The kid is eight weeks old now, and on his way to nine weeks, when Sunday comes around. He is developing all over the place, multiple fronts. His eyes move together and can focus and show interest and emotional reactions like fright or unhappiness. There's someone IN THERE. He sleeps in chunks during darkness, usually something like 9 pm to 2 am. And he does this in the bedroom bassinet, which is marvelous and did NOT take as much pain and trying, as we feared that it might. J still sleeps in about 75-90 minute segments, with feeding and baby watching (awaking at any substantial noise from him), but she does get at least 3 of those per night, so is probably approaching 5 hours of sleep a night. When work begins for her again on Friday, she'll have a nonsense short-term memory, but I feel certain that she'll be able to speak English and handle situations. The boy is cuter, nicer, when he's quiet for hours. Looking, smiling, approaching laughter. No laughs yet, but a few times, we've heard a sort of short involuntary chirping inhale, which is halfway. Humanity. It is coming.
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I am still asana challenged on days when there is no studio class: Wed, Thurs, Fri. This week, I am doing subbing galore at the studio: Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and both Saturdays after that (different classes). My art history gig comes to an end next Wednesday, and so may provide more time then. But there are classes to prep for, including one at the graduate level, on art theory, and so that'll refill the gap. I WANT my six-a-week back. The practice is growing on me, getting big and green and healthy, and I want MORE of it.
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Recently I got a statement from my big loan lender (I have four different loans that I pay monthly) that my request for INCOME BASED REPAYMENT had gone through. This is a Department of Education program from 2008 (that's right! During the BUSH YEARS!) that says that student loan payments should be GEARED to one's INCOME. Every year, I will send them a couple pages of my tax return, and they'll set my payments for the next year.
I used to pay 1,051.61 EVERY MONTH on that big loan. The financial record of all of my grad school stupidities. The financial record of letting my ex-wife try to buy off her own bottomless insecurities with my student loans. Under IBR, my new payment is 106 bucks. That's right. ONE HUNDRED SIX.
Sure, interest accrues. But if I do this for TWENTY FIVE YEARS, the government will forgive it ALL. It's magnificent. Until and unless I make about seventy thousand dollars, I won't get anywhere near that thousand dollar monthly mark. It's a freakin LIFE SAVER.
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Every now and then something blows up in the ashtanga blogosphere. It has to happen. It's like the way that gypsy moth caterpillars get plague. Someone writes or comments on something and a nerve is hit and BOOM!! It's cool, we've seen it before. I won't provide the sites, out of politeness. Hunt around and you'll find the fireworks.
I also don't have any answers about what one SHOULD do in a Mysore room or how a teacher SHOULD behave. I can say how I would.
In every Mysore room I've been in (all three), the teacher at some point checks my practice, either in advance ("you do Primary your first day when you arrive") or at the point where I would start Intermediate ("what do you usually do?"). A year ago, which was my most recent Mysore style experience, I was doing up to Kapotasana.
I am told--by our buddy Cody, actually--that in one of the rooms I've been in, if a teacher sees someone pull a non-Ashtanga move, the teacher will wander over there and ask, "What're ya doin'?" just in an investigative way, and then apparently explain what the room is and why certain expressions and poses are allowed and others not. Insert description of tradition here, etc.
Personally, I think that if a room calls itself Mysore-style, it has a certain right to adhere to that tradition. As David Swenson once put it, if you do whatever you want, great, enjoy, but just don't call it Ashtanga.
But I know in my own room (I try to imitate Mysore-style rooms that I've personally been in, when I teach in that style), I spend quite a bit of time talking to people about how to modify, what they're used to, how much practice experience they have, and so on. It's really negotiation heavy, especially with new people. Sure, I've told people not to bind side angle poses. Sure, I've let people go past the Marichyasanas they can't do. Indy IS NOT a big Ashtanga town; I have flexy rules in my room because if I run a tight ship the way I know I should, I lose all my students. I serve them first and try to serve the tradition as well as I can, while doing that. It flexes, in my room. As it must.
If someone wants to do rad poses (like lift up to tripod headstand from the first Prasarita, as one of my enthusiastic students does), I usually ask something like, "Hey, that's more like third series; can you put your foot behind your head?" and when that student realizes that no, s/he can't do that, the rest follows. Do what the tradition says, that's why it's a Mysore room.
However, I've never had students in my room--with one exception--who want to mix and match Intermediate into Primary or even to do Intermediate or a more advanced sequence. Everyone does Primary because no one has it memorized or mastered. So that part's easy, but it also means that I never have to confront certain situations and so I also don't know what I'd do if I were confronted with such situations.
My own practice is still a weird animal. I fought for EVER with the question, what pose is your final one? Usually, backbends at the end of Primary. Yes, I STILL do not stand up; I knee-stand. But one thing that seventh series really did do for my asana practice is change it from:
1. "Traditional practice" meaning you stop at the pose you can't do
to
2. "Traditional practice," meaning breath-bandhas-dristi.
For one, I don't have the TIME and the PSYCHO-EMOTIONAL SPACE for Primary and up to Kapo. Sure, I've spent 1:45 on Second before, but something about Primary and up to Kapo kicks my BUTT, sends me into outer space for an HOUR, minimum. I remember those space trips from February, from March, from April.
I can't be in outer space for an hour with an eight-week-old. When I get up from the grass or the mat or the rug, it is GAME ON, straight away. I can be mellow, I can be energized, but I cannot be pulverized in a way that takes me an hour to re-solidify.
Would I do that practice during day care days to come? Yes, probably. It was a hell of a trip to do it for the late winter and springtime before seventh series began. As a matter of fact, I expect to return to it in the wintertime when the Y and I again become friendly.
I do about one Primary a week; there's no led that I can go to, and so I have to do it at home, and time is totally scattershot and unpredictable. Seventh series RULES home practice. But I do get one Intermediate a week, Monday nights. I also throw in a fair amount of Intermediate and advanced postures in the Saturday and Tuesday power yoga classes: usually Pasasana, Eka Pada Sirsasana, occasionally Kapotasana, a lot of Ustrasana, regular Vasisthasana and Viswamitrasna (no matter which one is called which), sometimes the Urdhva Kukkus (various), some of those seven arm balances from Advanced A (with tripod headstand vinyasas), now and then a shot at Purna Matsyendrasana and Eka Pada Rajakapotasana. I also drop back if we do wheels.
I want more settled practices, I want more strict Ashtanga in my week. But seventh series calls the shots and seventh series tells me what where when and how. So be it.
I call my home practice (whether I do Primary, partial Intermediate or the whole thing) Ashtanga because it has the regular sun salutations, standing series and closing series. Whatever it has in the middle, is still Ashtanga sequences, even if it's just Pasasana to Kapo, before closing.
It's ashtanga because I'm focusing, willfully, on breath-bandhas-dristi, and doing poses in certain sequences and with certain transitions which are the ones this practice classically calls for. Sure, if I do full Intermediate, I take some serious catch-your-breath breaks. But I also hit every pose as fully as I'm able and every vinyasa in and out as well as I'm able.
Having no teacher is quite freeing in this fashion, but also restrictive. Freeing in that I can learn and fail whatever transition I want. Freeing in that I'm not told every day "stop at backbends." Restrictive in that it's harder for me to learn those very backbends by myself. Restrictive in that I don't know where I "am" in the system.
But I know how I behave in a Mysore room. Since I can only get to one for probably a week a year (two, if I'm lucky), they are JEWELS. I do whatever the teacher in charge wants me to do. Primary only? Great. Up to whatever I was most recently doing? Great. I know I'm going to get some assisted backbends, and that's marvelous. I suck up knowledge and adjustments (rare as they are, most often being solely Kapo and backbends) like the world's most efficient sponge, because my opportunities are SO limited.
I'm down with this ashtanga yoga business.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
What if Dwi Pada Sirsasana was in a country line dance?
Yeah, that in a way is a serious question. Here's how it came about.
A lovely Intro to Second class. I did the sequence solid from first sun salutation to Pincha Mayurasana.
Dwi Pada was a highlight. I backed my mat up against a column, for just that TINY bit of support I need as an adjustment, and took lefty back. Still no problem. Lefty likes to go back. Then I took righty up in my hand, back toward the shoulder, and upward toward lefty. This is where lefty usually slips over and the pair end up hooked in front of my neck like the world's weirdest necklace.
But with just a touch of spine-on-wall, I was able to straighten my back enough to get righty over and I just barely hooked the ankles, cranked the shoulders back, and stuck an effortful but successful Dwi Pada. Five in front, unable to sit upright without the wall, and then five lifted up, which I think is easier.
But wait, the vinyasa out is Tittibhasana/Bakasana/jump. I'm back-to-a-wall. Well, this won't do.
So I put my hands down in front, and pushed up and boot-scooted, if you will, forward. Probably four times. Hopping forward with my feet behind my head. Miraculously, they stayed there. It was like doing the Tittibhasana sequence upside down, or, er, right side up, since the Tittis themselves are upside down.
Then I lifted up and hit the exit. Good stuff. Dwi Pada is still a tiring pose for me, and I think it's from having to CRANK the shoulders back to stick it.
In other news, the ligament soreness from two weeks back is easing up, which means that right-side Eka Pada is back on the menu.
A lovely Intro to Second class. I did the sequence solid from first sun salutation to Pincha Mayurasana.
Dwi Pada was a highlight. I backed my mat up against a column, for just that TINY bit of support I need as an adjustment, and took lefty back. Still no problem. Lefty likes to go back. Then I took righty up in my hand, back toward the shoulder, and upward toward lefty. This is where lefty usually slips over and the pair end up hooked in front of my neck like the world's weirdest necklace.
But with just a touch of spine-on-wall, I was able to straighten my back enough to get righty over and I just barely hooked the ankles, cranked the shoulders back, and stuck an effortful but successful Dwi Pada. Five in front, unable to sit upright without the wall, and then five lifted up, which I think is easier.
But wait, the vinyasa out is Tittibhasana/Bakasana/jump. I'm back-to-a-wall. Well, this won't do.
So I put my hands down in front, and pushed up and boot-scooted, if you will, forward. Probably four times. Hopping forward with my feet behind my head. Miraculously, they stayed there. It was like doing the Tittibhasana sequence upside down, or, er, right side up, since the Tittis themselves are upside down.
Then I lifted up and hit the exit. Good stuff. Dwi Pada is still a tiring pose for me, and I think it's from having to CRANK the shoulders back to stick it.
In other news, the ligament soreness from two weeks back is easing up, which means that right-side Eka Pada is back on the menu.
Friday, July 24, 2009
What started as baby care and wound up being about French theory and quantum physics.
Now, I don't write my rants about seventh series while the bad days are upon me; I know better than to get ANYWHERE near a computer when the bad days are here. I write rants after I've digested the feelings OF the bad days, and then I describe them here. Most of the time, I'm in a fairly good, high-energy mood when I'm writing rants about seventh here. Sure, I'm bitching like a jealous schoolgirl, but until seventh's apparently inevitable "weird magic" kicks in and makes me love it more than anything else I can imagine, this is the way.
People love their first kid SO MUCH, apparently, that they get psyched to have a second one. That blows my FUCKING MIND. The first two months of this child's life have been some of the most violently hateful disorienting hell that I can ever even IMAGINE going through. The pain has exceeded my WILDEST imagination of how bad it could ever POSSIBLY get. And that's on all levels: partner's sleeplessness, emotional anxiety, child's incomprehensibility, multiple rounds of mastitis that make breastfeeding into pure agony, on and on and on like that. We basically HAVE no relationship to ourselves; we are pure and total parents.
BUT APPARENTLY so much love and wonder and magic is headed our way that we will FORGET ALL ABOUT THIS. EVERYONE seems to.
On the one hand, I can't wait. But on the other, I fucking DARE the gods to make me forget this. You fucking BRING IT, you motherfuckers.
****************
ANYWAY:
Let us talk about things we enjoy better. I did get in a Primary today, and while Supta K was harder than I remembered, and Baddha K was much stiffer than it was a week and a half ago (my last Primary before this one), generally things were good, and I was able to get in my now-regular backbends, although I decided to walk in vs. stand up (well, stand to kneeling) from the 3 dropbacks.
I am DISTINCTLY mellower in my house, after I've had an asana practice.
I think it is NOT about ego, about "me time" or anything like that. It seems that it should be, but on a certain level which is not entirely conscious, I am AWARE that I'm deceiving myself about the baby thing, wholesale. The pain isn't real. It IS, of course, and I know that I can't get "myself" to follow this line of thinking in actuality.
It's like I walk out of my accumulated self, from the mat or rug, and especially so from ashtanga practice, moreso than power yoga, which is why I throw in specifically ashtanga moves when I do power yoga. Something about the routine, a sort of emotional familiarity, which could use some more digging-around-in.
There IS magic in ujjayi-bandhas-dristi. It has looked--especially after trying to dig into the wildly deep stuff Owl is saying about this recently--like an ocean that my feet are wading into. Shallower before, fairly shallow now still, depth awaiting. And there's your "all is coming."
Quick tangent: the new Yoga Journal arrived today (I get it as part of my yoga teacher insurance, it's a set deal, which I can't undo if I want to) and it's got a marvelous couple pages of quotes about remembering Pattabhi Jois, and from real live Mysorians like Freeman and MacGregor. Good stuff.
A lot of my Primary practice is about either one or more of ujjayi-bandhas-dristi. I like to work with dristi in sun salutations. I like keeping a very, VERY strict breath pace; it provides RIGOROUS focus. Eventually in seated the rigor of my ujjayi falls off, usually around the Marichyasanas, and asana details--mechanics--take over. The twists are still fun for me to think about in terms of ribs-to-thigh, shoulder up, back, spine tall, twist, vertical, shoulders down, etc. The physical experience. Probably this is because the twists happen BIG TIME in my outer hips, which is also part of where my backbends happen (and actually, not long ago, foot-behind-head got in there too, which it doesn't usually).
Dristi is KEY in Navasanas for me; makes them not easier but steadier. Changes them from "the pose" to something else, something back to ujjayi-bandhas-dristi, moves them from OBJECTS to FLOW (insert quantum physics equation here).
The hard poses were all, well, hard: the arm balance, the ankle-cross in Supta K, the rollup in Garbha Pindasana; actually I couldn't do it today, and that's damn unusual. I've been able to hit that since 2007! Everything that got into my right glutes, took me out of the flow. Became physical, sort of "settled into reality" again, the way my emotions do under intense child frustration. I sort of "embody" the stickiness, I agglutinate, like rice. Threatened, fear, sadness.
Focus can be maintained through this: Baddha Konasana. When it stops being about my inner thighs, it moves right into the glutes. The same way that Janu Sirsasanas, more productively, move from being hamstring stretches, to hip openers. Again, I get them in the glutes. Janus, however, are not as intense on me as Baddha, and so I can maintain breath and gaze and bandhas there, whereas its harder in Baddha, more physical, "stickier." Here it's not riding the tristana, it's in a way BEING the tristana so as, if you like, NOT to be the physical, not to get stuck.
I don't ACTUALLY believe that I am "non-physical" when I'm high on tristana, but it's a metaphor, for again, emphasizing flow over cessation, over pose-as-object. And in a way, it DOES get to physics, and quickly. There are multiple meanings of "pose-as-object." In one, the pose is the thing you got, did not get. It's about you and your capabilities. Gymnastics. In another, it's about the pose as a moment of stoppage (did you stop breathing too?). In another, it's about the pose as an agglutination, what Deleuze and Guattari would call "striated space," unopen space, defined space, a territorialization. Full tristana, if you like, de-territorializes these agglutinations, and poses turn liquid. One POURS OUT a practice.
(Uhh, Patrick, you just used French theory to describe asana practice)
At this point, binaries crumble. One isn't HAPPY to be engaged in tristana, but one CAN be sad, angry, other things, to be what I've called "agglutinated" into a hard pose. One "wakes up" at not being able to do it, perhaps. This is where I see Owl's bit about not exerting, but not "consciously" surrendering, either. There is a surrender from which the pose comes, and it's from surrendering (I think) the very exertion, not from ACTIVELY surrendering. It's not a surrender you "DO". At the point that you STOP DOING, something happens, the movement occurs. I just CANNOT trace it further than that, you'll have to ask her, assuming that I haven't just fucked it all up.
To be happy to have achieved a pose is cool, but I think that in my tristana terms, it still reflects stickiness, agglutination, striated, determined space. "I got it; I didn't get it." Not long ago I did (via experimentation) an Advanced A pose that I've wanted to do ever since I saw it in a photograph. I just fell totally in love with the look, the lines, the energy of it. I'm intentionally not naming it here. The position was achieved, but all the while that I was doing it, it was suprising, unusual, weird. It wasn't that I was unsure, or anxious, but every movement was distinct, and weird, like it was underwater or in slow motion, or like I was in a Cronenberg film where you can't tell if you're watching TV or if you're ON TV.
I have no idea what my breath pace for it was, getting in, but I remember putting the gaze in the right place and taking five breaths and then by the time I exited, I was thinking about breath again, cueing it right. And it was all beautiful, particularly the way out. So yay me, right? Sure, whatever. What was remarkable about it was that I COULDN'T BELIEVE that it had happened. It was as if I didn't do it, but dreamed that I did. A very realistic dream.
I like the dreamlike quality, and I'm torn--still--between wanting to REALIZE IT and own it and make it mine, and wanting to LEAVE it out there in the foggy dreamland. Maybe if I am ever doing that sequence, it will come with the ability to leave MYSELF out there in the foggy dreamland.
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See the parallels between asana and baby care?
Is there a "tristana" for baby care? For seventh series? With all of its wildly unpredictable entries and exits? Is there baby care "vinyasa" if you will? I think the mindset needs to be considered, not some actual "asana" parallel.
Let us rephrase: is there FLOW in baby care versus OBJECTS? Smooth space, deterritorialization? The urge, of course, in such WILD deterritorialization that the child creates, is to RETERRITORIALIZE, to fucking draw lines EVERYWHERE, to delineate MINE from THINE and they're all broken regularly, and that's where metaphors of drowning and being killed and overwhelmed and "having no relationship" come from. Not that having no relationship is imaginary.
But that falls for the trick that the SELF is territorial, has territory, and that all deterritorialization is therefore chaos unless it's "controlled" in some way, and then we're right back at self and not-self and it's not juicy anymore.
Baby space DOES have striations. There ARE objects and agglutinations there. Crying. Feeding. Napping. All of that is agglutination. The emotional dynamics of the child's noise and my REACTION to it is an agglutination. NOW we're in sexy territory again; surely there is FLOW in that dynamic, yes? Dynamism itself implies flow. The tendency is to REDUCE all FLOW in order to create, precisely, ORDER.
But order flows. Otherwise time stops. No pose is steady; you've heard this? It has nothing to do with your heartbeat or your shaking foot; it has to do with the FOURTH DIMENSION.
But this is a tangent. Baby care: what would it be to INCREASE THE FLOW? Not the chaos overall (that's the trapdoor we just evaded) but to increase the FLOW of it, versus the AGGLUTINATIONS of it? Books offer strategies, like taking a break or a walk or whatever, but this isn't about strategies, its about dynamics, about not getting stuck, not settling for "good baby, bad baby" and plays of "good behavior, bad behavior." Those will all still exist--it's not for them not to--it's the DYNAMICS between the two, between him and me, between "his" and me.
Not "to give more love" or "to be less irritable," those miss the point, those conditions are still sticky, still little homes on the smooth space. Maybe one can park there, but to live there will mean this same unhappiness, I think.
This morning I did four different tasks of housework in about 80 minutes. Things I generally hate, like cleaning porcelain and vacuuming. DO, not THINK ABOUT. It was easier than I thought. Not hard, not hateful, there was no place for it, no time for it. But after that I was STILL pissed off about duty vs. enjoyment, because this phase of life is so massively (in my sticky experience) weighted for the former and seems to utterly deny the latter. This, of course, is deception, but hard deception for me to undo.
"Enjoy your duties!" That's how the wise man on the mountain nixes the binary, right? Bullshit; there are specific joys that I want, which I cannot have. It won't hold up, it just reinvents itself like a computer virus. Can one SURF over dissatisfaction? Another temptation: the Silver Surfer, mythology, a metaphor from the Sutras about surfing, swimming, experts we must be, and so on. No, let's not do that, THIS TIME. Can one DETACH from dissatisfaction, still DO what is dissatisfying, still NOT do what would be preferable, and maintain "yes/no" while COMMITTING THE TASKS? To make even the rarified, the privatized, the so-desired, INTO DOING?
Not to lose the valuations, the "good and evil" as maybe Nietzsche would have put it, but to avoid the stickiness of those valuations, to keep from being OWNED by them. Nietzsche's weird bit on what SOUNDS LIKE agency is telling here: he very much sounds like he's talking about domination, about even fascist conquest, when what I see there more and more is simply NOT BEING OWNED by what is "good," what is "evil," not BELONGING to what's already there in its accumulated errors and unthought traditions. Sure, he digs into the traditions and the histories and gives Foucault the material to call it later, "archaeologies," but he's not about what we call "living in the present" as much as he is about living AMIDST all of what I have above named "agglutinations." Nietzsche does not wish to be STICKY, to be CONCRETIZED. From this non-stickiness, this sort of CHOSEN friction or frictionlessness, this CONTROL OVER THE COEFFICIENT, Deleuze and Guattari put together territorialization and deterritorialization.
Control over the coefficient of baby care frictions is already coming. The past pain is, in what's come to be called yoga lingo, "aversion." Sure. It's not my only aversion and won't be my last one. It's probably possible to sail past painful experience with sufficient "tristana" but I haven't done that (haven't acquired the siddhi yet?) and so the game that I CAN see, is one of NOT STICKING. Of choosing the coefficient.
There is a sense in which my efforts to "chart the progress" of newborn care and to "set the record straight" are a record of failures. But those aversions are linked to ideological ones, gender aversions, long-held mythologies; I didn't just randomly "fail the love of parenting." It's not NEARLY that simple. I'd have to take apart my whole long-held value system (as deception, as I am a deception) in order to undo the aversions the past year has stepped on, re-set-off. There is a sense in which I WANTED to stick to the pain, to study it, chart it, write it down, use it as a hammer to defy what I see as euphemizing rhetoric. Sure, there's himsa in that, but I wanted it. I did it. I got it. It doesn't make me feel better in any way other than the cathartic power of writing something accurately.
I wonder if this is my LONGEST POST EVER yet. I've gotten damn chatty in the past. Maybe I will let this end now and see if anyone gets to these lines. There's good stuff in here, things that I've been thinking about less clearly; there are lines of discovery in here, little aha moments for me. Sometimes that's all I write for. I dance around a concept and turn it every which way, get all CUBIST on it, in order to get JUST the right beam of light to come out of it.
People love their first kid SO MUCH, apparently, that they get psyched to have a second one. That blows my FUCKING MIND. The first two months of this child's life have been some of the most violently hateful disorienting hell that I can ever even IMAGINE going through. The pain has exceeded my WILDEST imagination of how bad it could ever POSSIBLY get. And that's on all levels: partner's sleeplessness, emotional anxiety, child's incomprehensibility, multiple rounds of mastitis that make breastfeeding into pure agony, on and on and on like that. We basically HAVE no relationship to ourselves; we are pure and total parents.
BUT APPARENTLY so much love and wonder and magic is headed our way that we will FORGET ALL ABOUT THIS. EVERYONE seems to.
On the one hand, I can't wait. But on the other, I fucking DARE the gods to make me forget this. You fucking BRING IT, you motherfuckers.
****************
ANYWAY:
Let us talk about things we enjoy better. I did get in a Primary today, and while Supta K was harder than I remembered, and Baddha K was much stiffer than it was a week and a half ago (my last Primary before this one), generally things were good, and I was able to get in my now-regular backbends, although I decided to walk in vs. stand up (well, stand to kneeling) from the 3 dropbacks.
I am DISTINCTLY mellower in my house, after I've had an asana practice.
I think it is NOT about ego, about "me time" or anything like that. It seems that it should be, but on a certain level which is not entirely conscious, I am AWARE that I'm deceiving myself about the baby thing, wholesale. The pain isn't real. It IS, of course, and I know that I can't get "myself" to follow this line of thinking in actuality.
It's like I walk out of my accumulated self, from the mat or rug, and especially so from ashtanga practice, moreso than power yoga, which is why I throw in specifically ashtanga moves when I do power yoga. Something about the routine, a sort of emotional familiarity, which could use some more digging-around-in.
There IS magic in ujjayi-bandhas-dristi. It has looked--especially after trying to dig into the wildly deep stuff Owl is saying about this recently--like an ocean that my feet are wading into. Shallower before, fairly shallow now still, depth awaiting. And there's your "all is coming."
Quick tangent: the new Yoga Journal arrived today (I get it as part of my yoga teacher insurance, it's a set deal, which I can't undo if I want to) and it's got a marvelous couple pages of quotes about remembering Pattabhi Jois, and from real live Mysorians like Freeman and MacGregor. Good stuff.
A lot of my Primary practice is about either one or more of ujjayi-bandhas-dristi. I like to work with dristi in sun salutations. I like keeping a very, VERY strict breath pace; it provides RIGOROUS focus. Eventually in seated the rigor of my ujjayi falls off, usually around the Marichyasanas, and asana details--mechanics--take over. The twists are still fun for me to think about in terms of ribs-to-thigh, shoulder up, back, spine tall, twist, vertical, shoulders down, etc. The physical experience. Probably this is because the twists happen BIG TIME in my outer hips, which is also part of where my backbends happen (and actually, not long ago, foot-behind-head got in there too, which it doesn't usually).
Dristi is KEY in Navasanas for me; makes them not easier but steadier. Changes them from "the pose" to something else, something back to ujjayi-bandhas-dristi, moves them from OBJECTS to FLOW (insert quantum physics equation here).
The hard poses were all, well, hard: the arm balance, the ankle-cross in Supta K, the rollup in Garbha Pindasana; actually I couldn't do it today, and that's damn unusual. I've been able to hit that since 2007! Everything that got into my right glutes, took me out of the flow. Became physical, sort of "settled into reality" again, the way my emotions do under intense child frustration. I sort of "embody" the stickiness, I agglutinate, like rice. Threatened, fear, sadness.
Focus can be maintained through this: Baddha Konasana. When it stops being about my inner thighs, it moves right into the glutes. The same way that Janu Sirsasanas, more productively, move from being hamstring stretches, to hip openers. Again, I get them in the glutes. Janus, however, are not as intense on me as Baddha, and so I can maintain breath and gaze and bandhas there, whereas its harder in Baddha, more physical, "stickier." Here it's not riding the tristana, it's in a way BEING the tristana so as, if you like, NOT to be the physical, not to get stuck.
I don't ACTUALLY believe that I am "non-physical" when I'm high on tristana, but it's a metaphor, for again, emphasizing flow over cessation, over pose-as-object. And in a way, it DOES get to physics, and quickly. There are multiple meanings of "pose-as-object." In one, the pose is the thing you got, did not get. It's about you and your capabilities. Gymnastics. In another, it's about the pose as a moment of stoppage (did you stop breathing too?). In another, it's about the pose as an agglutination, what Deleuze and Guattari would call "striated space," unopen space, defined space, a territorialization. Full tristana, if you like, de-territorializes these agglutinations, and poses turn liquid. One POURS OUT a practice.
(Uhh, Patrick, you just used French theory to describe asana practice)
At this point, binaries crumble. One isn't HAPPY to be engaged in tristana, but one CAN be sad, angry, other things, to be what I've called "agglutinated" into a hard pose. One "wakes up" at not being able to do it, perhaps. This is where I see Owl's bit about not exerting, but not "consciously" surrendering, either. There is a surrender from which the pose comes, and it's from surrendering (I think) the very exertion, not from ACTIVELY surrendering. It's not a surrender you "DO". At the point that you STOP DOING, something happens, the movement occurs. I just CANNOT trace it further than that, you'll have to ask her, assuming that I haven't just fucked it all up.
To be happy to have achieved a pose is cool, but I think that in my tristana terms, it still reflects stickiness, agglutination, striated, determined space. "I got it; I didn't get it." Not long ago I did (via experimentation) an Advanced A pose that I've wanted to do ever since I saw it in a photograph. I just fell totally in love with the look, the lines, the energy of it. I'm intentionally not naming it here. The position was achieved, but all the while that I was doing it, it was suprising, unusual, weird. It wasn't that I was unsure, or anxious, but every movement was distinct, and weird, like it was underwater or in slow motion, or like I was in a Cronenberg film where you can't tell if you're watching TV or if you're ON TV.
I have no idea what my breath pace for it was, getting in, but I remember putting the gaze in the right place and taking five breaths and then by the time I exited, I was thinking about breath again, cueing it right. And it was all beautiful, particularly the way out. So yay me, right? Sure, whatever. What was remarkable about it was that I COULDN'T BELIEVE that it had happened. It was as if I didn't do it, but dreamed that I did. A very realistic dream.
I like the dreamlike quality, and I'm torn--still--between wanting to REALIZE IT and own it and make it mine, and wanting to LEAVE it out there in the foggy dreamland. Maybe if I am ever doing that sequence, it will come with the ability to leave MYSELF out there in the foggy dreamland.
*************************
See the parallels between asana and baby care?
Is there a "tristana" for baby care? For seventh series? With all of its wildly unpredictable entries and exits? Is there baby care "vinyasa" if you will? I think the mindset needs to be considered, not some actual "asana" parallel.
Let us rephrase: is there FLOW in baby care versus OBJECTS? Smooth space, deterritorialization? The urge, of course, in such WILD deterritorialization that the child creates, is to RETERRITORIALIZE, to fucking draw lines EVERYWHERE, to delineate MINE from THINE and they're all broken regularly, and that's where metaphors of drowning and being killed and overwhelmed and "having no relationship" come from. Not that having no relationship is imaginary.
But that falls for the trick that the SELF is territorial, has territory, and that all deterritorialization is therefore chaos unless it's "controlled" in some way, and then we're right back at self and not-self and it's not juicy anymore.
Baby space DOES have striations. There ARE objects and agglutinations there. Crying. Feeding. Napping. All of that is agglutination. The emotional dynamics of the child's noise and my REACTION to it is an agglutination. NOW we're in sexy territory again; surely there is FLOW in that dynamic, yes? Dynamism itself implies flow. The tendency is to REDUCE all FLOW in order to create, precisely, ORDER.
But order flows. Otherwise time stops. No pose is steady; you've heard this? It has nothing to do with your heartbeat or your shaking foot; it has to do with the FOURTH DIMENSION.
But this is a tangent. Baby care: what would it be to INCREASE THE FLOW? Not the chaos overall (that's the trapdoor we just evaded) but to increase the FLOW of it, versus the AGGLUTINATIONS of it? Books offer strategies, like taking a break or a walk or whatever, but this isn't about strategies, its about dynamics, about not getting stuck, not settling for "good baby, bad baby" and plays of "good behavior, bad behavior." Those will all still exist--it's not for them not to--it's the DYNAMICS between the two, between him and me, between "his" and me.
Not "to give more love" or "to be less irritable," those miss the point, those conditions are still sticky, still little homes on the smooth space. Maybe one can park there, but to live there will mean this same unhappiness, I think.
This morning I did four different tasks of housework in about 80 minutes. Things I generally hate, like cleaning porcelain and vacuuming. DO, not THINK ABOUT. It was easier than I thought. Not hard, not hateful, there was no place for it, no time for it. But after that I was STILL pissed off about duty vs. enjoyment, because this phase of life is so massively (in my sticky experience) weighted for the former and seems to utterly deny the latter. This, of course, is deception, but hard deception for me to undo.
"Enjoy your duties!" That's how the wise man on the mountain nixes the binary, right? Bullshit; there are specific joys that I want, which I cannot have. It won't hold up, it just reinvents itself like a computer virus. Can one SURF over dissatisfaction? Another temptation: the Silver Surfer, mythology, a metaphor from the Sutras about surfing, swimming, experts we must be, and so on. No, let's not do that, THIS TIME. Can one DETACH from dissatisfaction, still DO what is dissatisfying, still NOT do what would be preferable, and maintain "yes/no" while COMMITTING THE TASKS? To make even the rarified, the privatized, the so-desired, INTO DOING?
Not to lose the valuations, the "good and evil" as maybe Nietzsche would have put it, but to avoid the stickiness of those valuations, to keep from being OWNED by them. Nietzsche's weird bit on what SOUNDS LIKE agency is telling here: he very much sounds like he's talking about domination, about even fascist conquest, when what I see there more and more is simply NOT BEING OWNED by what is "good," what is "evil," not BELONGING to what's already there in its accumulated errors and unthought traditions. Sure, he digs into the traditions and the histories and gives Foucault the material to call it later, "archaeologies," but he's not about what we call "living in the present" as much as he is about living AMIDST all of what I have above named "agglutinations." Nietzsche does not wish to be STICKY, to be CONCRETIZED. From this non-stickiness, this sort of CHOSEN friction or frictionlessness, this CONTROL OVER THE COEFFICIENT, Deleuze and Guattari put together territorialization and deterritorialization.
Control over the coefficient of baby care frictions is already coming. The past pain is, in what's come to be called yoga lingo, "aversion." Sure. It's not my only aversion and won't be my last one. It's probably possible to sail past painful experience with sufficient "tristana" but I haven't done that (haven't acquired the siddhi yet?) and so the game that I CAN see, is one of NOT STICKING. Of choosing the coefficient.
There is a sense in which my efforts to "chart the progress" of newborn care and to "set the record straight" are a record of failures. But those aversions are linked to ideological ones, gender aversions, long-held mythologies; I didn't just randomly "fail the love of parenting." It's not NEARLY that simple. I'd have to take apart my whole long-held value system (as deception, as I am a deception) in order to undo the aversions the past year has stepped on, re-set-off. There is a sense in which I WANTED to stick to the pain, to study it, chart it, write it down, use it as a hammer to defy what I see as euphemizing rhetoric. Sure, there's himsa in that, but I wanted it. I did it. I got it. It doesn't make me feel better in any way other than the cathartic power of writing something accurately.
I wonder if this is my LONGEST POST EVER yet. I've gotten damn chatty in the past. Maybe I will let this end now and see if anyone gets to these lines. There's good stuff in here, things that I've been thinking about less clearly; there are lines of discovery in here, little aha moments for me. Sometimes that's all I write for. I dance around a concept and turn it every which way, get all CUBIST on it, in order to get JUST the right beam of light to come out of it.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
A good rant takes a certain amount of technique.
Recently I was watching one of my regular students, who is big into empathy and masculinity ("New Warrior" style, if you know that discourse), explain a frustrating conversation with his boss, and he got progressively LESS VERBAL as frustration increased, even though he was relating a SEPARATE experience; he was basically channelling the emotions of what he was, in free indirect discourse, narrating. It was a trip and we both remarked on it.
A good rant, I think, necessitates the ability to channel anger and frustration into language which conveys the intensity of MY experience without giving everyone else a case of red-ants-in-the-pants. From there, it's up to the rant's intent: does it want to propagandize, persuade, simply state and convey? A good rant COMMUNICATES, in short.
So let me practice this skill a bit; it's good to sharpen the blades now and again.
***********************
Seventh series is kicking me in the face, basically. It does that by maintaining randomness, all the time. That, and the ideological promises that are always attached to writing about it, even when honesty shows up now and then in a comment or a paragraph's description. It's as if the American Baby Discourse wants to leaven the harshness with some nice euphemisms and generalizations about how marvelous and miraculous it all is.
Now then.
Guy Debord once said that the first duty of all bureaucrats is to deny that there is any bureaucracy. A friend of a friend of mine is preparing to leave six years worth of a teaching career in Germany, and to return to the states. When he went to the bureaucrats to fix his paperwork, they told him that he needed a certain form. He insisted that for six years, he'd never used such form. "Yes you have," they said. I LOVE that. I love that, because BOTH he AND they are telling the truth.
Look around the blogosphere these days in the ashtanga world: know what I see when I do that? Trips to hither and yon, workshops, adventure, travels in the mind and body. Then I look past the computer to the table, the windows, the bassinet set up in the living room, the two carseats that live under this table, and inevitably I hear either soft crying and whining OR some singing to keep said crying and whining from happening. Yes, I'm not touching my feet by myself in Kapotasana these days. But I am doing seventh series. Okay, sure. Now, do those correspond? What's the translation? Am I doing something harder, more noble? Do I "get the points"? Or what's that I feel, mad jealousy that OTHER people get the workshops, the travel, the summer scene that a year ago I TOLD MYSELF that I too would have?
Well surely I can put my asana practice on hold, yes? Surely the fact that I really only get to practice when I'm NOT IN THE HOUSE is enough, yes? Saturday morning power yoga, Tuesday eve power yoga, Monday night Intermediate series? Is that enough? Wednesday-Thursday-Friday tend to be impossible for asana practice. I NEVER know if there's enough time and I REGULARLY feel guilty for taking an hour or two from J, and my nerves frazzle when I hear crying from the backyard.
"Stop taking time for yourself! Serve your seventh series!" It's the voice of some anonymous authoritarian, all of whom I thought I'd killed years ago. What is this inner priest, this cop?? May 1968 graffito: "Kill your inner cop!" Indeed, but as with all revolutionaries, we have to watch out that we don't end up doing nothing but killing our enemies...Che to Stalin in one turn....
What is meditative about seventh series? The pacing with a 9-pound baby sling over my shoulder? The ease of my own breathing in the hope that it will communicate to the squirming infant in the 2 am bassinet? Fixation on the target of coherently teaching people, when the night before, there's FOUR HOURS of whining, screaming, wiggling, and refusal to sleep on the part of the infant whose crying WOULD BE CURED by the sleep he won't take?
Can a seven-week-old be IRONIC?
Why did we do this? I don't hate it, don't think I ever really HATED it. I haven't fucking LIKED it very much, though, I'll own THAT with both hands. We did this in a series of progressive steps. Last July J suggested that we take a risk of getting pregnant, and immediately I felt like I'd received a firm kick in the crotch. That clenching in the belly, real pain, hard to breathe; had to lie down on the floor and make it go away. "Maybe we'll talk about this later?" "MUCH motherfucking later," I said.
In August, we decided that really, since we were 40 and 38, maybe we couldn't do it at all, and so it would save us money on prophylactic measures, if we just discovered that we can't get pregnant. Well, since we were both raised by "don't do it til you want a kid" people (me more Catholically; she more in terms of birth control), having risk-of-pregnancy sex was DOWNRIGHT hot. Very erotic stuff. Just like Foucault says: if you make it a secret, it becomes sexualized. This had NOTHING to do with sensation and EVERYTHING to do with psychology. People who discount the mind as a sex organ are utter and total idiots.
By the first week of September, we were late and she felt sick in the morning. I said, "Well you know what they say about that in the literature." And ever since then, it's been what Jason once called "plenty of time for meditation."
And now a year later, it's "put me in the bassinet and I will immediately wiggle and cough-sputter-sob," and I mean, in SECONDS of contact. This kid wants to either be put in a womb-like environment ALL THE TIME, or else it's sobbing, crying, unhappiness. True, he looks around more, is fascinated with the turn of books' pages and windows and light, and is more quiet than he was three weeks ago, but when it comes to sleep, he reacts as if it's terrifying, as if it's a sort of loss.
So just when we want peace, we get noise. Just when we want ease, we get sobbing, upset, complaints, and they are ABOUT that peace and ease.
Again: can a seven-week-old be IRONIC?????
****************************
"To the warrior, the child is MYSTERIOUS and INCOMPREHENSIBLE." Fuck yeah! This single sentence keeps me on target some days. I think of this and I realize that the world is not going fucking insane, and that that godforsaken sobbing noise is NOT the last thing I'll ever hear before I go fucking nuts in the SHOCK CORRIDOR.
Nesting in, for the record, is fucking NOT FOR ME. Sure, I do it. I serve, because in seventh series, you serve. But this endless introverted so-called "honeymoon" (one fucking audacious book actually CALLED IT THAT!!!) is fucking BULLSHIT. It's basically, stay with your tormentor, get bad sleep, make a fucking irrecoverable mess out of your house, occasionally run out to get groceries for feeding yourself, and then try to balance the crying-to-quiet ratio with someone whose idea of a good time is fucking STARING AT WINDOWS. It's like watching someone have a catatonic acid trip and having to deal with them when they bust out crying over some incomprehensible flashback they can't ever explain to you in fucking ENGLISH.
But I do all of this anyway, because the service is NOT TO BE REFUSED. It CAN'T BE. This isn't an obligation from without; it's from within, and that doesn't keep me in the LEAST from bitching my ass off about it.
***********************
A newborn totally WRECKS interpersonal relating literature. Let me explain. What I'm coming from is a book like PASSIONATE MARRIAGE, or HOW TO BE A COUPLE AND STILL BE FREE (yeah, back in the 2003 days, that was where it was at). The guidelines are to possess your own jealousy, if any, and to always STAND even when you LEAN to give support. The basic idea is that only the independent can TRULY give support and love, without setting up some fucked indebtorship or metaphysical justice idea. Coming from a fucked relationship that was made of debts to others that I was made to (but could never, not EVER) pay, this stuff was sexy as hell to me.
Now newborns, they fuck this up completely. A newborn is ALL NEED, ALL THE TIME. He does not negotiate, cannot be patient, has no reciprocity, shows no gratitude, is incapable of taking no for an answer, EVER, and cannot convey the desires that he so desperately needs you to meet, and you MUST meet them, no matter how irrational or impossible they may be. You HAVE to do what he asks for or else he will split your fucking eardrums open.
Speaking of which: do you know that newborn crying can reach EIGHTY MOTHERFUCKING DECIBELS? That's as loud as a fucking LAWN MOWER. Hey, next time someone tells you how sweet and nice babies are, try to imagine tucking a motherfucking LAWN MOWER into the crook of your arm.
Anyway:
I CANNOT get used to this sustained disorientation. It's not disabling, but it is consistently random to the point where I'm NEVER comfortable in my own life anymore. It IS, as the quote above said, "mysterious and incomprehensible." And this is coming from a fucking CONNOISSEUR of disorientation. I know Rimbaud's famous quote about "one must undergo a systematic disorientation of the senses to become a seer." I remember the 3-day bender that started with psychedelic mushrooms, led to a red wine passout and then ended with a free tab of acid from a friend. I've read the Kerouac, and I've FELT myself "bounce off" the deep end of consciousness. I have been AROUND that motherfucking corner.
BUT THIS, I cannot get used to!!!!
Every day of this is SO MOTHERFUCKING WEIRD. That's what books don't tell you; it's all "developmental strategies" and "do you have a fussy baby" and such. Great. But even when they quote parents saying, "Your life will never be the same again!" that does NOT capture the FUCKING WEIRDNESS of it all.
I live with a small organism that has the emotional complexity of, maybe, a tortoise. But he's human and I have to pour love and, as possible, human intelligence, into him so that later, wonderful things will bloom. See how philosophically "Christian" this is? On the one hand, we always live in the present tense, where he will piss himself at least five times a day, and scream about every one of them. But on the other hand, all of the love and devotion is so that we can get something LATER. It is a state of FUTURE PROMISE, and I motherfucking HATE living in future promise.
Some of his unhappiness is because he's not warm, closed-in and moving enough; i.e., he's not in the womb. So basically, he's unhappy because of EVOLUTION. Who in their right fucking mind would ever say, "MAKE ME A FUCKING AMPHIBIAN AGAIN!! I WANNA BE A FROG OR I'M GOING TO HOWL MY ASS OFF!!" Who the fuck thinks like that? Newborns do.
But again, it's not disabling and most of the time, it doesn't make me angry, although the boy does have the ability to burn through my patience in about ten minutes when he's determined. I'm better with him after asana practice, which again, in his ironic disguise, his presence does not permit me to do.
In a way there is something marvelous (in the Surrealist sense) about living in permanent discombobulation. But it's also terrifying, all the time. So sure, he's cute, but I see the dark razor's edge of this disorientation. All the time. It's a bit like the job market, seeing myself on a thin stone bridge next to a ball of rolling flame. It's a bit like dissertation, seeing myself closer and closer to Kafka's wonderful language-imprinting punishment machine. With time running out. It's a bit like paying off loan debt, always seeing the swishing Edgar Allen Poe pendulum, passing closer and closer.
And this disorientation is promised for at least the next 18 years or so. With all the generalizations about joy and whatever, they REALLY need to include the fact that parenting will DRIVE YOU INSANE. They really need to say that out loud.
A good rant, I think, necessitates the ability to channel anger and frustration into language which conveys the intensity of MY experience without giving everyone else a case of red-ants-in-the-pants. From there, it's up to the rant's intent: does it want to propagandize, persuade, simply state and convey? A good rant COMMUNICATES, in short.
So let me practice this skill a bit; it's good to sharpen the blades now and again.
***********************
Seventh series is kicking me in the face, basically. It does that by maintaining randomness, all the time. That, and the ideological promises that are always attached to writing about it, even when honesty shows up now and then in a comment or a paragraph's description. It's as if the American Baby Discourse wants to leaven the harshness with some nice euphemisms and generalizations about how marvelous and miraculous it all is.
Now then.
Guy Debord once said that the first duty of all bureaucrats is to deny that there is any bureaucracy. A friend of a friend of mine is preparing to leave six years worth of a teaching career in Germany, and to return to the states. When he went to the bureaucrats to fix his paperwork, they told him that he needed a certain form. He insisted that for six years, he'd never used such form. "Yes you have," they said. I LOVE that. I love that, because BOTH he AND they are telling the truth.
Look around the blogosphere these days in the ashtanga world: know what I see when I do that? Trips to hither and yon, workshops, adventure, travels in the mind and body. Then I look past the computer to the table, the windows, the bassinet set up in the living room, the two carseats that live under this table, and inevitably I hear either soft crying and whining OR some singing to keep said crying and whining from happening. Yes, I'm not touching my feet by myself in Kapotasana these days. But I am doing seventh series. Okay, sure. Now, do those correspond? What's the translation? Am I doing something harder, more noble? Do I "get the points"? Or what's that I feel, mad jealousy that OTHER people get the workshops, the travel, the summer scene that a year ago I TOLD MYSELF that I too would have?
Well surely I can put my asana practice on hold, yes? Surely the fact that I really only get to practice when I'm NOT IN THE HOUSE is enough, yes? Saturday morning power yoga, Tuesday eve power yoga, Monday night Intermediate series? Is that enough? Wednesday-Thursday-Friday tend to be impossible for asana practice. I NEVER know if there's enough time and I REGULARLY feel guilty for taking an hour or two from J, and my nerves frazzle when I hear crying from the backyard.
"Stop taking time for yourself! Serve your seventh series!" It's the voice of some anonymous authoritarian, all of whom I thought I'd killed years ago. What is this inner priest, this cop?? May 1968 graffito: "Kill your inner cop!" Indeed, but as with all revolutionaries, we have to watch out that we don't end up doing nothing but killing our enemies...Che to Stalin in one turn....
What is meditative about seventh series? The pacing with a 9-pound baby sling over my shoulder? The ease of my own breathing in the hope that it will communicate to the squirming infant in the 2 am bassinet? Fixation on the target of coherently teaching people, when the night before, there's FOUR HOURS of whining, screaming, wiggling, and refusal to sleep on the part of the infant whose crying WOULD BE CURED by the sleep he won't take?
Can a seven-week-old be IRONIC?
Why did we do this? I don't hate it, don't think I ever really HATED it. I haven't fucking LIKED it very much, though, I'll own THAT with both hands. We did this in a series of progressive steps. Last July J suggested that we take a risk of getting pregnant, and immediately I felt like I'd received a firm kick in the crotch. That clenching in the belly, real pain, hard to breathe; had to lie down on the floor and make it go away. "Maybe we'll talk about this later?" "MUCH motherfucking later," I said.
In August, we decided that really, since we were 40 and 38, maybe we couldn't do it at all, and so it would save us money on prophylactic measures, if we just discovered that we can't get pregnant. Well, since we were both raised by "don't do it til you want a kid" people (me more Catholically; she more in terms of birth control), having risk-of-pregnancy sex was DOWNRIGHT hot. Very erotic stuff. Just like Foucault says: if you make it a secret, it becomes sexualized. This had NOTHING to do with sensation and EVERYTHING to do with psychology. People who discount the mind as a sex organ are utter and total idiots.
By the first week of September, we were late and she felt sick in the morning. I said, "Well you know what they say about that in the literature." And ever since then, it's been what Jason once called "plenty of time for meditation."
And now a year later, it's "put me in the bassinet and I will immediately wiggle and cough-sputter-sob," and I mean, in SECONDS of contact. This kid wants to either be put in a womb-like environment ALL THE TIME, or else it's sobbing, crying, unhappiness. True, he looks around more, is fascinated with the turn of books' pages and windows and light, and is more quiet than he was three weeks ago, but when it comes to sleep, he reacts as if it's terrifying, as if it's a sort of loss.
So just when we want peace, we get noise. Just when we want ease, we get sobbing, upset, complaints, and they are ABOUT that peace and ease.
Again: can a seven-week-old be IRONIC?????
****************************
"To the warrior, the child is MYSTERIOUS and INCOMPREHENSIBLE." Fuck yeah! This single sentence keeps me on target some days. I think of this and I realize that the world is not going fucking insane, and that that godforsaken sobbing noise is NOT the last thing I'll ever hear before I go fucking nuts in the SHOCK CORRIDOR.
Nesting in, for the record, is fucking NOT FOR ME. Sure, I do it. I serve, because in seventh series, you serve. But this endless introverted so-called "honeymoon" (one fucking audacious book actually CALLED IT THAT!!!) is fucking BULLSHIT. It's basically, stay with your tormentor, get bad sleep, make a fucking irrecoverable mess out of your house, occasionally run out to get groceries for feeding yourself, and then try to balance the crying-to-quiet ratio with someone whose idea of a good time is fucking STARING AT WINDOWS. It's like watching someone have a catatonic acid trip and having to deal with them when they bust out crying over some incomprehensible flashback they can't ever explain to you in fucking ENGLISH.
But I do all of this anyway, because the service is NOT TO BE REFUSED. It CAN'T BE. This isn't an obligation from without; it's from within, and that doesn't keep me in the LEAST from bitching my ass off about it.
***********************
A newborn totally WRECKS interpersonal relating literature. Let me explain. What I'm coming from is a book like PASSIONATE MARRIAGE, or HOW TO BE A COUPLE AND STILL BE FREE (yeah, back in the 2003 days, that was where it was at). The guidelines are to possess your own jealousy, if any, and to always STAND even when you LEAN to give support. The basic idea is that only the independent can TRULY give support and love, without setting up some fucked indebtorship or metaphysical justice idea. Coming from a fucked relationship that was made of debts to others that I was made to (but could never, not EVER) pay, this stuff was sexy as hell to me.
Now newborns, they fuck this up completely. A newborn is ALL NEED, ALL THE TIME. He does not negotiate, cannot be patient, has no reciprocity, shows no gratitude, is incapable of taking no for an answer, EVER, and cannot convey the desires that he so desperately needs you to meet, and you MUST meet them, no matter how irrational or impossible they may be. You HAVE to do what he asks for or else he will split your fucking eardrums open.
Speaking of which: do you know that newborn crying can reach EIGHTY MOTHERFUCKING DECIBELS? That's as loud as a fucking LAWN MOWER. Hey, next time someone tells you how sweet and nice babies are, try to imagine tucking a motherfucking LAWN MOWER into the crook of your arm.
Anyway:
I CANNOT get used to this sustained disorientation. It's not disabling, but it is consistently random to the point where I'm NEVER comfortable in my own life anymore. It IS, as the quote above said, "mysterious and incomprehensible." And this is coming from a fucking CONNOISSEUR of disorientation. I know Rimbaud's famous quote about "one must undergo a systematic disorientation of the senses to become a seer." I remember the 3-day bender that started with psychedelic mushrooms, led to a red wine passout and then ended with a free tab of acid from a friend. I've read the Kerouac, and I've FELT myself "bounce off" the deep end of consciousness. I have been AROUND that motherfucking corner.
BUT THIS, I cannot get used to!!!!
Every day of this is SO MOTHERFUCKING WEIRD. That's what books don't tell you; it's all "developmental strategies" and "do you have a fussy baby" and such. Great. But even when they quote parents saying, "Your life will never be the same again!" that does NOT capture the FUCKING WEIRDNESS of it all.
I live with a small organism that has the emotional complexity of, maybe, a tortoise. But he's human and I have to pour love and, as possible, human intelligence, into him so that later, wonderful things will bloom. See how philosophically "Christian" this is? On the one hand, we always live in the present tense, where he will piss himself at least five times a day, and scream about every one of them. But on the other hand, all of the love and devotion is so that we can get something LATER. It is a state of FUTURE PROMISE, and I motherfucking HATE living in future promise.
Some of his unhappiness is because he's not warm, closed-in and moving enough; i.e., he's not in the womb. So basically, he's unhappy because of EVOLUTION. Who in their right fucking mind would ever say, "MAKE ME A FUCKING AMPHIBIAN AGAIN!! I WANNA BE A FROG OR I'M GOING TO HOWL MY ASS OFF!!" Who the fuck thinks like that? Newborns do.
But again, it's not disabling and most of the time, it doesn't make me angry, although the boy does have the ability to burn through my patience in about ten minutes when he's determined. I'm better with him after asana practice, which again, in his ironic disguise, his presence does not permit me to do.
In a way there is something marvelous (in the Surrealist sense) about living in permanent discombobulation. But it's also terrifying, all the time. So sure, he's cute, but I see the dark razor's edge of this disorientation. All the time. It's a bit like the job market, seeing myself on a thin stone bridge next to a ball of rolling flame. It's a bit like dissertation, seeing myself closer and closer to Kafka's wonderful language-imprinting punishment machine. With time running out. It's a bit like paying off loan debt, always seeing the swishing Edgar Allen Poe pendulum, passing closer and closer.
And this disorientation is promised for at least the next 18 years or so. With all the generalizations about joy and whatever, they REALLY need to include the fact that parenting will DRIVE YOU INSANE. They really need to say that out loud.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Advice? Lateral knee ligament, but also, teaching "series" classes
Hi everyone,
Two issues tonight.
One: some lateral (that is, outside) ligament on my right knee is getting achy and overstretched when I put the foot behind my head. I set this off last week and it's taking its time to heal. I can still take the hip well back, and the foot well up (that is, straighten the leg). It's the "sweep behind" that overcranks the ligament.
What would you do in order to keep being able to work FBH here? Do the Swenson mod where you duck your head under the front leg in a Virabhadrasana-style stance? Pigeons? A pose like double pigeon (Agnistambhasana) is some sore, but it's ok. Pigeon itself (reclining pigeon, I'm thinking) is also fine because I can way flex the foot (keeps the knee happier). All advice welcome.
Two:
The studio I teach at, is moving, and in September they want to do ashtanga classes as a "series" where students would commit in advance to 4/6/8 some number of weeks. Ashtanga for some reason just doesn't pull people in here (insert rant at this point) and so maybe a series-commitment will get some committed students. Good thinking, in my opinion. Series-classes are done sometimes in Indy, but most classes here are drop-in. Does anyone have experience teaching a series class? Does advertising these work? Do students attend through the whole session? Any stories, advice, etc, welcome.
That is all. Cheerio!
Two issues tonight.
One: some lateral (that is, outside) ligament on my right knee is getting achy and overstretched when I put the foot behind my head. I set this off last week and it's taking its time to heal. I can still take the hip well back, and the foot well up (that is, straighten the leg). It's the "sweep behind" that overcranks the ligament.
What would you do in order to keep being able to work FBH here? Do the Swenson mod where you duck your head under the front leg in a Virabhadrasana-style stance? Pigeons? A pose like double pigeon (Agnistambhasana) is some sore, but it's ok. Pigeon itself (reclining pigeon, I'm thinking) is also fine because I can way flex the foot (keeps the knee happier). All advice welcome.
Two:
The studio I teach at, is moving, and in September they want to do ashtanga classes as a "series" where students would commit in advance to 4/6/8 some number of weeks. Ashtanga for some reason just doesn't pull people in here (insert rant at this point) and so maybe a series-commitment will get some committed students. Good thinking, in my opinion. Series-classes are done sometimes in Indy, but most classes here are drop-in. Does anyone have experience teaching a series class? Does advertising these work? Do students attend through the whole session? Any stories, advice, etc, welcome.
That is all. Cheerio!
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Teaching sleep.
Did you know that you have to TEACH newborns to sleep? Well, no, not to EVER sleep, but to sleep on any kind of schedule, and eventually to be able to put themselves down, to develop what books call "sleep habits."
Right now I *think* the boy is asleep in the baby sling which is over my right shoulder; he's a warm, unmoving pile on my lap. It is HARD WORK to get this child to sleep with any kind of intention. He TENDS to sleep well from 6 am to 9 am or so (but with exceptions) and he TENDS to take a late morning nap, an early afternoon one, and an early evening one, but ALL of those are up for debate.
One night he slept largely from 5:30 pm to about 8 am; this was miraculous for undoing a little bit of our sleep debt. But then for four days after that, it was the much-more-regular screaming and overtired show for at least TWO HOURS at night, before sleeping begins (those 2 hours tend to be 8-10 or 9-11 pm).
Overtired. Yes, this needs definition. There are FOUR different "put your kid to sleep without tears" books in our house, most inherited. Most of the baby stuff we have at all, is inherited. Benefit of doing this late; EVERYONE we know gave us stuff, and it's ALL welcome.
So, overtired. The infant-ese turns into English like this: a child of 7 weeks (and today is 7 weeks) should apparently sleep 4-5 hours "in the night" (this is loosely called "sleeping through the night") and maybe three 1-2 hour naps, and whenever else s/he wants to. That adds up by my math, to 10 hours or more a day, in pieces. Overtired is when a kid does not sleep enough and thus is ALWAYS cranky from the sleep debt. With a fussy enough child, like this one, it's IMPOSSIBLE to tell "overtired" from daily fussiness. So at random we tried a super-early bedtime one day, and got those magnificent 15 hours of sleep. ONCE. (does anyone remember, "You shouldn't shoot me, Johnny; my Grandmother shot me once. ONCE!"??)
But still, there are at least six hours of whining, sputtering-to-screaming crying fussiness EVERY DAY. Feed me, or change me, or I'm not warm enough (it's gotten down to the 50s here at night, in freakin JULY; what the FUCK, global warming???), or the ever popular "I'm just feeling fuckin CRANKY right now, motherfuckers!" Yeah, our child is Samuel L. Jackson.
Anyway:
An attempt to organize sleep, to TEACH sleep, means several things, in order.
1. To create a "sleep environment" (dark room, quiet, etc).
2. To have "sleep rituals" (sling carry, whispered shushing, hands on chest, etc)
3. To PUT THE CHILD DOWN (which means not euthanasia, the way people use "put down" with pets), i.e., to put the child IN A BED where he will, yes, someday, SLEEP.
Creating the environment is nothing more than switching lights off and hoping that the fucking neighborhood has grown out of its late-night July fireworks fetish.
Sleep rituals vary with the kid, but he likes a swaddle or a sling carry, he likes WARMTH, MOVEMENT and CLOSENESS. So those govern the rituals. Shushing has also worked.
It is PUTTING DOWN that is the superhuman challenge, with this one.
See, putting this fussy one down, means ruining the sleep ritual. Step 3 is actually the anathema for step 2. It ruins step 2, and almost ALL THE TIME, it ruins the sleep, and with total ruination, I mean, full scream, child feeling abandoned, utter freakout, NUCLEAR MELTDOWN.
So it becomes ironic. You get the kid all quiet, you've put down the last screaming fit, you and your partner are whispering to each other even though babies can tune out fairly loud noise while asleep, and you tip toe (you do!) to the crib or bassinet, and maybe someone's even been laying on the blanket that goes in it, so it's warm, and you sneak over there, pile of sleeping lovable warmth in your sling or arms, and you lean over, and So so carefully put him in it...holding still...gradually slipping the hands away....exhaling begins...peace ensues...
BAM!!!
About SEVENTEEN SECONDS later, the sputtering begins and then it's two hours of VENGEANCE!!!!!!!!!
I mean, of course it's not vengeance, it's panic and wanting to be in the womb and feeling alone, and just freaking out. And so that's fine, even pitiable, but it's not good for anyone's sleep, his mine or hers.
Some stats:
Almost all the time, SOMEONE is awake in this house. J is trying to catch some Z's for example, while I carry the child in the sling and type this.
The kid NEVER sleeps if he's just put in a crib or bassinet. NEVER, no exceptions. He ONLY sleeps from sling carries, nursing, or on a lap. In order to fall asleep, this child MUST have human contact and warmth from skin. It helps--a LOT--if he can ALSO have movement. He must be comatose--seriously comatose--in order to be put down, and then you never know when you're gonna get Chuck Freakin Norris out of that crib in seventeen seconds.
J and I have not slept in the same location more than maybe 8 times in the past FORTY NINE DAYS. We've set up 2 beds (one is a futon mattress on the floor) so that someone can play baby-put-downer and someone else can get some honest sleep. If we actually sleep next to each other, it's always for less than 2 hours. Either a feeding or a noise or sheer randomness will necessitate a rearrangement, and then it's on again.
They say that the first three months are the "fourth trimester." This fits. They say that sleep can be developed--be taught--more easily after three months. Ok, we'll trust them on this. That's five weeks from now. FIVE. Right now I don't mind carrying the kid in the sling, because I'm not dead tired and looking for sleep. If it were just possible for one of us to be up while the other one sleeps, this would be ideal. The child could have constant walking-and-carrying, which is what he seems to want all the time anyway (can we say, "put me in the womb", everyone?).
I'm sure that with time, he'll get more confident with "being in the world," and thus being able to sleep in it.
Right now I *think* the boy is asleep in the baby sling which is over my right shoulder; he's a warm, unmoving pile on my lap. It is HARD WORK to get this child to sleep with any kind of intention. He TENDS to sleep well from 6 am to 9 am or so (but with exceptions) and he TENDS to take a late morning nap, an early afternoon one, and an early evening one, but ALL of those are up for debate.
One night he slept largely from 5:30 pm to about 8 am; this was miraculous for undoing a little bit of our sleep debt. But then for four days after that, it was the much-more-regular screaming and overtired show for at least TWO HOURS at night, before sleeping begins (those 2 hours tend to be 8-10 or 9-11 pm).
Overtired. Yes, this needs definition. There are FOUR different "put your kid to sleep without tears" books in our house, most inherited. Most of the baby stuff we have at all, is inherited. Benefit of doing this late; EVERYONE we know gave us stuff, and it's ALL welcome.
So, overtired. The infant-ese turns into English like this: a child of 7 weeks (and today is 7 weeks) should apparently sleep 4-5 hours "in the night" (this is loosely called "sleeping through the night") and maybe three 1-2 hour naps, and whenever else s/he wants to. That adds up by my math, to 10 hours or more a day, in pieces. Overtired is when a kid does not sleep enough and thus is ALWAYS cranky from the sleep debt. With a fussy enough child, like this one, it's IMPOSSIBLE to tell "overtired" from daily fussiness. So at random we tried a super-early bedtime one day, and got those magnificent 15 hours of sleep. ONCE. (does anyone remember, "You shouldn't shoot me, Johnny; my Grandmother shot me once. ONCE!"??)
But still, there are at least six hours of whining, sputtering-to-screaming crying fussiness EVERY DAY. Feed me, or change me, or I'm not warm enough (it's gotten down to the 50s here at night, in freakin JULY; what the FUCK, global warming???), or the ever popular "I'm just feeling fuckin CRANKY right now, motherfuckers!" Yeah, our child is Samuel L. Jackson.
Anyway:
An attempt to organize sleep, to TEACH sleep, means several things, in order.
1. To create a "sleep environment" (dark room, quiet, etc).
2. To have "sleep rituals" (sling carry, whispered shushing, hands on chest, etc)
3. To PUT THE CHILD DOWN (which means not euthanasia, the way people use "put down" with pets), i.e., to put the child IN A BED where he will, yes, someday, SLEEP.
Creating the environment is nothing more than switching lights off and hoping that the fucking neighborhood has grown out of its late-night July fireworks fetish.
Sleep rituals vary with the kid, but he likes a swaddle or a sling carry, he likes WARMTH, MOVEMENT and CLOSENESS. So those govern the rituals. Shushing has also worked.
It is PUTTING DOWN that is the superhuman challenge, with this one.
See, putting this fussy one down, means ruining the sleep ritual. Step 3 is actually the anathema for step 2. It ruins step 2, and almost ALL THE TIME, it ruins the sleep, and with total ruination, I mean, full scream, child feeling abandoned, utter freakout, NUCLEAR MELTDOWN.
So it becomes ironic. You get the kid all quiet, you've put down the last screaming fit, you and your partner are whispering to each other even though babies can tune out fairly loud noise while asleep, and you tip toe (you do!) to the crib or bassinet, and maybe someone's even been laying on the blanket that goes in it, so it's warm, and you sneak over there, pile of sleeping lovable warmth in your sling or arms, and you lean over, and So so carefully put him in it...holding still...gradually slipping the hands away....exhaling begins...peace ensues...
BAM!!!
About SEVENTEEN SECONDS later, the sputtering begins and then it's two hours of VENGEANCE!!!!!!!!!
I mean, of course it's not vengeance, it's panic and wanting to be in the womb and feeling alone, and just freaking out. And so that's fine, even pitiable, but it's not good for anyone's sleep, his mine or hers.
Some stats:
Almost all the time, SOMEONE is awake in this house. J is trying to catch some Z's for example, while I carry the child in the sling and type this.
The kid NEVER sleeps if he's just put in a crib or bassinet. NEVER, no exceptions. He ONLY sleeps from sling carries, nursing, or on a lap. In order to fall asleep, this child MUST have human contact and warmth from skin. It helps--a LOT--if he can ALSO have movement. He must be comatose--seriously comatose--in order to be put down, and then you never know when you're gonna get Chuck Freakin Norris out of that crib in seventeen seconds.
J and I have not slept in the same location more than maybe 8 times in the past FORTY NINE DAYS. We've set up 2 beds (one is a futon mattress on the floor) so that someone can play baby-put-downer and someone else can get some honest sleep. If we actually sleep next to each other, it's always for less than 2 hours. Either a feeding or a noise or sheer randomness will necessitate a rearrangement, and then it's on again.
They say that the first three months are the "fourth trimester." This fits. They say that sleep can be developed--be taught--more easily after three months. Ok, we'll trust them on this. That's five weeks from now. FIVE. Right now I don't mind carrying the kid in the sling, because I'm not dead tired and looking for sleep. If it were just possible for one of us to be up while the other one sleeps, this would be ideal. The child could have constant walking-and-carrying, which is what he seems to want all the time anyway (can we say, "put me in the womb", everyone?).
I'm sure that with time, he'll get more confident with "being in the world," and thus being able to sleep in it.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
I am very numerical: six weeks, "seventh" and second series
Sunday is the kid's week-birthday, so this makes six weeks. They say that the first six weeks are the hardest, and I'm already finding that I don't remember large sections of June, so I'm glad I threw down some posts about those days. For example, I can't remember if I led a Primary on the second Monday in June (my monthly Primary, that is). I can't recall ENTIRE three-hour classes in art history that I taught. Days at a time, are simply gone, transformed into quick, summary images of whole experiences, conversations. Hard sleep deprivation will definitely fuck up your memory.
***********************
The new test for the household is to get this child to sleep regularly so that when J begins going back to work for administrative stuff in August, some kind of sleep schedule (at NIGHT) will be in place. This means about two hours nightly of trying to coax the child into unconsciousness and comfort, in the crib or bassinet. Very challenging stuff. Currently the kid is unconscious next to me, wrapped up in both a swaddling blanket and a sling (that's for ease of me putting him over my shoulder to walk around; sling creates peace and lets J get some sleep while I do things like type this very blog entry).
**************************
The nature of seventh series is that it needs to be done above and primary to, whatever it is that you're doing. Writing something delicious while you're really in the zone? Put it down, seventh series is calling. Cooking garlic which burns easily? Take that pan with you; seventh is calling. And so on: practicing and up to Janu Sirsasana C? Hold that sweat and walk the kid around in the sling! Diaper changes, crying that needs attention, anything at all. Seventh comes before it all. He's never called me out of Kapotasana (what a mindbender THAT would be) but in general, his needs come before everyone else's. If one of us has an appointment or I want to practice in the back yard, negotiations have to be made. It's not an attack on free will--as earlier I would have described it--it's more like really intense obligation with no set schedule. Maybe it's comparable to being "on call" at a hospital; you might have to address a scratch or a big emergency. Whenever that call comes in, no matter what you're doing, you go.
************************
Our communication--that is, between the kid and me-and-J-as-a-unit, is getting better. We can tell "feed me" crying from "change my diaper" crying. We can spot overtired crying. There is still random, inconsolable crying, but not as much of it. We're getting better ears for him. The comfort level is somewhat increasing, but J is getting big pressure between the biochemical impulses to be near the kid all the time, and the demands of work coming soon. I think this will sort itself out as new schedules do, but that first week in August is going to be a mess.
*************************
I am slowly and gradually rebuilding a regular practice of asana. Brief Intermediate (to Bakasana) on Sunday, whole Intermediate on Monday. Hopes for a Primary today (for its hip-opening qualities; I could use some big stretches through the hips and glutes).
About whole Intermediate:
I modified everything which I could not do in full expression: that's Kapo, Supta Vajrasana, Dwi Pada Sirsasana, Karandavasana, Mayurasana (yesterday, anyway), Nakrasana, and (I suspect) Parighasana and Gomukhasana and Supta Urdhva Pada.
Kapo and I are still, without adjustment, working toward a toe-grab. With adjustment, it's easy.
Supta Vajrasana and I are working toward keeping the toe-grab. I built this with my kneeling dropback practice, then lost it to seventh series, and yesterday I started over again with that.
FBH yesterday was very springy; the foot really wants to spring out from behind my head, and slightly overcranked a lateral ligament behind the right knee, trying to keep the foot back there. This is really what's making me want more Primary. I could get lefty back, no problem, for Dwi Pada, but taking righty up, made the whole thing explode, like a box of Slinkies(tm) falling off a quick-moving truck.
Discoveries in Karandavasana, which feel like I'm tracking Grim's footsteps:
When I make lotus upside down, I fold slightly toward my belly. Predictably, for Karanda, this starts the lower-down before the lotus is made, and then I lose the inversion. Yesterday I did it 7 times, finding that if I move my gaze just barely toward the elbows, I can somehow get enough of a backbend to counter the lotus forward fold, and I MADE the lotus. Twice. The new test is to CURL IT IN rather than dropping it down (Grim has written at length about this).
Mayurasana, I can usually do anytime, anywhere. But sweaty triceps on sweaty belly saw me fall to the side, then onto my nose, then down between the arms. I simply could NOT hold it together. I used to blame too-much-sweat on poses I couldn't stick in Primary, and that's turned out to be nonsense (hell, I stuck a Bakasana B on those same sweaty triceps), so I'm not willing to blame the sweat here. More bandhas!
Nakrasana, I know I faked. Chest coming up, making it more locust than bandhas jumping. Also, I suspect that the rule for Parighasana and for Gomukhasnaa is "sit bones grounded" and they weren't, in either pose (particularly the forward fold in the cowface). Couldn't hold the lotused toe in the rollup in SUPV, whereas before, I've been able to. That pose isn't, I think, as hard as it's rumored to be. I just couldn't stick it yesterday.
Nonetheless, I did the seven deadlies and chaturanga'd down all seven, and then did five wheels, three heels-up dropbacks and three stand-to-knees. 25-10 closing. Took about 1:45 to do it all. A worthy experiment. Learning experience.
It's been a year since I was getting any instruction in a Mysore-style format. Matthew wanted hands-to-heels in Kapo and K wanted me (I think) simply to stay down there for as long as she held me down there. I imagine a trip out to see family (and K) in August, but I know that won't happen. Who the hell knows when my next session of instruction will be.
***********************
The new test for the household is to get this child to sleep regularly so that when J begins going back to work for administrative stuff in August, some kind of sleep schedule (at NIGHT) will be in place. This means about two hours nightly of trying to coax the child into unconsciousness and comfort, in the crib or bassinet. Very challenging stuff. Currently the kid is unconscious next to me, wrapped up in both a swaddling blanket and a sling (that's for ease of me putting him over my shoulder to walk around; sling creates peace and lets J get some sleep while I do things like type this very blog entry).
**************************
The nature of seventh series is that it needs to be done above and primary to, whatever it is that you're doing. Writing something delicious while you're really in the zone? Put it down, seventh series is calling. Cooking garlic which burns easily? Take that pan with you; seventh is calling. And so on: practicing and up to Janu Sirsasana C? Hold that sweat and walk the kid around in the sling! Diaper changes, crying that needs attention, anything at all. Seventh comes before it all. He's never called me out of Kapotasana (what a mindbender THAT would be) but in general, his needs come before everyone else's. If one of us has an appointment or I want to practice in the back yard, negotiations have to be made. It's not an attack on free will--as earlier I would have described it--it's more like really intense obligation with no set schedule. Maybe it's comparable to being "on call" at a hospital; you might have to address a scratch or a big emergency. Whenever that call comes in, no matter what you're doing, you go.
************************
Our communication--that is, between the kid and me-and-J-as-a-unit, is getting better. We can tell "feed me" crying from "change my diaper" crying. We can spot overtired crying. There is still random, inconsolable crying, but not as much of it. We're getting better ears for him. The comfort level is somewhat increasing, but J is getting big pressure between the biochemical impulses to be near the kid all the time, and the demands of work coming soon. I think this will sort itself out as new schedules do, but that first week in August is going to be a mess.
*************************
I am slowly and gradually rebuilding a regular practice of asana. Brief Intermediate (to Bakasana) on Sunday, whole Intermediate on Monday. Hopes for a Primary today (for its hip-opening qualities; I could use some big stretches through the hips and glutes).
About whole Intermediate:
I modified everything which I could not do in full expression: that's Kapo, Supta Vajrasana, Dwi Pada Sirsasana, Karandavasana, Mayurasana (yesterday, anyway), Nakrasana, and (I suspect) Parighasana and Gomukhasana and Supta Urdhva Pada.
Kapo and I are still, without adjustment, working toward a toe-grab. With adjustment, it's easy.
Supta Vajrasana and I are working toward keeping the toe-grab. I built this with my kneeling dropback practice, then lost it to seventh series, and yesterday I started over again with that.
FBH yesterday was very springy; the foot really wants to spring out from behind my head, and slightly overcranked a lateral ligament behind the right knee, trying to keep the foot back there. This is really what's making me want more Primary. I could get lefty back, no problem, for Dwi Pada, but taking righty up, made the whole thing explode, like a box of Slinkies(tm) falling off a quick-moving truck.
Discoveries in Karandavasana, which feel like I'm tracking Grim's footsteps:
When I make lotus upside down, I fold slightly toward my belly. Predictably, for Karanda, this starts the lower-down before the lotus is made, and then I lose the inversion. Yesterday I did it 7 times, finding that if I move my gaze just barely toward the elbows, I can somehow get enough of a backbend to counter the lotus forward fold, and I MADE the lotus. Twice. The new test is to CURL IT IN rather than dropping it down (Grim has written at length about this).
Mayurasana, I can usually do anytime, anywhere. But sweaty triceps on sweaty belly saw me fall to the side, then onto my nose, then down between the arms. I simply could NOT hold it together. I used to blame too-much-sweat on poses I couldn't stick in Primary, and that's turned out to be nonsense (hell, I stuck a Bakasana B on those same sweaty triceps), so I'm not willing to blame the sweat here. More bandhas!
Nakrasana, I know I faked. Chest coming up, making it more locust than bandhas jumping. Also, I suspect that the rule for Parighasana and for Gomukhasnaa is "sit bones grounded" and they weren't, in either pose (particularly the forward fold in the cowface). Couldn't hold the lotused toe in the rollup in SUPV, whereas before, I've been able to. That pose isn't, I think, as hard as it's rumored to be. I just couldn't stick it yesterday.
Nonetheless, I did the seven deadlies and chaturanga'd down all seven, and then did five wheels, three heels-up dropbacks and three stand-to-knees. 25-10 closing. Took about 1:45 to do it all. A worthy experiment. Learning experience.
It's been a year since I was getting any instruction in a Mysore-style format. Matthew wanted hands-to-heels in Kapo and K wanted me (I think) simply to stay down there for as long as she held me down there. I imagine a trip out to see family (and K) in August, but I know that won't happen. Who the hell knows when my next session of instruction will be.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Fatherhood and Second Series
While we were still pregnant, I would periodically go through "gender panics" about what fatherhood was "going to impose on me." It turns out, now with kid in sling around my neck, that this panic was all about me and not at all about actual roles and behaviors. This is a good discovery.
I expected--in part from experience but in large part from media socialization, to which I seem particularly susceptible--that fatherhood would HAVE to come with some kind of emotional insensitivity and then later with baseballs and such. In short, I felt that fatherhood would HAVE to consist of stereotypes of "American masculinity," from competition (which passes itself off as sport) to emotional cluelessness (which passes itself off as toughness, machismo, what have you).
I haven't had either of those things, really ever as part of my own specific gender makeup. I don't like competition and actively avoid team sports, unless I'm watching them on TV with my father when I visit over the summer (he likes this and it's a type of community-building now that he's full of arthritis). Also, machismo has never been my thing. The closest I ever get to that is the warrior-climber personality, but that's all about metaphysics and voodoo and cultural re-envisionining, not about seeing myself as the hetero conqueror of Jane the jungle chick.
Nurture (by which I mean actual care of others, not socialized nurture versus essentialized nature) is big in my life experience. I grew up with pets--mostly dogs but later cats too-from birth. They preceded me, in fact, and I was brought into a house with five dogs in it (I'm adopted, and so is my brother).
My parents were around most of the time, and so there was nurture to the point of overprotectiveness, and I've always had dogs and cats and so forth, and really, I see my own child as something of a very specialized, high-needs sort of pet. Not that he's MINE, not that he's somehow a belonging or a limited creature (I don't mean "pet" in any kind of perjorative sense) but in that he's currently something I very much care for, not interact with. He's not nearly independent yet, and in fact, the cats FAR outreach him in independence. So for now, I can pull in experience with animals from my own youth, in dealing with him. Yes, I realize he's more than this, but it's the experience with nurture which I'm pulling in, not the actual analog.
As I've said before (or heavily implied), my parents excel at children, but get weird with adolescents. They simply do not have the machinery to celebrate and enjoy the bodies that develop with puberty. They can discipline (in the Foucauldian sense) such bodies, but cannot enjoy and celebrate them; there's too much fear there. So in thinking of growing up with my own son, there's a like weirdness. This is simple nurture and care; this is fine. Later there will be language and hikes in parks and such, and that'll be fine. HOW WEIRD will my relationship to adolescent alienation (my own) be, when he does it? I'm not sure it'll get weird at all, I've pretty well shattered my own experience with this, so as not to hand it down.
J, as I've said before, did not have this alienation; she was raised by body-saavy people. I think that between the two of us, we can turn up the nurture and the body celebration, and then whatever issues about bodies and gender and masculinity I fear about handing down, won't be so handed. This will be good. Other issues--something, I'm not sure what--will no doubt be carried by this kid, but I think that my own, are over. They belong to me, stay with me.
I'm finding that fatherhood is a SOCIAL phenomenon--not that it's social versus essential, but that it is social in that it only REALLY exists as discourse to me, when I'm around OTHER people. When it's just J and the kid and me, we are all action. He is crying and we run the checklist. He is calm and we sleep or do errands or whatever. It is doing, not "thinking about roles" or "being certain to look like a proper parent" or any of that. That is a PERFORMANCE which is done and asked for (consciously or not) by OTHER people.
For example: when I'm in my office preparing to teach, other teachers come by and ask about how fatherhood is going. Wow! I have to, quickly, figure out what I think fatherhood means. It's like they see me in costume and I don't, so I have to quick-check in the mirror to see what they might see and then answer it. Usually I go right for experience rather than fucking around with roles. We talk sleep, behavior of child, that sort of thing. Action. Really, this answers the question, without addressing the weird "role in the middle" which somehow needs to be in the phrasing, but which DOESN'T AFFECT THE REALITY.
It's as if an action is overlaid with a discourse, but the action counts and the discourse is pure costuming. Let's say your hair grows (it does). Now let's say that, totally arbitrarily, culture decides to refer to hair growth as "mammothing." Hey, what's up with your mammothing? And there's this whole discourse about the degrees to which one does or does not mammoth. But the ACTUAL GROWTH has nothing to do with mammothing. You talk about reality--"I got it cut, I'm growing it out"--and the discourse of mammothing HAPPENS AROUND YOU.
This is not in the least to undefine fatherhood or to challenge it. I simply find that right now, at five weeks and some, fatherhood is almost entirely about ACTION and not about DISCOURSE. I acknowledge that there's a discourse, but it doesn't do anything to the actions. The actions are so prior, and so dominant, that discourse is just a pirate flag flapping on the ship so people can identify my role from a distance. Fatherhood discourse is FOR THEM, not for me.
Maybe with further socialization of the kid, more "fatherhood discourse" will ensue. Language, after all, is the house we live in (note that Deleuze and Guattari took this idea QUITE apart in A THOUSAND PLATEAUS). Maybe there will be baseball games and such, but I'd prefer to think that some rock climbing and ashtanga yoga will be seen as cooler :)
Or maybe it'll be Paris, Texas:
"What kind of father do you want to be, Mr. Travis, rich or poor?"
"Well, can't I be kinda in the middle?"
"No: you must decide, rich or poor."
"Rich!"
"A rich father, looks at the sky; a poor father, looks at the ground."
Then we get the wonderful, totally alienated but performative, joyfully costumed, striding of Harry Dean Stanton, all around the Texas cityscape, looking up, seen across the street when he goes to pick up the blond-haired boy.
Tangentially, the reunion of the family is the reunion of Germany, and so in Paris Texas and in Wings of Desire we can't have union, but we can have desire, love and sacrifice, but also fear and imperatives. In Faraway So Close, the world is different.
**************************
Another quite nice Second series on Monday night. Kapo less cooperative, but still to toes with adjustment. Supta Vajrasana, hands popping off toes again. Dwi Pada, a struggle (again). But really, aside from the hardest poses, much of what I could do, has remained. This month off hasn't taken anything from me pose-wise.
More Eka Pada will build Dwi Pada, just like before. More cat-paw dropbacks from kneeling will build both Kapo and Supta V. Just like before. More exposure to this back-then-forward sequence will let me re-disover the bandhas in Pincha Mayurasana. Yes, just like before. I am re-growing hangbacks-to-dropbacks, which I knew would have to happen with the month of hard stress, off.
I remain an ashtangi, after the first wave of hard challenge from seventh series. I do not climb (haven't since February) but I remain that too. I remain an academic (perhaps temporarily, but still), and I am teaching the marvelous 12-hours of DADA course. My favorite, my most taught, my most developed, course. The child sleeps in the sling over my shoulder and is pretty much in my lap as I type this.
This all, somehow, will be fine. Look out for that first step (ahem, month). It's a freakin' DOOZY.
I expected--in part from experience but in large part from media socialization, to which I seem particularly susceptible--that fatherhood would HAVE to come with some kind of emotional insensitivity and then later with baseballs and such. In short, I felt that fatherhood would HAVE to consist of stereotypes of "American masculinity," from competition (which passes itself off as sport) to emotional cluelessness (which passes itself off as toughness, machismo, what have you).
I haven't had either of those things, really ever as part of my own specific gender makeup. I don't like competition and actively avoid team sports, unless I'm watching them on TV with my father when I visit over the summer (he likes this and it's a type of community-building now that he's full of arthritis). Also, machismo has never been my thing. The closest I ever get to that is the warrior-climber personality, but that's all about metaphysics and voodoo and cultural re-envisionining, not about seeing myself as the hetero conqueror of Jane the jungle chick.
Nurture (by which I mean actual care of others, not socialized nurture versus essentialized nature) is big in my life experience. I grew up with pets--mostly dogs but later cats too-from birth. They preceded me, in fact, and I was brought into a house with five dogs in it (I'm adopted, and so is my brother).
My parents were around most of the time, and so there was nurture to the point of overprotectiveness, and I've always had dogs and cats and so forth, and really, I see my own child as something of a very specialized, high-needs sort of pet. Not that he's MINE, not that he's somehow a belonging or a limited creature (I don't mean "pet" in any kind of perjorative sense) but in that he's currently something I very much care for, not interact with. He's not nearly independent yet, and in fact, the cats FAR outreach him in independence. So for now, I can pull in experience with animals from my own youth, in dealing with him. Yes, I realize he's more than this, but it's the experience with nurture which I'm pulling in, not the actual analog.
As I've said before (or heavily implied), my parents excel at children, but get weird with adolescents. They simply do not have the machinery to celebrate and enjoy the bodies that develop with puberty. They can discipline (in the Foucauldian sense) such bodies, but cannot enjoy and celebrate them; there's too much fear there. So in thinking of growing up with my own son, there's a like weirdness. This is simple nurture and care; this is fine. Later there will be language and hikes in parks and such, and that'll be fine. HOW WEIRD will my relationship to adolescent alienation (my own) be, when he does it? I'm not sure it'll get weird at all, I've pretty well shattered my own experience with this, so as not to hand it down.
J, as I've said before, did not have this alienation; she was raised by body-saavy people. I think that between the two of us, we can turn up the nurture and the body celebration, and then whatever issues about bodies and gender and masculinity I fear about handing down, won't be so handed. This will be good. Other issues--something, I'm not sure what--will no doubt be carried by this kid, but I think that my own, are over. They belong to me, stay with me.
I'm finding that fatherhood is a SOCIAL phenomenon--not that it's social versus essential, but that it is social in that it only REALLY exists as discourse to me, when I'm around OTHER people. When it's just J and the kid and me, we are all action. He is crying and we run the checklist. He is calm and we sleep or do errands or whatever. It is doing, not "thinking about roles" or "being certain to look like a proper parent" or any of that. That is a PERFORMANCE which is done and asked for (consciously or not) by OTHER people.
For example: when I'm in my office preparing to teach, other teachers come by and ask about how fatherhood is going. Wow! I have to, quickly, figure out what I think fatherhood means. It's like they see me in costume and I don't, so I have to quick-check in the mirror to see what they might see and then answer it. Usually I go right for experience rather than fucking around with roles. We talk sleep, behavior of child, that sort of thing. Action. Really, this answers the question, without addressing the weird "role in the middle" which somehow needs to be in the phrasing, but which DOESN'T AFFECT THE REALITY.
It's as if an action is overlaid with a discourse, but the action counts and the discourse is pure costuming. Let's say your hair grows (it does). Now let's say that, totally arbitrarily, culture decides to refer to hair growth as "mammothing." Hey, what's up with your mammothing? And there's this whole discourse about the degrees to which one does or does not mammoth. But the ACTUAL GROWTH has nothing to do with mammothing. You talk about reality--"I got it cut, I'm growing it out"--and the discourse of mammothing HAPPENS AROUND YOU.
This is not in the least to undefine fatherhood or to challenge it. I simply find that right now, at five weeks and some, fatherhood is almost entirely about ACTION and not about DISCOURSE. I acknowledge that there's a discourse, but it doesn't do anything to the actions. The actions are so prior, and so dominant, that discourse is just a pirate flag flapping on the ship so people can identify my role from a distance. Fatherhood discourse is FOR THEM, not for me.
Maybe with further socialization of the kid, more "fatherhood discourse" will ensue. Language, after all, is the house we live in (note that Deleuze and Guattari took this idea QUITE apart in A THOUSAND PLATEAUS). Maybe there will be baseball games and such, but I'd prefer to think that some rock climbing and ashtanga yoga will be seen as cooler :)
Or maybe it'll be Paris, Texas:
"What kind of father do you want to be, Mr. Travis, rich or poor?"
"Well, can't I be kinda in the middle?"
"No: you must decide, rich or poor."
"Rich!"
"A rich father, looks at the sky; a poor father, looks at the ground."
Then we get the wonderful, totally alienated but performative, joyfully costumed, striding of Harry Dean Stanton, all around the Texas cityscape, looking up, seen across the street when he goes to pick up the blond-haired boy.
Tangentially, the reunion of the family is the reunion of Germany, and so in Paris Texas and in Wings of Desire we can't have union, but we can have desire, love and sacrifice, but also fear and imperatives. In Faraway So Close, the world is different.
**************************
Another quite nice Second series on Monday night. Kapo less cooperative, but still to toes with adjustment. Supta Vajrasana, hands popping off toes again. Dwi Pada, a struggle (again). But really, aside from the hardest poses, much of what I could do, has remained. This month off hasn't taken anything from me pose-wise.
More Eka Pada will build Dwi Pada, just like before. More cat-paw dropbacks from kneeling will build both Kapo and Supta V. Just like before. More exposure to this back-then-forward sequence will let me re-disover the bandhas in Pincha Mayurasana. Yes, just like before. I am re-growing hangbacks-to-dropbacks, which I knew would have to happen with the month of hard stress, off.
I remain an ashtangi, after the first wave of hard challenge from seventh series. I do not climb (haven't since February) but I remain that too. I remain an academic (perhaps temporarily, but still), and I am teaching the marvelous 12-hours of DADA course. My favorite, my most taught, my most developed, course. The child sleeps in the sling over my shoulder and is pretty much in my lap as I type this.
This all, somehow, will be fine. Look out for that first step (ahem, month). It's a freakin' DOOZY.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
An ASANA post (yep!) and the better-behaved boy.
Second things first: the boy was better behaved today, than ever before. Being left alone and not crying, letting his parents do important things without needing 24/7 lap time, even catching a nap. He's five weeks old today, and while this is probably a fluke, it's the most welcome fluke ever.
The things I would like him to develop are causality (i.e., crying that's about something I can both find and fix) and interactivity (more smiles, more gazing at me, more interaction). They are coming. In a way, it IS like asana practice.
Speaking of which:
I did the BADDHA KRAMA from Sweeney's book today. There are four doable sequences in it, plus the "fifth" sequence, which is related to (apparently) the Ashtanga Fifth Series (about which I know not very much, so I can't speak about the "fifth" sequence either).
Chandra is very mellow and yet intense, full of twists and hip opening. Simha is billed sometimes as a replacement Intermediate, and again is very hip flexory with backbends and some footbehindhead and inversions. I love the Simha Krama.
The Baddha and Uddi Krama are mixes of poses mostly from the Advanced A and B series, but each has some of both, so it's not a straight-up correspondence.
The Baddha Krama exceeded me in all of its most advanced aspects, but there are chunks of it which I can do; if I back off the uppermost poses, it works. However, I found that I did NOT have that concentrated focus that either a Primary or an Intermediate can bring; maybe it's the memorization, maybe it's the sequence, maybe its the fact that this sequence was beyond me in several places. It shook the rust off, that's for damn sure, but it didn't have, in this rendition anyway, the ashtanga MAGIC that happens.
Anyway:
The Baddha Krama opens with Sun A, and then Sun C, which has a dropback and handstands (I used a wall to modify both).
It then kicks into the most amazing standing sequence I've EVER SEEN. All bindable poses: so maybe oddly, no Virabhadrasanas, but plenty of Parsvakonasanas. If it's a standing pose and you can bind it, it's in this sequence. The action in my right lateral hip is magnificent. Challenging, but so welcome. Eagles, squats in Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana (doing those twisted is freakin HARD, man), full Malasana, and then some brilliant deep twists and hip openers and we're on to the hip flexors.
Three different seated sequences of hip-flexor cracking backbends, which I have praised before. Not camels or Kapos or anything like that: more like lunges, pigeons and splits. I found that in Eka Pada Rajakapotasana, I can reach over in front of my face and take the foot in the opposite hand, but I can NOT reach the arm over my head once I've done that. I wind up wearing my elbow as a mustache.
Then a couple Advanced A-style arm balances which I know I can do because I've done them on Tuesday nights, but which I couldn't hit today. Then some Advanced-A-level footbehindhead, which I also could not do.
A few forward bends and hip openers with arm balance vinyasa, and it was five dropbacks which again I modified, a twisty closing sequence with some extra goodies, and rest.
I tried a tic (handstand drop over) against the garage, and it felt, to quote Tova speaking about something different, like a SACK OF ASS.
But I know that just from rustiness, if nothing else, that I didn't have my whole asana game with me today. I know to push the LEG down to get height in arm balances; I know to grip the floor with the fingers. But I spaced those elements. That's how it was today; spacey movement. So be it. That fits.
The good behavior is much more exciting than asana developments. Nonetheless, it's easy and fun to write about asana.
The things I would like him to develop are causality (i.e., crying that's about something I can both find and fix) and interactivity (more smiles, more gazing at me, more interaction). They are coming. In a way, it IS like asana practice.
Speaking of which:
I did the BADDHA KRAMA from Sweeney's book today. There are four doable sequences in it, plus the "fifth" sequence, which is related to (apparently) the Ashtanga Fifth Series (about which I know not very much, so I can't speak about the "fifth" sequence either).
Chandra is very mellow and yet intense, full of twists and hip opening. Simha is billed sometimes as a replacement Intermediate, and again is very hip flexory with backbends and some footbehindhead and inversions. I love the Simha Krama.
The Baddha and Uddi Krama are mixes of poses mostly from the Advanced A and B series, but each has some of both, so it's not a straight-up correspondence.
The Baddha Krama exceeded me in all of its most advanced aspects, but there are chunks of it which I can do; if I back off the uppermost poses, it works. However, I found that I did NOT have that concentrated focus that either a Primary or an Intermediate can bring; maybe it's the memorization, maybe it's the sequence, maybe its the fact that this sequence was beyond me in several places. It shook the rust off, that's for damn sure, but it didn't have, in this rendition anyway, the ashtanga MAGIC that happens.
Anyway:
The Baddha Krama opens with Sun A, and then Sun C, which has a dropback and handstands (I used a wall to modify both).
It then kicks into the most amazing standing sequence I've EVER SEEN. All bindable poses: so maybe oddly, no Virabhadrasanas, but plenty of Parsvakonasanas. If it's a standing pose and you can bind it, it's in this sequence. The action in my right lateral hip is magnificent. Challenging, but so welcome. Eagles, squats in Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana (doing those twisted is freakin HARD, man), full Malasana, and then some brilliant deep twists and hip openers and we're on to the hip flexors.
Three different seated sequences of hip-flexor cracking backbends, which I have praised before. Not camels or Kapos or anything like that: more like lunges, pigeons and splits. I found that in Eka Pada Rajakapotasana, I can reach over in front of my face and take the foot in the opposite hand, but I can NOT reach the arm over my head once I've done that. I wind up wearing my elbow as a mustache.
Then a couple Advanced A-style arm balances which I know I can do because I've done them on Tuesday nights, but which I couldn't hit today. Then some Advanced-A-level footbehindhead, which I also could not do.
A few forward bends and hip openers with arm balance vinyasa, and it was five dropbacks which again I modified, a twisty closing sequence with some extra goodies, and rest.
I tried a tic (handstand drop over) against the garage, and it felt, to quote Tova speaking about something different, like a SACK OF ASS.
But I know that just from rustiness, if nothing else, that I didn't have my whole asana game with me today. I know to push the LEG down to get height in arm balances; I know to grip the floor with the fingers. But I spaced those elements. That's how it was today; spacey movement. So be it. That fits.
The good behavior is much more exciting than asana developments. Nonetheless, it's easy and fun to write about asana.
Friday, July 3, 2009
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The title of this post alone is better than any of its content. Perhaps I should just write some musical notation and a bunch of BOOMs and POWs and BANGs!!
I did Primary up to Baddha K again and got the same result as last Sunday: by the Kurmasanas, my overstressed right hip flexors are ready to cramp up and freak out. They're overloaded from life stress. On a ready day, I can hit Supta Kurmasana either from the floor or from Dwi Pada, anytime I want.
So be it. I haven't done Garbha Pindasana since the teens of June.
***********************
The Vinyasa Krama book arrived today; I remember that when it came out, I didn't buy it because it said things like, "Move from Ustrasana to the pigeon pose by simply reaching over your head." I wanted instruction, not sequences. However, I can see how, NOW, it would be useful. Sets of one-legged balances, sets of locust and bow variations, and so on. I have yet to play with any of its contents, but I shall.
************************
I estimate that the kid cries between 66 and 85 percent of his waking time. No, no joke. When he was born, he was either asleep or crying. That whole now very, VERY fuzzily remembered first two weeks, it was pretty much either UNCONSCIOUS and quiet or conscious and fucking SCREAMING.
He likes to be in contact, preferably with a lap, ALL the time that he's awake. He can NOT be put in a crib for more than about 17 seconds (I timed him, and that's the longest he's gone without howling, unless he's unconscious first, put in unconscious, and DOES NOT WAKE).
The baby sling (basically an actual sling into which he's put) is a freakin LIFESAVER. He can be put into it and, howling or not, I can still make bread around him, or wash dishes around him, or handle my life, around him. It's the only way I get papers graded. Often he falls asleep in it.
IF he is both awake and not screaming, he's very cute. But these times are so temporary and so random and such a minority, that they don't occupy nearly the memory space that his long, random, inconsolable crying fits do.
He does not actually cry for 3-4 hours straight. Usually he will commit a series of almost musical patterns and pitches in his crying, with pauses in between, as if he's a one-man symphony and sometimes reaches the end of a phrase or has to turn a page in order to continue. There are long legato "laaaaaaaaaaah's" and shorter more percussive "ahhh!!!!s" on the exhale and there are pumping kapalabhati "ah!(inh)ah!(inh)ah!" patterns, and high-pitched screams like "iiiii!!!!" in the middle sometimes, and then throaty "ehhhhhhh!!!!" screaming, like he's pulled ujjayi breathing WAY WAY too tight in the throat, and sometimes crying proper is preceded by a set of coughing "eh! eh! EH! EHHH!!!!!" which are like the small earthquakes which precede a volcanic eruption. There are a dozen other sounds he makes, and he switches between them as he makes his way through 90 minutes or 3 hours or however long it is, of inconsolable, sourceless, incomprehensible, existential wailing.
He MUST scream before going to sleep; it's like he fights it off or finds it threatening. Just now (and it's 10:30) he finished NINETY MINUTES of inexplicable howling, while laying out in cozy bed on the floor directly next to J. All the comfort he could need, and.........screaming. Why? Who knows? Food? Already fed. Diaper? Clean. Digestion? Flatulent without complaint. No source. No explanation. By the time he can say, he won't remember.
***********************
Income-based repayment is now available, and even for my biggest loan (the payoff balance of which is 150,000 dollars; no, I'm not kidding). According to the calculators on IBR's site, my monthly payment on this plan might move from its current 1,050 dollars (which is about half to two-thirds of my ENTIRE monthly income), to SEVENTY BUCKS.
If I could put away say seven hundred bucks a month, I could have a savings account again. I could stash money away and regain a type of freedom I've only ever imagined. I could pack up the family and move somewhere. Like Boston, or Portland (Oregon).
Ocean, I WILL see you again. Close up.
***************************
I have done no academic research since the kid was born. Recently my advisor published a piece on art-horror films (which are her thing) which says much about the "new french extremism" that I wished to say. This set off a depression about how I have no research topic and, in a glutted market, how having no recent research means that you DO NOT GET HIRED.
I have until September to submit some article (on what?) to some journal. Hah! SEPTEMBER? To write what, 20-odd pages, on something, publishable, while newborn care is upon me?
Freakin IMPOSSIBLE.
*************************
But the art school likes me and they're running a search next year and another of the art historians just took off for personal reasons I'm aware of but won't describe here. Maybe I can hang here until I get that savings account in order, and then become an I-don't-know-what, a high school teacher maybe, in the Northwest, where they teach film studies IN HIGH SCHOOL (I have it on good word that they do in Seattle, for example). No research required. I'm a THOUSAND times better as a teacher than a researcher, anyway. Teaching is extroverted; research, introverted.
*******************
Life is silly and desperate and stupid but somehow it's still all worth it. I don't know why or what for, but it is not enough to check out yet.
I did Primary up to Baddha K again and got the same result as last Sunday: by the Kurmasanas, my overstressed right hip flexors are ready to cramp up and freak out. They're overloaded from life stress. On a ready day, I can hit Supta Kurmasana either from the floor or from Dwi Pada, anytime I want.
So be it. I haven't done Garbha Pindasana since the teens of June.
***********************
The Vinyasa Krama book arrived today; I remember that when it came out, I didn't buy it because it said things like, "Move from Ustrasana to the pigeon pose by simply reaching over your head." I wanted instruction, not sequences. However, I can see how, NOW, it would be useful. Sets of one-legged balances, sets of locust and bow variations, and so on. I have yet to play with any of its contents, but I shall.
************************
I estimate that the kid cries between 66 and 85 percent of his waking time. No, no joke. When he was born, he was either asleep or crying. That whole now very, VERY fuzzily remembered first two weeks, it was pretty much either UNCONSCIOUS and quiet or conscious and fucking SCREAMING.
He likes to be in contact, preferably with a lap, ALL the time that he's awake. He can NOT be put in a crib for more than about 17 seconds (I timed him, and that's the longest he's gone without howling, unless he's unconscious first, put in unconscious, and DOES NOT WAKE).
The baby sling (basically an actual sling into which he's put) is a freakin LIFESAVER. He can be put into it and, howling or not, I can still make bread around him, or wash dishes around him, or handle my life, around him. It's the only way I get papers graded. Often he falls asleep in it.
IF he is both awake and not screaming, he's very cute. But these times are so temporary and so random and such a minority, that they don't occupy nearly the memory space that his long, random, inconsolable crying fits do.
He does not actually cry for 3-4 hours straight. Usually he will commit a series of almost musical patterns and pitches in his crying, with pauses in between, as if he's a one-man symphony and sometimes reaches the end of a phrase or has to turn a page in order to continue. There are long legato "laaaaaaaaaaah's" and shorter more percussive "ahhh!!!!s" on the exhale and there are pumping kapalabhati "ah!(inh)ah!(inh)ah!" patterns, and high-pitched screams like "iiiii!!!!" in the middle sometimes, and then throaty "ehhhhhhh!!!!" screaming, like he's pulled ujjayi breathing WAY WAY too tight in the throat, and sometimes crying proper is preceded by a set of coughing "eh! eh! EH! EHHH!!!!!" which are like the small earthquakes which precede a volcanic eruption. There are a dozen other sounds he makes, and he switches between them as he makes his way through 90 minutes or 3 hours or however long it is, of inconsolable, sourceless, incomprehensible, existential wailing.
He MUST scream before going to sleep; it's like he fights it off or finds it threatening. Just now (and it's 10:30) he finished NINETY MINUTES of inexplicable howling, while laying out in cozy bed on the floor directly next to J. All the comfort he could need, and.........screaming. Why? Who knows? Food? Already fed. Diaper? Clean. Digestion? Flatulent without complaint. No source. No explanation. By the time he can say, he won't remember.
***********************
Income-based repayment is now available, and even for my biggest loan (the payoff balance of which is 150,000 dollars; no, I'm not kidding). According to the calculators on IBR's site, my monthly payment on this plan might move from its current 1,050 dollars (which is about half to two-thirds of my ENTIRE monthly income), to SEVENTY BUCKS.
If I could put away say seven hundred bucks a month, I could have a savings account again. I could stash money away and regain a type of freedom I've only ever imagined. I could pack up the family and move somewhere. Like Boston, or Portland (Oregon).
Ocean, I WILL see you again. Close up.
***************************
I have done no academic research since the kid was born. Recently my advisor published a piece on art-horror films (which are her thing) which says much about the "new french extremism" that I wished to say. This set off a depression about how I have no research topic and, in a glutted market, how having no recent research means that you DO NOT GET HIRED.
I have until September to submit some article (on what?) to some journal. Hah! SEPTEMBER? To write what, 20-odd pages, on something, publishable, while newborn care is upon me?
Freakin IMPOSSIBLE.
*************************
But the art school likes me and they're running a search next year and another of the art historians just took off for personal reasons I'm aware of but won't describe here. Maybe I can hang here until I get that savings account in order, and then become an I-don't-know-what, a high school teacher maybe, in the Northwest, where they teach film studies IN HIGH SCHOOL (I have it on good word that they do in Seattle, for example). No research required. I'm a THOUSAND times better as a teacher than a researcher, anyway. Teaching is extroverted; research, introverted.
*******************
Life is silly and desperate and stupid but somehow it's still all worth it. I don't know why or what for, but it is not enough to check out yet.
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