Hah! Wonder how many hits I'll get from THAT? Anyone know how to find out which internet searches bring people here? This is actually, of course, about how, when and where I plan to practice in the coming months. It shall go by the name Operation Exhibitionism! Here's what I know and why I thus plan:
1. Spring semester begins January 11.
2. I am teaching three courses, with meetings five days a week.
3. I teach three mornings, at 10:30, and two afternoons, at 1:30.
4. Parking, as it is on all campuses, is totally unmanageable. You can't park if you get there after 9 or before 4, unless you try at lunchtime when SOME spots open.
AND:
1. Kid requires daycare, five a week. J and I both work and her job is basically 8-4 with its administrative component, so I expect to do most of the daycare driving.
2. Daycare is in the arts village district about six miles north of here. It's a straight shot, though, and as long as you don't try driving it at 8 am or 5 pm, you can make it to or fro in about 15 minutes.
3. The criss-crossing highway-from-hell that leads from where daycare is, to where school is, is both very fast and very trafficful. Nobody wants an accident on their rat-race commute, however, and so everyone is fairly careful with their recklessness. This is about 20-30 minutes to school, depending.
4. Daycare's HARD CLOSE is 6 pm. It's ten bucks a MINUTE if you don't get your kid by 6.
AND:
1. I'm going to hit a YMCA for practice, again. It's warmer than my house, it has a sauna in it (booyah!), and our house has had a running monthly membership that is WOEFULLY underused from the summer and fall, and there's one 25 blocks north of where daycare is, and it's newly renovated, with all kinds of fanciness and big open glass facings on one side.
2. I scoped this out today. There are mats in the big exercise room, but to use them, it's going to be exhibitionism CENTRAL. Imagine a rectangle, wider on the bottom than the sides. The mats are center on the "bottom" wall; the bikes take up the top 2/3 of the room, wall to wall. The free weights are in the "southwest" corner. Behind the mats is a glass wall through which one can see the indoor pool. The main entry hall to this room is from the southeast corner, on the vertical edge. Sure, you can sneak up a little corridor on the right, but no one'll do that. The main enter-exit course is going to be directly in front of where I'll lay out my mat and have at it. Bare feet are of course, discouraged, but last year at the Y east of here, they let me practice as long as I kept to my own piece of rubber, and I think that once they saw some of the FREAKY STUFF that I do as part of practice, they just left me alone. It's obvious that I have a routine; a ritual, even.
3. This is a ton easier than driving out to the southern Y's near the house. I figure that I'll link a daycare dropoff-or-pickup with a Y trip. There is also good erranding up there, from shopping to cat medicine pickup, a hundred different things. Good options for heading south to home involve 2 major roads which'll be well-plowed even in blizzard conditions, and 2 ways to get to the "highway-from-hell" 'as I called it above, to school.
THEREFORE:
Between parking, commute time, class prep time, and teaching time, I expect my practice schedule to be something like THIS:
Monday/Wednesday: afternoon class, 1:30. Drive kid up at about 8:30-9, go directly to that Y and practice. Finish that before noon, go down to school and park. Teach. Either J or I can do daycare pickup; I can do it earlier. I often take a yoga class at 7 pm on Monday and I teach one at 6 pm on Wednesday. This probably indicates earlier daycare pickup and thus more kid-at-home time, before J and I trade for night. It'll be hectic. Non-stop motion on these two days.
Tuesday: morning class, 10:30, ends at 11:45. Drop kid off early, by 8 am, and then haul ass down to school, park and teach. Hold office hours, clean up bureaucratic business, drive up to the Y, practice, drive over to daycare, get kid. Should be able to get practice in by 2 pm even on a fairly hectic day. Kid pickup by 4-5, home, call it a day.
Thursday/Friday: morning classes at 10:30 which are longer sessions, ending at 1:15. No time to fool around. Drop kid off early, by 8 am, haul down to school, teach; again, no time: shoot BACK up there, practice, pick up kid, haul it back home. It's a class-and-practice double-decker sandwich, all on driving-bread. Hah!
THIS will be something like the model for my weeks, from January 11 all the way to my birthday on May 3 (which is the last day of classes). I'll be 40.
NOTE for the record that I haven't accounted for time to GRADE, for the two CONFERENCES J and I want to attend (with kid), or for any randomness of any kind, such as sickness, car incidents, or departmental meetings.
THIS is what you can expect for a practice schedule if you do seventh series. Nonetheless! Let Operation Exhibitionism begin!
Monday, December 28, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Asana post! No, seriously!
Intermediate today, up to Mayurasana. Last post I was talking about defeat; defeat is when the physical effort gives way to laughter and everything becomes ridiculous. It's somewhat cathartic, the way that the "scream" in the ghost story is.
68 degrees in the house, shorts, shirt and polar fleece top. My normal winter gear. House somewhat warmer, due to a certain young person's preferences :)
Pasasana, I now consider myself to be officially able to bind on both sides. Thank you, Kino MacGregor, for that.
Krounchasana and I have *always* gotten along. I have silly long hamstrings.
The build-up backbends are going strong these days, even after November off. I can't explain that, but I like it. Yesterday in a vinyasa class, I even took a standing lunge (Anjaneyasana) into a far enough backbend that I was looking full-on at the back wall of the room. Uh, hi, "tight" hip flexors?
Shalabhasana (well, both of them) is low ribs to floor, pubic bone to floor, ten breaths, thoracic spine getting the most attention.
Bhekasana is fingertips to floor, feet close but not touching floor, arching as much as possible. I tend to feel more action in the thoracic here than in the quads or psoas.
Dhanurasana has been big lately, and again, can't explain but do like. Ribs up, almost off floor, eye gaze easily getting to ceiling. Same in the Parsvas; they're not smoking me as much in the psoas now either, after the pose is over.
Ustrasana, I'd need a photo of, in order to judge. It feels good and I can palm the bottom of my feet, but that's been typical for over a year. I can look back behind me, not just up, which again, I think is happy news in thoracic spine territory.
Laghuvajrasana and I are playing the "shorten the distance" game. I arch, fix my gaze at halfway between nose tip and third eye, and keep it there, big cervical curve back, head to floor, and then snugging in a bit, toward my feet. Eye gaze to mat; it NEVER moves. Hands to back of knees is easy; might try side of knees or the "Laghu B" old-school version of hands to front of knees, sometime.
Kapotasana and I are developing a relationship again. Take a month off your newly-developed drop-and-stands, and you'll lose your Kapo. No suprise there. I've been dropping back and just hanging out for ten breaths. Today for the first time all month, I spidered in a bit and held for 8 breaths. Challenging enough. I'm waiting for the hips to be able to move forward and for the arch not to drop as soon as I wiggle a finger. More drops-and-stands will bring this pose back.
Supta Vajrasana and I were deeper than usual today, another suprise. Again, thank you Kino for the "don't let go of the toes" advice. I was able to take a big, big arch, but the elbows came down first, which just means the backbend isn't big enough. My futon frame was my friend in this pose; held the knees down nicely.
Bakasana and I are old friends; I do B without a half-handstand entry. Maybe someday a teacher will fix that.
Bharadvajasana, for me, hints at the sort of hip rotations developed in third series. It's half Tiriang Mukha, which is internal rotation, and then half Ardha Baddha Padma, which is external rotation. The whole pose goes to whichever side you twist; it's like "full body left! full body right!" Good stuff.
Ardha Matsyendrasana, as Jason once said, really develops Eka Pada, and doesn't so much respond to Kapo. I've loved this pose for ever.
Eka Pada Sirsasana: also sketchier with so much time away from it, but still, able to do A (seated upright) and B (fold) with no real trouble. I lost C (pressup Chakorasana-style) with right leg back, and held it with left leg back. That's par.
Dwi Pada: Again, when righty comes up, the feet slip out from behind my head and I have to try to balance with them folding me over, ankles clasped up at the top of my head. The pressup still isn't bad, but balancing like that is madness.
Yoganidrasana: Easier, just like Maehle says. I think I'm still too round in it, but it feels fine. I notice that the up-dog after, REALLY gets into the hip flexors. Same with both after the Eka Pada series.
Tittibhasana: a little stiffer than usual, but really, no part of this gives me trouble.
Pincha: nice one today; had to try four times on Monday night to get it. I think the exit is too loud and heavy, but I still do it, if it's a matter of "do or do not."
Karanda: All I did with this was come up, make lotus, unmake lotus, crash down (couldn't chaturanga it; core strength really fading at this point of the series). I'll build this the way Maehle says. Exit from each stage until you can hold it easily. Then add the next one.
Mayurasana: great entry, but then when I got into the pose, thinking shoulders broad and gaze forward, I simply COULD NOT hold it. It melted out from under me like wax. I did everything I could: breath focus, uddiyana, concentration on full body not on any one detail, and I just melted over to the right and went down. Hilarious. I tried it again and melted down, face and feet descending, no help for it. Usually I can crank out this pose anytime, anywhere, but today it was enough.
Three press-up wheels, one long hang-back, and a drop back. Feet turned out, I know, but it was a nice landing, all arms, no head. Held for five and let it go. The hangback was REALLY intense; I still feel it in the lumbar, hours later. I'll build my regular regimen of three back-and-ups back.
15-8 closing and called it a practice. A little pranayama after. Good, good stuff.
68 degrees in the house, shorts, shirt and polar fleece top. My normal winter gear. House somewhat warmer, due to a certain young person's preferences :)
Pasasana, I now consider myself to be officially able to bind on both sides. Thank you, Kino MacGregor, for that.
Krounchasana and I have *always* gotten along. I have silly long hamstrings.
The build-up backbends are going strong these days, even after November off. I can't explain that, but I like it. Yesterday in a vinyasa class, I even took a standing lunge (Anjaneyasana) into a far enough backbend that I was looking full-on at the back wall of the room. Uh, hi, "tight" hip flexors?
Shalabhasana (well, both of them) is low ribs to floor, pubic bone to floor, ten breaths, thoracic spine getting the most attention.
Bhekasana is fingertips to floor, feet close but not touching floor, arching as much as possible. I tend to feel more action in the thoracic here than in the quads or psoas.
Dhanurasana has been big lately, and again, can't explain but do like. Ribs up, almost off floor, eye gaze easily getting to ceiling. Same in the Parsvas; they're not smoking me as much in the psoas now either, after the pose is over.
Ustrasana, I'd need a photo of, in order to judge. It feels good and I can palm the bottom of my feet, but that's been typical for over a year. I can look back behind me, not just up, which again, I think is happy news in thoracic spine territory.
Laghuvajrasana and I are playing the "shorten the distance" game. I arch, fix my gaze at halfway between nose tip and third eye, and keep it there, big cervical curve back, head to floor, and then snugging in a bit, toward my feet. Eye gaze to mat; it NEVER moves. Hands to back of knees is easy; might try side of knees or the "Laghu B" old-school version of hands to front of knees, sometime.
Kapotasana and I are developing a relationship again. Take a month off your newly-developed drop-and-stands, and you'll lose your Kapo. No suprise there. I've been dropping back and just hanging out for ten breaths. Today for the first time all month, I spidered in a bit and held for 8 breaths. Challenging enough. I'm waiting for the hips to be able to move forward and for the arch not to drop as soon as I wiggle a finger. More drops-and-stands will bring this pose back.
Supta Vajrasana and I were deeper than usual today, another suprise. Again, thank you Kino for the "don't let go of the toes" advice. I was able to take a big, big arch, but the elbows came down first, which just means the backbend isn't big enough. My futon frame was my friend in this pose; held the knees down nicely.
Bakasana and I are old friends; I do B without a half-handstand entry. Maybe someday a teacher will fix that.
Bharadvajasana, for me, hints at the sort of hip rotations developed in third series. It's half Tiriang Mukha, which is internal rotation, and then half Ardha Baddha Padma, which is external rotation. The whole pose goes to whichever side you twist; it's like "full body left! full body right!" Good stuff.
Ardha Matsyendrasana, as Jason once said, really develops Eka Pada, and doesn't so much respond to Kapo. I've loved this pose for ever.
Eka Pada Sirsasana: also sketchier with so much time away from it, but still, able to do A (seated upright) and B (fold) with no real trouble. I lost C (pressup Chakorasana-style) with right leg back, and held it with left leg back. That's par.
Dwi Pada: Again, when righty comes up, the feet slip out from behind my head and I have to try to balance with them folding me over, ankles clasped up at the top of my head. The pressup still isn't bad, but balancing like that is madness.
Yoganidrasana: Easier, just like Maehle says. I think I'm still too round in it, but it feels fine. I notice that the up-dog after, REALLY gets into the hip flexors. Same with both after the Eka Pada series.
Tittibhasana: a little stiffer than usual, but really, no part of this gives me trouble.
Pincha: nice one today; had to try four times on Monday night to get it. I think the exit is too loud and heavy, but I still do it, if it's a matter of "do or do not."
Karanda: All I did with this was come up, make lotus, unmake lotus, crash down (couldn't chaturanga it; core strength really fading at this point of the series). I'll build this the way Maehle says. Exit from each stage until you can hold it easily. Then add the next one.
Mayurasana: great entry, but then when I got into the pose, thinking shoulders broad and gaze forward, I simply COULD NOT hold it. It melted out from under me like wax. I did everything I could: breath focus, uddiyana, concentration on full body not on any one detail, and I just melted over to the right and went down. Hilarious. I tried it again and melted down, face and feet descending, no help for it. Usually I can crank out this pose anytime, anywhere, but today it was enough.
Three press-up wheels, one long hang-back, and a drop back. Feet turned out, I know, but it was a nice landing, all arms, no head. Held for five and let it go. The hangback was REALLY intense; I still feel it in the lumbar, hours later. I'll build my regular regimen of three back-and-ups back.
15-8 closing and called it a practice. A little pranayama after. Good, good stuff.
Monday, December 21, 2009
On Paradoxes: empowering futility, for example.
Every now and then, as anyone who reads here a lot knows, I wander totally off the asana train and write wandering wanna-be-philosophical entries, kind of like those some ashtangis we know do, but always with less focus. Here goes.
In 2000, I taught a course on the Hollywood Blacklist. I think it was Lester Cole's book HOLLYWOOD RED that bore an epigraph from Virgil, translated into English as, "If I cannot get into Heaven, then I will raise Hell." I liked it on contact; I liked the flavor, the defiance, the promise of power. That epigraph has cycled around in my (sub) conscious for years, and recently it showed up again, and a Google search revealed that in its native Latin, it's actually much, much more famous as the epigraphic opening of Freud's INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS. So be it.
I like it related to the Blacklist, better. It seems more defiant there. The Latin is variously translated by various people (as anything is) but as written, it reads FLECTERE SI NEQUEO SUPEROS ACHERONTA MOVEBO, which I think is probably accurately rendered in English as, "If I cannot bend the Higher Powers, I will move the Infernal Regions." The flavor, however, which echoes with a whole set of archetypes I adore, is "if I cannot get an audience with those in charge, I will set the world on fire."
This echoes all through the "man with no name" empowering archetypes that I hold, in a self-aware degree, sacred. Robert Ray called this same type--and we see it everywhere, from westerns to DIE HARD to "Episode IV" of STAR WARS--the "outlaw hero." American pop culture LOVES its outlaw heroes--it would be easier to name those heroes who are NOT outlaws, than it would be to give examples. I'm serious when I say this is omnipresent: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ALL "renegade cops" from screens big and small, ALL western "men with no names," virtually all Bruce Willis roles, virtually all Harrison Ford roles, ALL Eastwood roles, Marilyn Manson, Perry Farrell's stage persona, the refusal of "shoegaze" bands to acknowledge audience, on and on and on and on and on. A billion examples.
The outlaw hero is the solo rebel, walking that crusty desert earth of PARIS TEXAS. His soundtrack is Ry Cooder. His past is painful and his music is blues. His skills are the result of long focus and interminable desire. Tapas is his mark. He is on a quest, always. Obstacle-mounting is his nature, his very task. If he has no obstacles, they appear for him. Warriorship is the core of him. He is oddly in line with natural forces and deities. Thunder announces his arrival. His victory is always, always assured.
And yet none of this exists except in the archetype and the old stories. This guy is ink on the page. We know this, but still, we feel his footsteps in our muscles, we sense him, the same way we can feel blood move inside us when we're quiet enough to get in there. What is this about?
I think it's empowering futility; I think it's a way to see the divine, without having to surrender everything, without having to just spontaneously be naked before the impossible. No one can pull that without some kind of wrapping curtain to gradually surrender. Even the dancing goddess has seven veils. And so it isn't a being, it isn't about achieving victory and conquest.
But it also isn't about surrendering the conquering persona at "the end," that's a weak version of any mythology. If your hero-dom is something you can just take off like a bathrobe, you were never a hero. If you don't have to be killed, you're not heroic. Cuchullain doesn't disappear into the ether, he FIGHTS THE WAVES UNTIL THEY TAKE HIM. That, my friends, is hero-dom; that is what it is, and what it does. Harry Dean Stanton can NEVER stop driving off into that horizon, or walking that desert. Eastwood can NEVER cease to ride off into the sunset, run out of money, and have to conquer again.
All of this is theater; you don't vanquish the role when you're doing playing it, you leave it there until someone ELSE plays it. If it worked any other way, there could only ever have been ONE performance of HAMLET. And you'd die in real time at the end and then no one could ever perform it again. It would be like the "funniest joke" gag from Monty Python. Sure, you can read it, but it'll kill ya.
No, you leave the tools for someone ELSE when you're done. This isn't about human nature because there IS no human nature. Nicolai Evreinov said that back in the twenties, in his big play, "The Main Thing." And postmodernists think they invented performativity--hah!
WE ALREADY KNOW there's nothing but futility--but I can't LIVE KNOWING THAT, can you? I can't stare that down. And so I seize power at a galactic level, I wrap myself in mythologies and heroes and I fight everyone, everything. I go to freaking WAR on life. But it ISN'T war on life, it's the PLAY of war on life.
How does inner peace come? Through DEFEAT. Very importantly: NOT through surrender, but through DEFEAT. I could NOT make it up that 5.11d a few years ago, and I fought it with all of my intelligence, strength and proprioception. And when I'd sweated it out and taken that fucker on EVERY WAY I COULD, every freakin' way I could even THINK OF, I sat down on the floor mats, looked at it, laughed and realized the truth.
It's fucked up, to want to be killed every day, but that's what it is to REALLY achieve peace. Life as FIGHT CLUB (but only in its underground introspective phase, not in its public fascist phase).
There are a lot of ways to do what I've just described, the wrong way. Wrong meaning in a way that's backwards, ineffective:
1. The outlaw hero is NOT there to reinforce your ego. If you're not killed, you've lost your own game.
2. All the power you gain and discover--and there will be a lot of it--is for GREATER challenges, NEVER, NEVER EVER EVER, TO KEEP.
3. FIND your DEEPEST POSSIBLE levels of defeat. Actually TRY to be AS DEFEATED AS POSSIBLE, as DEEPLY as possible.
4. This has nothing to do with humiliation, surrender or negotiation. In this universe there are ONLY two things: VICTORY AND DEFEAT.
5. This WHOLE GAME is only for living OUTSIDE the present. In moments of non-dualism (on a climbing wall, a yoga mat, in bed or elsewhere (and yes, I just said that; do you need a lesson on those moments of non-dualism?)), this game SUSPENDS.
6. At ALL OTHER MOMENTS, this quest is on. Doctor's offices, road trips, writing papers, public speaking, ALL other moments. Cultivate your outlaw quest ALL THE TIME. There is no break from this theater; this show's run NEVER stops.
******************************
The birth of my child confused me because it took, from my schedule, much of my time to engage in "warfare," on climbing walls, on the mat, and in bed and other places. It didn't, as I first thought, assault me personally, my sense of myself; it took my PLAY TIME away. Took away my time to, quite literally, PRACTICE.
But the quest started to oddly re-manifest in activities like washing dishes or bottles, in driving to-and-from daycare, in being able to successfully hug (or not) the partner. The levels turned down--got householdier, less sweaty and endorphin-laden--but the game maintained. If I can read a few pages of a book before the child wakes, WIN! That sort of thing.
I've been trying to go 6-a-week in asana practice since he was born and I've failed, EVERY single week. For almost seven months now. And that's fine. It annoys me, but it's OK. I'm very keenly cued to my own failures now. Failures to regularly practice, failures to put him down successfully, failures to hear him at night sometimes, failures to get him early from daycare because I'm working on stuff, and a thousand other miniature household failures. I'm surrounded with them every day. And gradually I'm understanding that they ARE life. In life, one fails. That's what life is.
In householding, I don't HAVE to crave defeat and go looking in the hills for it. I'm defeated REGULARLY, sometimes several times a day. And as the partner does not cease to remind me, there are always more dishes to do, laundry to put in, and so forth. These challenges will outlive me. There are days when I quite literally see my own death as I wash a glass in the sink. I don't think she has ANY IDEA at all how my game works where this is all concerned.
I'm getting more comfortable with this less-mythical and thus less-protected look at mortality, but I really crave my nice cozy warrior sheath back. It is, as I said above, HARD to stare this down.
And it's funny and ironic: she was seeing life lived "under a bridge alone" before the kid was born, and now that he's born, I'm the one having the death trip. She's got comfort and I have moved significantly closer to staring Kali in the face than I was before. That's hilarious.
But in seeing the quest even in householding, finally the big binary between the two (let's call it play vs. work, for ease, even though that's ridiculous) falls, and that's really refreshing. Doesn't mean I don't want my play back, but I see continuity now, and that greatly reduces the pain.
In 2000, I taught a course on the Hollywood Blacklist. I think it was Lester Cole's book HOLLYWOOD RED that bore an epigraph from Virgil, translated into English as, "If I cannot get into Heaven, then I will raise Hell." I liked it on contact; I liked the flavor, the defiance, the promise of power. That epigraph has cycled around in my (sub) conscious for years, and recently it showed up again, and a Google search revealed that in its native Latin, it's actually much, much more famous as the epigraphic opening of Freud's INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS. So be it.
I like it related to the Blacklist, better. It seems more defiant there. The Latin is variously translated by various people (as anything is) but as written, it reads FLECTERE SI NEQUEO SUPEROS ACHERONTA MOVEBO, which I think is probably accurately rendered in English as, "If I cannot bend the Higher Powers, I will move the Infernal Regions." The flavor, however, which echoes with a whole set of archetypes I adore, is "if I cannot get an audience with those in charge, I will set the world on fire."
This echoes all through the "man with no name" empowering archetypes that I hold, in a self-aware degree, sacred. Robert Ray called this same type--and we see it everywhere, from westerns to DIE HARD to "Episode IV" of STAR WARS--the "outlaw hero." American pop culture LOVES its outlaw heroes--it would be easier to name those heroes who are NOT outlaws, than it would be to give examples. I'm serious when I say this is omnipresent: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ALL "renegade cops" from screens big and small, ALL western "men with no names," virtually all Bruce Willis roles, virtually all Harrison Ford roles, ALL Eastwood roles, Marilyn Manson, Perry Farrell's stage persona, the refusal of "shoegaze" bands to acknowledge audience, on and on and on and on and on. A billion examples.
The outlaw hero is the solo rebel, walking that crusty desert earth of PARIS TEXAS. His soundtrack is Ry Cooder. His past is painful and his music is blues. His skills are the result of long focus and interminable desire. Tapas is his mark. He is on a quest, always. Obstacle-mounting is his nature, his very task. If he has no obstacles, they appear for him. Warriorship is the core of him. He is oddly in line with natural forces and deities. Thunder announces his arrival. His victory is always, always assured.
And yet none of this exists except in the archetype and the old stories. This guy is ink on the page. We know this, but still, we feel his footsteps in our muscles, we sense him, the same way we can feel blood move inside us when we're quiet enough to get in there. What is this about?
I think it's empowering futility; I think it's a way to see the divine, without having to surrender everything, without having to just spontaneously be naked before the impossible. No one can pull that without some kind of wrapping curtain to gradually surrender. Even the dancing goddess has seven veils. And so it isn't a being, it isn't about achieving victory and conquest.
But it also isn't about surrendering the conquering persona at "the end," that's a weak version of any mythology. If your hero-dom is something you can just take off like a bathrobe, you were never a hero. If you don't have to be killed, you're not heroic. Cuchullain doesn't disappear into the ether, he FIGHTS THE WAVES UNTIL THEY TAKE HIM. That, my friends, is hero-dom; that is what it is, and what it does. Harry Dean Stanton can NEVER stop driving off into that horizon, or walking that desert. Eastwood can NEVER cease to ride off into the sunset, run out of money, and have to conquer again.
All of this is theater; you don't vanquish the role when you're doing playing it, you leave it there until someone ELSE plays it. If it worked any other way, there could only ever have been ONE performance of HAMLET. And you'd die in real time at the end and then no one could ever perform it again. It would be like the "funniest joke" gag from Monty Python. Sure, you can read it, but it'll kill ya.
No, you leave the tools for someone ELSE when you're done. This isn't about human nature because there IS no human nature. Nicolai Evreinov said that back in the twenties, in his big play, "The Main Thing." And postmodernists think they invented performativity--hah!
WE ALREADY KNOW there's nothing but futility--but I can't LIVE KNOWING THAT, can you? I can't stare that down. And so I seize power at a galactic level, I wrap myself in mythologies and heroes and I fight everyone, everything. I go to freaking WAR on life. But it ISN'T war on life, it's the PLAY of war on life.
How does inner peace come? Through DEFEAT. Very importantly: NOT through surrender, but through DEFEAT. I could NOT make it up that 5.11d a few years ago, and I fought it with all of my intelligence, strength and proprioception. And when I'd sweated it out and taken that fucker on EVERY WAY I COULD, every freakin' way I could even THINK OF, I sat down on the floor mats, looked at it, laughed and realized the truth.
It's fucked up, to want to be killed every day, but that's what it is to REALLY achieve peace. Life as FIGHT CLUB (but only in its underground introspective phase, not in its public fascist phase).
There are a lot of ways to do what I've just described, the wrong way. Wrong meaning in a way that's backwards, ineffective:
1. The outlaw hero is NOT there to reinforce your ego. If you're not killed, you've lost your own game.
2. All the power you gain and discover--and there will be a lot of it--is for GREATER challenges, NEVER, NEVER EVER EVER, TO KEEP.
3. FIND your DEEPEST POSSIBLE levels of defeat. Actually TRY to be AS DEFEATED AS POSSIBLE, as DEEPLY as possible.
4. This has nothing to do with humiliation, surrender or negotiation. In this universe there are ONLY two things: VICTORY AND DEFEAT.
5. This WHOLE GAME is only for living OUTSIDE the present. In moments of non-dualism (on a climbing wall, a yoga mat, in bed or elsewhere (and yes, I just said that; do you need a lesson on those moments of non-dualism?)), this game SUSPENDS.
6. At ALL OTHER MOMENTS, this quest is on. Doctor's offices, road trips, writing papers, public speaking, ALL other moments. Cultivate your outlaw quest ALL THE TIME. There is no break from this theater; this show's run NEVER stops.
******************************
The birth of my child confused me because it took, from my schedule, much of my time to engage in "warfare," on climbing walls, on the mat, and in bed and other places. It didn't, as I first thought, assault me personally, my sense of myself; it took my PLAY TIME away. Took away my time to, quite literally, PRACTICE.
But the quest started to oddly re-manifest in activities like washing dishes or bottles, in driving to-and-from daycare, in being able to successfully hug (or not) the partner. The levels turned down--got householdier, less sweaty and endorphin-laden--but the game maintained. If I can read a few pages of a book before the child wakes, WIN! That sort of thing.
I've been trying to go 6-a-week in asana practice since he was born and I've failed, EVERY single week. For almost seven months now. And that's fine. It annoys me, but it's OK. I'm very keenly cued to my own failures now. Failures to regularly practice, failures to put him down successfully, failures to hear him at night sometimes, failures to get him early from daycare because I'm working on stuff, and a thousand other miniature household failures. I'm surrounded with them every day. And gradually I'm understanding that they ARE life. In life, one fails. That's what life is.
In householding, I don't HAVE to crave defeat and go looking in the hills for it. I'm defeated REGULARLY, sometimes several times a day. And as the partner does not cease to remind me, there are always more dishes to do, laundry to put in, and so forth. These challenges will outlive me. There are days when I quite literally see my own death as I wash a glass in the sink. I don't think she has ANY IDEA at all how my game works where this is all concerned.
I'm getting more comfortable with this less-mythical and thus less-protected look at mortality, but I really crave my nice cozy warrior sheath back. It is, as I said above, HARD to stare this down.
And it's funny and ironic: she was seeing life lived "under a bridge alone" before the kid was born, and now that he's born, I'm the one having the death trip. She's got comfort and I have moved significantly closer to staring Kali in the face than I was before. That's hilarious.
But in seeing the quest even in householding, finally the big binary between the two (let's call it play vs. work, for ease, even though that's ridiculous) falls, and that's really refreshing. Doesn't mean I don't want my play back, but I see continuity now, and that greatly reduces the pain.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Maehle review (short repost version), free class, December marches on.
I wrote a big, chewy, delicious Maehle review, about 56 hours ago, and then mis-keyed (I type FAST) and lost the whole thing. I'm still mourning it. In any case, enough of that; here's the core of it:
The "how to do the pose" section doesn't begin until page 93. Everything prior to that, is marvelous, even better than the asana specifics. My favorite of the asana specifics is probably Karandavasana, where GM advises us to do the pose in stages, exiting each stage through Pincha, before advancing to the next stage. This virtually, to my mind, guarantees a pick-up to anyone who can muster the patience to master the stages.
The almost-100 prior pages are about mythology, breath, Sanskrit, anatomy, the ways in which ashtanga vinyasa can be uncerstood to be an ancient practice, chakra meditation, metaphysics, and a thousand other things. I am more and more impressed as I chew on these topics and re-read sections.
As in his Primary book, Maehle writes (in a fairly matter of fact way) that we are living in the age of Kali Yuga, the dark ages, where, as GM puts it, people are obsessed with bodies and wallets, wars break out everywhere, and false teachings abound. He writes, "You can decide for yourself, whether or not this describes the world we live in." I love that. From this, Maehle urges us to dig into the sacred texts, into mythology, into Sanskrit, in order to really make contact with the tradition. I find this really, deeply compelling, and also quite inspiring. To imagine oneself as practicing an age-old sequence (penned upon the now vanished banana leaves) during a period of global ignorance and darkness? Man, that's about as close to Star Wars or LOTR as you can get! Magicians, levitation, chanting foreign tongues, casting spells, you name it!
And so I'm more turned on by the sections on pranayama and Sanskrit than I am about the advice on how to do Kapotasana (although that's also cool). Consider this book recommended: I mean, I started hunting for copies of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika after this, and also considered picking up Bachmann's Sanskrit index cards.
*******************
I'm teaching my regular Sunday ashtanga class for free today, as part of my being the "featured teacher" at my studio (featured teacher means you get a little internet nod, and mostly, it means that your class is free one week that month). So far, in Facebook RSVP's, I'm apparently picking up two people from the local vinyasa place (one student, one teacher) and I'm going to (hehe) try for conversion, hah! if that's not too utterly pretentious. But I'll do what I always do; we'll make shapes for 90 minutes, I'll add in quick descriptions of bandhas, dristi and ujjayi, along with vinyasa and options for it, and everyone'll walk out with that "i've practiced hard" glow. If it turns anyone on, so be it.
********************
It's December 13. Two days from now, the Saturnine cycle of the divorce morning will be over. I'm hoping it takes all that history with it.
The "how to do the pose" section doesn't begin until page 93. Everything prior to that, is marvelous, even better than the asana specifics. My favorite of the asana specifics is probably Karandavasana, where GM advises us to do the pose in stages, exiting each stage through Pincha, before advancing to the next stage. This virtually, to my mind, guarantees a pick-up to anyone who can muster the patience to master the stages.
The almost-100 prior pages are about mythology, breath, Sanskrit, anatomy, the ways in which ashtanga vinyasa can be uncerstood to be an ancient practice, chakra meditation, metaphysics, and a thousand other things. I am more and more impressed as I chew on these topics and re-read sections.
As in his Primary book, Maehle writes (in a fairly matter of fact way) that we are living in the age of Kali Yuga, the dark ages, where, as GM puts it, people are obsessed with bodies and wallets, wars break out everywhere, and false teachings abound. He writes, "You can decide for yourself, whether or not this describes the world we live in." I love that. From this, Maehle urges us to dig into the sacred texts, into mythology, into Sanskrit, in order to really make contact with the tradition. I find this really, deeply compelling, and also quite inspiring. To imagine oneself as practicing an age-old sequence (penned upon the now vanished banana leaves) during a period of global ignorance and darkness? Man, that's about as close to Star Wars or LOTR as you can get! Magicians, levitation, chanting foreign tongues, casting spells, you name it!
And so I'm more turned on by the sections on pranayama and Sanskrit than I am about the advice on how to do Kapotasana (although that's also cool). Consider this book recommended: I mean, I started hunting for copies of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika after this, and also considered picking up Bachmann's Sanskrit index cards.
*******************
I'm teaching my regular Sunday ashtanga class for free today, as part of my being the "featured teacher" at my studio (featured teacher means you get a little internet nod, and mostly, it means that your class is free one week that month). So far, in Facebook RSVP's, I'm apparently picking up two people from the local vinyasa place (one student, one teacher) and I'm going to (hehe) try for conversion, hah! if that's not too utterly pretentious. But I'll do what I always do; we'll make shapes for 90 minutes, I'll add in quick descriptions of bandhas, dristi and ujjayi, along with vinyasa and options for it, and everyone'll walk out with that "i've practiced hard" glow. If it turns anyone on, so be it.
********************
It's December 13. Two days from now, the Saturnine cycle of the divorce morning will be over. I'm hoping it takes all that history with it.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
December and 2002 (first installment) and blog-proof.
It's December. I was instantly happier when November turned over. A month that I let wash over me, from the Kino workshop to the first of this one. Too much work, too much kid, too much of everything that monopolizes time that, to be honest, I'd rather spend on me, with me, about me. Sure, I'm selfish, but I like to think that it's that selfishness that Nietzsche defended.
As I'll say quite a bit about on Facebook (but more here), it's going to be the seven year anniversary of the end of my marriage, which was really an abusive relationship (emotionally, both directions). That relationship lasted almost seven years, itself. January 1995. Legally, from June 1998 to December 2002.
It ended on the morning of December 15. A conversation that started with an admission that we were essentially broken turned into her regular disciplining of my ever bringing that up, but this one time, I wasn't out to fix it. It turned out that I had to lie about the actual cause (an admission I won't reproduce here, one of very, VERY few things I won't write online), and it took hours to get down the stairs and into the car, but it ended.
I drove over a hill and across town and laid on a very good friend's floor and had a panic attack. One of two that I've ever had in my life (they're not in my nature) and both of them were related to that experience. Probably--in fact very likely--the biggest, most intense, deepest transformative experience of my time on the planet in this incarnation.
Wait, you'll say, what about the birth of your kid? Yes, I've meant to write about that. They really can't be compared. The marriage-divorce energetic system was like a star collapsing into a black hole and thence to a big bang that creates another universe. It was cosmic. Birth is fucking totally miraculously amazing and I'll never forget seeing it as long as I live, but energetically, I continued through that whole experience in a way that I did NOT, in the marriage-divorce.
Sure, there's frustration galore in the pregnancy-birth-newborn phase for me, a long, LONG pause of my warrior-march which characterizes most of my life on earth, but it STILL continues, it doesn't break into a whole new cosmic configuration. Tending the pregnant partner and then the kid was like having my life reduced to one frequency only, and that frequency at maximum volume. But leaving the marriage was like a total explosion of all matter, a creation, an act of God. They're completely irreconcilable. Can't be spoken about, together.
I have a big blue book that contains months of writing, from January to about July, maybe, 2002 (EDIT: obviously, I mean 2003 here, not 2002). I am numb for about the first six weeks, just embryonic, alive but senseless, theoretical. In February I write the "men's monologue" bit for the Vagina Monologues (which, remember, I spoke aloud for three nights) and that really broke into the pain. That was serious transferral. In March I was accompanying Jill Nagle about the Bloomington campus, on a visit I organized (how, I'll never understand) and that was my entry into real meetings with real sex radicals. The rest, as Owl once put it, was a Tom Robbins novel :)
My writing in that blue book is very shy. Henry Miller I'm not. Or at least, I wasn't then. I understand why, but that's something else I'll not put clearly to words here. A lot of that past, those topics, are things I won't put to words here. Things I've not admitted to more than about four people.
**************************
Am I blog-proof? Let me make sense. I haven't really been interested in much that I've read in blog-land for MONTHS. Am I too busy? Am I too pulled into my own life, my present day-to-day? I think so. I can barely write about my own asana practice, much less reach out to someone else's ruminations about their own. Be it the tradition, the Intermediate sequence, the "whys" of practice, the "goal," whatever, I'm just not interested. This obviously says more about me than about the writers. I read a thing where a guy said it took 8 years to drop back and stand up. It took me five. I couldn't figure out how to make any more sense of it than those two sentences. I LITERALLY could not think of what to think next.
As I'll say quite a bit about on Facebook (but more here), it's going to be the seven year anniversary of the end of my marriage, which was really an abusive relationship (emotionally, both directions). That relationship lasted almost seven years, itself. January 1995. Legally, from June 1998 to December 2002.
It ended on the morning of December 15. A conversation that started with an admission that we were essentially broken turned into her regular disciplining of my ever bringing that up, but this one time, I wasn't out to fix it. It turned out that I had to lie about the actual cause (an admission I won't reproduce here, one of very, VERY few things I won't write online), and it took hours to get down the stairs and into the car, but it ended.
I drove over a hill and across town and laid on a very good friend's floor and had a panic attack. One of two that I've ever had in my life (they're not in my nature) and both of them were related to that experience. Probably--in fact very likely--the biggest, most intense, deepest transformative experience of my time on the planet in this incarnation.
Wait, you'll say, what about the birth of your kid? Yes, I've meant to write about that. They really can't be compared. The marriage-divorce energetic system was like a star collapsing into a black hole and thence to a big bang that creates another universe. It was cosmic. Birth is fucking totally miraculously amazing and I'll never forget seeing it as long as I live, but energetically, I continued through that whole experience in a way that I did NOT, in the marriage-divorce.
Sure, there's frustration galore in the pregnancy-birth-newborn phase for me, a long, LONG pause of my warrior-march which characterizes most of my life on earth, but it STILL continues, it doesn't break into a whole new cosmic configuration. Tending the pregnant partner and then the kid was like having my life reduced to one frequency only, and that frequency at maximum volume. But leaving the marriage was like a total explosion of all matter, a creation, an act of God. They're completely irreconcilable. Can't be spoken about, together.
I have a big blue book that contains months of writing, from January to about July, maybe, 2002 (EDIT: obviously, I mean 2003 here, not 2002). I am numb for about the first six weeks, just embryonic, alive but senseless, theoretical. In February I write the "men's monologue" bit for the Vagina Monologues (which, remember, I spoke aloud for three nights) and that really broke into the pain. That was serious transferral. In March I was accompanying Jill Nagle about the Bloomington campus, on a visit I organized (how, I'll never understand) and that was my entry into real meetings with real sex radicals. The rest, as Owl once put it, was a Tom Robbins novel :)
My writing in that blue book is very shy. Henry Miller I'm not. Or at least, I wasn't then. I understand why, but that's something else I'll not put clearly to words here. A lot of that past, those topics, are things I won't put to words here. Things I've not admitted to more than about four people.
**************************
Am I blog-proof? Let me make sense. I haven't really been interested in much that I've read in blog-land for MONTHS. Am I too busy? Am I too pulled into my own life, my present day-to-day? I think so. I can barely write about my own asana practice, much less reach out to someone else's ruminations about their own. Be it the tradition, the Intermediate sequence, the "whys" of practice, the "goal," whatever, I'm just not interested. This obviously says more about me than about the writers. I read a thing where a guy said it took 8 years to drop back and stand up. It took me five. I couldn't figure out how to make any more sense of it than those two sentences. I LITERALLY could not think of what to think next.
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