Have mat, will travel

update update

2010-08-03T20:22:00.003-04:00

So, I'm killing this blog, and resurrecting it on wordpress where the living's easy and the spam easier to control. You can find the new blog (including all old posts from the blogger incarnation) by replacing "blogger" in the URL with "wordpress".

Smell you later, blogger. Much, much later.

update

2010-08-03T15:32:00.003-04:00

I haven't given up on blogging, I'm just sick of dealing with all the spam that my blog seems to attract. So I'm looking into other blogging options.

Well, I'll take it as a compliment.

2010-07-26T14:36:00.001-04:00

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

yoga rant

2010-06-10T12:58:00.007-04:00

Since last fall, I've been co-teaching a pranayama/meditation/dharma discussion group on the first Sunday of every month. We started out strong with about a half dozen participants, but quickly the number dropped, and this month no one showed up. My ego wasn't bruised much (I wasn't really expecting anyone to show up, based on the great weather and the low turn out in recent months), but the more I think about this, the more frustrating it is. I also teach moderate and "advanced" yoga classes. The moderate classes are definitely the big sellers, but there are always students in the advanced classes as well, so clearly there is local interest in advanced yoga practice. And what is more advanced than moving past asana practice and working on the other seven limbs? Where are my "advanced" students on Sunday night, when we're doing the real advanced work? Everyone wants to look good flopping around on a sticky mat, but no one wants to sit still and work. It's a lot easier (I know this from my own experience) to be driven to work hard physically by an external task-master (the teacher) than to have to sit and deal with your own insatiable internal task-master (the mind). So I understand why no one shows up for our first Sunday sits, but it frustrates me anyway.

I'm going to be teaching classes this Sunday morning. I'm mulling over my options for the "advanced" class. Option one: business as usual. Option two: work on pranayam and sitting for 75 minutes. Option three: start by asking everyone, one by one, what "advanced" yoga practice means. Option four: tell everyone to roll up their mats at the beginning of class, put their shoes back on, and go outside to pick up litter from the street while contemplating saucha. Probably I'll stifle my frustration and go with option one. I can't force my students to do advanced practice. But neither can I stop being bugged by the fact that what we're calling advanced practice really doesn't amount to much more than calisthenics with Sanskrit names.

click

2010-05-29T13:56:00.004-04:00

Someone asked me today if I had three channels to watch - the anger channel, the misery channel, and the sunshine channel - which would I choose to watch? It was an unfair question; obviously I was supposed to choose the sunshine channel. But just as obviously, I guess, I don't think that's the choice I'd actually make. What possible benefit could you glean from closing yourself off to certain inevitable avenues of human experience, unsavoury though they may be? We are all going to experience anger and misery in our lives; being open to them allows us to figure out how to work with them more intelligently and sensitively than by just running away. There is an emotional rawness which can only be tapped through anger, and there is a sweetness on the other side of fully-realised misery that you will not find anywhere else. So I wouldn't choose to watch just the sunshine and puppies and lollipops channel. I would watch all three. And so I do.

The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman - a review

2010-05-24T13:21:00.010-04:00

I'm a big fan of Pullman. I loved the His Dark Materials series, so much so that I found it hard to talk about without getting very excited and jumbling all my words for a year or two after I finished the third book. Pretty sure I've written about Pullman here before... oh well, I'm too lazy to find the post and link to it. The long and the short of it is that his less than exalted view of religion finds a very receptive audience in me, so it was with great pleasure that I added his new book (let's just call it GMJ for the sake of brevity) to my library queue.

The book is a retelling of the story of Jesus Christ, however, with the revision that Jesus and Christ were two different people - twin brothers with decidedly different approaches to the question of what is Good. I found the title to be a bit of a misnomer; I didn't think Christ was depicted as a scoundrel at all, just someone with good intentions and poor judgement. I wondered as I read GMJ whether Pullman had come up with the title of the book first, then wrote it, realized it didn't quite match his original vision, but didn't want to part with such a juicy title. I don't know that this is so, but I imagine that it might be. Regardless, both Jesus and Christ were surprisingly nuanced and, I thought, sympathetic.

One of my favourite quotes from the book, from the chapter "Jesus In The Garden Of Gesthemene," page 197: "As soon as men who believe they're doing God's will get hold of power, whether it's in a household or a village or in Jerusalem or in Rome itself, the devil enters into them." Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely; what power is greater than believing you're doing the work of God? Doing good in the world requires humility, and is not reconcilable with ostentation or pride.

Apart from the splitting of Jesus into two people, I don't know how consistent GMJ is with the gospels. I wasn't raised with any sort of religion, and for better or for worse, most of my knowledge of Jesus comes from pop culture depictions. In fact, if my best friend in high school hadn't convinced the bus driver on the way back from our senior class trip to play the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, thus piquing my interest, I don't know if I'd know much of anything about Jesus. Ha! Take that, religious right! Most of my knowledge of Christianity comes from show tunes, that ever present staple of gay culture.

Overall, I give the book a thumb's up; it's not as scandalous as the title suggests, and I think Pullman does a good job of retelling the story and calling into question the more dubious aspects of Christianity (abuse of power, treating followers as sheep, &c.) while keeping the core values of the protagonist(s) intact. But if you really want to have your mind blown by Pullman's philosophy on religion, do yourself a favour and read the His Dark Materials trilogy.

CBC - Backbencher

2010-05-06T11:48:00.008-04:00

There's a new radio drama on the CBC - Backbencher. It's about a brand spanking new MP in the House of Commons from a riding in Nova Scotia. I'm quite enjoying it so far; it doesn't have the action/drama of Afghanada or the comedy of Canadia 2056, but it's near sight more entertaining than Monsoon House. I can't imagine what Backbencher's target audience is, though; is there really a swell of interest for Canadian Parliamentary drama? I would have figured I'd be more or less the only person interested in this sort of thing.

In other news, I'm toying with the idea of combining two of my interests and writing a radio drama/comedy set in a yoga studio. I have a few rough ideas in mind, but haven't put pen to paper yet.

dumb joke

2010-04-28T11:30:00.003-04:00

Inspired by a snippet of conversation I overheard last night at the Muddy Cup:

"Hypnosis? My mom tried that once."

"Did it work?"

"We can't tell; she's just VERY SLEEPY all the time now."

Alan Chartock, WAMC

2010-04-13T14:36:00.017-04:00

It will come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I listen to a great deal of radio. I listen to conventional broadcast radio, I listen to streaming stations on-line. I listen to local stations, stations from other states, stations from other countries. I listen to music programmes, news programmes, radio drama, radio comedy, public radio, commercial radio. And I listen to some radio programmes which joyously defy any and all classification. I even had my own radio programme for about a year in college, and miss it sorely sometimes. About the only genre of radio with which I am not intimately acquainted is right-wing talk radio. So it is on no small pool of experience that I draw when I say that far and away the most obnoxious radio personality I have ever had the displeasure of listening to is Dr. Alan Chartock, president and CEO of local public radio station WAMC.

I didn't always feel this way. Ten or fifteen years ago, when I started listening to WAMC, I had much greater tolerance for Dr. Chartock. In gross terms, after all, his political views are in concordance with my own. He, too, is a progressive lefty; supports Obama, doesn't support the wars, &c. We also share a love of Pete Seeger's music. The common ground between us ends there, unfortunately. I am irrevocably divorced from the cult of Chartock by the man's own insufferable self-importance and megalomania.

Dr. Chartock's voice is inescapable on WAMC; both literally (he is on the air almost continuously, hosting his own weekly programmes and serving as a regular commentator and co-host of other programmes) and figuratively (there are very few commentators on WAMC who do not share Dr. Chartock's political views). I can understand, to some extent, the pervasiveness of his actual voice over the air waves. If I remember correctly from my days in the DC area, WAMU's president was also their most regular on-air personality. Perhaps this is inherent to public radio stations in this country (or at least those devoted to commentary and news). I cannot, however, understand Dr. Chartock's refusal to air more than the most paltry smattering of opinions contrary to his own. WAMC offers air time to a wide variety of commentators. Exactly one of them is a conservative; and even his arguments are poorly constructed and inane. It is almost as though he is retained to serve as a straw-man. This theory is not in any way discredited by the fact that during every single fund drive, Dr. Chartock parades this one conservative commentator's brief weekly opinion pieces as evidence of his own (Dr. Chartock's) magnanimous willingness to air other points of view. Is it really Dr. Chartock's sole responsibility and privilege to determine who should and should not be allowed air time? WAMC is a public radio station. It is their responsibility to provide quality programming for their audience, not the palest imaginable shadow of balanced politics.

If WAMC's lone conservative commentator were my sole complaint, it would not occur to me to accuse Dr. Chartock of egomania. Perhaps WAMC is simply catering to its audience's interests. However, Dr. Chartock really shows his hand during his Tuesday afternoon hour-long open political forums. Callers generally fall into two categories: progressives and conservatives (reflecting WAMC's audience and local demographics, the majority fall into the former category). Within each of these categories, there are sub-groups: conscientious callers and, for lack of a better term, wackos. Conscientious callers respectfully voice well reasoned arguments, sometimes calmly, sometimes with great passion. Wackos are generally irate and voice opinions which they are unable to support. My perspective is that both progressives and conservatives can have valuable insights to share, and should be granted air time to share them, provided that they are conscientious. In other words, callers should be screened based on their placement on the conscientious/wacko spectrum, not the progressive/conservative spectrum. This idea, however, is clearly foreign to Dr. Chartock. Progressives are permitted to voice their opinions with minimal interruptions, regardless of where they fall on the conscientious/wacko continuum. Conservatives, on the other hand, are treated to continuous interruptions from Dr. Chartock, with the result that regardless of their state of calmness at the start of the call, their level of agitation increases until Dr. Chartock cuts the call short and informs his call screener, over the air, to add the caller to The List (ie, the list of callers who are no longer permitted on air). I listen to this happen every time I tune in, and it never fails to disgust me. He even has the audacity to accuse his conservative callers of speaking from a "bully pulpit." I believe the Yiddish word for this sort of statement is "chutzpah."

Why do I still listen if Dr. Chartock's antics infuriate me so? WAMC, despite the failings and egocentrism of its president, is still a quality source of local information, and I do enjoy many of its other programmes and commentators. Many years ago, though, I stopped donating to the station during fund drives because I couldn't stand the thought of underwriting Dr. Chartock's gigantic ego. I know many of WAMC's other listeners enjoy listening to him berate callers with opposing viewpoints (they voice their enjoyment in their comments during the fund drives); to me, this is the cheapest sort of lions-vs-Christians entertainment. WAMC's listeners, I believe, would be far better served by a more balanced approach. And perhaps by a change in leadership.

bra story

2010-03-23T18:05:00.003-04:00

Walking down Church Street a few weeks ago, I was surprised to see a bra hanging in a tree outside an apartment building. It stayed there for a few days and gave me a smile every time I walked past it. When it disappeared, I thought I'd seen the last of it... but then last week, I saw it (or its twin) outside another house about a quarter mile away. I can't for the life of me figure out what the story behind this bra is. I'm wondering where I'm going to see it next.

Projects for the new year - update

2010-03-05T13:07:00.003-05:00

I've winnowed down the list; I realized I'd bit off more than I cared to chew. So, I've chosen just two projects to focus on this year:

Train for a triathlon
Writing project

I may work on some of the other projects on the original list as well, but I'm not committing myself to them. "When all else fails, lower your standards!"

Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism) by Frank Schaeffer - a review

2010-03-02T08:27:00.004-05:00

I read this book because my friend Lorna interviewed the author for Chronogram, and he seemed to have interesting insights about the considerable overlap between evangelical religion and what he refers to as the "new atheism" - Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. Unfortunately, although Schaeffer's ideas are interesting and found a receptive audience in me, he is not a very strong writer. It was a bit of a struggle to get through the book. I do have to give the author credit for penning one very good chapter; he wrote about a mason he knew when he was growing up in Switzerland, someone who almost never spoke but focused intently on his job and always produced superlative work. The only time the author saw this master craftsman rise to anger was when his mother tried to rush him in a job, and he replied, "Non, il faut faire ça comme il faut" - "No, this must be done the way it must be done." This story is compelling to me because this is the way I always hope to work, no matter what the task, and on those rare occasions when I rise to this level of ability, it is sheer bliss to do whatever it is that I am doing. I understand why Schaeffer included the description of this man in his book; work, when done this way, is a form of prayer or meditation. It gives one the experience of connection (or "communion," if you like) regardless of one's beliefs or lack thereof.

Schaeffer's main thesis is that both evangelicals and the "new atheists" are insufferably obsessed with their own rightness, and more importantly, everyone else's wrongness; thus do they miss the point entirely - that mystery is the fundamental condition of existence. I agree with him, and he supports his thesis well enough, but he does so in the first hundred pages of a 230 page book. The rest is repetitive and/or tangential, much to the detriment of the book. Also, Schaeffer's anger, though understandable, does not serve him well here.

story

2010-02-09T08:21:00.003-05:00

I heard the story of a famous Buddhist monk who was visiting an ashram to give a talk. The ashram was very excited to have the monk come, and asked him to send a bio so that they could advertise his talk. They didn't hear back from him for a while, so they asked again. Still nothing. They asked again. No response. Finally, the day before the talk, they asked one final time for a bio, or resume, or whatever, and at last they received a reply. Four words: "One mistake after another."

Mother. Pus. Bucket.

2010-02-01T10:23:00.007-05:00

Now I have to find a whole new name for myself. Bastards.

ahimsa

2010-01-28T08:18:00.009-05:00

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread..." thus do I enter into the thorny issue of yoga and vegetarianism.

There was an interesting article in the New York Times recently about yoga and food, and how some studios and restauranteurs are bringing them together in surprising (and somewhat icky - who wants to use their sweaty, nasty yoga mat as a place setting for an after class meal?) ways. This, of course, raises the question of what sorts of foods are fit for us yogis to eat. Patañjali's Yoga Sutras list ahimsa as the first part of the first limb of yoga - he is clearly making a statement of importance here by listing it right up front. Usually, we translate ahimsa as non-violence; not hurting each other. For a lot of yogis, this means adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet. The reasoning, I believe, is as follows: If I'm committed to not hurting other people, why would I be willing to benefit from the death of other animals? Especially when it is certainly possible to survive without consuming any animal products?

Well... I'm not completely sold on the idea, and my basic argument against it boils down to, ironically perhaps, my appreciation of the incredible complexity of life. How do we draw the line between what we can (ethically) eat and what we can't? Is it a simple division based on kingdom? If so, then why are animals more important than plants, or fungi, or protozoa for that matter? We all started from the same biological miracle; we all have 4.5 billion years of evolution behind us. It's not as if we can pretend that non-animal life is less advanced or more primitive than animals are, and therefore less worthy of survival on an individual basis. We all, essentially, share the same birthday and are growing old together.

It's a fundamental truth that animals need to feed on other life. If we live on plants, we're still eating something that once lived and was killed for our benefit. Something needs to die in order for me to live. This can't be avoided.

When I think about the idea that the only ethical diet is a vegetarian or vegan diet, it also brings to mind the diets and lifestyles of other cultures. Traditionally, the Inuit lived on a diet that consisted exclusively of animal products. They did so because these were the resources available to them - in the far North, there are no edible plants. There are birds, there are sea mammals, there are polar bears, there are caribou, and that's about it. Does this make the traditional Inuit diet unethical? No, and I don't think anyone would claim that it does. Let's progress into murkier territory, then - other foods are now available to many in the far north, foods that have been grown and processed in the south and flown to the Arctic at great expense. Now, does this recent availability of plant based foods make contemporary adherence to the traditional Inuit diet unethical? Is it wrong for the Inuit (or anyway, those among them who can afford the imported foods) to continue to adhere to their traditional diet when other options are now available? I'd argue that the answer to this question is also No; to answer it otherwise would be to suggest an inherent inferiority of the traditional Inuit culture, which is ridiculous. To suggest the superiority of one's own culture or belief system is paternalistic at best, patronizing at worst.

A lot of the argument around vegetarian/vegan diets for yogis strikes me this way - paternalistic. Why should I let someone else decide for me what ahimsa means? Isn't it my own responsibility to make peace with my decisions and with the world? Isn't that part of svadhyaya, self-study, which is also listed in Patañjali's eight limbs of yoga? I did not become involved with yoga to become pious and superior, nor to kowtow to those who are. I'm involved in this practice because it helps me find meaning and beauty in the world.

Is it possible to practice ahimsa as an omnivore? Is it possible to eat meat and practice non-violence? I think this question is far more nuanced and complex than many in the yoga community admit. The answer cannot be reduced to a simple yes or no.

Ugh... this post definitely needs more editing, but frankly I'm tired of working on it. These ideas have been on my mind for a long, long time, and I will probably return to them at some point in the future.

As always, comments are welcome and encouraged, especially if you respectfully disagree with me or find flaws in my arguments.

Poised for Grace by Douglas Brooks - a review

2010-01-25T07:20:00.003-05:00

I finished reading Douglas Brooks' Tantric commentary on the Bhagavad Gita last night, after struggling with it for about two weeks. Well... it wasn't terrible, but it was in dire need of editing. There were a few sentences that didn't make sense even after repeated readings, and there were a few very obvious errors, like subject-verb agreement. I don't fault the author; these things can creep into anyone's writing. But the editors could have done a better job.

Regarding the content - it was interesting, but I don't know if I buy the basic Tantric belief that everything is god or comes from god. I have never found that to be a satisfying philosophy, and usually when it gets fleshed out, it starts feeling circular. On a positive note, though, the book did give me a much better understanding of the Gita. Whereas Patañjali's Yoga Sutras is a philosophical treatise, the Bhagavad Gita addresses the more vital question of how to practice yoga in the morally ambiguous full blown disaster of the world. The description of Arjuna's breakdown on the battlefield is especially striking, and will be hauntingly familiar to anyone who has ever lost their footing in the world and didn't know what to do next. Krishna's advice is all the more poignant for the familiarity of Arjuna's self doubt.

Dahn Yoga

2010-01-11T07:06:00.006-05:00

There's been a fair bit of talk in the yoga blogosphere lately about Dahn yoga, so I thought I'd weigh in with my own experience.

It was November 2005, and I was spending a few days in Ottawa; I'd driven up for the weekend to visit my best friend (as I used to do every spring and fall). She was working the day after I arrived, so we couldn't hang out, but she'd received a flyer at work announcing an open house at a new yoga studio and she passed it along to me. Dahn yoga. I'd never heard of it, but I was willing to go and find out what it was all about.

The open house was partly meet and greet, partly sales pitch, partly practice session. Regarding the practice itself, it was unlike any other yoga I'd practised before. No reference to Patanjali, or even to India; totally unfamiliar poses. Strangest of all, we ended the session with 30 seconds of forced laughter. I remember sitting there in the circle at the end, forcing laughter along with the rest, thinking "This is crazy."

Regarding the sales pitch; well, they were certainly quite heavy handed. I had an out, of course, because I was only in Ottawa for the weekend. Still, they persisted in suggesting that I pursue Dahn yoga back in New York, and they really wanted me to return the following week for some sort of an aura reading.

I don't recall if anyone (apart from me) from outside the Dahn yoga circle came to the open house; most everyone else there was from Dahn yoga's Montreal centre. That, of course, was the real highlight of the open house for me; sitting there listening to people talking in Korean, French, and English, with a smattering of Sanskrit thrown in (names of other yoga studios in Montreal). I didn't understand the Korean, of course, but I understood a fair bit of the French. There is little that makes me happier than being surrounded by conversations in multiple languages, some of which I vaguely understand. I felt so cosmopolitan. I felt like I was in the Tower of Babel.

Is Dahn yoga a cult? I guess that depends on how you define the word cult. Is a cult just a religion without any political clout? I find this definition tempting, but ultimately insufficient. I think there needs to be a proselytizing aspect as well, which is common but not inherent in religion. Also, my sense of cults is that they are intractable; once you are in, it is difficult to leave. So given this very informal definition of cult (religion without political clout, proselytizing, intractable), does Dahn yoga fit the bill? Perhaps. I leave it to greater minds than my own to decide.

There is, perhaps, a second issue here, and I only raise it because I suspect the question will be asked (and answered poorly) by mainstream media if it ever addresses the Dahn yoga story. Is yoga a cult? Obviously I don't believe it is, else I would not be involved in it. But let's apply my three point definition here as well for the sake of argument. First, I disagree with the suggestion that yoga is a religion (though some in the community do present it as such, and would probably take umbrage with me for disagreeing). Although we talk about goddesses and gods, no one in the yoga community has ever suggested to me that I need to believe in these deities as anything other than mythological beings, and no one has ever suggested that I need to pray to them. Neither is there in yoga (at least, the forms of yoga which I practice) a hierarchical power structure or a supreme leader. Yoga, in my experience, is a bottom-up enterprise; yes, there are big names and leaders of sorts, but I am free (and encouraged) to build my practice out of my own experience rather than relying on anyone else's. Also, I have never experienced anything akin to proselytizing in yoga. Those involved in the practice have found their own way there, and remain there (or not) because of the meaning that they find in it, not because of the meaning that anyone else attributes to it. Finally, the question of intractability. People leave (and return to) yoga all the time; it's almost a joke among yoga teachers. We run into former students outside the studio, and the first thing they want to tell us is that they're sorry they haven't been practising. Not to sound insensitive, and not at all to suggest that I'm uninterested in their practice or personal struggles (nothing could be further from the truth), but whether and how to practice is the student's decision, not her teacher's. We are not shepherds. We are not baby sitters. Just as we all find our own way into the practice, we are all free to find our own way out as well, and I don't think I have ever met a teacher who does not understand or respect that.

meaningful

2010-01-05T19:42:00.006-05:00

Ever since I made my monster list of New Year's projects, I've been totally freaking out from the enormity of it all, and the thought of all the things I left off the list. So while I'm winnowing down, revising, and prioritizing the list, here's a post on an unrelated topic.

I sometimes find myself wondering why I am here. Like everyone else on the planet, I know that I am ultimately headed for the big dirt nap, and will probably get there sooner than I expect and much sooner than I'd like. Before that happens, though, I wonder if there's something important that I'm meant to do; not in a paranoid-schizophrenic-delusions-of-grandeur sort of way, rather, I'd like to think there is something I can do with my time here that would be of benefit to others and also meaningful to me. At first I thought that it would involve writing, or some obscure interest or fascination of mine, but I have never been able to figure out what to do with any of that. Most of my interests seem very peculiar to me, and probably not of great import to society at large.

Frustrated, I thought about Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Buckminster Fuller, and their respective struggles to find purpose in their lives. Goethe found his answer in writing; Fuller, in devising creative new ways of living. Both ideas resonate with me in different ways, but neither seems to be my path, per se. Writing is certainly something I love to do, but I don't think I could view it as an end, only as a means. The fundamental drive for me lies somewhere else.

Then I realized I was thinking too much about it, and if there really was something I was meant to do, it was probably right in front of me and not something that I had to dig very deep for. And then it came to me. Yoga. Of course it's yoga; what else could it be? This practice, more than anything else, has been the thing that has helped me unfold as a person. If there is anything I am meant to do, at least at this point in my life, I am certain that this is it; studying, practicing, teaching, living yoga. And there is great comfort and relief in that realization, because this is something I am already involved in and already love.

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (a review)

2010-01-03T19:55:00.003-05:00

Why, oh why doesn't anyone write this beautifully today? Deliciously complex sentence structure, social commentary and subtle sarcasm. And humour too, though Austen doesn't sacrifice her charcters on the altar of irony as contemporary writers do. She leaves some room for them to breathe and to live. Generally, it was a pleasure to read this book.

However, there is one question that keeps rising for me whenever I read Austen's writing. Her characters are constantly talking about money, worrying about money, making arrangements and engagements based on money or the lack thereof, yet I have yet to encounter a charcter of Austen's who holds a job. They are all living on interest, though Austen never sees fit to mention the source of the principle. If her characters are all so very concerned about their finances, would it not behoove them to find some manner of gainful employment? Perhaps this simply was not done among the upper (or upper-middle) classes of England in the 19th century.

I guess this is why although I love Austen's writing, the plot of Sense and Sensibility seems a little thin to me. I just can't identify with the lifestyle of her protagonists, envious though I may be of their excesses of leisure time.

Well, one Jane Austen novel down, two others previously read (Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey - I haven't decided whether I'll re-read them). That leaves three works, unless I'm mistaken; Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion. I'm off to a good start on at least one of my projects for 2010, reading all of Austen's novels.

Projects for the new year

2009-12-31T14:24:00.004-05:00

I don't like making resolutions, because they only end of being broken, but at the beginning of the new year I do make a list of projects to work on. Here is (most of) this year's list:

Train for a triathalon.
Asana: work on abs, forward bends, back bends
Pranayam: I'd like to decrease my resting breath rate to one per minute. I don't know if that's physically possible.
Drastically cut back on my television watching
Eat local/organic meat only
Writing project? Not sure what. Maybe one that I've contemplated in the past but haven't had the courage to start.
Visit Berlin and/or Paris and/or Ireland and/or... somewhere else
Read all of Jane Austen's novels

This is a much larger and more complicated list than I usually make. Fortunately, I'm not much attached to whether I accomplish these things. I do seem to be happiest when I have challenges to work on, though.

Welcome, 2010. Arthur C. Clarke would be so disappointed.

asana sequence

2009-12-15T12:30:00.002-05:00

I taught this on Sunday, and I think most of the class didn't know what hit 'em, so I want to record it for posterity (and so I can teach it again):

Start in down dog. Inhale forward to a plank.

Take side plank (vasistasana) on the right side. Left hand grips left big toe in yogi toe grip, and left leg is extended to the ceiling.

Inhaling, lunge the left foot forward and come onto the ball of the right foot. Take a few breaths in the lunge, both hands on the floor.

Then lunge the right foot forward and past the left foot, taking the right big toe in yogi toe grip with the right hand, and extending the right leg forward as you come up to stand. (padangusthasana).

Inhale - open the right leg up to the right, bringing the gaze to the left. Breathe.

Exhale the right leg forward, back into padangusthasana, then inhaling, sweep the right leg behind you, taking hold of the top of the right foot and extending the left arm up to the ceiling. (dancer pose - natarajasana).

Breathe.

Transition into half moon, ardha chandrasana, by releasing the right leg, extending the right hand to the ceiling, and bringing the left hand to the floor. Hips stack, shoulders stack.

After a few breaths, bring the right hand to the floor and the left hand up towards the ceiling for parivrtta ardha chandrasana.

Then bring both hands to the floor, and extend the back leg (right leg) up towards the ceiling for standing split (can't remember the Sanskrit - something eka pada something).

Then, bending in the left knee, jump back to three legged down dog, move through a vinyasa, and return to down dog.

Repeat on the left side.

and now, a few words from Woody Guthrie

2009-12-14T11:12:00.005-05:00

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose, bound to lose, no good to nobody, no good for nothing, because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim, too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and your work.

more scribblings

2009-12-14T10:10:00.006-05:00

A list of reminders to myself I have written on a card in my wallet, which I never remember to read in moments of need:

Passion. Beauty. Joy. (I took this from an interview with Bill Nye, the Science Guy - it's his response to a question about what motivates him.)
Prayer doesn't pay the bills.
Go where going takes you.
Save the drama for your mama.
Soldier on.
One hand for yourself, one hand for the ship. (I tend to pour myself completely into things (like work), leaving nothing left to give if anything else arises with which I need to deal. So I end up totally loosing my shit over tiny little things. I need to remember to keep one hand for myself.)
Make hay while the sun shines.
Build what you cannot borrow, buy what you cannot build. (My adage on frugality.)
Show up and see what happens. (You can do all the planning in the world, but it still won't make you completely ready for whatever happens.)
Live like a yogi. Die like a Buddhist. (This is probably my favourite. I think I came up with it during a session with my therapist a few years ago. I'm less fond of the second half of this imperative than I once was.)
You'd do well to recognize when your anger is masking a well of sadness. (Cause, you know, it usually is.)

an offer I couldn't refuse

2009-12-01T14:35:00.005-05:00

A few weeks ago, my best friend from high school called me and asked if I would be willing to be godfather for his daughter. I was kind of shocked at first; partly because I know he's not religious, partly because he knows that I'm not religious, and partly because I don't think I'm the obvious choice to be responsible for anyone else's spiritual well being. Yes, yoga and all that, but I don't even really believe in anything that's easily recognizable to the average bear as spiritual. I just ask a lot of annoying questions. Guess that makes me a Saganist.

My friend's mother is religious, though, and I imagine that she lobbied hard to have her granddaughter baptized. The way it plays out in my mind is that I was the concession. "Okay mom, we'll agree to dunk her head... but F's going to be the godfather." Probably (almost definitely) not true, but it makes me smile to imagine it so.

The ceremony itself... h'mmm. The priest passed out scripts from which we all read; somehow, my new goddaughter got her hands on one, and had a terrific time swatting it against mine all during the ceremony. Eight months old and already causing a ruckus in church! I couldn't be prouder. I guess if I were more inclined to approach religious ceremonies with an air of solemnity, I could have moved out of her range, but her distraction and delight made the baptism much more meaningful for me.

I was honoured that my friend asked me to be a part of his daughter's life in this way; actually, I teared up a bit when he first asked me. And although a lot of the script we went through with the priest as part of the ceremony left me cold, I do like the idea of having a role in someone else's spiritual development. And perhaps I am a good choice, if not an obvious one. I made a promise in that church that I would guide her development as a Christian, and I will do that... if it's what she wants. But I'm going to make absolutely certain that she knows what that means first, the history of Christianity (both the light and the dark bits), and what her other options are. If she chooses one of those other options, or like me, decides to figure out for herself what makes sense, well, I'll be happy to help her with that too.

search strings

2009-11-19T12:49:00.003-05:00

According to Google Analytics, these are a few of the search strings that people have used to find my blog:

carl sagan haircut
cold and drunk as i can be
inappropriate things to write on a cake

That last one is my personal favourite. I should probably come up with more inappropriate things to write on a cake so I can be sure I'm pleasing my audience.

untitled poem

2009-11-16T15:31:00.009-05:00

I submitted this poem to the Chronogram for November, and apparently it made the short list but didn't fit in the final layout. The poetry editor suggested that I resubmit it in the future. Since it's a spring-themed poem, I think maybe I'll resubmit it in March. Until then, I make it available here for your reading pleasure!

I have known silence
luscious and austere, all coarse and rarefied -
louder than a drum
louder than any hustle and bustle
I could ever devise.

In the fractional pause
between ringing gadgetry
and digital embrace,
some quiet thought
pervades -
some kind, unfettered thing
softens the void.

I learned to listen
in north Ontario, early spring.
In that sharp, naked season of light
not so much as a bird chirping
nor wave lapping
stirs the cool, dry air.

and Sometimes
I can still hear
that raw Canadian landscape
creeping across my threshold
bearing treasures and trinkets -
Longing
and Release.

Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler - a review

2009-11-12T14:33:00.013-05:00

So, I've once again been chewing my way through Drawing Down the Moon, by Margot Adler. This is my third try; I first picked it up in spring of 2001 (inspired by liner notes for a Dar Williams song), but was soon distracted by an immediate and unforeseen need to leave the place I was living at the time. I started reading it again a few years ago; can't remember why I didn't make it all the way through that second time. Anyway, this is attempt #3, and I'm making good progress. I'm further into the book than I got on my prior attempts, and a lot of it is sinking in and making sense (or in some cases very clearly not making sense).

I just finished the chapter on "Women, Feminism, and the Craft". The first half of the chapter didn't do much for me; I'm reading an old edition of the book, and a lot of it seemed dated. Second wave feminism. I understand (at least, I think I understand) the importance from a historical context, but it all seems a bit reductionist/dualistic to me. I'm glad we've moved on.

With those caveats in place, there are some really rich passages in this chapter. Let's start with these two quotes from page 210:

Despite what some psychologists say, no one really has the slightest idea what a woman (or, for that matter, what a man) is.

"...the great mystery of our society is that men and women are exactly alike and this truth is hidden from us under an incredible load of bullshit."

That second quote gets right down to the heart of the matter. Politics, religion (which is just another word for politics), and 99% of what we call gender - they are all based on the bullshit of false dichotomies and a fearful desire to call things Other. Apart from the gross physical level of genetics, hormones, brain structures, and plumbing (important to note that the last two list items are wholly dependent on the first two list items), is there any inherent difference between men and women? (For the moment, let's pretend that these two categories are mutually exclusive and exhaustive.) And how amazing is it that this dichotomy that every one of us buys into to some extent is almost wholly fabricated? We as humans have the capability to invent something that orders our entire universe and never, ever gets questioned. Wow. I'm not saying that's either good or bad. Mostly it's just amazing.

Also, quoted from Robin Morgan's Sisterhood is Powerful on page 206:

If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a Witch. You make your own rules. You are free and beautiful. You can be invisible or evident in how you choose to make your witch-self known. You can form your own Coven of sister Witches (thirteen is a cozy number for a group) and do your own actions...

Your power comes from your own self as a woman, and it is activated by working in concert with your sisters...

You are a Witch by saying aloud, "I am a Witch" three times, and thinking about that. You are a Witch by being female, untamed, angry, joyous, and immortal.

Part of the reason I started with the discussion of gender was to lend this description of witchcraft some degree of universality. What I love about this quote is that it makes it very, very clear that witchcraft/neo-Paganism is not about superficial action; it's about essence. You can't convert. You either are or aren't, and if you aren't, there's no way in, and if you are, there's no way out (stakes and bonfires notwithstanding). Also, modern witchcraft, unlike conventional religion (and much of the rest of neo-Paganism), is independent of power structure, hierarchy, bureaucracy. It is wild, untamed. "You make your own rules."

Another element of witchcraft/neo-Paganism that's really struck me on this third voyage through the book is the idea of imminence rather than transcendence. The divine is not off floating in the clouds shooting the shit with saints and angels. If it's anywhere, it's right here. Where else could it be? And here's where the connection to yoga comes in. (You knew that was coming, right?) The first line of Patañjali is atha yoga anusasanam - now, yoga instruction. The key word is NOW - not yesterday, not tomorrow, not in the afterlife. Now. Here. Imminence. Not transcendence.

The risk with a philosophy of imminence is that the divine has nowhere to hide; it's all out in the open, immediately available to everyone. This is a threat to traditional religion because traditional religion is based on hierarchical power structures. If those at the bottom of the hierarchy have equal access to the divine as do those at the top, it obviates the need for the hierarchy. Also, the game of "I know god's will but you don't so you need to listen to me if you want to go to heaven" becomes impossible to play. There is no heaven, there is no hell, and we all have access to divinity.

This post is dedicated to the memory of my friend Byron, who would have been 40 today, and probably would have humoured me by listening to all these musings.

freiheit

2009-11-09T13:04:00.001-05:00

Some scribblings from my lunch break, after spending all morning listening to reflections on the CBC about the twenty year anniversary of the Berlin Wall:

the danger of history
is viewing the past as an inevitable series of events
like dominoes, clockwork, death.

the danger of the present
is approaching the future as an untouched canvas
open to experimentation and wild, boundless play.

Addendum: song for today - Titanic Terrarium, the Tragically Hip

from the IT department

2009-11-04T13:15:00.000-05:00

Fellow employees,

We in the IT department, in accordance with recent regulatory mandates, have recently updated our password policy. Effective immediately, all passwords must meet the following criteria:

At least 47 characters in length, containing 12 or more of the following: lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numerals, nationals, cyrillic characters, Japanese Kenji characters, and Chinese ideograms.

You are required to change your password(s) every 14 seconds. If you do not, your access to our computer network will be terminated immediately, you will be stripped of your clothing, and you will be thrown out on the street. We will disavow any knowledge of you.

You are not permitted to reuse any password you have used in the previous 30 years. If you attempt to do so, we will hang you.

If you are like most computer users today, you probably access dozens of services which require passwords. You are not permitted to use the same password for more than one service. If you do, we will shoot you.

You are not permitted to record your password(s) in writing anywhere. If you do, we will hang you, then shoot you, then hang you again.

We have provided several examples of good and bad passwords:

Bad password:
IHeartPuppies!

Easily remembered good password:
fjdsakl;ierpowENIVA;OSI%$@$AIAOIDAEOIWFNDV

We in the IT department have every expectation that these simple to follow rules will vastly improve the security and efficiency of the company. NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Sincerely,
Your friends in the IT department

"Escape Is At Hand For The Travelling Man"

2009-11-03T10:11:00.002-05:00

Last Tuesday, I walked down town to the bike shop on my lunch break to sign up for a bicycle repair course. The weather was lousy; misty rain, chilly weather, grey skies, piles of wet leaves everywhere. I loved it. I just wanted to keep on walking until my legs would carry me no further, but I had to get back to work.

There is a lot of appeal, I've been thinking lately, in not doing the thing that you think you're supposed to do. What happens when you start colouring outside the lines? Not out of mean-spiritedness or a desire to throw other people's plans all akimbo, just out of curiosity of what we miss when we always do what we assume we're supposed to or expected to. Are our actions fated or freely chosen?

old scribblings

2009-11-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

I was cleaning out my nightstand/bookshelf last night, and I found a few scraps of paper that I want to be able to throw out, but not before first recording their contents.

Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life

Jane Eyre

This quote well encapsulates what I loved about Jane Eyre, what made it such a vibrant and revolutionary novel. If I weren't in the middle of something else right now, I'd want to go back and re-read it. Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life is an excellent biography of all three Brontë siblings, with an emphasis on Charlotte, who outlived Emily and Austin. I remember thinking how familiar a lot of their life story sounded, and how similar their childhood was to mine in some respects. I could see how the emotional stresses of early life affected the way each of their lives unfolded, for better or for worse. All three were incredibly creative, but only Charlotte and Emily seemed able to find relief by this route; Austin unfortunately channelled his energies into addiction and anger. The unsettling possibility that that difference is attributable to gender has not escaped my notice.

I also remember the horror of realizing that Emily, Austin, and their father all died within about a year and a half of each other. I can't even imagine living through that. But of course, we are a lot more removed from death than our forebears were, even a century or two ago. So perhaps everyone developed stronger skills for dealing with loss back then.

finish Anne [a novel I started writing some years ago; it remains unfinished]
rebuild the Rideau Queen [a rather fanciful idea that sometimes haunts me. The Rideau Queen was a steam ship that transported passengers up and down the Rideau Canal in south eastern Ontario around the turn of the 20th century.]
Ghosts Along the Rideau [an idea for a novel that I toss around in my head sometimes. I'm unclear regarding the plot, theme(s), and characters, but other than that I think it's a good idea.]
buy house [done]
teach yoga [done, or in process anyway]

Pre-Euro residence

Trapping?
Surveying
Construction
Military
Commerce - logging [I remember hearing on CBC radio that at the turn of the 20th century, 1/3-1/2 of the men in eastern Ontario were engaged in logging.]
Tourism - Rideau King & Queen
Tourism - Fishing
Tourism - Cottaging

yoga quiz

2009-10-30T07:39:00.010-04:00

I took a quiz over on Yoga Dawg's website; got a nice chuckle to start the morning with (although, knowing Yoga Dawg (or his/her website, anyway), probably everyone gets this response):

Well, if that doesn't hit almost all of my yoga buttons, I don't know what does. I love the fact that there are (other) yogis out there who recognize the deep irony of yoga marketing (the yoga-industrial complex) and who don't hesitate to call others in the community "ass-hats" when it's warranted.

"Drowning in their self-piousness" - that's going to have me smiling all day!

PS - I'm back. I think.

the Tragically Hip, 15 October 2009, Albany - a review

2009-10-19T10:59:00.011-04:00

About two weeks ago, T and I drove up to Albany to see the Tragically Hip. By far, it was the best show I've ever gone to. The Hip's front man, Gord Downie, is a maniac, and I mean that in the best sense of the word. His stage presence, jumping around, dancing, engaging with the audience, was incredible. Several times throughout the show, he walked out into the audience on the backs of the seats as far as his mic cord would allow him (he came within 3 feet of us at one point). The Hip have been together for 26 years; I've seen a lot of shows by other bands that have been together for that long, and most of the time their performances are very predictable and uninspired. Not the Hip. On stage, they acted like it was their first tour. They were present, even when playing songs that they've probably played thousands of times. A reflection of the energy they had on stage - this was the first concert I've been to in a long, long time in which the entire audience was on its feet throughout the entire show.

I know it sounds weird, but I felt somehow validated by their performance, even more than I feel validated by their recorded music. There's an emotional rawness and honesty to Downie's writing and performances. No artifice or disconnect. I tried to explain it to my therapist, and she said, "He's doing what you're doing." Probably the nicest thing she could have said to me. Yes. Exactly. Gord Downie is doing what I am trying to do; he's not hiding the things that might be uncomfortable to sing about or write about or talk about in public; he's airing it all. That sort of honesty can't be faked.

the great dark wonder

2009-08-11T13:14:00.004-04:00

I spent last week in Maine with T, my siblings, their significant others, and a few of our friends. I'm going to gloss over most of the rest of the trip and zero in on one event that was really special and meaningful to me: visiting the grave of an old friend, E, in a cemetery in Bath. She was someone my siblings and I started hanging out with around the time that I went off to college; when I returned for summer break after my freshmen year, there she was, all smiles and sarcasm. And Troubles as well, though these were mostly under control when we met her. E's Troubles reappeared over the next few years, though, and we drifted apart. Eventually, Troubles got the better of her, and she died. Maybe I'm supposed to say that poetically. She shuffled off this mortal coil. She slipped the surly bonds of earth. No. She fucking died. And there was nothing poetic about it.

Walking away from her casket after the wake was the worst I ever felt in my life, and that is not something that I say lightly. I remember reading her obituary and wondering if I'd ever make it up to Maine to pay my respects properly at her grave. I'm glad that I did, though of course I forgot to bring a rock to leave on it.

Funny story: while we were walking around the cemetery searching for the grave, my sister (I kid you not) fell in a hole up to her knee. She lost her shoe, and her husband had to reach his entire arm into the hole to retrieve it. We couldn't stop laughing. E would have LOVED that; she would have made us roll-play it over and over again until we were too sick from laughing to do it any more. In fact, the whole episode was such a classic E moment that it almost makes me believe she set it up for us from the afterlife; and that, too, is not something I say lightly.

hibernation

2009-07-13T21:59:00.004-04:00

I need to put this blog to rest for a while. I've been writing here instead of writing in my journal, and that's creating problems for me. I don't know when I'll be back.

Enlighten Up - a review

2009-06-29T21:23:00.004-04:00

I wouldn't have thought that it would be possible to make a funny, touching documentary about yoga that really got into the heart of what yoga is. Well, apparently it is possible, for it has been done. For those of us who take this practice seriously, but have some curiosity (and perhaps some reservations) about some of those who take it even more seriously, this was a fine, fine film. There were very funny scenes (kundalini = kundalooney!), and there were quite moving scenes as well (eg, when Nick and Kate are in India, and he starts crying when he talks about his mom). The film really confirmed my suspicion that Indian masters are teaching a very different discipline than many of their well known American counterparts (the long and the short of it: it doesn't matter what you're doing; what matters is how you're doing it - this is yoga).

I also found it quite interesting that as Nick (the subject of the documentary) began delving further into yoga, Kate (his friend and documentarian) began getting frustrated with him for not being able to articulate his experience and evolving belief in the terms that she was expecting. At least, this was my take on it. It struck me that perhaps she was looking for a greater understanding for herself about yoga and trying to acquire it vicariously through Nick, the neophyte, though she didn't seem entirely aware of it. But perhaps I'm just projecting.

BKS Iyengar made the poignant observation that you can't start thinking about philosophy until you're in a good state of health. That is what links this physical practice of sticky mats and tank tops to the deeper practices of dharna, dhyana, and samadhi. First prepare the body; then proceed from there. This question comes up so often (what does twisting yourself into a pretzel have to do with the headier philosophies of yoga?), and I'm glad to finally have an easily digestible answer from none other than Sri Iyengar.

So yogis and yoginis - go see this film! You will love it.

honoured

2009-06-27T17:28:00.009-04:00

I spent last weekend in Massachusetts at the wedding of two dear, dear friends. It was a beautifully idiosyncratic ceremony (the ring bearer was their dog), and a great reception followed. If I ever get married, I too want to have a contra dance (or perhaps a Scottish country dance) afterwards.

Since the wedding, I've been thinking a lot about love. It's never really what you expect when it hits you, is it? And sometimes you don't see it until it's gone. E and K are very lucky to have recognized it in each other. And I am lucky too - for T, for my family, and also for E and K. Friends like these make the world a better place, and they don't appear every day.

Anyway, the title of this post - I was honoured (I can think of no other word to describe the feeling) that E and K asked me to read a poem as part of their ceremony. (I realized afterwards that I was, in fact, the only man with a speaking role in the ceremony.)

The Summer Day - Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

little things

2009-06-25T21:36:00.018-04:00

Swim update: Swim season at Minnewaska started this past weekend, though I didn't have a chance to get up to the lake until today. I did my mile - half freestyle, quarter side, quarter breast. I love the feeling of shaky exhaustion that I experience at the end of a swim. Oh, also: there are newts and tadpoles in the lake!

Robin update: The chicks have left the nest! They were doing little test flights on Saturday, and when I came back from Massachusetts on Sunday, they (and mama bird) were gone. So, two weeks from eggs to flight capable. Pretty amazing, especially when you consider that some humans take 30 or more years to leave the nest.

Foodie porn: Summer CSA distributions have begun, so I'm once again up to my ears in greens, peas, cabbage, beets, spring onions, broccoli, &c. I guess I'm not going to have to worry about getting enough roughage for a while. I wonder if any of this would make good ice cream... maybe the basil? Do I dare? Most everybody likes mint ice cream, so it wouldn't be so much of a stretch; basil is in the same family. H'mmm... something to ponder.

fermentation

2009-06-19T09:51:00.004-04:00

Okay, here's an experiment. You can try it at home kids, but make sure you ask your parent's permission.

Take a handful of flour, a little bit of salt, and some water. Swirl it around in a bowl, get out your soup spoon, and dig in. Soggy, nasty, mess, right?

Now, take some hops, barley, and water, and try the same. Result: grain flavoured water. Mmmm! Tasty!

Finally - start with milk, add some salt, and shake it up. What do you get? A salt milkshake. Slightly to moderately disgusting; definitely not inspired haute cuisine.

But what happens if you give each of these mixtures a bit of quiet time on their own under the right circumstances (temperature, pressure, micro organisms)? Instead of getting some nasty concoctions that remind you of what the kid who sat next to you in grade seven lunch dared you to eat, you get bread, beer, and cheese, three of the finest foods ever devised. The ingredients are important, but they are not responsible for the alchemy. The magic comes from quality time spent in a dark, still place.

my new favourite thing ever

2009-06-18T13:00:00.003-04:00

So, so wrong:

Carl Sagan's Contact (book) - a review

2009-06-13T10:47:00.011-04:00

I've been on a big Carl Sagan kick lately. It started when I realized that all 13 episodes of Cosmos were available on Hulu. Somewhere between laughing at Dr. Sagan's haircut and secretly wondering if I too could get away with wearing a red turtleneck with a corduroy jacket, the beauty and amazement of what he was saying washed over me. He did an incredible job of exploring the complexity and the beauty of science without dumbing it down. Amazingly, even 30 years later, very, very little of Cosmos feels dated.

As a chaser to my refreshing revisitation of Cosmos, I decided that it was finally time for me to read Contact. It had been on my reading list since the movie came out (10+ years ago). My brother and sister both read it and loved it. And wow! It was amazing, and much more complex than the movie. Curiously, I think the thing I liked most about the book was the startling amount of social commentary that Dr. Sagan packed into it. Our inherent fear of the unknown struggling against our desire to explore; the inertia of entrenched social and political systems; the irony that those of us who yearn for and dream about a much bigger picture sometimes make such a mess of the more intimate details of our lives; the incredible stupidity of some aspects of capitalism; and of course, the relationship between science and religion (and the intersection between the two - the numinous). And unlike any of the characters in the many, many iterations of Star Trek (the comparison is unfortunate but inevitable whenever discussing science fiction), the characters in Contact are complex and nuanced - believable, not like cardboard cutouts or action figures.

The scientific questions Dr. Sagan raised are nothing to sneeze at either. If there are other civilizations in the universe, how could we find and contact them? Vastly different organisms must use vastly different systems of communication on perhaps vastly different time scales. But the common ground for all of us is the language of physics, which is based on discoverable, testable, provable universal absolutes; so that's the place to look for (or send) a message.

"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love." This sentence alone is reason enough to read the book. Where else in the annals of science fiction (excepting the excellent film Serenity, of course) can you find a work that speaks so eloquently about love? Or an author who even bothers to try? And without love, what's the point? When you divorce love, emotion, caring from your subject, no matter what it is, it loses all relevance.

Robin update

2009-06-12T13:04:00.005-04:00

Man, the kids grow up fast these days:
There are three chicks in the nest, though I know they're not all immediately apparent in this photo. Up until today, I thought there were only two.

Hudson Quadricentennial Armada

2009-06-11T07:32:00.009-04:00

As part of the quadricentennial celebrations, a motley flotilla of historic recreations - the Clearwater, the Onrust, and the Half Moon - arrived at the Rondout in Kingston last night, accompanied by booming cannons, blaring ship's horns, and posturing local politicians. Unfortunately, I only got a decent shot of the Half Moon.

Part of me wanted to jump up on the stage, grab the microphone, and propose to the assembled crowd that we board the boats, sail north, and storm Albany, demanding that our idiot elected representatives either do their jobs or resign.

birds

2009-06-07T18:42:00.011-04:00

There's a robin's nest in the bush right outside my front door; I noticed her there a few weeks ago, then I looked further and discovered that she had eggs. Really, really bad planning on the robin's part; for a while, every time I left home or came back, she'd fly off. I started being a bit quieter with the door, and she stopped freaking out quite so much every time she saw me. So, we're getting to know each other. She let me take her picture today:

I've been peeking into the nest every now and then (when she's away) to see how the eggs are doing; well, as of this morning, no more eggs. They've hatched, and now there are fuzzy little proto birds wiggling around in the nest. I'm excited to watch their progression to adulthood.

It occurred to me a few days ago (when I first thought about writing this post) that if my personal ratio of curiosity to ethics were slightly different, I could be describing the taste of a robin egg omelette right now.

I spent two and a half hours this afternoon in a didgeridoo workshop. What fun! I wanted to ask the instructor what role the didgeridoo plays in the songlines of aboriginal Australians, but I didn't want to bore everyone else or sound like a know it all. Probably, I should have just asked and let the chips fall where they may.

One of the things the instructor said towards the end of the class was that the didgeridoo is sometimes used to emulate the sounds of the natural world; so we tried a few Australian bird calls. Now I find myself wondering how well the didgeridoo would handle local bird calls. Mourning dove, loon, osprey; these are the calls I know and love. The anachronism of trying to replicate them on an ancient Australian instrument really appeals to me.

Odd that I decided to write a whole post about bird related topics. Growing up, there was a starling nest outside my bedroom window, and I loved hearing them (the mother and the little ones) every morning. Later, though, bird song took on a more sinister meaning in my mind - I remember sleepless nights, wrought with anxiety, culminating in the raucous cacophony of song birds just before dawn heralding the arrival of another dreadful day. Bad memories, these. Bad days in Beltsville. For a long, long, long time afterwards, I absolutely detested the sound of song birds. This has lessened a bit in the past few years, thankfully, but I still don't rejoice in bird songs as others (like T) do. At best, it's a neutral stimulus. I'm aware of it, but it does little for me. I'm just glad it doesn't make me horribly anxious anymore. I talked to my therapist about this last week; she agreed that tiny, otherwise innocuous things can become absolutely horrible when we associate them with unrelated circumstances; and it can take a lifetime to get over the connection. So I'm thankful to have come as far as I have. Guess I'll never be much of a birder, though.

Oh - something else the didgeridoo instructor said - the mind is like a garden; if you don't keep weeding it, it gets out of control almost immediately. I think that's why I like writing so much; it feels like weeding my mind.

Might also be why I dislike gardening so much.

Dar Williams' End of the Summer - a review

2009-06-03T20:54:00.019-04:00

I was going to write a long winded intro about nada yoga and the importance of music and creation myths and blah blah blah, but I've decided to skip it and cut right to the chase. Life is short (and I am tired).

It feels weird writing a review of an album that's over ten years old, but it's still one of my favourites - one I reach for when I need a boost or some sense that someone else understands. My understanding is that she wrote most of these songs to work her way out of a bout of depression, and unlike my own experiences with trying to write my way out of a hole, Dar's work is actually quite beautiful.

"Are You Out There" - I know this song is about WBAI, but it makes me think of WFMU. Does that make me a radio snob? "You always play the madmen poets, vinyl visions, grungy bands; you never know who's still awake; you never know who understands." Feeling like every song on corporate radio, every show on TV, every story in the paper is designed to make you feel like less than you are; the sheer terror on the part of the previous generation that its offspring will do a much better job of living up to its ideals; the amazing solace in late night radio - this song hits on a lot of themes that are near and dear to me.

"Party Generation" - My favourite part of this song is Nerissa and Katrina Nields singing backup. I had such a crush on Katrina the first time I saw The Nields play (with Moxy Früvous opening!), but then she went and got married before I could figure out a way to sweep her off her feet and for neither the first nor the last time I learned something about disappointment. Anyway, "Party Generation" - not my favourite song on the album, but I do love those Nields harmonies.

"If I Wrote You" - It took me a long time to hear the open spaces that Dar describes when she talks about this song, but it finally clicked, and it was worth the wait. It's not the sort of thing that one is accustomed to listening for; the sprawling open landscape in the background, the sounds that are not there. "We drew our arms around the bastard sons; we never would drink to the chosen ones. Well, you know the way I went was not the way I'd planned, but I thought the world needed love and steady hand; so I'm steady now."

"What Do You Hear In These Sounds" - A song about therapy. Brilliant, in places familiar, in places obscure, ultimately gorgeous.

"The End Of The Summer" - When I was growing up, my parents owned a cottage in Ontario, and my mother, sister, brother, and I would spend all summer there. I lived the rest of the year in anticipation of July and August. The place represented escape, freedom, release - "dream, comfort, memory to spare," as Neil Young put it. Inevitably, though, there came a point at the end of every summer when it was time to pack up and return to the more mundane scholastic concerns of loose leaf binders, yellow school buses, and perceived social hierarchies. This song encapsulates that feeling exactly.

"Teenagers, Kick Our Butts" - I wonder if Dar will roll her eyes and wonder what she was thinking when she wrote this song ten years from now when her son is a hell raising teenager?

"My Friends" - I have a sticker on my refrigerator that says "My friends kick ass" - I bought it in a tie-dye shop in Eugene, Oregon, with my friend D. This song expresses much the same sentiment in rather more subdued tones; sort of the Buddhist version of the bumper sticker. "I like the whole truth, but there are nights I only need forgiveness."

"Bought and Sold" - "I look up to the people who are less bought than I; you can show them what you're selling, and they'll only ask you why."

"Road Buddy" - Also on the soundtrack to the film Smoke Signals. I like the image of kids sipping juice boxes and smiling at each other at rest stops; that's a really nice detail to include. Descriptive. Evocative. Painterly, even.

"It's A War In There" - I don't even know where to begin. Irreducible complexity. This song is perfect; anything I could write would detract from it.

"Better Things" - My friend L was so dismayed when I told her that this is actually a Kinks song (though I like the Dar version better). I should try to learn to keep my mouth shut. I'm thankful that Dar ended this album on such an up-note; there are enough more sullen tracks on this album that she could easily have ended with. I think it says something about her outlook that she chose otherwise.

short reviews

2009-05-31T21:17:00.005-04:00

The Reader (film) - shockingly good. Kate Winslet was characteristically brilliant. Do not watch this film if you are not fond of struggling with problems of moral ambiguity and complexity.

Twilight (book) - so after seeing the film, I decided to read the book, but there were about a zillion people ahead of me on the wait list at the library and I'm too cheap to buy it so I gave up. Now the wait list has evaporated (I guess vampires aren't cool anymore), it's my turn to read it. I'm really liking it. The writing is sometimes cringe worthy, but the story is fun. Looks like I have my early summer reading list all worked out.

The Fabulous Stains (film, starring youngsters Diane Lane and Laura Dern) - what a weird little movie. Almost no attempt was made to construct anything resembling a narrative thread, but I kind of liked it anyway. In some respects it was a dirtier, grittier, not at all kid friendly version of Josie and the Pussycats.

So according to my blogger page, this is my 100th post. I find it hard to believe I've written that many times over the past two years. If I'd done a better job of using tags for my posts, I'd put up a pie chart or something showing what portion of my posts were navel gazing, what portion dealt with yoga, what portion contained the phrase "gingerbread outhouse," &c.

pet peeves addenda

2009-05-28T11:13:00.006-04:00

Okay, one more linguistic pet peeve:

"Yeah, no." Why has this become such a popular way to begin a response to a yes/no question? These words express two totally different ideas; ideas which are mutually exclusive and exhaustive! Two words into your response, you've already contradicted yourself. Start over. Take a deep breath. (The worst part of it is that I've caught myself answering questions this way too.)

Oy... my inner crotchety old man has resurfaced, apparently. Maybe I should pour him some whiskey and hope he doesn't drool all over the upholstery when he falls asleep on the couch.

reunion, revelation

2009-05-25T19:04:00.009-04:00

I ran into and old friend of Byron's on Friday. The last I knew, N was living in Ireland, and I didn't expect to see him again, so it was a pleasant shock to find him at the Bakery. He's in town for the summer. When I asked him what he's been doing, he said biking and hiking, so I gave him my number so that we could get together.

Later on Friday, I discovered that one of my friends grew up right down the road from me (albeit a few years earlier). We had all of the same elementary school teachers and graduated from the same high school. Very, very weird!

I am glad to have finally made the real world acquaintance of one of my fellow bloggers, Pam, this past weekend, and I am happy to report that she is as interesting and funny in real life as her blog has led me to believe. She was in New Paltz to climb, so we met at Bacchus and I bought her the beer that I promised her almost a year ago. We both wore WFMU tee shirts (totally unplanned) and we talked and laughed about last week's episode of Seven Second Delay. It was a really, really nice way to spend the evening.

On Sunday morning, I taught two yoga classes at Jai Ma. I got very positive feedback after each, and perhaps more importantly, I felt good about the classes, both while teaching and afterward. I think I may be getting the hang of this. Students keep asking me if there are any classes that I teach on a regular basis (rather than subbing). That seems like a good sign. I'm still losing sleep the night before I teach, but not as much as I used to. I'm freaking out less beforehand too (generally).

Finally, yesterday after yoga, T and I drove to Long Island to visit with her grandmother. Unfortunately, she isn't doing very well. After a hospital stay, she is now home again receiving hospice care. The first time I met her (about six months ago), I remember thinking about what a sharp and fascinating person she was to talk to. I still see that in her, but she is struggling now, both physically and mentally. And if it's hard for me to see, I know it must be a million times worse for T.

It's not an easy thing to think or write about, but part of me really hopes that when my own time comes, it will be sudden and offer me little opportunity for reflection. I do not want to have the experience of knowing. Even as I write this, though, I know that I am curious. There are already so many realms of knowledge from which I am permanently barred. (What is it like to be a woman? What is it like to live all of your life in a third world country? What was it like to live in the 1800s?) It feels like I'm cheating myself by saying that there is yet another realm of experience from which I would voluntarily bar myself if I could.

bad ideas as a creative exercise

2009-05-22T14:07:00.007-04:00

I went to the Bakery during my lunch break to order a cake for my grandmother's birthday tomorrow (I would have made one from scratch, but I completely forgot about her birthday until yesterday, and I just don't have time). When the girl behind the counter asked me if I wanted anything written on the cake, I really really REALLY wanted to say, "Yes, could you please write 'CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR TEST RESULTS ARE NEGATIVE!' or 'SORRY THE CONDOM BROKE' or 'DON'T WORRY, IT'S JUST A COLD SORE'."

I often spend my idle time thinking up the worst possible things I could say or do in various situations. I find that I do this much, much more when I'm nervous. I think maybe sometimes I'm just starved for a creative outlet. When my sister asked me what sort of ice cream I was going to make with my new ice cream maker, I told her my first plan was tuna raisin surprise. She actually believed me.

So what other wildly inappropriate things could I have asked the girl at the bakery to write on the cake? And are there any worse flavours of ice cream than tuna raisin surprise?

(Afterword: I made a batch of pumpkin ice cream last night. I'm out of cinnamon, so I used allspice instead, and some maple syrup. Amazingly good.)

Wintergirls - a review

2009-05-18T13:43:00.011-04:00

I read this over the weekend after seeing a review of it in The New York Times. I loved it; it was very well written, engrossing, and dove very deeply into its subject matter, anorexia. The picture it painted was raw, horrifying, utterly convincing, and familiar. It reminded me of people I've known and some of my own experiences. The author, Laurie Halse Anderson, did not pull any punches, and I thought she did a great job of writing a riveting book with a complex and believable protagonist without in any way romanticizing the disorder.

Having said that, I don't know if I would unconditionally recommend this book to someone who is currently dealing with an eating disorder. There's some question about whether books about anorexia will trigger or egg on susceptible people. My thought: it's dicey. Some anorexics might read this novel as a dire warning. Others might find in Wintergirls' fictional protagonist a competitor and use her example to drive themselves further into disordered eating. Ultimately, it depends on the reader. We all see the world as a reflection of ourselves.

tanked

2009-05-13T22:38:00.011-04:00

So... pranayam class didn't go so well. I think I wasn't in the right state of mind to teach; I'd been focusing all day on writing code, and my head was still spinning with data and algorithms. So in the class, I just taught mechanics. Didn't go into benefits of specific pranayams or benefits of breath work in general. I skipped my whole planned spiel about "the first thing you did in this world was inhale, and one of the last things you're going to do is exhale, so if you want an advanced yoga practice you need to work on pranayam."

A few things I know I could improve on in the future: Teaching five different pranayams in an hour is too much. Four is plenty. Also, I need quiet time to myself before I teach, to get into the right state of mind. There's not much benefit in taking class from a teacher whose head is still reeling from his other job. Also, I need to require pre-registration and pre-payment in the future.

"If Yoga isn't pushing you outside your comfort zone, it ain't really Yoga." I came across this line late last night on someone else's blog, when I was feeling lousy about giving a mediocre class, and I immediately felt better.

Grace, Too

2009-05-11T19:29:00.006-04:00

Well, this afternoon after work I hit one of my goals for this year (or got as close as I could, anyway). I biked from the village up to the Mohonk Mountain House. The goal, originally, was to bike up to sky top, but I couldn't find any bikeable trails from the mountain house to the tower. Even getting as far as I did required me to ride on trails I probably shouldn't have been riding on (but they were poorly marked for bicycle use, so I'm not sure). It was about 1100 feet of elevation gain over... I don't know. Maybe eight miles each way? Most of it carriage trails or hiking trails. My thighs are not as sore as I thought they'd be, surprisingly. I'm glad my knees didn't give out. In reference to my earlier post today, I didn't wear a tablecloth skirt or knee high socks. Sorry to disappoint. Maybe next time. No pink clips either. Good thing I didn't know they made pink clips when I bought my new bike, I never would have gone clipless.

This afternoon's ride opens up other possibilities to me - if I can bike that far into Mohonk and connect with the carriage trail network (it only took me an hour to get to the mountain house), basically the entire Shawangunk ridge is available to me. I could bike out to Minnewaska, swim my laps, then bike home. Wow. Just... wow. I wonder if I will.

Every now and then, I remember what a lump I used to be; how in my teens and early twenties I never got any exercise or did anything aerobic. Times change, I guess.

I'm not really sure why, but this is the song that was playing in my head while I was riding. And I did, in fact, exhibit some grace; I didn't fall over on this ride!

Pic of the day...

2009-05-11T13:00:00.008-04:00

...which is definitely NOT going to be a regular feature of this blog.

The tablecloth skirt and the knee socks with bike shoes first caught my eye, but it's the pink clips on the bike that completely win me over. Really? They make those? Awesome!

(Photographer: Leah Nash, from a recent article on Portland, OR in the New York Times.)

Qualified pleasures

2009-05-10T11:23:00.013-04:00

After wanting one for years, I finally bought an ice cream maker last weekend, off of Craig's list. So, so, so not a good idea! I mean, I'm lactose intolerant. What was I thinking? I made a quart of vanilla on Monday, a quart of mocha on Tuesday, and a quart of coconut vanilla this morning (no, I'm not eating it all by myself; I've been sharing the wealth). It's sooo good, but oy, the repercussions.

A few other things that have made me smile lately: the kids in my condo complex racing down the driveway on their razor scooters (or whatever they're called); one kid standing at the bottom of the hill as a lookout to make sure the others don't become road kill. It reminds me of the sort of thing my brother and my neighbour and I used to do way back when, except we probably would have been lighting something on fire, too. Also, the woman at the ice cream shop (which for reasons made clear by the above paragraph I haven't been frequenting of late) still (since last year) has her Manic Panic pink hair; I think it's the same shade that I dyed my own hair about two years ago. ("Pretty Flamingo" - it glows under ultraviolet light! Stop laughing!) Also, the other yoga teachers I've been taking class with lately have been talking a lot about breath work and prana; this gives me hope that my fellow yogis are ready and eager for the pranayam class I'll be teaching on Wednesday. I'm still nervous about it, but I finished my planning yesterday, so I'm as prepared as I can hope to be.

Regatta

2009-05-04T11:47:00.010-04:00

Every spring, New Paltz hosts a peculiar regatta on the Wallkill River. First there's the kayak race (usually, the only competitors here are injection molded boats, though the one time I competed, I raced the skin-and-frame kayak I'd built myself - came in second, which also happened to be last). The kayak race is followed by the canoe race, which in turn is followed by the main event: the home made boat race. Anyone with a creative idea and some drive to bring it to fruition can compete. This year, we had Vikings versus Shop Rite versus pirates versus Tiki bar versus Doctor Seuss versus ninjas versus a big rubber ducky versus the New Paltz Greens versus... I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting. So many classic battles - ninjas versus pirates. Vikings versus Greens. Shop Rite versus... everyone. As usual, the ninjas came in first by a mile. Almost as predictably, Shop Rite came in dead last, after many difficulties getting to the starting line and some apparent confusion regarding which way to paddle.

Renewal

2009-04-29T08:31:00.006-04:00

This is, I think, my favourite time of year; the short period when the buds on the trees are just beginning to unfurl into leaves, and everywhere I look I see shades of light green infusing the landscape. This picture (taken last night on the mud flats) hardly does justice. (Aside: just to the left of this shot, there were two kids having sex in a field! I wondered if they knew about the fertility rites that took place at this time of year long ago in northern Europe. This being New Paltz, probably they did. I should have thanked them for ensuring good crops in the coming year.)

Incense and Peppermint Chamomile

2009-04-28T08:45:00.010-04:00

Last Monday, I taught two moderate classes at Jai Ma. And on Friday, I taught a demo Level I class across the river in Lagrange. The incense was so thick in the Lagrange studio, I smelled like I'd fallen into a vat of nag champa after Friday's class. Apart from that, I really liked the studio. It's in a strip mall! What a perfect place for a yoga studio!

The more I teach, the more comfortable I feel doing it; but I'm still having difficulty sleeping the night before.

I'm going to be teaching a class on pranayam, yogic breathing, on 13 May. Partly I'm doing this because I never seem to have as much time as I'd like during normal classes to teach and practice pranayam. Partly I'm doing this because I want more experience teaching, and I'm not getting it by subbing alone, and I don't feel ready to commit to a regular weekly class. At least not a regular weekly asana class. So... we'll see how this goes. Maybe if there's interest, I'll start teaching a pranayam class on a regular basis. Stranger things have happened.

I spent Saturday morning spreading manure on my third of the garden plot that I'm sharing with T and B. Does it say something about my feelings about my day job that I chose to spend my off time shovelling horse shit? My original plan was just to plant cheese pumpkins (which are way, way, way superior to sugar pumpkins for pie making), but I think I might plant pole beans as well. It'd be nice to have enough to freeze and enjoy throughout next winter, rather than just getting the meagre allotment of beans from my CSA share. I remembered on Saturday that I have a bag of chamomile seeds from a few years back, so I'll probably scatter those around too.

Pet peeves

2009-04-23T11:16:00.013-04:00

Three linguistic pet peeves:

Using quotation marks to provide emphasis. Why do people do this? Quotes are for verbatim transcriptions of speech or writing, or to uniquely identify a specific phrase or word (as demonstrated in the following item). If you feel you must show emphasis in your writing, use underlining, boldface, or italics. Or, if you aspire to even higher echelons of writing quality, find a way to show emphasis through word choice and arrangement.

Prefixing the last item in a list with the word "even." This should only be done if there is some sort of poignancy or amazement value that you wish to underscore in the last list item. If the last list item doesn't stand out any more than any of the other list items do, don't prefix it with "even."

Passive voice. There are some work related tasks which require me to write passively. I hate it. It goes against everything I've ever been taught about writing.

I don't know why this bee is in my bonnet today. I know that my own writing isn't perfect. For example, I tend to start sentences with conjunctions (in my defence, though, I see this done in the New York Times almost every day). And I sometimes end sentences with prepositions (as my sister pointed out to me yesterday).

funny story

2009-04-15T11:15:00.002-04:00

So, at the museum of nature in Ottawa, we were looking at the arctic exhibit - a display of a polar bear and her cub, and a seal poking its head through the ice. Most everyone else at the museum was speaking French. I kept wondering why I was hearing all these little kids around me swearing, and then I remembered that the French word for seal is "phoque."

Emotional landscapes

2009-04-13T10:06:00.007-04:00

I'm back from my weekend trip to Ottawa. Had a pretty good time - walked around Parliament Hill, through the Byward Market, went to the nature museum, finally saw Passchendaele. Ate way too many jelly beans. And I discovered that Canadians take Good Friday way, way, way seriously; NOTHING was open on Friday. I mean, Wal-Mart was closed. Wal-Mart! Yes, that Wal-Mart!

On the drive north, T and I talked about emotional landscapes; how the mental maps that we make of a place do not necessarily correspond to the dry, two dimensional images that we find on Google Earth; memories and perceptions colour the map and warp distances and sizes. This evolved into a discussion of the slippery slope of assigning our own perceptions to places as if they reflected inherent values. We were driving through an area of northern New York with very little in the way of industry or economic opportunity of any sort. The first few times I drove through it (many years ago), I thought about how depressed the area was and how depressing it must be to live there. Eventually, though, I began asking myself how I knew that. I was jumping to an unwarranted conclusion; I simply don't know the experience of the people who live there. I've never met them. I've never asked.

One of my yoga teachers talks about the Sanskrit concept of shri; life-affirming. A daisy sprouting through a crack in the pavement. Butterflies on a battlefield. We tend to find happiness, beauty, joy in the least likely places.

Rolling the hard six

2009-04-05T14:55:00.010-04:00

So... after a few months of renewed communication via email, I met with my father yesterday morning for a bike ride. We rode the rail trail out to the bridge in Rosendale; spent about two hours together. It was the first time since 2002 that I'd spent any time with him. I asked him about his job and about his siblings, and he told me a little about his health as well (his prostate cancer responded very well to treatment, and he's free of cardiovascular disease - a concern, because it runs in his family). The only question he asked me during our time together, on the other hand, was how my company keeps track of me while I'm telecommuting; i. e., how they know I'm actually working. It really felt like a continuation of the last conversation we had in 2002; him talking about himself and his beliefs and interests, and me listening. For a while yesterday evening, I considered the possibility that perhaps he was just trying to avoid any sensitive topics (and maybe this was true); but he really didn't ask me anything at all. It wasn't surprising, but it was disappointing.

I gave him my sister's email address, as she asked me to, and he seemed happy for (and surprised by) that. Perhaps she will be willing to come with me if I meet with him again.

I don't know if I'm being too harsh on him or missing something or jumping to unwarranted conclusions. It wouldn't be the first time I misread a situation. But I don't think I'm wrong here to let my memories of the past colour my experience of the present. He doesn't seem much different from who I remember, and, well, I guess that's what I have to accept if I want to continue having contact with him.

New Paltz moment

2009-04-02T21:30:00.005-04:00

At the counter of the Muddy Cup this afternoon, patiently waiting for my chamomile. Struck by a sudden odour, I look behind me. Dreadlock guy. In chain mail. With a dog. Dog is not wearing chain mail. I sit down with my tea; he asks for a big cup of water. Margaret must be in a good mood, she gives it to him without any guff. I figure it's for his dog. Minute or two later, I'm gazing out the window. He's outside, looking at his reflection in the glass, moving a piece of plastic rhythmically over his face. I look closer. It's a disposable razor. He got the water so he could shave himself.

Still not sure what to make of this.

BSG - thoughts on the final episode

2009-03-26T09:13:00.007-04:00

I wasn't fond of Baltar's soliloquy about god; it's not that I disagreed, per se, I just didn't think it was necessary to make it all explicit. Anyone who's watched the show should have already been able to see what the show's creators were trying to say, that god is inherently unknowable and it is ridiculous to get into a dick swinging match about whether your beliefs or someone else's beliefs are uniquely correct. So I thought it was overkill to come right out and say it. On the other hand, someone pointed out to me that this scene could be viewed as Baltar's redemption for his original sin. I'm still mulling that over. I thought his redemption came later in the show, on earth, when he told Caprica 6 that he knew a little about farming (from his father) and then started crying. But maybe that's just because I have my own kettle full of father issues.

I have mixed feelings about the fleet's decision to abandon all of their advanced technology and start from scratch on the new earth they found. On one hand, the series has been building towards that decision and arguing for it from the start; there was always a theme about the dangers of technology, that it is folly to think that our clever devices will save us. I have a great deal of sympathy with that point of view. On the other hand, could such a tremendous decision really be made without any sort of discussion and argument? Did no one object? The way that decision was made and played out just didn't seem realistic to me. Maybe a more interesting question, though, is whether I agreed with the decision. To which I say, well... sort of. There is definitely a strong anti-technological bent to my thinking. But if push came to shove, I really doubt I would be willing to walk away from all the tech and gadgetry. Most of it, yes. 99%, probably. But not all. Creative use of tools is part of what makes us human. So in that sense, I found the show's conclusion unrealistic and unfulfilling.

This is sort of a dull blog entry... sorry. I thought I'd have more to say.

Battlestar Galactica - penultimate episode

2009-03-19T14:09:00.009-04:00

So, Adama has changed his mind, and he and his crew of volunteers (both human and cylon) are going to jump into the lion's den to try to save little kidnapped Hera after all. I like this. What an essentially human thing to do - risk the lives of many for the good of one. Courageous, irrational, hopeless, sacrificial. I know there's a bigger explanation given in the context of the show, but what I keep coming back to is many for one. This really highlights the difference between man and machine, which obviously has been a theme throughout the show. We can make decisions for emotional reasons rather than rational ones. We do this all the time. Actually, I have a theory that emotion is the driving force behind essentially all of our decisions; rationality and logic are thin veneers that we apply after the fact to keep ourselves from feeling vulnerable or foolish. The world becomes much softer and more plastic when one starts to look at it this way.

I am both looking forward to and dreading the final episode tomorrow night. There has been a lot of food for thought in this programme.

A Student of Weather - a review

2009-03-11T22:02:00.008-04:00

I finished reading A Student of Weather by Elizabeth Hay last night. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I enjoyed her other novel, Late Nights on Air, but it was still quite good. Exceptional, in fact, for a first novel. It pleased me to no end that not only did a large portion of the book take place in Ottawa, it took place in a part of Ottawa that I know well - the square of the city bordered by Bank Street, Bronson Ave, the canal, and the Rideau River. This familiar landscape wasn't my chief source of pleasure in the book, but it was definitely a bonus.

The author's writing is strong and her story is compelling. Perhaps most importantly, the protagonist is a sympathetic character. Even at the points (there were several) when I groaned and said to myself, "She's not really going to do that, is she?" I could still understand and relate to her decisions. Love doesn't just make us crazy sometimes; sometimes it makes us wilfully ignorant or just plain stupid. We all know this, but it's hard to write such a flawed, human character without making her pathetic or one dimensional. Elizabeth Hay pulled it off well. Actually, now that I think about it, she did much the same with the protagonist in Late Nights on Air. H'mmm. I wouldn't have recognized that if I hadn't sat down to write this review. Oh, also - she's good at writing both male and female characters convincingly, which is an exceedingly rare talent and one I admire above almost any other fiction writing skill.

An excerpt from the ending that I'm particularly fond of:

She has worked her way into the heaven of her childhood. Ontario, and all it means. This is where it took so long to "make the land" - three generations to clear two hundred acres of trees and stumps and stones. This is where weary listeners fell for those mythical tales about the Canadian west - how you could plough a furrow a mile long without even striking a stone, how the feet of oxen were stained red by all the wild strawberries, how the light, dry, spicy air restored the feeblest person to health. This is the place they returned to, some of them, after drought and dust did them in.

That is the Ontario I know and love. It was the heaven of my childhood, too. Sometimes, in my depths of vulnerability and doubt, it still is.

WFMU

2009-03-09T15:35:00.004-04:00

I finally pledged today, despite not being able to listen at home anymore (except online, which just doesn't appeal to me). Yay! Now I get to enjoy the unique fruits of smugness that come from donating to a listener sponsored radio station. Plus, I get a T shirt.

Happiness addenda

2009-02-26T14:07:00.005-05:00

A few more things:

Guilty pleasures, eg fashion blogs. The Cherry Blossom Girl. I'm not proud, but this does make me happy.

The CBC.

The simple pleasure and release of breathing through a vinyasa sequence.

My girlfriend unexpectedly showing up with lunch.

Nannerpus!

1990's Toronto music scene.

Happiness

2009-02-25T13:01:00.010-05:00

The lousy mood I've often been in this winter has (shockingly) not been ameliorated by any of my navel gazing, hand wringing, woe is me posts, so I'm going to try something different, and list some things I'm happy about.

Trees. In general, and also one very specifically.

Radio drama. Afghanada (great), Canadia 2056 (okay), Monsoon House (meh)... even when it's bad, it's still pretty good.

The hours between 8 and 10 pm, which usually find me lying on my couch, listening to the radio, falling asleep. Delicious.

There are people who read this blog who I don't even know, and who have never commented. I don't know who they are, but Google Analytics tells me they are out there, and that's something that makes me oddly happy.

The good people of New Paltz. I just took a walk to the library on my lunch break, and had four very different and interesting conversations with four very different and interesting people. This happens to me almost every time I step out my door. We have a great per capita of different and interesting people here.

I have read some great books in the past year. Wall to Wall. Late Nights on Air. I Capture The Castle.

Hiking, swimming, biking season will soon be here. Not to mention my CSA share.

My old landlady still calls me and asks me what I'm cooking.

My best friend in Ottawa knows I miss watching the Rick Mercer Report, and she thinks about me whenever she watches it. She even researched how to bypass the CBC's geoblocking for me.

Watchmen - a review

2009-02-19T13:43:00.014-05:00

A review of the graphic novel, that is, which I finished reading this morning.

I should start by saying that I'm generally not a fan of the comic book / graphic novel genre, though Maus and Persepolis were both very, very good, and lived up to the hype surrounding them. But both of those titles used what is an essentially frivolous medium to look at deadly serious real world issues, and I think that's why they worked. Watchmen, on the other hand - well, vigilante crime fighters in skin tight suits of primary colours isn't exactly a big stretch for a comic.

Having said that, Watchmen wasn't half bad, and it did raise some interesting issues. The first, of course, is the question that is explicitly asked by the story: Who watches the ones who watch over us? This question has been asked to death, though, so I'm not going to devote any more ink to it. Or pixels, rather. I'll move on to some of the other questions that occurred to me: Do we, individually or as a species, need to have an enemy in order to define ourselves or establish our sense of identity? Deprived of such an Other, do we necessarily create one for ourselves? And, um... what if we didn't? How would that go?

I think the answer to the first two questions is probably yes. Perhaps a nuanced yes, but one way or another, for almost all of us, yes. The third and fourth questions? H'mmm. It just occurs to me now that those are the questions I'm asking by resuming correspondence with my father. Interesting.

frustration

2009-02-19T09:21:00.005-05:00

I am REALLY looking forward to that day in the far distant future when I feel comfortable teaching a yoga class. I am sick of getting so nervous that I stumble over my words, can't remember the tune of the chant that I begin class with, silently berate myself all the way through class for not knowing what I'm doing.

It has been a long time since I've done something this... different. And challenging for me. Unfortunately, at this point I'm only getting tapped to sub about once a month, so I'm not getting enough experience to become more comfortable with it.

I wrote a few months ago about feeding the mind either garbage or gourmet. I've been feeding myself a lot of garbage lately, and I think it's more apparent when I'm teaching because, as I observed when I first started teaching, this part of my practice keeps me honest. I can't hide when I'm up there. I can't go on autopilot, because I'm just not good enough at this yet. I have to be there.

Oh dear, oh dear.

2009-02-03T07:21:00.005-05:00

How can something so wrong be so... no, actually, this is just entirely wrong.

And by the way, there's more.

use your illusion

2009-02-01T20:38:00.006-05:00

There is a good number of dichotomies that are discussed in yoga philosophy - effort and surrender, which I wrote about quite a bit last year; matter and spirit (prakrti and purusa); self and Self. One of my teachers talks a lot about concealment and revelation. She's been talking about it for years, actually, but I never really heard what she was saying (maybe because a lot of her discussion has had to do with our innate divinity, which is not an idea that resonates with me). Well, I've been giving more thought to this duality over the past few days. I can't count the number of times I've been absolutely certain that something (usually wretched) was going to happen; I'd read the tea leaves, and all the signs pointed to calamity. Yet almost invariably, at the moment when concealment is replaced by revelation, my worst fears don't come to pass. There's always some crucial element of moderation that I fail to see or which I dismiss. "The worst things in my life never happened." I think Mark Twain said that.

What do we do when we can't see what's coming next? When the horse blinders are on and we're hurtling down the track, hell bent on an uncertain fate? It's no secret that I aim for the bottom and assume the worst. Hell, even when I can see that everything's going to be alright, half the time I still assume that I must be missing something, and everything will go south in the end.

As effort and surrender deal with action, concealment and revelation are attributes of perception. It's a subtler schism, easier to overlook, and harder to talk about. I'm curious about the role that faith plays here. Part of me chafes at the use of that word, with its suggestion of showy displays of religiosity. But devoid of those unpleasant connotations, faith is simply a belief that is not supported by evidence. It does not have to mean a belief that flies in the face of evidence. What we believe when we have no reason to believe one thing over another says a lot about who we are. So what do my beliefs say about me? And what would it mean to believe something else - something less apocalyptic? Why is that such a struggle for me?

East meets West

2009-01-31T07:24:00.008-05:00

Three things:

After teaching class on Tuesday, I had the Buddhist chant "Gate, gate, paragate" stuck in my head (which is weird, because I didn't play it or chant it during class). "Gone, gone, gone beyond." Later in the week, I was listening to the Wizard of Oz soundtrack, and I had the out of the blue revelation that when Dorothy sings "Somewhere over the rainbow," she's expressing much the same sentiment. Or is she? She wants escape; absolute anathema from the point of view of the middle-way; but what she ultimately discovers is that if she can't find what she wants right where she is, she's not going to find it anywhere. The value of her fantastic travels is that they allow her to experience and value home differently (something I reflected on in Guatemala last summer). H'mmm. Buddhist perspectives on American show tunes. If I still had any inclination towards the upper echelons of academia, I think this would be a gold mine thesis title.

Another realization from this past week: The weird otherworldly vocals in the beginning of Battlestar Galactica? Sanskrit. It's a Sanskrit chant. I recognized one of the words, then I remembered which chant I knew it from, then I recognized the rest of the chant, and then... well, then my head pretty much exploded. I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. It's the Gayatri mantra. In English: "The dawn, the day, and the dusk, those three most excellent daughters of the Sun, the radiant forms coming from the Gods, I meditate upon you and reach out to you. That is my offering." I am ridiculously, overwhelmingly, embarrassingly pleased with myself for recognizing this.

I participated in an "Eye of the Tiger" Anusara yoga practice last night; two and a half hours of asana. We started with twenty six sun salutations. It was WONDERFUL. I haven't worked that hard in a long, long time. My only disappointment was that the teacher didn't play the Survivor song at any point in the practice.

There is no mat.

2009-01-30T10:27:00.005-05:00

I started writing a post about cookbooks yesterday, but two paragraphs in I decided that it was stupid and I'd probably already made all of the interesting points anyway. Short version: we'd have a lot more quality time for ourselves if we'd get rid of all of our labour saving devices and "helpful" gadgets. But, well, I think everyone more or less knows that already, so I won't go into further detail.

In the intermediate/advanced yoga class I taught on Tuesday night, I incorporated a great deal of pranayam (breathing) instruction. Actually, pretty much all of my planning for the class focused on pranayam. I know there's a school of thought that says advanced yoga practice involves well choreographed vinyasa and complex poses, and there's definitely something to be said for that, but I don't think that that's how I want to teach at this point. There's another school of thought that says that in advanced practice, the more basic practices (like asana) are used as a launching pad for subtler work. The physical practice is used to prepare the body for breath work. Breath work is used to prepare the mind for meditation. And meditation is used to calm the fluctuations of the mind, which is the whole point of the practice. In the most advanced yoga practice, of course, as I've written elsewhere, the mat disappears. But most of us aren't ready for that. We need to keep getting on our mats as a reminder, if nothing else.

Magic 8 ball says...

2009-01-27T10:31:00.004-05:00

...this is how I feel today:

Release

2009-01-20T18:14:00.009-05:00

I was thinking today about nature and civilization, and how arbitrary the line between them can be. Everything ultimately was produced by natural forces, right? So is it just the act of laying human hands on something that makes it an artifact of civilization? This was touched on briefly in His Dark Materials. Perhaps a more significant distinction is our expectation of things, depending on whether we call them natural or man-made. We expect natural things (trees, forests, mountains, cockroaches) to change. They gradually come into existence, then just as gradually die away. Generally, both of these processes are happening at the same time, so like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, it's hard to say whether something is coming or going. Adding to the complexity, things in the natural world are in a constant state of becoming something else. A mountain is constantly being eroded by wind and water, and what was once mountain is now silt; and what was once silt is now river bed or flood plain soil. Animals are constantly playing host to myriad bacteria and fungi, which, far from parasitic, are necessary parts of the larger animal's existence. Where do I end, and the flora in my gut begin? It's hard to say. In nature, everything is constantly in flux, and nothing is well defined.

On the other hand, we seem to expect man-made things to exhibit a bit more consistency. Once something is made, we expect it to last. But that's nonsense, isn't it? It's a basic tenet of Buddhism (and the second law of thermodynamics) that everything falls apart. Doesn't matter if I made it, you made it, Flying Spaghetti Monster made it, or it came into existence on its own. It will, eventually, return to its most basic components. All work we do sometimes seems like a struggle against acceptance of this basic, undeniable fact.

I've forgotten where I was going with this... oh yes. In his speech this afternoon, President Obama talked about how it's time for us to take responsibility and fix what's broken. I know he's right, but I'm embarrassed to admit that part of me would rather look for excuses. "It's all going to fall apart anyway, so why bother?" Well... here's why. It's not about the end result. It's not even remotely about the end result. It's about the work itself. Honest work undertaken with whole hearted intention and awareness (tapas and svadhyaya for all you yogis out there) creates its own reward (isvarapranidhana), regardless of what the material consequences may be. Of course whatever we build is going to fall apart in the end. If it didn't, it would rob us of the opportunity to rebuild it yet again.

Speaking of fixing what's broken, I finally initiated email correspondence with my father in November. At first, I just wanted to thank him for letting me (and my sister and brother) know about his health issues, and wish him a speedy recovery. But we've kept emailing back and forth. We haven't touched on any of the big issues that divided us for years. We've really only talked about movies, actually. But, well, I had to start the rebuilding process somewhere.

Ski lift

2009-01-13T10:26:00.008-05:00

Warning: this post is yet another in my series of mopey, maudlin, self-pitying diatribes.

A few months ago, my brother was shooting a wedding at the summit of Hunter Mountain (with his camera, I mean). I talked to him beforehand, and he told me that he was so scared about riding the ski lift to the top that he almost wanted to just jump off. As a preemptive strike against falling off. I've kind of felt the same way lately; not about any specific thing in my life, but generally. Things are going well - very well, actually - but all I can think about is the omnipresent possibility of calamity, and it's making me crazy. I think maybe I always get this way at this time of year; maybe I need more sunlight or exercise or something.

I've been seeking solace through the usual sources: yoga, friends, books, music. I finally completed the playlist that I started working on years ago, and I've been listening to it non-stop. Cathartic. I remember asking my therapist once years ago if it's okay to cry when you don't know why you're crying. She said it was. So, I guess I've got that going for me.

I went for a massage about a week ago - my first ever. I felt calmer afterwards than I remember ever feeling before. Probably should make that a more regular event in my life.

Anyway, new episodes of BSG start on Friday, so I have that to look forward to (even if I kind of think they should have ended it with the last episode that aired last spring).

Doubt - a review

2008-12-29T08:08:00.007-05:00

Philip Seymour Hoffman gave an incredible performance; he always does. But he didn't hold a candle to Meryl Streep. She was amazing. She nailed her character perfectly. If she doesn't get an Oscar for her role, well, then there is no justice at all in the cinematographic world.

The film was well written, too. The characters were convincing; multilayered; complex. There was moral ambiguity. And the film ended without resolution; it ended with a question that is not comfortable to ask and is not easily answered.

Summary: Go see it. Now.

Season's Greetings

2008-12-23T21:57:00.005-05:00

Attentive readers will note that the tonight's subversive baking experiment has been in the planning stages for a very long time:

O, the pink background... I'm a little disappointed with that, but unfortunately the only sheets I could find to use as backdrops were white and pepto-pink, and it looked even worse on the white. Well, the gingerbread outhouse is all about the flash-in-the-pan shock value anyway, so maybe bright pink was a good choice.

Pumpkin Pie

2008-12-22T21:21:00.007-05:00

Response to NoR's Pecan Pie post:

For the near pie, I used a plain old sugar pumpkin; for the far pie, I used a cheese pumpkin. Both pumpkins were from my (summer) CSA. I've never made a pie with a cheese pumpkin before. I'm itchin' to do a taste test.

Physical education

2008-12-17T11:35:00.004-05:00

Well, I'm long since back from Oregon, as all readers of this blog already know, I guess. What can I say about my trip? Well, like the Dave Matthews song says, I ate too much, I drank too much. Too much! Saw sea lions and elk. It was a good trip.

In yoga class last week, I was reminded of a PE class in high school. I was sitting on the bleachers with my friend Travis who, for reasons to this day unbeknownst (or anyway forgotten), reached over, grabbed my nipple, and twisted it. Hard. It was brutally painful and he wouldn't let go, no matter how much I begged. He just kept saying, "The pain is not there." And eventually, it wasn't anymore. I stopped attaching to the sensation, and only then did he let go.

I wonder why he did that? I suspect that he was trying to show me the difference between pain and suffering. He was reading a lot about Buddhism at that time.

Alternatively, perhaps he was just being an asshole. The memory of the lesson on pain versus suffering is what remains, though.

"...the cradle of escape"

2008-12-04T14:03:00.004-05:00

Quoted from a poem I wrote years ago while sitting at the Bakery on a ridiculously warm December day; the full line is "Her solitary Mecca is the cradle of escape," if I remember correctly.

So... I feel totally burned out by work, and in a feat of remarkably good timing, I'm going to Oregon tomorrow to spend a few days on the coast with my siblings and some of our friends. I may or may not post while I'm there. I don't know if we'll have access to the interwebs.

I wanted to post something about statistics and science and democracy and how I generally trust their results because they are fundamentally messy processes and the messiness tends to cancel itself out when averaged over large scale experiments, but I just don't have time to put it into words right now. Oh wait... I just did.

Twilight

2008-11-24T10:53:00.002-05:00

OMG, there he is, it's EDWARD CULLEN!!!!!! He's SOOO dreamy! I just have to scream in the middle of this crowded movie theatre! OMG, new scene and there he is again! More screaming! I just can't take it! Oh Edward, walk out of the screen and come to me! All the other girls in my 8th grade class don't understand you, but I do!!! OMG!!!!

So... I went to see Twilight on Friday night. Let me tell you, watching a teen vampire movie on opening night in a theatre in which almost every other seat is filled by 13 year old girls ramped up on Pepsi, Milk Duds, and burgeoning endocrine systems is an experience like no other. I think I may have permanently lost some of the high range of my hearing.

I went with my friends T, E, and R. We were pretty much the only ones in the theatre over the age of 30. Well, we were pretty much the only ones in the theatre over the age of 14. So while the rest of the audience was screeching, I was thinking about Freud's theories of motivation and how that relates to why vampire stories are so compelling. According to Freud, eros and thanatos drive us in varying proportions through everything we do. But thanatos (death instinct) is terrifying. Vampire stories work, perhaps, because they remove some of the edge from thanatos (vampires can't die), and translate it to something else (they are compelled to kill). They are foreign creatures because they are removed from human frailty by immortality, but they are familiar and romantic because they are still driven by eros.

Or, you know, whatever.

I really liked the movie, but it probably wouldn't grab the attention of anyone who isn't at least partially enthralled by teen melodrama and the undead. I really want to read the books now. I'll have to see if the library has them.

Russian Science

2008-11-20T13:34:00.004-05:00

Every time I think I've run out of things to write about, some idiotic new idea pops into my head.

I was reading an article in the New York Times this morning about the possibility of creating a wooly mammoth. Technically, it's not cloning because the proposed technique wouldn't use extracted mammoth DNA; rather, it would compare the extracted mammoth DNA to the DNA in the egg of an African elephant, and change the elephant DNA to match the mammoth's. Anyway, the article mentioned that there have been Russian attempts over the years to get well preserved mammoth eggs to gestate, but they've failed because the eggs weren't viable.

This got me thinking. How did the Russian scientists not realize that eggs that had been frozen for ten thousand years were no longer viable? I don't think it would even occur to an American geneticist to try such a long shot experiment. Can you imagine standing in front of a funding board and asking for money to thaw out some mammoth gonads and see if they'll still produce furry baby elephants? You'd never ever get funding for that in this country. People would think you were insane. I think these Russian attempts must have taken place during the Soviet era, when there was enough bureaucracy that wild little projects could be buried in other proposals and rubber stamped.

This also brought to mind stories I've heard of the Russian space program in the 60's; big dreams, crazy schemes, somewhat (i.e., rather) lax safety protocols. I have to admit, I sort of admire that "well, it does sound crazy, but let's just try it and see what happens" mindset. Is this characteristic of Russian culture? I wonder.

Also, the idea of mammoths being brought back, of herds of pachyderms wandering the Russian steppe and the North American prairies, is just awesome.

The legend lives on

2008-11-10T13:48:00.003-05:00

Perhaps of limited interest to the readers of this blog, today is the 33rd anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I won't go into details here. The wikipedia entry is quite a good summary. I usually mark the day by thinking about nautical disasters in general, and my father, because this is one of his favourite songs. I still haven't contacted him. I still need to contact him.

I don't know what it is that makes nautical disasters so compelling for me. I think of a line by Dar Williams: "I thought the ocean; the ocean thought nothing." Maybe it's because despite the incredible human ability to anthropomorphize and personify almost everything in our environment, the ocean resists, absolutely. It is not kind, it is not cruel; it just is.

Yes We Did

2008-11-08T18:04:00.007-05:00

I've been composing this in my mind since Wednesday, but I wanted to wait a few days for the exhilaration to die down before posting. I went to bed on Tuesday night before any of the networks had made an official prediction of the election winner. It looked promising, but I'd thought so in 2004 too. Also in 2000. So, with Amy Ray's sage advice ("Don't assume anything") thundering across my synapses, I dropped off to sleep with hope, tremendous hope, but also tremendous trepidation. I thought it would be best if I got a good night's sleep before steeling myself up to find out who won, and who lost.

Well, fate had other plans for me. Rather, my friend [J] had other plans. He drunk text messaged me at 1:20am with the following: "Fuck yes. Obama." Then he drunk dialed me 30 minutes later and left a wonderfully rambling message about love, change, and the promise of a new future. I really wish I'd saved it. I would totally turn it into an MP3 and post it if I had.

For the most part, I'm quite jaded about politics, and I usually end up pulling down the lever for the candidate I think has the least capacity to harm her or his constituents. Triage voting. This time was different. It marked the first time I'd voted for a winning presidential candidate, for one thing. In 2004, I voted for Kerry; 2000, Nader (whoops!); 1996, I wrote in a vote for Colin Powell. So I guess I've always been an idealist. Obama is almost too good to be true, even by my idealistic standards. That speech he gave on race last spring? When the GOP was slinging about all that nonsense about Reverend Wright, like a passel of angry monkeys slinging their own shit? His speech was amazing. It brought tears to my eyes then, and it still does when I think about it. I was already an Obama supporter when I watched it, but that was the point at which I realized that he was the real thing; not just play acting the role. He didn't mince his words. He didn't go on the attack, and he didn't pull punches. He said more in 30 minutes than any other leader has on that topic in decades. Look it up on YouTube and be amazed.

After the third debate, one of my yoga teachers talked about the two candidates as "warriors." One, angry, bitter, ready to attack, unable to reign in his animosity. The other, cool, calm, reserved, letting groundless accusations and false statements slide off of him like water off a duck's back. Words by Rudyard Kipling return to me now: "If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools..." He bore it. He bore it and smiled. Another teacher, in Wednesday night's class, described Obama as a yogi. I don't know if he's ever been on a mat, but truer words were never spoken. As I've written elsewhere, in advanced yoga practice, the mat disappears.

Which brings me to Wednesday. Wednesday was amazing. In the morning, I watched Obama's gracious acceptance speech, and again was moved to tears. Everyone I know, everyone I ran into, was equal parts relieved and ecstatic. Wednesday night's yoga class was incredible. There were other factors involved, I know, but I was amazed at how much more open my body was than even the day before. My old practice, the practice I'd been accustomed to prior to slacking off last summer, was finally back. It's astonishing to me how much tension I was carrying in my body in the weeks leading up to the election. Do you remember the scene at the end of Return of the Jedi when the Death Star has been destroyed and the Ewoks are beating out a victory song using the stormtroopers' helmets as drums? Wednesday felt like that. Relief. Ecstasy. Release.

I will remember Wednesday as the day that I realized we'd turned "Yes We Can" into "Yes We Did." Congratulations, President Elect Obama. Congratulations to all of us, really. We've waited a long time for someone of this caliber to be elected.

Personal update

2008-11-05T12:13:00.006-05:00

Apologies for the sub-par video quality.

The Reminder

2008-11-04T09:06:00.000-05:00

VOTE!

Sticky Squirrel

2008-11-02T12:06:00.008-05:00

So, about six months ago, my brother in law and I were in his kitchen, cooking, and as often is the case in such situations, I was waxing philosophical (read: ridiculous). My particular rant that day was the lamentable lack of a national drink of Canada. From his vast well of knowledge, [T] offered me some simple guidelines on how to design a mixed drink, and I set myself to the task immediately. In short order, I had devised the Sticky Squirrel (the original name I gave to the drink referred not to the ubiquitous gray rodent but rather to the national animal of Canada - my finely honed sense of discretion forced me to rebaptize the drink with a less suggestive appellation.):

Alcohol: Canadian whiskey (2 oz)
Sweet: Maple syrup (1/2 oz)
Bitter: Acorns (3 or 4) (here's where my creative insanity really came into its own)
Ice
Shake like mad, and pour over rocks. Add some Canada Dry to dilute it a bit. Optionally, garnish with some pine needles.

Well, last night as part of my birthday celebrations, we finally did a trial run. I was expecting it to be thoroughly undrinkable. I was expecting that the hours I had spent earlier in the day first collecting acorns out on the mud flats of the Wallkill and then shelling them and processing them through many changes of boiling water would be all for naught. But much to my surprise and delight, my reaction after the first sip was, "Oh, that's quite good!" So let it be known that Canada now has a contender for a national drink, invented by an admiring foreigner, which seems somehow appropriate to me.

I wonder if it would be in bad taste for me to nominate myself for the Order of Canada?

Hallowe'en rant #2

2008-10-29T14:56:00.007-04:00

Continuing with a line of thought I started mulling over many years ago and first began to expound in writing last year (because, you know, once I get an idea in my head, I can't put it down until I've beaten it completely to death):

A (really) brief history of Hallowe'en: Samhain, Celts, harvest, darkness, evil spirits, costumes, candy, Madison avenue, blah blah blah. The details have been written in fine detail elsewhere, so I won't repeat. The important point here is that for better or for worse the holiday has undergone an evolution, thanks to the twin forces of Christianity and capitalism. It's easy enough to bemoan this fact and lament the change, but it's occurred to me that perhaps some element of the original meaning hasn't been lost. The day was originally an opportunity to look directly at the darker side of culture, the chaotic forces which threatened to destroy a society; now it seems to be an innocent chance to play dress up. But look at what we choose to dress up as. Young women, almost invariably, seem to prefer costumes better suited to street walking than to casting out demons. We give ourselves a chance to dress up as anything this one time each year, and I think it reflects a poorly hidden desire of the collective unconscious that a substantive part of the population choose to parade as hookers. Hallowe'en is still an opportunity for the darker parts of our culture to rear their heads. You just need to know how to see them.

Tangentially, I love this time of year. Slate grey skies, forests a sea of orange, yellow, brown, burnt umber. Wind, rain, flurries. It's beautiful; but not the gaudy beautiful of early fall or the manic beautiful of spring. Sombre, rarified beauty.

Inconsistency

2008-10-28T21:12:00.005-04:00

I've been thinking about this a lot over the past few months. I don't believe in astrology, but I read and mull over my horoscope monthly. I don't believe in god, yet I pray and sometimes even chant the names of Hindu deities. I don't even understand what is meant by the words "spirit" and "soul," but I devote a large part of my life to a practice that would be no more than fancy gymnastics if not for its metaphysical underpinnings. Am I just hedging my bets? No. I don't have any lingering doubts about astrology; I don't even have any curiosity about the existence of god. As for spiritual matters, I tend to think that the work we do is what matters in life. Why the inconsistency, then? Why do my actions and beliefs not gel?

Maybe the question is wrong; maybe there is no underlying inconsistency. There is value in prayer even if it goes no further than the person who is praying, because it focuses and calms the mind. Same is true of chanting. Astrology is a bit harder to explain... maybe I just like the idea of getting vague advice that I can interpret through the lens of my own perceptions. The mind is a curious beast; you can feed it garbage or you can feed it gourmet, and either way what it chiefly wants is to make sense of the meal.

It does appeal to my DIY/punk ethos to explain these schisms away as taking the trappings of various and sundry belief systems and putting them to my own use. I guess it worries me that the difference between being punk and being self-delusional is so fine. And it worries me that I do not think of myself as a materialist, yet I'd be hard pressed to prove that I'm not.

H'mmm. Maybe that's the point.

"cold and drunk as I can be"

2008-10-05T19:29:00.006-04:00

So, a few years back I decided that I wanted to bag all of the fire towers in the Catskills. I had already hiked Overlook a few times, and the next tower I set my sights on was Hunter Mountain. I tried it. Really rough terrain, lots of elevation. I didn't quite make it to the top. Tried again. Another failure. Again. Again. I gave up. So it goes sometimes.

Well, yesterday I finally did it. Unfortunately, my sense of accomplishment is tempered by the fact that I beat the shit out of my knees on the way down. They're a lot better now, but I'm still concerned. I was treating this hike as step one in a training regimen to prepare me for a NOLS trip to the high Arctic that I've been thinking about taking next summer. That's not going to happen if my body isn't in decent shape. In addition to my knee issues, I also have a shoulder injury from years ago that never really healed, and which makes it difficult to carry a pack. Plus wrist issues that have been plaguing me for the past few months. Plus... the courses I'm interested in have an average participant age of ~20, more than ten years my junior. How much would I enjoy a month in the company of the summer-break-from-university crowd (even if it's in the Arctic, the place I want to see more than anywhere else)?

I applied for (and was accepted to) a NOLS course once before - sea kayaking in Prince William Sound in 2000. I didn't go. The weird thing is that I can't for the life of me remember why I didn't. I was in pretty lousy mental space at the time, and that must have had a lot to do with my decision to back out, but I remember none of the specifics. This was when I was living in Beltsville, MD. Three days after I would have left for the month long course, I came home after work to discover all of the utilities turned off and a note of foreclosure on the front door of the house where I was renting a room. The landlord (who much to my surprise was not the owner listed on the foreclosure notice) was nowhere to be found. That was one of the worst weekends of my life. I had no one to turn to, so I called my father, who I hadn't spoken to in six months. He put me in contact with some relatives who were living locally and who kindly put me up for a few weeks. I was humbled by their generosity.

Sometimes, still, I lie awake at night and wonder if it wouldn't have been better for me to have gone on the NOLS trip. I would have returned to MD to discover that my apartment was no longer mine (according to the foreclosure notice, the house was to be sold at auction in two week's time, and I had no lease). What would I have done? Panic was my usual response to stress back then. Would NOLS have changed my outlook on life? Is it possible that I would have just shrugged my shoulders and calmly worked through the situation? Hard to say. Revisiting the past is always tricky business. I wonder, though.

Well... I'm in a different place now, geographically and emotionally. All these memories do come up for me, though, when I think about NOLS. Most of the draw of next summer's program is my fascination with the far North and my desire to see it before it all melts, but I know that some of the appeal is the possibility of salving memories from this sore spot in my past; proving to myself that I can, indeed, do this.

I have plans to do some more hiking later this week, assuming my knees are on the mend by then. I guess I'm going to go ahead with my training regimen, unless/until it becomes apparent that physical limitations are going to make a NOLS trip infeasible for me. In which case... I don't know what I'll do. That would be quite disappointing.

Oh, and regarding the title of this post - I'm neither cold nor drunk now, but I've wanted to use that Gordon Lightfoot line as a post title for quite a while, and I figured I'd better use it now or else I'd waste it on some horribly maudlin diatribe, when I am actually drunk.

Indigo Girls - UPAC, Kingston, NY

2008-09-25T10:57:00.009-04:00

Great show last night... I think it was the 16th or 17th time I've seen them. I miss seeing them play with a full band, as they did on their tours in the 90's, but they are good solo acoustically too. I was very happy to hear them play Three Hits and Reunion; it was really nice to hear Chickenman live again too. My siblings and I hung out for a bit by the stage after the concert. Sully, their head roadie, gave us guitar picks and a copy of their setlist. Then we waited outside by their bus for a while, and my brother got his picture taken with Amy Ray. He was so happy, I thought he was going to wet himself.

There was a time in my life, my early twenties, when I went to concerts whenever I could. Now I just don't any more, and that's sort of sad. I have too many other distractions and competing priorities. Last weekend, Nellie McKay played in Woodstock, and I didn't go to see her because I'd been hiking and biking all day and I was tired and wanted to turn in early. Lame! What was I thinking?

Speaking of competing distractions, I've been taking a break from TV for a while. I wrote a few weeks ago about getting agitated and irritated every time I turned the damned thing on. That kept happening, so I've put the remote to rest for the time being. Curiously, I still feel sort of on edge, but I don't have the boob tube to blame anymore. Maybe I'm just detoxing from media withdrawal. I'm sure Marshall McLuhan would have had something to say about that.

I don't know if I'm going to break my stint of television abstinence to watch the debate tomorrow night. I'm kind of tempted to, but I know I'm 100% guaranteed to feel agitated and irritated if I do. Besides, the debate I'm really looking forward to seeing is the vice presidential debate (which unfortunately is scheduled for the same night as the Canadian national party leader's debate). This afternoon I saw a clip of Katie Couric interviewing Sarah Palin, and I discovered that not only is Palin bat-shit crazy (this, I'd already realized), but she's also completely unable to think on her feet. She was just spouting a bunch of talking points that must have been fed to her by the McCain campaign. Even when Couric asked her to clarify one of her responses, she just paused for a few seconds and then repeated what she'd just said, word for word. I can't wait to see her debate Biden. It's going to be a complete train wreck.

Part of me does feel bad about looking forward to seeing her destroyed in the debate, but that sense of guilt is overwhelmed by my anger. Is Palin really the person the Republican party deems to be the best candidate for vice president? Someone with no relevant experience, someone who is stupid, vain, and self-involved enough to believe that it's good public policy to ban library books which espouse a different point of view from one's own, and that political office is an appropriate platform from which to act on personal vendettas? Someone who believes the fundamentalist horse shit that life is a constant battle between Good and Evil and there is no middle ground or room for negotiation? I think I am justified in looking forward to watching Biden tear her apart into little pieces of crazy.

My father used to (and probably still does) quote Winston Churchill, who said that "a free people get exactly the government that they deserve." I disagree. We deserve better than this.

Ugh. This post is in dire need of more editing, but it's past my bedtime so I'm uploading it to the interwebs as is, crows feet and all.

Courage

2008-09-24T06:54:00.014-04:00

Walking across the street by the bus station early this morning, I was almost hit by a car. I was lost in my thoughts and the driver clearly wasn't expecting to encounter a pedestrian at 6:30 in the morning. She swerved and braked at the last minute, my heart went from a fugue to a rhumba beat, and we managed to avoid a messy situation with ambulances and police and insurance claims and medical bills and me crying in public.

Anyway... that's not what I meant to write about today. Last week, I wrote in my journal that I miss "the risk and vulnerability of being held in higher regard than I felt worthy of." I've been brooding over that line for the past few days. This is where my courage fails. Not when I'm up in front of a yoga class teaching - I know that's a challenge, so I steel myself up for it. Not over this past summer, when I climbed up a cliff with the intent to jump off it into the water, but chickened out instead - I realized I was just doing it to prove to myself that I could, and that just wasn't a compelling reason. I lose my nerve at quieter moments than these; unfamiliar; interstitial. I look away when I should hold a gaze. I say something when I should be silent. I stop to reflect and figure it all out when it's time to put thinking aside and act. And ultimately, I hesitate or walk away because I'm unsure. I lose things because contrary to popular belief, I'm pretty lousy at being calm and quiet when it matters most. I run away when I should take a deep breath and wait to see what happens next.

This video's more or less irrelevant, but the song hits the nail on the head:

The other New Paltz

2008-09-22T08:48:00.012-04:00

I've been riding my bicycle quite a bit lately. In the past, I've had a habit of riding the same routes over and over again (rail trail out to Rosendale, back roads up to North Ohioville); but recently, rather than revisiting these routes, I've begun adding some variety to my peregrinations. There are roads in New Paltz that I never travel by car because they don't lead to anywhere I've ever needed to go. On bike, however, I'm much more inclined to investigate side streets and cul-de-sacs. I'm discovering that there are parts of New Paltz that I didn't even know existed. Over the past month, I have been pedalling through large developments of McMansions on five acre lots with manicured lawns and artificial ponds, tucked away on side streets off 299 heading up the mountain.

Now, as a dedicated conservation-minded pinko liberal progressive wacko, I know I'm supposed to bemoan the existence of these antiseptic monstrosities with much hand wringing and shaking of fists. (Can one wring his hands and shake his fists simultaneously? Perhaps this is a Zen koan for the modern age.) But I don't. I'm going to be honest here. When I pedal though these neighbourhoods, my first emotional reaction is surprise. My second is curiosity. (Who lives here? What do they do?) And much to my embarrassment, my next reaction is envy.

Partly, this has to do with money. Sure, I love the condo complex where I live now. (I love listening to my neighbour's radio blasting NPR all day through our thin walls; I love watching the college kids who rent here playing redneck golf out on the lawn; I love listening to my neighbours across the parking lot screaming at their kids.) All cynicism aside, I really do like it here. But a lifetime of indoctrination into the American dream has succeeded in instilling in me a nagging sense that I ought to be striving for Something Better, and by "better" I mean more expensive and more isolationist. I know it's retarded, but to some small extent I've bought into the myth. (I hope no one takes offence to my use of the word "retarded." It seems appropriate here.)

Partly, though, this envy of mine relates to something other than money. I grew up in a gigantic, beautiful, old house in the middle of nowhere, and I miss it. The place still shows up in my dreams sometimes, representing the past, familiarity, and a returning to myself. Am I seeing poor surrogates of my childhood home in the McMansions of New Paltz? I don't know. Maybe. But I fantasized about big, new, emotionless houses like that when I was a kid, too; then, I suspect what they represented were escape and the illusion of security - twin cradles which I craved when growing up, and which were in short supply.

The burning question on my mind is how the people who live in these houses experience them. What do they feel when they return home in the evening? What did they feel the first time they drove up the driveway? What most appeals to them about their dwellings? What concessions, if any, do they feel they've made in order to live there? What do they value? Who are they? Unfortunately, this other New Paltz offers me no answers. It is silent for me. I don't know who lives there, and I rarely if ever see anyone out in the well manicured yards.

Burn After Reading - a review

2008-09-20T08:25:00.004-04:00

Brad Pitt - hilarious. Until... well, until no longer hilarious. Malkovich - characteristically annoying. Clooney - meh. Swinton - characteristically cold. McDormand - also hilarious.

The movie made me think of Seinfeld; a bunch of generally obnoxious people doing stupid things with tepidly amusing results. I didn't care about anyone in the movie, ergo I didn't care much for the movie. (I wasn't a big fan of Seinfeld either, for the same reason.)

Also - DC and surrounding suburbs. Good god. I have the capacity to feel nostalgia about almost anything; generally pleasant experiences, generally unpleasant experiences. Living outside DC is the one thing in my life I have never felt an iota of nostalgia for. The movie was a sort of reminder of the emptiness I felt when I lived there, when I didn't yet quite understand that the chief thing that I was looking for, people to connect with, I was never going to find there. It was wholly alien territory for me. And remains so, on the rare occasions when I return (which, apparently, I will be doing once again for work in the next few months).

Confidential to Percy: I have figured out how to use google analytics, and it is gratifying to see that I am getting hits from Chennai. It gives me the illusion of internationally popularity.

The Last Unicorn

2008-09-15T08:13:00.017-04:00

Yesterday was hot, humid, and miserable, and I hid inside most of the day, practising yoga, writing in my journal, and discovering that there's nothing good on TV on Sunday afternoons. After a brief period of fruitless channel flipping, I decided to watch The Last Unicorn. I bought the DVD a few weeks ago, largely to assuage my curiosity about why some of the women I know find this film so compelling. I'm not going to bother writing (much) about the obvious hero's journey stuff or the Rankin-Bass animation nostalgia that the movie stirred in me or even the cheesy/awesome soundtrack by America. Others have no doubt already addressed these topics. Instead, here's what I got from the film: it's basically a coming of age story for a girl who wants to find out what happened to all of her friends. She discovers that they've been collected (for lack of a better word) by a bitter old king in a lonely castle by the sea. In the course of discovering this, she begins to undergo transformations leading towards adulthood, and she learns of the costs and curious appeal of mortality.

There's kind of a lot packed in there, actually:

The hero is a girl. This still hardly ever happens in pop culture, though I guess it's a bit more common now than it used to be.

The bitter old king, collecting youth as if it possesses some quality that can be reacquired; isn't this pretty much exactly how pop culture works now? Look at that big dust-up about Miley Cyrus a few months ago. Why do we care? What the hell was she doing in the middle of People magazine or whatever it was in the first place? I think a lot of adult (or proto-adult) culture is based on vicariously living out fantasies through teens and tweens.

I don't know what to make of the film's ending. She succeeds in freeing her friends, with rather limited help from her male companions. Interestingly, the film's romantic figure, the classic hero, is pretty much useless. She ends up saving him. It's her friend, the wizard, who gives her the most help - but even here, his help is limited, and for the most part she saves her friends and herself on her own. But what exactly has she saved? She retains her immortality by eschewing the advances of the prince, but in doing so, she learns regret. (The hero is always fundamentally changed by the journey; this is why Frodo needs to leave Middle Earth at the end of The Lord of the Rings. But I digress.) What is the film trying to say about childhood and adulthood?

I can see why this movie was important to girls who first saw it when they were on the cusp of adolescence. It must have offered some solace that although big changes were afoot, some semblance of who they were as children could carry through with them to adulthood. I'm vastly over simplifying here, I know; partly this is because I'm not done mulling this over. Also, pedagogic as this may be, I want my readers (all three of them) to think about this for themselves (if they've seen the film) and not be over burdened with my ruminations.

In addition to the above, I guess the thing I liked most about the movie is that it was genuine. It didn't contain the sort of self-referential oh-aren't-we-clever humour that permeates most animated and kid's films today. The film told a story that I as an adult (or reasonable facsimile thereof) found interesting and thought provoking, but it also appealed to kids. It did this not so much by the schizoid approach of cute little animals and over-the-little-ones'-heads pop culture references, but by telling a simple story, and telling it well.

Jonji

2008-09-11T11:09:00.006-04:00

A rather exceptional teacher in the local yoga/Buddhist community shuffled off this mortal coil this past Labour Day. I hadn't studied with him very often over the years, but the few times I did were memorable. I remember him leading a kirtan once, and instructing us that the Sanskrit word "jai" is an expression of excitement; he translated it as "hot dog!" Then he thought for a moment and changed his translation to "not dog!" in deference to vegetarians. That still makes me crack up a little bit when I think about it. He also taught a primer on Buddhist teachings one Sunday afternoon last winter (which I mentioned here), and this was when I really got an inkling of the depth of his practice. Jonji had been diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer about 8 months earlier. He'd gone through one (or more) round(s) of chemo. He warned us at the start of the talk that due to the medications he was on, he might have to run to the bathroom without warning. And he still sat with greater stillness and equipoise than I could muster. He didn't budge during his talk, even when I was cramping up and squirming around. He had this presence that's hard to describe... humble, honest, fierce, compassionate. And he told me to tell more jokes.

I went to Jonji's memorial service on Saturday. Sad to say that when paying my respects at his alter, it did not occur to me to think of a joke to share with his spirit, but in his honour, I will share one here.

What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?
Make me one with everything.
And when he complained that the vendor did not give him enough change when he paid for his hot dog, what did the vendor reply?
True change comes from within.

Rest in peace, Jonji. Thank you for your teachings.

Sweet Shiva!

2008-09-04T09:15:00.005-04:00

I'm sitting here stressed about a million things - the cavity I'm ignoring, my workload which alternates between non-existent and overwhelming, the fact that I haven't been tapped to substitute teach a class since giving my sample class, the weird creaky noises coming from my car that my mechanic tells me to ignore, my finely honed skill at shooting myself in the foot in so many aspects of my life - when out of the blue (well, out of my iMac's speakers) comes relief from a wholly unexpected quarter: Afghanada has been renewed for a third season. The first new episode will air today. In two hours. Happy happy! Joy joy!

Last day of the swim season...

2008-09-01T18:23:00.006-04:00

...so I decided I'd best make the most of it. It wasn't my best swim of the season, probably, but it wasn't my worst either. I did four laps, 3/8 of the total distance of which was freestyle. Upon exiting from the water, I had the pleasant sensation of exhaustion and dizziness that I often feel after a good workout. Afterwards, I picked and froze about a quart of wild blueberries. Then I came home and took a nap. Not a bad way to start the day.

I've found a pattern in my television viewing habits: I turn on the TV, flip through the channels until I find the least obnoxious programme, then, after about twenty minutes of viewing, realize that I'm scowling, fidgety, and slightly anxious. Then I turn off the TV. Maybe it's time to hide the remote from myself. There are certainly better ways I could be spending my time.

I feel like I'm nestled between two extremes right now. Twice in the past month, friends have told me that they're pregnant, which is wonderful and exciting. On the other hand... I have another friend who is self-destructing, who will (hopefully) be checking into a rehab tomorrow, if he doesn't back out at the last minute. And my brother is apparently attempting to construct a wall between himself (and his girlfriend) and the rest of the world. So here I am sitting in the middle of all this, happy and slightly envious of my friends who are creating new life, concerned about (and slightly angry at) those who are bent on destroying the good things they have.