Where is Shane now? Maybe practicing yoga, maybe hauling crates on the Oakland dock, maybe lolling about the union office, waiting for his number to pop up, hair a bit thinner, face a bit fuller, bright tattoos beaming, still quick to smile, still fast with a joke, still good for a laugh.
I had committed to a daily morning Mysore practice at the yoga studio, a move that had jimmied open a whole new perspective on the yoga and introduced me to a whole new cast of characters: the morning shift.
My girlfriend and I were living in the Mission in San Francisco, on 27th and Guerrero, in a slant-floored firetrap. The flat's amenities included splinters from the peeling wood floor and, living in the building's common basement, an uncountable and ever-changing mass of illegals sleeping on sweat-stained mattresses. On weekends the group of small, sun-darkened men would drink cases of beer and listen to what sounded to me like Mexican polka music, the bomp-bomp of the drum and nerve-grating whine of accordion turned up as loud as it would go. I never felt in any physical danger, but the men on the street would hiss and sometimes grab at Tiffany, so I feared what the men in the basement might do, nerves galvanized by cases of beer.
The yoga studio, Ahimsa, was only a few blocks away on foot. Alice, with her fierce full-back tattoo of Kali, had turned an old storefront into a warm and inviting yoga studio tucked between a grocery and a storefront church.
Shane was gregarious, friendly, quick to laugh. He was inconstant in his practice because, as I soon found out, he was a member of the dock-worker's union. A few mornings a week he would head to the union office to put his number in the lottery for work. I imagined the job hard and exhausting, calloused men in peacoats and beanies cursing in the cold and fog, wrestling giant crates, twisting crowbars, banging, slamming, heaving, and groaning.
Months passed. My girlfriend and I moved to a better apartment in order to better unravel, and Alice eventually closed the studio to have a baby. Shane joined a long and ever-growing list of people I idly wonder about---people I knew only in passing, yet with whom I was profoundly intimate, peope I saw every day, six days a week, for months on end, all of us sweaty and half-naked, moments of poise and grace alternated with shaky struggling and ragged vulnerability. Where is Shane now? Maybe practicing yoga, maybe hauling crates on the Oakland dock, maybe lolling about the union office, waiting for his number to pop up, hair a bit thinner, face a bit fuller, bright tattoos beaming, still quick to smile, still fast with a joke, still good for a laugh.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Notes from a recent Ashtanga Yoga Journal editorial meeting:
Proposed article topics:
Pattabhi Jois: Always Right or Simply Never Wrong?
Coffee Before Intermediate: Good or Bad?
Investigative Report: Does Ashtanga Make Women Hard and Men Soft?
Fashion Report: Men's Apparel---Banana Hammocks Versus Board Shorts
Reader Poll: Shala Voted Best Place to Meet Women
Romantic Advice: Fending Off Creepy Male Ashtangis
Best Pre-tan Tips Before Hitting Southern Star
Beauty in the Shala: Makeup That Won't Run When You Sweat
Proposed cover shots for June issue:
(Note to photog: prefer sharp photo to blurry, poorly framed digi/instant)
Pattabhi Jois smiling
Pattabhi Jois grinning
Pattabhi Jois laughing
Pattabhi Jois waving
Pattabhi Jois counting a led class
Pattabhi Jois and Sharat in conference
Additional notes:
Not enough space to print entirety of Richard Freeman's asana advice column---publish separately as 300-page book?
Tell art director NOT to Photoshop hair onto Swenson's head!
Potential ad buys? Tell reps to call: Ibuprofen, Motrin, Ben Gay, Tiger Balm, Starbuck's, all imported chocolate manufacturers
Proposed article topics:
Pattabhi Jois: Always Right or Simply Never Wrong?
Coffee Before Intermediate: Good or Bad?
Investigative Report: Does Ashtanga Make Women Hard and Men Soft?
Fashion Report: Men's Apparel---Banana Hammocks Versus Board Shorts
Reader Poll: Shala Voted Best Place to Meet Women
Romantic Advice: Fending Off Creepy Male Ashtangis
Best Pre-tan Tips Before Hitting Southern Star
Beauty in the Shala: Makeup That Won't Run When You Sweat
Proposed cover shots for June issue:
(Note to photog: prefer sharp photo to blurry, poorly framed digi/instant)
Pattabhi Jois smiling
Pattabhi Jois grinning
Pattabhi Jois laughing
Pattabhi Jois waving
Pattabhi Jois counting a led class
Pattabhi Jois and Sharat in conference
Additional notes:
Not enough space to print entirety of Richard Freeman's asana advice column---publish separately as 300-page book?
Tell art director NOT to Photoshop hair onto Swenson's head!
Potential ad buys? Tell reps to call: Ibuprofen, Motrin, Ben Gay, Tiger Balm, Starbuck's, all imported chocolate manufacturers
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
As per the last post's myPod music list: I am an Urban Outfitter's playlist.
Which raises the question as to whether it's better to live in ignorance of "hip," or to expend extra energy moving faster and searching harder in order to live lower under the trend radar.
Lately I've been listing toward ignorance. Well, that, and never setting foot in an Urban Outfitters.
Which raises the question as to whether it's better to live in ignorance of "hip," or to expend extra energy moving faster and searching harder in order to live lower under the trend radar.
Lately I've been listing toward ignorance. Well, that, and never setting foot in an Urban Outfitters.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Idiot
Yesterday afternoon, I applied Tiger Balm to my knee and then urinated.
There was five seconds of dawning realization before the napalm ignited.
And let me tell you something about Tiger Balm: that shit don't wash off.
The "Village Voice's" Johnny Maldoro on Lindsey Lohan
"Everyone says she's a skank, and of course I agree, but ... where was I going with this?"
Me on "60 Minutes''" and "CNN" Reporter Christianne Amanpour
Everyone says she's a skank, and of course I agree, but ... where was I going with this?
myPod
1. The new Gorrilaz---Hooks plus beats!
2. The new Fischerspooner---The eighties electro-pop boat is sent down the house river. Consistently great, consistently dirrrty.
3. The new Kaiser Chiefs---Why do I keep thinking late-era Kinks? Which isn't a bad thing, at all.
Get a Late Pass
The Rapture's "Echoes"---You've got your Robert Smith wail, your ominous Joy Division guitar, your Gang of Four jangle, your four-to-the-floor house/disco beats. It's working, it's working!
1:30 PM Sunday Practice Time?
Okay Tim, this Sandcastle Room schedule re-arranging is getting ridiculous.
Backing Out of a Vegas Bachelor Party
It's the new trend for Q3 2005---I started it last weekend.
(I did want to see the Star Trek-themed stripper. Ferengi? Klingon? Borg? Meet me in the Jeffries Tubes.)
Christ, Yet Another Yoga Student Reading Rumi
Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who's there.
---from "The Sunrise Ruby"
Books on My Desk Right Now
Remember, we aren't making qualitative judgments right now.
1. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
2. Fires, Raymond Carver
3. The Garden of Iden, Kage Baker
4. Jhereg, Steven Brust
5. Isle of the Dead/Eye of Cat, Roger Zelazny
6. The Enneagram, Dimension Books
7. Finding God Through Sex, David Deida
8. Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
9. McSweeney's Astonishing Tales, Edited by Michael Chabon
Common Asana Stories
It's all one big story, isn't it?
1. My back is too stiff.
2. My arms are too short.
3. My legs are too short.
4. Women can't do that because they're [insert adjective here].
General Yoga Practice Stories
Put a nickel in your Mysore jar any time you get one.
1. I can't get up that early.
(A popular variant: I'm not a morning person.)
2. My body isn't flexible that early in the day.
3. I can't stretch that many days in a row, I just get too sore.
How to Recognize A Story
Sentence structure will involve some form of the personal pronoun "I" and the verb "be": "I am ... ," "I was ... ," "My back is ... ," etc, etc.
Yesterday afternoon, I applied Tiger Balm to my knee and then urinated.
There was five seconds of dawning realization before the napalm ignited.
And let me tell you something about Tiger Balm: that shit don't wash off.
The "Village Voice's" Johnny Maldoro on Lindsey Lohan
"Everyone says she's a skank, and of course I agree, but ... where was I going with this?"
Me on "60 Minutes''" and "CNN" Reporter Christianne Amanpour
Everyone says she's a skank, and of course I agree, but ... where was I going with this?
myPod
1. The new Gorrilaz---Hooks plus beats!
2. The new Fischerspooner---The eighties electro-pop boat is sent down the house river. Consistently great, consistently dirrrty.
3. The new Kaiser Chiefs---Why do I keep thinking late-era Kinks? Which isn't a bad thing, at all.
Get a Late Pass
The Rapture's "Echoes"---You've got your Robert Smith wail, your ominous Joy Division guitar, your Gang of Four jangle, your four-to-the-floor house/disco beats. It's working, it's working!
1:30 PM Sunday Practice Time?
Okay Tim, this Sandcastle Room schedule re-arranging is getting ridiculous.
Backing Out of a Vegas Bachelor Party
It's the new trend for Q3 2005---I started it last weekend.
(I did want to see the Star Trek-themed stripper. Ferengi? Klingon? Borg? Meet me in the Jeffries Tubes.)
Christ, Yet Another Yoga Student Reading Rumi
Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who's there.
---from "The Sunrise Ruby"
Books on My Desk Right Now
Remember, we aren't making qualitative judgments right now.
1. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
2. Fires, Raymond Carver
3. The Garden of Iden, Kage Baker
4. Jhereg, Steven Brust
5. Isle of the Dead/Eye of Cat, Roger Zelazny
6. The Enneagram, Dimension Books
7. Finding God Through Sex, David Deida
8. Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
9. McSweeney's Astonishing Tales, Edited by Michael Chabon
Common Asana Stories
It's all one big story, isn't it?
1. My back is too stiff.
2. My arms are too short.
3. My legs are too short.
4. Women can't do that because they're [insert adjective here].
General Yoga Practice Stories
Put a nickel in your Mysore jar any time you get one.
1. I can't get up that early.
(A popular variant: I'm not a morning person.)
2. My body isn't flexible that early in the day.
3. I can't stretch that many days in a row, I just get too sore.
How to Recognize A Story
Sentence structure will involve some form of the personal pronoun "I" and the verb "be": "I am ... ," "I was ... ," "My back is ... ," etc, etc.
Friday, May 13, 2005
As per yesterday's blog ...
I was devastated to learn last night that, since Bush's second term began, Los Angeles has changed the laws for exotic dance clubs: if a strip club serves alcohol, the dancers must wear bikinis.
Which explains why two friends and I---all yogis, no less---were at Cheetah's last night, weeping into our martinis and absolutely gutted to learn that bikinis was all we was gonna get.
Bikinis?
What the hell is wrong with this country that two men and their lady friend can't go to an exotic dance club, sip a beverage, and be mesmerized by synthetic breasts shaking in time to heavy metal or rock-rap?
You weren't even allowed to tuck tips into waistbands! So in the custom of the Ishtar love cults of ancient Babylon, I set several propitiatory offerings of dollar bills at the feet of those ladies whose dancing called forth the divine goddess, or who did tricky and athletic pole maneuvers.
Bikinis!
Christ.
PS, and I practiced today, and it was great, so there.
I was devastated to learn last night that, since Bush's second term began, Los Angeles has changed the laws for exotic dance clubs: if a strip club serves alcohol, the dancers must wear bikinis.
Which explains why two friends and I---all yogis, no less---were at Cheetah's last night, weeping into our martinis and absolutely gutted to learn that bikinis was all we was gonna get.
Bikinis?
What the hell is wrong with this country that two men and their lady friend can't go to an exotic dance club, sip a beverage, and be mesmerized by synthetic breasts shaking in time to heavy metal or rock-rap?
You weren't even allowed to tuck tips into waistbands! So in the custom of the Ishtar love cults of ancient Babylon, I set several propitiatory offerings of dollar bills at the feet of those ladies whose dancing called forth the divine goddess, or who did tricky and athletic pole maneuvers.
Bikinis!
Christ.
PS, and I practiced today, and it was great, so there.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
The thing about this blog nonsense is that when I started, I merely fired random thoughts out into the infosphere, a place overflowing with information. I thought, "Who the hell will read more white noise anyway?"
Then I started meeting people who actually read stuff on the Internet (People actually do that? Go figure), and several of them even from the studio here in Encinitas. I noticed my internal editor ramped up a few notches, because now I'm more careful about what I put out there.
I wish to be perceived in a certain way, and as a result I don't write about certain things.
This all leads up to the fact that I've just washed down a handful of M&M-sized ibuprofen with a double-espresso before practice, and I'm sitting here thinking, "Is this something I want to write about? Is this something I want people to know about?"
Because, you know, I want to come off as some serious, dedicated, "pure" yoga practitioner.
Which is nonsense.
And on a related tangent about one's own perceptions, if I could just tell you the countless times I've had what's come to be known as "The Volvo Conversation."
I drive a 2001 Volvo V70 wagon (a T5, suckers! That's "T" for "turbo" and 5 for 5-cylinder. Shit is bad-ass).
At least five people at Cosmodemonic Shoe Co., where I work, have said, "A Volvo? I never would have pegged you for driving a Volvo---what with all the yoga you do."
What do they expect a yogi to drive?
Well, when I would tell people I was looking for a car, I got one of two responses: One, "Check out those hybrid electric cars, they'd be perfect for you," and two, "My cousin/brother/roommate is selling a VW bus."
So I practice yoga and therefore should be driving a bio-diesel or electric car. Or a VW bus from the sixties.
Christ.
Then I started meeting people who actually read stuff on the Internet (People actually do that? Go figure), and several of them even from the studio here in Encinitas. I noticed my internal editor ramped up a few notches, because now I'm more careful about what I put out there.
I wish to be perceived in a certain way, and as a result I don't write about certain things.
This all leads up to the fact that I've just washed down a handful of M&M-sized ibuprofen with a double-espresso before practice, and I'm sitting here thinking, "Is this something I want to write about? Is this something I want people to know about?"
Because, you know, I want to come off as some serious, dedicated, "pure" yoga practitioner.
Which is nonsense.
And on a related tangent about one's own perceptions, if I could just tell you the countless times I've had what's come to be known as "The Volvo Conversation."
I drive a 2001 Volvo V70 wagon (a T5, suckers! That's "T" for "turbo" and 5 for 5-cylinder. Shit is bad-ass).
At least five people at Cosmodemonic Shoe Co., where I work, have said, "A Volvo? I never would have pegged you for driving a Volvo---what with all the yoga you do."
What do they expect a yogi to drive?
Well, when I would tell people I was looking for a car, I got one of two responses: One, "Check out those hybrid electric cars, they'd be perfect for you," and two, "My cousin/brother/roommate is selling a VW bus."
So I practice yoga and therefore should be driving a bio-diesel or electric car. Or a VW bus from the sixties.
Christ.
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
I'm back in India, in Goa, at the beach.
I've wandered out onto the sand and clambered over some large rocks. I turn to head back to shore when the tide rushes in, and I'm forced to wade through rapidly rising water, holding my iPod over my head. It mustn't get wet!
My hand wavers and it dips into the salt water.
"It's ruined!" I think. The screen reads "Water Damage."
Anxiety dream about traveling to India? Or just an anxiety dream?
I've wandered out onto the sand and clambered over some large rocks. I turn to head back to shore when the tide rushes in, and I'm forced to wade through rapidly rising water, holding my iPod over my head. It mustn't get wet!
My hand wavers and it dips into the salt water.
"It's ruined!" I think. The screen reads "Water Damage."
Anxiety dream about traveling to India? Or just an anxiety dream?
Friday, April 29, 2005
Back from the Rotten, tightened hip flexors, tweaked knee and all.
New Yorkers are a savage people. They don't use cars! Often they don't use escalators or even elevators!
Like our nomadic Stone Age forebears, they walk, run, and jog everywhere---on foot.
I remain horrified.
We steady mobbed to LA this weekend to say goodbye to Noah and Kimberley. Like waves on a sandy shore, friendships and acquaintances swell and recede.
It would seem the Los Angeles ashtanga community has been roundly hammered in the last month, as in addition to Noah's and Kim's departure, Chuck and Maty are also departing the city.
Would now be an appropriate time to reflect on how thankful I am that Tim Miller has seen fit to show up at the studio every morning and unlock the shala door for the past 20-something years?
Well, now he's unlocking the door to the Sandcastle Room, but you get my drift.
If you head to LA, don't fear---the lovely Maia has stepped in to run morning Mysore until mid-June for the students at Noah's and Kim's.
Otherwise they all would have had to switch to Bikram's. Hah!
There seems to be a post-Guruji-tour fever of India trips in the works.
Tons of people are packing up their Western lives, putting their affairs in (semi) order, and lighting out for Mysore this summer. And god help me, I'll be one of 'em.
New Yorkers are a savage people. They don't use cars! Often they don't use escalators or even elevators!
Like our nomadic Stone Age forebears, they walk, run, and jog everywhere---on foot.
I remain horrified.
We steady mobbed to LA this weekend to say goodbye to Noah and Kimberley. Like waves on a sandy shore, friendships and acquaintances swell and recede.
It would seem the Los Angeles ashtanga community has been roundly hammered in the last month, as in addition to Noah's and Kim's departure, Chuck and Maty are also departing the city.
Would now be an appropriate time to reflect on how thankful I am that Tim Miller has seen fit to show up at the studio every morning and unlock the shala door for the past 20-something years?
Well, now he's unlocking the door to the Sandcastle Room, but you get my drift.
If you head to LA, don't fear---the lovely Maia has stepped in to run morning Mysore until mid-June for the students at Noah's and Kim's.
Otherwise they all would have had to switch to Bikram's. Hah!
There seems to be a post-Guruji-tour fever of India trips in the works.
Tons of people are packing up their Western lives, putting their affairs in (semi) order, and lighting out for Mysore this summer. And god help me, I'll be one of 'em.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
As those of you who've been to New York City know, there's not a whole lot going on here. Not much to look at, not a lot of places to eat, nothing much to do.
Well, maybe there're like two places to eat. But that's it.
I'm not sure which god I've pleased lately, but some cosmic hand has seen fit to bestow spring-like weather, even summer-like, on New York City.
This isn't novel for those of us from SoCal, where there's incredible weather all day, every day, all year---for us, rain is the novelty---but let me tell you why I've fallen to my knees in thanks in the intersection of Prince and Sullivan Streets, to the amusement of oncoming drivers and the Korean guy stocking the fruit at the corner store.
White wife-beaters.
New York's unending supply of cripplingly attractive women have all seen fit to crack out their white wife-beaters. They're parading about the city, oblivious to the ensuing sprained necks and car crashes.
Yoga has happened in the dingy, grime-encrusted Russian and Turkish Baths, located on E. 10th Street.
An exhausted-looking Russian guy does you the favor of taking your money. You change in the grimiest locker in the known universe, and then descend downstairs to the "spa."
They have a Turkish steam room, a dry sauna, a Swedish sauna, an ice-dip pool, and the best room in the joint, the Russian sauna.
In the Russian sauna, the kiln in the corner is filled with rocks that are baked all night, and then left to radiate temps of 165 degrees all day. Faucets with buckets underneath are interspersed along the ampitheatre-style stone steps.
When the heat gets unbearable---about every five minutes or so---you dump the bucket of frigid water over your head and let it cascade down your body.
What follows is a milisecond of pure consciousness whiteout and bliss.
That's some yoga right there.
It was coed, which meant it wasn't a total dude-fest. I was a little apprehensive about the joint's gay quotient, and scoured the website for hints that this was any place other than an OG Russian Jewish "schvitz" bathhouse. I couldn't find any, and subsequently only got hit on once.
("Say---are you by any chance a model?" Damnit, that line works on me every time.)
I've been practicing at Eddie Stern's joint, sans Eddie, who's apparently very sick. I've heard about his dedication, so he must be incredibly ill to have missed a week of class.
The space is incredible, and there's a lot of shakti in the room. Everyone faces in the same direction, towards an altar at one end of the room, and there's a warm, inviting feel to place. Everyone's been very friendly, if not a bit harried---it is New York, after all.
I also keep running into people I've met in Mysore---maybe 10 people or so? That's a lot, man. It's been too sweet.
Of course, my experience at Eddie's is made sweeter by the fact that I will soon be returning to the Best Western's Sandcastle Room.
There are also new Mysore plans in the air. I'm at 90-percent certainty there will be an extended 05 trip. More soon.
Well, maybe there're like two places to eat. But that's it.
I'm not sure which god I've pleased lately, but some cosmic hand has seen fit to bestow spring-like weather, even summer-like, on New York City.
This isn't novel for those of us from SoCal, where there's incredible weather all day, every day, all year---for us, rain is the novelty---but let me tell you why I've fallen to my knees in thanks in the intersection of Prince and Sullivan Streets, to the amusement of oncoming drivers and the Korean guy stocking the fruit at the corner store.
White wife-beaters.
New York's unending supply of cripplingly attractive women have all seen fit to crack out their white wife-beaters. They're parading about the city, oblivious to the ensuing sprained necks and car crashes.
Yoga has happened in the dingy, grime-encrusted Russian and Turkish Baths, located on E. 10th Street.
An exhausted-looking Russian guy does you the favor of taking your money. You change in the grimiest locker in the known universe, and then descend downstairs to the "spa."
They have a Turkish steam room, a dry sauna, a Swedish sauna, an ice-dip pool, and the best room in the joint, the Russian sauna.
In the Russian sauna, the kiln in the corner is filled with rocks that are baked all night, and then left to radiate temps of 165 degrees all day. Faucets with buckets underneath are interspersed along the ampitheatre-style stone steps.
When the heat gets unbearable---about every five minutes or so---you dump the bucket of frigid water over your head and let it cascade down your body.
What follows is a milisecond of pure consciousness whiteout and bliss.
That's some yoga right there.
It was coed, which meant it wasn't a total dude-fest. I was a little apprehensive about the joint's gay quotient, and scoured the website for hints that this was any place other than an OG Russian Jewish "schvitz" bathhouse. I couldn't find any, and subsequently only got hit on once.
("Say---are you by any chance a model?" Damnit, that line works on me every time.)
I've been practicing at Eddie Stern's joint, sans Eddie, who's apparently very sick. I've heard about his dedication, so he must be incredibly ill to have missed a week of class.
The space is incredible, and there's a lot of shakti in the room. Everyone faces in the same direction, towards an altar at one end of the room, and there's a warm, inviting feel to place. Everyone's been very friendly, if not a bit harried---it is New York, after all.
I also keep running into people I've met in Mysore---maybe 10 people or so? That's a lot, man. It's been too sweet.
Of course, my experience at Eddie's is made sweeter by the fact that I will soon be returning to the Best Western's Sandcastle Room.
There are also new Mysore plans in the air. I'm at 90-percent certainty there will be an extended 05 trip. More soon.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
A special treat: two entries in one day!
The Morrisey firestorm rages unabated.
Quite simply, the world is divided into two camps: those who love Morrisey, and those who must be pushed screaming from a helicopter.
My mom always says, "Remember when you broke up with Tiffany and then listened to The Smiths and Morrisey for the next six months?"
Don't laugh, I was 25.
In my defense, I was listening to the Mozzer before the break-up.
Well, maybe my Morrisey phase was symptomatic of some larger issues at hand.
On a lighter note, after practice today, my spine hurts. But baddha konasana felt great! I do feel a lot physically stronger after Guruji's two-week stopover.
With that, I'll let Morrisey take it away!
I was good kid
through hail and snow
I’d go
just to moon ya
--"I Have Forgiven Jesus"
Off the rails I was and
off the rails
I was happy to stay
--"Piccadilly Palare"
Angel, don't take your life
Some people have got no pride
They do not understand
The urgency of life
But I love you more than life
--"Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together"
The Morrisey firestorm rages unabated.
Quite simply, the world is divided into two camps: those who love Morrisey, and those who must be pushed screaming from a helicopter.
My mom always says, "Remember when you broke up with Tiffany and then listened to The Smiths and Morrisey for the next six months?"
Don't laugh, I was 25.
In my defense, I was listening to the Mozzer before the break-up.
Well, maybe my Morrisey phase was symptomatic of some larger issues at hand.
On a lighter note, after practice today, my spine hurts. But baddha konasana felt great! I do feel a lot physically stronger after Guruji's two-week stopover.
With that, I'll let Morrisey take it away!
I was good kid
through hail and snow
I’d go
just to moon ya
--"I Have Forgiven Jesus"
Off the rails I was and
off the rails
I was happy to stay
--"Piccadilly Palare"
Angel, don't take your life
Some people have got no pride
They do not understand
The urgency of life
But I love you more than life
--"Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together"
Speaking of coconuts, how does one get the little bastards open?
Monkeys do it, and here I am with my opposable thumbs and giant, evolved forebrain, smashing the thing around the parking lot like an idiot, unable to get at the sweet, sweet meat inside.
I'm right fucked if I ever crash-land on a deserted island.
I've been using the DeWalt drill to bore two holes into the coconut, after which I insert a straw.
Even with the DeWalt, I still can't get it open as fast as Beg the Coconut Man of Mysore, who holds the coconut in one hand and swings a machete at it with the other---yet still has all his fingers!
My Electric Lady betrayed me the other day. Tim's been running Sunday classes in the Sandcastle Room much later in the day, so I've been practicing at 1 PM.
Like a true Western yoga student (read: "idiot"), I ate a banana and some almonds at about 8 AM, and immediately washed it down with my vaunted Electric Lady Hammerhead. And that was it.
Needless to say, by 1 PM I was a jittery, sugar over-loaded, dehydrated mess.
Back: not bending. Muscles: trembling. Demeanor: shaky.
After practice, Andrew and Jess told me they'd eaten pancakes for breakfast that morning. Pancakes! Doubtless covered in cream. Nothing like a bit of common sense to set one on an even keel.
As Jay-Z says, streets is talking, and the mean yoga streets of Encinitas is talking about the location of our new shala.
I don't want to say anything about the new spot just yet.
I'm fighting an immediate knee-jerk "Jesus-Christ-are-you-fucking-serious!" reaction. What I'm trying to say is that I'm still trying to process the information.
What else is yoga for, than to recognize our conditioned patterns of behavior?
Change is good, right? Things can't stay the same forever.
Right?
I'm trusting that regardless of where Tim hangs up his new shingle, he'll imbue it with the same degree of love and devotion as the last location.
I mean, we all gather because of The Big Guy (in this case, Tim. But through him, the Other Big Guy---Guruji).
We don't gather because of the studio space. The studio space will become a reflection of The Big Guy's personality.
So maybe the new spot is flash, but just like the last spot---which was funky, literally and figuratively---it's going to have the same vibe.
In New York City news, I've roughed out a practice spot for the next 10 days or so. And I am psyched!
So if you're in New York City and see a long-haired, string-bean guy with nut-hugger yoga shorts and characteristic tattoos (chief among them Hanuman, hence the blog name. Duh) at your studio---that's me.
I will not be lurking through the streets in the nut-hugger attire. Normallly I wear clothes. However, for a nominal fee, I will don my grape-smugglers and come to your house to perform a series of erotic dances for you and your friends.
I'm going to start an on-line poll: just how bummed do you think my work will be when I quit---again!---to go to India?
Since I've made up my mind to go again, the hardest part has been NOT going. Meaning, there's a tendency to make my target date earlier and earlier ...
Finally, in sartorial news, I have procured a new Morrisey shirt. It doesn't even say his name! It's just a picture of the young Mozzer! Thus far, it ranks as 05's hottest purchase. So so def.
Ladies! You can either form an orderly make-out line, or just tackle me en masse.
Monkeys do it, and here I am with my opposable thumbs and giant, evolved forebrain, smashing the thing around the parking lot like an idiot, unable to get at the sweet, sweet meat inside.
I'm right fucked if I ever crash-land on a deserted island.
I've been using the DeWalt drill to bore two holes into the coconut, after which I insert a straw.
Even with the DeWalt, I still can't get it open as fast as Beg the Coconut Man of Mysore, who holds the coconut in one hand and swings a machete at it with the other---yet still has all his fingers!
My Electric Lady betrayed me the other day. Tim's been running Sunday classes in the Sandcastle Room much later in the day, so I've been practicing at 1 PM.
Like a true Western yoga student (read: "idiot"), I ate a banana and some almonds at about 8 AM, and immediately washed it down with my vaunted Electric Lady Hammerhead. And that was it.
Needless to say, by 1 PM I was a jittery, sugar over-loaded, dehydrated mess.
Back: not bending. Muscles: trembling. Demeanor: shaky.
After practice, Andrew and Jess told me they'd eaten pancakes for breakfast that morning. Pancakes! Doubtless covered in cream. Nothing like a bit of common sense to set one on an even keel.
As Jay-Z says, streets is talking, and the mean yoga streets of Encinitas is talking about the location of our new shala.
I don't want to say anything about the new spot just yet.
I'm fighting an immediate knee-jerk "Jesus-Christ-are-you-fucking-serious!" reaction. What I'm trying to say is that I'm still trying to process the information.
What else is yoga for, than to recognize our conditioned patterns of behavior?
Change is good, right? Things can't stay the same forever.
Right?
I'm trusting that regardless of where Tim hangs up his new shingle, he'll imbue it with the same degree of love and devotion as the last location.
I mean, we all gather because of The Big Guy (in this case, Tim. But through him, the Other Big Guy---Guruji).
We don't gather because of the studio space. The studio space will become a reflection of The Big Guy's personality.
So maybe the new spot is flash, but just like the last spot---which was funky, literally and figuratively---it's going to have the same vibe.
In New York City news, I've roughed out a practice spot for the next 10 days or so. And I am psyched!
So if you're in New York City and see a long-haired, string-bean guy with nut-hugger yoga shorts and characteristic tattoos (chief among them Hanuman, hence the blog name. Duh) at your studio---that's me.
I will not be lurking through the streets in the nut-hugger attire. Normallly I wear clothes. However, for a nominal fee, I will don my grape-smugglers and come to your house to perform a series of erotic dances for you and your friends.
I'm going to start an on-line poll: just how bummed do you think my work will be when I quit---again!---to go to India?
Since I've made up my mind to go again, the hardest part has been NOT going. Meaning, there's a tendency to make my target date earlier and earlier ...
Finally, in sartorial news, I have procured a new Morrisey shirt. It doesn't even say his name! It's just a picture of the young Mozzer! Thus far, it ranks as 05's hottest purchase. So so def.
Ladies! You can either form an orderly make-out line, or just tackle me en masse.
Friday, April 8, 2005
The Pope's been buried. Good fucking riddance, I'm tired of reading about it everywhere, all the time. Who knew he had such a devoted following?
(I posted this a few minutes ago, thought about it, and came back to edit it out---but you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to let it stand and hope no one declares jihad on me. Or molests me and then covers it up.)
Today, BBC News' website has a photo of an Iraqi woman's face as the thumbnail image for a photo essay. Is it wrong to think she's totally hot? Inaam Tadra, student, 24---if you're reading this, drop me a line.
We had a massive moon-day breakfast at Andrew's house. The poor guy got shanghaied into whipping up pancakes for about 10 yoga homies (yomies?) from the studio. He also makes a great latte. (Of which I had two, thanks.) He only has himself to blame, for being such a damn fine cook.
I also have come to appreciate the Australian way of eating pancakes, which is to pour cream on top.
The only way to build and sustain a community is to do it. Which means breakfasts, coffees, lunches, dinners, and around these parts, child-watching.
I'm currently reading a copy of the Gheranda Samhita, which Julie was kind enough to float my way. It's actually a great version, but more forthcoming ...
My homeboy at work and I have spent the last hour browsing espresso machine websites, as we've concocted this fantastic plot to order an illmatic espresso machine for the office and expense it to the company. Charge it to the game!
In days of yore, when in Vegas for a trade-show, I'd always somehow end up at Crazy Horse 2. The homies would be running up cash advances on their work credit cards (getting those Crazy Horse dollars) and purchasing unholy amounts of lap dances. The recurring battle-cry: "Charge it to the game!"
Is there yoga in a lapdance? In the stripclub? It is a place filled with ritualized behavior that harnesses a deep, dark (dare I trot out "cthonic"?) energy. Tantric yoga, maybe.
Perhaps this line of inquiry bears further investigation.
(I posted this a few minutes ago, thought about it, and came back to edit it out---but you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to let it stand and hope no one declares jihad on me. Or molests me and then covers it up.)
Today, BBC News' website has a photo of an Iraqi woman's face as the thumbnail image for a photo essay. Is it wrong to think she's totally hot? Inaam Tadra, student, 24---if you're reading this, drop me a line.
We had a massive moon-day breakfast at Andrew's house. The poor guy got shanghaied into whipping up pancakes for about 10 yoga homies (yomies?) from the studio. He also makes a great latte. (Of which I had two, thanks.) He only has himself to blame, for being such a damn fine cook.
I also have come to appreciate the Australian way of eating pancakes, which is to pour cream on top.
The only way to build and sustain a community is to do it. Which means breakfasts, coffees, lunches, dinners, and around these parts, child-watching.
I'm currently reading a copy of the Gheranda Samhita, which Julie was kind enough to float my way. It's actually a great version, but more forthcoming ...
My homeboy at work and I have spent the last hour browsing espresso machine websites, as we've concocted this fantastic plot to order an illmatic espresso machine for the office and expense it to the company. Charge it to the game!
In days of yore, when in Vegas for a trade-show, I'd always somehow end up at Crazy Horse 2. The homies would be running up cash advances on their work credit cards (getting those Crazy Horse dollars) and purchasing unholy amounts of lap dances. The recurring battle-cry: "Charge it to the game!"
Is there yoga in a lapdance? In the stripclub? It is a place filled with ritualized behavior that harnesses a deep, dark (dare I trot out "cthonic"?) energy. Tantric yoga, maybe.
Perhaps this line of inquiry bears further investigation.
Wednesday, April 6, 2005
I probably shouldn't have written about baddha konasana---because now the slim progress I've made will slip away again as my hips tighten like a fist. The Greeks called it hubris.
I was surfing Richard Freeman's website yesterday (don't ask why) and saw that he's written four (FOUR!) pages, using 9-point-sized font, on the subject of baddha konasana. Wow.
Here's a small sign of insanity for you. In my defense, keep in mind this was years ago. I went to Home Depot and bought two empty plastic sandbags for fifty cents each. Next, I walked down to the beach and filled 'em with sand so I had two 25-pound home-made sandbags.
I would get up an hour before practice and watch The Weather Channel with a sandbag on each thigh.
Every morning I would think, "Dear god, when will this nightmare stop?"
And because I was watching The Weather Channel, I would also think, "Dear Jesus, it's cold in other parts of the country!"
I was surfing Richard Freeman's website yesterday (don't ask why) and saw that he's written four (FOUR!) pages, using 9-point-sized font, on the subject of baddha konasana. Wow.
Here's a small sign of insanity for you. In my defense, keep in mind this was years ago. I went to Home Depot and bought two empty plastic sandbags for fifty cents each. Next, I walked down to the beach and filled 'em with sand so I had two 25-pound home-made sandbags.
I would get up an hour before practice and watch The Weather Channel with a sandbag on each thigh.
Every morning I would think, "Dear god, when will this nightmare stop?"
And because I was watching The Weather Channel, I would also think, "Dear Jesus, it's cold in other parts of the country!"
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
1. Kapotasana.
Is it possible to break one's spine in half? Just wondering, because it sure feels like it. Can your spine fall out of your back?
2. The Sand Castle Room at the Encinitas Best Western
Tim is asking that you refrain from hitting the wet bar until after practice.
3. "Trance Classics" Volumes 1 and 2
O the shame! The degradation! Yes, yes, a thousand times yes---I admit it, it's all true!
4. David Elsewhere
You call that twitching you're doing popping and locking? This is the real deal.
5. Two weeks with the Guru
I'm physically wiped out, but only realized it today. That led intermediate was gee-damn tough.
6. "Sin City"
It was too long, but there were some great moments, especially the grisly, hands-on demise of That Yellow Bastard. (Shades of Sonny Chiba's "Streetfighter"!) The very closing scene, obviously directed by Tarantino, was the only scene in the movie with a jittery, dread-filled spark of something real unfolding on the screen.
7. Speaking of "Sin City" …
Before making "Sin City," I wish director Robert Rodriguez had watched less Peckinpah and more Raoul Walsh, Sam Fuller, "Touch of Evil," Anthony Mann, Robert Aldrich, Jean-Pierre Melville, or even Budd Boetticher's later Westerns.
8. New York City
In two weeks …
9. Recipe for baddha konasana
Six days a week for three years, have a 185-pound man flatten you. Also, sit cross-legged every chance you get, all day, every day, for 18 months.
10. Bloc Party
The album is called "Silent Alarm."
11. Sheenon's tour shirts
"Ashtanga Yoga---Pure for Sure." And it's the Bharat Petroleum logo! Way too tight. Get one now, while supplies last. Or be reduced to envying mine.
12. Vajroli mudra VCD?
Who was in Mysore when that VCD was circulating, the one that showed that nutty British guy performing nauli kriya, dipping his Tiny Tim into a glass of milk, sucking the milk up his urethra, leaking it back into the glass---and then bloody winking at the camera? Jesus, how do I get a copy?
13. You can do drop-backs, but you're having trouble standing up.
Widen your feet one (and only one) inch.
Is it possible to break one's spine in half? Just wondering, because it sure feels like it. Can your spine fall out of your back?
2. The Sand Castle Room at the Encinitas Best Western
Tim is asking that you refrain from hitting the wet bar until after practice.
3. "Trance Classics" Volumes 1 and 2
O the shame! The degradation! Yes, yes, a thousand times yes---I admit it, it's all true!
4. David Elsewhere
You call that twitching you're doing popping and locking? This is the real deal.
5. Two weeks with the Guru
I'm physically wiped out, but only realized it today. That led intermediate was gee-damn tough.
6. "Sin City"
It was too long, but there were some great moments, especially the grisly, hands-on demise of That Yellow Bastard. (Shades of Sonny Chiba's "Streetfighter"!) The very closing scene, obviously directed by Tarantino, was the only scene in the movie with a jittery, dread-filled spark of something real unfolding on the screen.
7. Speaking of "Sin City" …
Before making "Sin City," I wish director Robert Rodriguez had watched less Peckinpah and more Raoul Walsh, Sam Fuller, "Touch of Evil," Anthony Mann, Robert Aldrich, Jean-Pierre Melville, or even Budd Boetticher's later Westerns.
8. New York City
In two weeks …
9. Recipe for baddha konasana
Six days a week for three years, have a 185-pound man flatten you. Also, sit cross-legged every chance you get, all day, every day, for 18 months.
10. Bloc Party
The album is called "Silent Alarm."
11. Sheenon's tour shirts
"Ashtanga Yoga---Pure for Sure." And it's the Bharat Petroleum logo! Way too tight. Get one now, while supplies last. Or be reduced to envying mine.
12. Vajroli mudra VCD?
Who was in Mysore when that VCD was circulating, the one that showed that nutty British guy performing nauli kriya, dipping his Tiny Tim into a glass of milk, sucking the milk up his urethra, leaking it back into the glass---and then bloody winking at the camera? Jesus, how do I get a copy?
13. You can do drop-backs, but you're having trouble standing up.
Widen your feet one (and only one) inch.
Friday, April 1, 2005
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.
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.
Tarik-from-Tokyo is 6-feet, 6-inches tall. The Best Western's Sand Castle conference room has ceilings that are maybe 8 feet tall. You do the math.
We were all crammed in there anyway, so it didn't really matter that there was a row of (mostly) pasty white appendages flapping about, catching unsuspecting yogis/yoginis unawares. Still, Tarik's one tall dude.
Tim brought his yoga studio jump-start kit---money box, sign-in sheet, incense, candles---everyone unrolled their mats, and we got to work. Just like that. A room is just a room, I guess, and what matters is the intent that fills it.
Nary a dry eye yesterday, the last on Guruji and Sharat's Encinitas stop. Like today, I practiced next to Andrew and Tarik, and had to dodge the requisite limbs. I was pretty fried physically after a week of led intermediate, and was glad for the first-series breather. Which I phoned in, might I add.
It was sad to say goodbye to so many people, and as I said, there was quite a bit of crying. (Never fear---as an incredibly masculine, macho, ass-kicking man, I didn't cry.)
It is so beautiful to come together for something like this, isn't it? Hundreds of people, unified in purpose, intent, and gratitude.
We were all crammed in there anyway, so it didn't really matter that there was a row of (mostly) pasty white appendages flapping about, catching unsuspecting yogis/yoginis unawares. Still, Tarik's one tall dude.
Tim brought his yoga studio jump-start kit---money box, sign-in sheet, incense, candles---everyone unrolled their mats, and we got to work. Just like that. A room is just a room, I guess, and what matters is the intent that fills it.
Nary a dry eye yesterday, the last on Guruji and Sharat's Encinitas stop. Like today, I practiced next to Andrew and Tarik, and had to dodge the requisite limbs. I was pretty fried physically after a week of led intermediate, and was glad for the first-series breather. Which I phoned in, might I add.
It was sad to say goodbye to so many people, and as I said, there was quite a bit of crying. (Never fear---as an incredibly masculine, macho, ass-kicking man, I didn't cry.)
It is so beautiful to come together for something like this, isn't it? Hundreds of people, unified in purpose, intent, and gratitude.
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