...to be able to do every pose in Primary. I was just checking out a workshop online which *was* called "Primary Series" but now is called "Ashtanga-inspired" and Yoga Chikitsa (Ashtanga-inspired Yoga Chikitsa? Is that like Iyengar-influenced Iyengar?). Let me explain: Yoga Chikitsa is the formal name of the Primary Series, the way that Intermediate is called Nadi Shodana. It's tricky, to put it lightly, to try to teach "Yoga Chikitsa" in a format called "Ashtanga-inspired."
So my guess is either that because of time, or because the instructor doesn't do every pose of Primary or (more likely) isn't comfortable teaching them all (this is for you, Setu Bandhasana), or simply to get more students in the door, the class is now "Ashtanga-inspired." That's fair.
All the same, I'm glad that I do every pose in Primary and have taught them all, including Setu Bandhasana and Chakrasana and Navasana and Mari D and Janu C and how to do proper vinyasa; is there anything else I should add to the "frequently cut" list?
This is a gift, not a source for ego-stroking and pretension. Thanks, Yoga Chikitsa!
Friday, March 28, 2008
The Kitten Post.
This is what is sitting in my lap as I type: everyone, meet Raku the kitten. This is the same critter I almost stepped on, in a November sun salutation, and which led to a two-week gym membership. She was born, I was told, in April 2007, so she's almost a year old, and in this photo, she's sleeping in my black hat (in which I am rarely not seen, but of course, not in yoga photos).
She's really pretty fabulous.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The Invisible.
I was hoping that this was an experience with the pranamaya kosha, but it doesn't seem to be (based on some reading about the Hindu sense of that term).
It began with an asana practice: I was aiming, intending, that is, for Primary through Mari D and then Intermediate at least to Dwi Pada. I got to Marichyasana B and then too much sweet fatigue pain set in, and it was best just to call it a practice right there. This sort of thing has happened before, you've read about it.
There has been a lot of chitchat about Nadi Shodana in the blogosphere lately, about the kinds of craziness it can bring, and "Nadi Shodana" technically means many different things (although in those discussions, it means Intermediate Series). Nadi Shodana is also alternate nostril breathing (Pranayama). It is also, more generally, "Nerve Cleansing" (which is the name of the Intermediate Series but which, as I'll carry on about below, seems to be a a PROCESS itself).
"Nerve Cleansing." Polishing the 72,000 nadis. Clearer channels. I wonder if Nadi Shodana is a process through which one goes, Intermediate or no Intermediate. Perhaps it takes some experience with Intermediate to fix on, to be able to recognize, this "nerve cleansing," but it seems to me to be a process. These half-Primaries, incomplete Primaries, cue me to this.
If I want to, and particularly, in a full room doing led Primary, I can rip off a really powerful, "Wow Harry, Look at That!" style Primary. But in home practice, I often do a partial Primary, and it almost always stops somewhere between Mari A and Baddha Konasana. The biggest hip openers of the sequence. I keep most of my tension, both recent and ages old, in my glutes, and moreso in the right one than the left one. The outer hips, generally, and the low abs and psoas, also hold it.
I asked myself, post-practice, if I was more HONEST with myself, in home practice; if it is somehow IMPORTANT that in led class, with spectators, that I put on a PERFORMANCE. Sure, I can rock my nadis sideways and upside down in a hard, fast Primary (and I have), but today with no jumpbacks (I wasn't in the mood) and the gradually slow, but NOT tight, progress into the Maris? This wasn't muscular or fascia resistance. Mari B was downright EASY, but the fatigue that set in was just enervating, numbing, and that was that. Levels are implied: how else can a pose be easy and hard AT ONCE?
A long time ago I posted something about a "hippie acid freakout" in Intermediate, and I decided NOT to have that, because there were people around, and it wasn't SAFE, as I put it then. In home practice, is it SAFER to not "go all the way," is it safer to have greater sensitivity, to tune into the invisible, to really feel these big emotional, non-muscular releases? To.....clean the nadis?
I know I like to be the guy on stage; that's obvious, I've always known that. I reliably have the most advanced and fluid practice in the room, in Indianapolis, unless there's someone doing a national workshop and people from out of state come down. This goes both for ashtanga and for vinyasa practices; I'm the go-to guy. This has set up in me, and while I do what I can to disempower it, I see it resist. My own students progress admirably; there are hips more open than mine, in the Intro to Intermediate class. "Advancedness" is one way of measuring one's asana practice, of comparing. But what if we were to compare on "the invisible"? That TOO is a measure of one's asana practice: or is it, since we (precisely) can't SEE IT?
In San Francisco, there was no worry about this: I remember doing my humble Janu C and watching a guy bend himself into Kapotasana before my very eyes, about three feet away. I TOTALLY lost dristi in that case, and that sort of thing happened ALL THE TIME in SF, so much so that I was actually able to concentrate on my own practice and give up "the rankings" and all of that. Over at IY, however, and not in the Mysore room, I was again high on the superstar list.
It is one thing to argue, however cogently, that "ranking and comparing" is not what it's about. DOING that is something different. REALLY making it true is way, way across the universe from simply SAYING that it should be true. This experience that I've called my encounter with "the invisible," is a new truth of the asana practice; it changes my whole perception about poses and practice and "advanced" and such. I know those things will still exist, and that I'll still be able to be the fluid guy in the room, or whatever, but "the invisible" isn't a community thing and so rankings are irrelevant to it. These things will exist simultaneously.
Back to Kapotasana as an "introverted" pose: "the invisible" is in asana practice, and is real, but isn't photographable, isn't Yoga Journal. The process of nadi shodana doesn't demand that one do Nadi Shodana, and it CERTAINLY does not seem to GIVE one Nadi Shodana. Just the opposite, in my case.
Led class/home practice....Outer teacher/inner teacher? I do almost every Ashtanga class in the city Mysore-style (as student), because there's no need for me to do it any other way. How does one "do class" according to "the invisible" and its limits and permissions?
Intend for the invisible to run the practice. Disregard the aims of "getting" pose Q. That isn't just advice; it HAS to go, in order to do what the invisible says, to let the invisible guide.
The invisible is the undoing of all of this tension since the 1990s, the bad relationship, the divorce, the dissertation, the job search, the non-stop firewalk that life has been since about late 2003 when I decided that I'd write. All with one pause, in SF, in the middle. One decompression, then back in the box. But I am paying my debts and applying to visiting gigs: the "hanging by a string" days are few. They end soon. With this perhaps comes the guidance of the invisible, rather than restriction by the invisible. Less noise, more hearing. Ram Dass said something like that.
It began with an asana practice: I was aiming, intending, that is, for Primary through Mari D and then Intermediate at least to Dwi Pada. I got to Marichyasana B and then too much sweet fatigue pain set in, and it was best just to call it a practice right there. This sort of thing has happened before, you've read about it.
There has been a lot of chitchat about Nadi Shodana in the blogosphere lately, about the kinds of craziness it can bring, and "Nadi Shodana" technically means many different things (although in those discussions, it means Intermediate Series). Nadi Shodana is also alternate nostril breathing (Pranayama). It is also, more generally, "Nerve Cleansing" (which is the name of the Intermediate Series but which, as I'll carry on about below, seems to be a a PROCESS itself).
"Nerve Cleansing." Polishing the 72,000 nadis. Clearer channels. I wonder if Nadi Shodana is a process through which one goes, Intermediate or no Intermediate. Perhaps it takes some experience with Intermediate to fix on, to be able to recognize, this "nerve cleansing," but it seems to me to be a process. These half-Primaries, incomplete Primaries, cue me to this.
If I want to, and particularly, in a full room doing led Primary, I can rip off a really powerful, "Wow Harry, Look at That!" style Primary. But in home practice, I often do a partial Primary, and it almost always stops somewhere between Mari A and Baddha Konasana. The biggest hip openers of the sequence. I keep most of my tension, both recent and ages old, in my glutes, and moreso in the right one than the left one. The outer hips, generally, and the low abs and psoas, also hold it.
I asked myself, post-practice, if I was more HONEST with myself, in home practice; if it is somehow IMPORTANT that in led class, with spectators, that I put on a PERFORMANCE. Sure, I can rock my nadis sideways and upside down in a hard, fast Primary (and I have), but today with no jumpbacks (I wasn't in the mood) and the gradually slow, but NOT tight, progress into the Maris? This wasn't muscular or fascia resistance. Mari B was downright EASY, but the fatigue that set in was just enervating, numbing, and that was that. Levels are implied: how else can a pose be easy and hard AT ONCE?
A long time ago I posted something about a "hippie acid freakout" in Intermediate, and I decided NOT to have that, because there were people around, and it wasn't SAFE, as I put it then. In home practice, is it SAFER to not "go all the way," is it safer to have greater sensitivity, to tune into the invisible, to really feel these big emotional, non-muscular releases? To.....clean the nadis?
I know I like to be the guy on stage; that's obvious, I've always known that. I reliably have the most advanced and fluid practice in the room, in Indianapolis, unless there's someone doing a national workshop and people from out of state come down. This goes both for ashtanga and for vinyasa practices; I'm the go-to guy. This has set up in me, and while I do what I can to disempower it, I see it resist. My own students progress admirably; there are hips more open than mine, in the Intro to Intermediate class. "Advancedness" is one way of measuring one's asana practice, of comparing. But what if we were to compare on "the invisible"? That TOO is a measure of one's asana practice: or is it, since we (precisely) can't SEE IT?
In San Francisco, there was no worry about this: I remember doing my humble Janu C and watching a guy bend himself into Kapotasana before my very eyes, about three feet away. I TOTALLY lost dristi in that case, and that sort of thing happened ALL THE TIME in SF, so much so that I was actually able to concentrate on my own practice and give up "the rankings" and all of that. Over at IY, however, and not in the Mysore room, I was again high on the superstar list.
It is one thing to argue, however cogently, that "ranking and comparing" is not what it's about. DOING that is something different. REALLY making it true is way, way across the universe from simply SAYING that it should be true. This experience that I've called my encounter with "the invisible," is a new truth of the asana practice; it changes my whole perception about poses and practice and "advanced" and such. I know those things will still exist, and that I'll still be able to be the fluid guy in the room, or whatever, but "the invisible" isn't a community thing and so rankings are irrelevant to it. These things will exist simultaneously.
Back to Kapotasana as an "introverted" pose: "the invisible" is in asana practice, and is real, but isn't photographable, isn't Yoga Journal. The process of nadi shodana doesn't demand that one do Nadi Shodana, and it CERTAINLY does not seem to GIVE one Nadi Shodana. Just the opposite, in my case.
Led class/home practice....Outer teacher/inner teacher? I do almost every Ashtanga class in the city Mysore-style (as student), because there's no need for me to do it any other way. How does one "do class" according to "the invisible" and its limits and permissions?
Intend for the invisible to run the practice. Disregard the aims of "getting" pose Q. That isn't just advice; it HAS to go, in order to do what the invisible says, to let the invisible guide.
The invisible is the undoing of all of this tension since the 1990s, the bad relationship, the divorce, the dissertation, the job search, the non-stop firewalk that life has been since about late 2003 when I decided that I'd write. All with one pause, in SF, in the middle. One decompression, then back in the box. But I am paying my debts and applying to visiting gigs: the "hanging by a string" days are few. They end soon. With this perhaps comes the guidance of the invisible, rather than restriction by the invisible. Less noise, more hearing. Ram Dass said something like that.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Hope and Illusion?
There is a visiting professor gig available in THAT state.
Usually, that state's academic gigs are either film and video production, or else some specialty du jour, like feminist imagery in South Asian cinema. Not the things I studied, not easily translatable into "me."
But this is garden-variety, center-shot, all-purpose film studies. History, theory, genre, authorship, national cinemas, marginalized voices. Stuff I can do; stuff I have done.
And it is a one year position THERE.
Hope springs to life in me like a seven year old looking in a candy store window.
That seven year old's parents look on with trepidation, not wanting the youngster to be disappointed. Apply? Of COURSE I will apply, are you MAD??? But I know that I won't be able to restrict myself to non-attachment all the way here, because that is how the hope of something like this actually HAPPENING goes. Why this illusion? Why this unrequited (well, not quite unrequited) love affair?
The cravings are honest; my very MARROW wants life there. I have always wanted a life in that place, and I KNOW, I fully intellectually KNOW, that this is illusion, marketing, mythology, but I CAN'T PUT IT DOWN.
Just reading a job description for something I can actually potentially HAVE, over there, brought vivid images of kissing sidewalks in gratitude. This is silliness.
Or is it?
In a way I'm afraid to want it; afraid that it's a candle flame that will flash out as soon as I approach it. I want this to be any other application, and I can write it as if it is, but I know I'll rank this one higher than others in my heart. That happens, right, that's typical, right? We all do that?
It hurts like a junior high crush, this potential, this possibility. Silliness! But irresistible! Adrenaline and imagination and superstition all await.
This dialogue contains all of the cautions and all of the sincerities:
(But what if it's a crappy job? What if the service load is hell or something?)
(Life there is worth anything; ANY THING.)
To what voice do I listen?
I will strive for non-attachment on this. If I can non-attach from this, I can non-attach from everything else. Must become a witness for ideas like "the soul's home" and ideas of reward and trial, ideas of any kind of privation like that. Remember: Purusha is fullness, and fullness, plenitude, is NOT location specific.
(flashes of memories to the contrary; argument)
The application is not due until May. I might know more by then. Will I still apply? Hell yes I'll still apply....are you MAD???
I see that I'll be busy with this for a while.
Usually, that state's academic gigs are either film and video production, or else some specialty du jour, like feminist imagery in South Asian cinema. Not the things I studied, not easily translatable into "me."
But this is garden-variety, center-shot, all-purpose film studies. History, theory, genre, authorship, national cinemas, marginalized voices. Stuff I can do; stuff I have done.
And it is a one year position THERE.
Hope springs to life in me like a seven year old looking in a candy store window.
That seven year old's parents look on with trepidation, not wanting the youngster to be disappointed. Apply? Of COURSE I will apply, are you MAD??? But I know that I won't be able to restrict myself to non-attachment all the way here, because that is how the hope of something like this actually HAPPENING goes. Why this illusion? Why this unrequited (well, not quite unrequited) love affair?
The cravings are honest; my very MARROW wants life there. I have always wanted a life in that place, and I KNOW, I fully intellectually KNOW, that this is illusion, marketing, mythology, but I CAN'T PUT IT DOWN.
Just reading a job description for something I can actually potentially HAVE, over there, brought vivid images of kissing sidewalks in gratitude. This is silliness.
Or is it?
In a way I'm afraid to want it; afraid that it's a candle flame that will flash out as soon as I approach it. I want this to be any other application, and I can write it as if it is, but I know I'll rank this one higher than others in my heart. That happens, right, that's typical, right? We all do that?
It hurts like a junior high crush, this potential, this possibility. Silliness! But irresistible! Adrenaline and imagination and superstition all await.
This dialogue contains all of the cautions and all of the sincerities:
(But what if it's a crappy job? What if the service load is hell or something?)
(Life there is worth anything; ANY THING.)
To what voice do I listen?
I will strive for non-attachment on this. If I can non-attach from this, I can non-attach from everything else. Must become a witness for ideas like "the soul's home" and ideas of reward and trial, ideas of any kind of privation like that. Remember: Purusha is fullness, and fullness, plenitude, is NOT location specific.
(flashes of memories to the contrary; argument)
The application is not due until May. I might know more by then. Will I still apply? Hell yes I'll still apply....are you MAD???
I see that I'll be busy with this for a while.
Serpent Power
Yesterday I achieved much in the land of work: tests graded, paper feedback given, online records updated, house maintained, and so forth. Hectic, but productive.
This allowed me to get in a Moon practice (again, Sweeney's Moon sequence) at about 5 in the afternoon before the 7 pm Intro to Intermediate class. I wanted something chill before kicking into the big twists and backbends.
When I got to Intro to Intermediate, I was more chilled out than I wanted (a well-designed practice and a good intention'll do that). This was particularly evident in the breath in sun salutations: I did three to the led class' FIVE. Man, it took for EVER to exhale all the way. Standing poses were fun, all of them; only a waver or two in Utthita Hasta, and the rest were gigantic and easy (we generally do up through the Warriors before we Pasasana).
But as soon as I hit that Pasasana, it wasn't right; physically, the pose was tight, but energetically, and more importantly this time, the emotions that were cracking open were long-held sadness and frustration and depression. The more poses I did, the more of this stuff seemed to bleed out from the hips and lower back.
I've seen that before, in Intermediate: a few times, and for most of February, that sequence both cracks open unhappy emotional "memories" in muscles and fascia, and also provides a super-chill "witness mind," as if I'm being cued both to experience these emotional notes AND to see them from a distance. This, progressively, is becoming MORE important than what pose I do or how well or when or if.
Nonetheless: Pasasana, par for the course, but not feeling great, then a decent Krounchasana, really nice baby backbends, all through Ustrasana, and then a Laghu I couldn't come up from and a messy Kapo; even wall-walking the hands didn't clean it up. The dropback was clean, hands to floor, but after that, breathing got ragged, couldn't get the proprioception going, wanted a photograph or a giant adjustment, some commentary, something. Confusion and puzzlement. Oh well.
I almost face-planted in Bakasana B but stuck it instead. That's uncommon and probably due to being afraid of this sore left wrist, which I'm officially going to lay off of, for the next few days.
The Eka and Dwi Padas were ok; too much pressure on the neck, and I just could NOT put both feet back. Whatever. Is it supposed to be five breaths seated upright, folded forward, and then pressed up? Sweeney's book seems to say, enter the pose, fold forward for five, take a chakorasana exit. Only the fold gets five? That's a serious temptation, to abandon fifteen breaths for about seven :)
I did the Tittibhasana sequence, which again, was off-breath, not centered; it was technically "successful" in that I did it, but it didn't FEEL that way. After that, I was all sparkling, snow-globe energy from shoulders to sacrum, and I just could NOT stick a Pincha Mayurasana in that condition; any energy I tried to send through my back got lost in static and there was no holding myself erect upsidedown.
So I chilled out on the mat while the class ran on around me, and then I did three backbends with a Viparita Dandasana hands-version in the middle (headstand hands) and three wall dropbacks, and closed. Closing REALLY chilled the energy in the back and spine; it was a closing series that definitely increased my appreciation for the whole idea of "closing series."
Class continued while I got rest in, and then while they rested, I sat up, tried some uddiyana bandha breath retentions, but that magic was too powerful for me; I could feel the tension in the throat, chest, and so on. So I did alternate nostril breathing instead, maybe ten rounds and then switched sides. True to its reputation, pranayama stills the mind, chills the monkeys.
Then, as I'd read a chakra meditation a few days back, complete with imagery, I did that: a seven trunked elephant, yellow square, red triangle, serpent power, line of fire, ascending the spine from a spinning mooladhara up to ajna chakra; inhale and ascend the spine, exhale and descend. There were some monkeys in my mind, but I was able to stick the imagery, and I ran with it; I've always had a talent for visualization, and the images were powerful. That fire up the spine, linked to breath and color, and chakra imagery, zowie! That is powerful stuff! Dude, I felt the mula bandha! Energetically, even!
Only when I called an end to that meditation did I realize that I'd sat stock-still in Siddhasana (or as close to classical Siddhasana as I can get) for however long it had been. That was FABULOUS and it took me far, FAR away from questions about "I got the pose, I didn't get the pose."
The radio, when I finally packed back into the car, cued up Big Head Todd and the Monsters, "Broken Hearted Savior." That remains, in a way, the mula bandha song.
This allowed me to get in a Moon practice (again, Sweeney's Moon sequence) at about 5 in the afternoon before the 7 pm Intro to Intermediate class. I wanted something chill before kicking into the big twists and backbends.
When I got to Intro to Intermediate, I was more chilled out than I wanted (a well-designed practice and a good intention'll do that). This was particularly evident in the breath in sun salutations: I did three to the led class' FIVE. Man, it took for EVER to exhale all the way. Standing poses were fun, all of them; only a waver or two in Utthita Hasta, and the rest were gigantic and easy (we generally do up through the Warriors before we Pasasana).
But as soon as I hit that Pasasana, it wasn't right; physically, the pose was tight, but energetically, and more importantly this time, the emotions that were cracking open were long-held sadness and frustration and depression. The more poses I did, the more of this stuff seemed to bleed out from the hips and lower back.
I've seen that before, in Intermediate: a few times, and for most of February, that sequence both cracks open unhappy emotional "memories" in muscles and fascia, and also provides a super-chill "witness mind," as if I'm being cued both to experience these emotional notes AND to see them from a distance. This, progressively, is becoming MORE important than what pose I do or how well or when or if.
Nonetheless: Pasasana, par for the course, but not feeling great, then a decent Krounchasana, really nice baby backbends, all through Ustrasana, and then a Laghu I couldn't come up from and a messy Kapo; even wall-walking the hands didn't clean it up. The dropback was clean, hands to floor, but after that, breathing got ragged, couldn't get the proprioception going, wanted a photograph or a giant adjustment, some commentary, something. Confusion and puzzlement. Oh well.
I almost face-planted in Bakasana B but stuck it instead. That's uncommon and probably due to being afraid of this sore left wrist, which I'm officially going to lay off of, for the next few days.
The Eka and Dwi Padas were ok; too much pressure on the neck, and I just could NOT put both feet back. Whatever. Is it supposed to be five breaths seated upright, folded forward, and then pressed up? Sweeney's book seems to say, enter the pose, fold forward for five, take a chakorasana exit. Only the fold gets five? That's a serious temptation, to abandon fifteen breaths for about seven :)
I did the Tittibhasana sequence, which again, was off-breath, not centered; it was technically "successful" in that I did it, but it didn't FEEL that way. After that, I was all sparkling, snow-globe energy from shoulders to sacrum, and I just could NOT stick a Pincha Mayurasana in that condition; any energy I tried to send through my back got lost in static and there was no holding myself erect upsidedown.
So I chilled out on the mat while the class ran on around me, and then I did three backbends with a Viparita Dandasana hands-version in the middle (headstand hands) and three wall dropbacks, and closed. Closing REALLY chilled the energy in the back and spine; it was a closing series that definitely increased my appreciation for the whole idea of "closing series."
Class continued while I got rest in, and then while they rested, I sat up, tried some uddiyana bandha breath retentions, but that magic was too powerful for me; I could feel the tension in the throat, chest, and so on. So I did alternate nostril breathing instead, maybe ten rounds and then switched sides. True to its reputation, pranayama stills the mind, chills the monkeys.
Then, as I'd read a chakra meditation a few days back, complete with imagery, I did that: a seven trunked elephant, yellow square, red triangle, serpent power, line of fire, ascending the spine from a spinning mooladhara up to ajna chakra; inhale and ascend the spine, exhale and descend. There were some monkeys in my mind, but I was able to stick the imagery, and I ran with it; I've always had a talent for visualization, and the images were powerful. That fire up the spine, linked to breath and color, and chakra imagery, zowie! That is powerful stuff! Dude, I felt the mula bandha! Energetically, even!
Only when I called an end to that meditation did I realize that I'd sat stock-still in Siddhasana (or as close to classical Siddhasana as I can get) for however long it had been. That was FABULOUS and it took me far, FAR away from questions about "I got the pose, I didn't get the pose."
The radio, when I finally packed back into the car, cued up Big Head Todd and the Monsters, "Broken Hearted Savior." That remains, in a way, the mula bandha song.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
And welcome to Yoga Week 2008!
Today, as usual, I drove out 40 minutes to teach five students (that class and the Thursday night one I teach there both seem to have settled into five) at 8:30, taught at 9:30, got in a quick modified Primary and had time for Kurmasana (!) in an hour, which they really seemed to like (and a few can get flat in it!). Then hauling back to downtown for an 11:00 led Primary, which, again, I do Mysore-style and I always manage to get the whole sequence in. Practice notes will follow below.
Sunday, of course, I'm teaching my own Mysore-style class.
Monday is the brilliant return of Intro to Intermediate (and I get to be a student!)
Tuesday is my weekly vinyasa adventure (again as student, yeehaw!)
Wednesday, if students attend, I'll teach the Rocket up north.
Thursday it's back to the spa for teaching a modified Primary.
Friday, I get a home practice day!
Saturday, check it: drive up to the spa early, join one of my students for an early morning dog walk and chitchat and breakfast, then teach a yoga class, then bolt back downtown to do Primary and THEN have light lunch and lead a two-and-a-half hour workshop on arm balances and inversions, my "Anti-Gravity class." That is going to RULE! Eight hours of either driving or yoga, sweet!
Sunday: back to the spa in the early morning for a 2-hour version of my usual class, which means we'll do a big ole close-to-Primary. Then it's turn around, back downtown, teach Mysore-style. That's about four hours of teaching Primary with about an hour's drive.
Did I mention that I also, apparently on the side, teach art history and film studies?
Practice notes: Brilliant! I had to borrow a mat, so I wound up with a slightly cushier, not as sticky blue mat, instead of my 1/8 inch, red, wearing-through Jade Harmony which I love to pieces (and quickly that's turning true). Easy sun salutations, big standing poses, with hand flat on floor in Parsvakonasana and the full expression (not exactly comfortable, but full) of Parivrtta Parsvakonasana. Few worries in the balance of Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana. Great jumps, both back and through, easy, warm, still some foot scraping, but it didn't interfere at all. I'm beginning to jump through, set up the foot for Janu A (or Mari A), and just exhale, fold, right into the pose. The Marichyasanas are still challenging; there is serious hip action in all four and I come out of each with some "feeling it out" breaths.
Navasana is, for me these days, all about uddiyana bandha, which is my favorite bandha anyway: I did five rounds, straight arms, straight legs, exhaled down with feet to floor, inhale up, exhale down, extend, next Navasana. I used to, a year ago, when I was practicing SO much more regularly, come down and NOT let my feet touch.
Bhuja was comfortable; I am STILL not jumping into a wide Titti (I'm going to have to teach myself that post-practice), but I am touching the chin down, which is actually HARDER than hovering. The exit and I are good friends now. Same in the Kurmasanas; no jump in--instead I jump feet outside hands, lean back, feet come up, put butt down, extend, Kurmasana, take five (with heels up!), fold, Supta Kurmasana, hands bind first, ankles cross second, duck head under (or try to), take five, press up, feet fall from above head to around neck, Titti, Bakasana, chaturanga.
Baddha Konasana and I remain friendly: feet to chin in the forward folds, head more regularly touching the floor in the rounded back fold. I am having an easier time with bandhas in the final roll-ups; I look up, straighten my spine, and hold a pose like Ubhaya Padangusthasana, every time now. I still don't do Urdhva Paschimo with straight legs, but that's ok.
A bridge, two wheels, down; then a wheel, a modified Viparita Dandasana position, a final wheel. Five. Three wall-assisted dropbacks; I'm reaching beneath waist height. Closing was easy, proper, bound feet without trouble in Baddha Padmasana, tossed the lotus back with no trouble but can't undo it, so I land in sort of a Simhasana (lion) position and then undo and vinyasa. Brilliant.
Sunday, of course, I'm teaching my own Mysore-style class.
Monday is the brilliant return of Intro to Intermediate (and I get to be a student!)
Tuesday is my weekly vinyasa adventure (again as student, yeehaw!)
Wednesday, if students attend, I'll teach the Rocket up north.
Thursday it's back to the spa for teaching a modified Primary.
Friday, I get a home practice day!
Saturday, check it: drive up to the spa early, join one of my students for an early morning dog walk and chitchat and breakfast, then teach a yoga class, then bolt back downtown to do Primary and THEN have light lunch and lead a two-and-a-half hour workshop on arm balances and inversions, my "Anti-Gravity class." That is going to RULE! Eight hours of either driving or yoga, sweet!
Sunday: back to the spa in the early morning for a 2-hour version of my usual class, which means we'll do a big ole close-to-Primary. Then it's turn around, back downtown, teach Mysore-style. That's about four hours of teaching Primary with about an hour's drive.
Did I mention that I also, apparently on the side, teach art history and film studies?
Practice notes: Brilliant! I had to borrow a mat, so I wound up with a slightly cushier, not as sticky blue mat, instead of my 1/8 inch, red, wearing-through Jade Harmony which I love to pieces (and quickly that's turning true). Easy sun salutations, big standing poses, with hand flat on floor in Parsvakonasana and the full expression (not exactly comfortable, but full) of Parivrtta Parsvakonasana. Few worries in the balance of Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana. Great jumps, both back and through, easy, warm, still some foot scraping, but it didn't interfere at all. I'm beginning to jump through, set up the foot for Janu A (or Mari A), and just exhale, fold, right into the pose. The Marichyasanas are still challenging; there is serious hip action in all four and I come out of each with some "feeling it out" breaths.
Navasana is, for me these days, all about uddiyana bandha, which is my favorite bandha anyway: I did five rounds, straight arms, straight legs, exhaled down with feet to floor, inhale up, exhale down, extend, next Navasana. I used to, a year ago, when I was practicing SO much more regularly, come down and NOT let my feet touch.
Bhuja was comfortable; I am STILL not jumping into a wide Titti (I'm going to have to teach myself that post-practice), but I am touching the chin down, which is actually HARDER than hovering. The exit and I are good friends now. Same in the Kurmasanas; no jump in--instead I jump feet outside hands, lean back, feet come up, put butt down, extend, Kurmasana, take five (with heels up!), fold, Supta Kurmasana, hands bind first, ankles cross second, duck head under (or try to), take five, press up, feet fall from above head to around neck, Titti, Bakasana, chaturanga.
Baddha Konasana and I remain friendly: feet to chin in the forward folds, head more regularly touching the floor in the rounded back fold. I am having an easier time with bandhas in the final roll-ups; I look up, straighten my spine, and hold a pose like Ubhaya Padangusthasana, every time now. I still don't do Urdhva Paschimo with straight legs, but that's ok.
A bridge, two wheels, down; then a wheel, a modified Viparita Dandasana position, a final wheel. Five. Three wall-assisted dropbacks; I'm reaching beneath waist height. Closing was easy, proper, bound feet without trouble in Baddha Padmasana, tossed the lotus back with no trouble but can't undo it, so I land in sort of a Simhasana (lion) position and then undo and vinyasa. Brilliant.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Eclipse (the film)
I am happily ensconced on my couch, with blanket over and polarfleece(tm) on, watching _The Eclipse_, the 1962 art cinema classic (and I mean CLASSIC, people) by Michelangelo Antonioni, who has, very obviously, the COOLEST name in all of cinema.
It's been a good day, a couple days, actually. Yesterday on a job search online I found a listing for a job with ETS, the Educational Testing Service. Those are the people who bring you the SAT and GRE and other lovelies. They are hiring people to review, evaluate and even write tests, and you need a graduate degree. Fabulous!
The major benefit of seeing this has been that I realized that other people, well outside the academy, are interested in intelligence and merciless knowledge of English grammar, both of which I have. This--as I put it to my partner--is like knowing, suddenly, that I can take one foot OUT of the "grave of the job market" and stand firmly on the other, in "real life" or "daily life" or even "the daily grind," whatever you'd like to call it. Hell, even call it "corporate job," that's not far-fetched. But all of it feels fantastic; it eases the sensation of academic job market as bottomless pit. Indianapolis has, in its newspapers, several DOZEN clerical jobs; any of them would have me. I'm committee enough for that.
The faith reinstallment here is that, again, as I've always known, but doubted hard for these months, I WILL NOT BE DESTROYED.
Today I did most of Primary, which is the first time in several days. Sun salutations to Baddha Konasana, which is an odd stopping place. But that pose released or cracked open or otherwise caused or was related to a MASSIVE change in energy, a body-wide jellification, a huge, melting fatigue. I couldn't even really press up into a bridge, after. I know that Baddha K opens the hips, rotates the femurs in the sockets to quite a degree (and I get my face to my feet in both the straight backed and rounded forward bends these days), and so I suspect that it broke into long-held tension, now releasable based on my ETS revelation.
The release was massive; so intense that I gave myself a sort of Reichian massage after, pre-svasana, just shaking, breathing, expanding the relaxation, spreading the fatigue, losing control, rocking the spine in a wave, and then lying out on the floor. It was brilliant, a little spooky, but brilliant. I can better this thing.
it is the first day of spring, and I am well pleased. Sunshine warming the house to a toasty 61. Black and white art cinema and a malty beer. Soon I will teach David Cronenberg and Judy Chicago. I played "Blink" with a student in my class, after today's test. They seem to have mostly done well on it.
If you like Antonioni--or if you don't know his stuff--see _The Adventure_ and _The Night_, which are the other two in this trilogy. The Italian is _L'Avventura_ and _La Notte_. See _Blow-up_ any which way you can. It will rock your world. Look for Jimmy Page onstage with the Yardbirds. See _A Walk in the Clouds_. See _Red Desert_. And then, for commentary, see his marvelous, perceptive interview in Wim Wenders' _Room 666_. All of that Italian art cinema might well lead you to Fellini and Pasolini, which in my case, led me to Godard and Marxism, MUAH-HAH-HAH!!!! We all know how that's played out. Ah, and I forget about Bertolucci. Anyway, go from all that radicalism over to Alain Resnais and then to Marguerite Duras, and get into the American Underground from there, get into Paul Sharits and Michael Snow and Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren and then go on up into camp in the sixties and hit Warhol and the Kuchar brothers and the Cinema of Transgression and wind up with Richard Kern and then put on your copy of Sonic Youth's EVOL and chill out to "Madonna Sean and Me #9" or whatever that song is called. "We're gonna kill...the California girls...."
And they won't hire me. Why? Isn't it obvious that I'm completely insane in the most brilliant way? Don't you want me teaching your students?
It's been a good day, a couple days, actually. Yesterday on a job search online I found a listing for a job with ETS, the Educational Testing Service. Those are the people who bring you the SAT and GRE and other lovelies. They are hiring people to review, evaluate and even write tests, and you need a graduate degree. Fabulous!
The major benefit of seeing this has been that I realized that other people, well outside the academy, are interested in intelligence and merciless knowledge of English grammar, both of which I have. This--as I put it to my partner--is like knowing, suddenly, that I can take one foot OUT of the "grave of the job market" and stand firmly on the other, in "real life" or "daily life" or even "the daily grind," whatever you'd like to call it. Hell, even call it "corporate job," that's not far-fetched. But all of it feels fantastic; it eases the sensation of academic job market as bottomless pit. Indianapolis has, in its newspapers, several DOZEN clerical jobs; any of them would have me. I'm committee enough for that.
The faith reinstallment here is that, again, as I've always known, but doubted hard for these months, I WILL NOT BE DESTROYED.
Today I did most of Primary, which is the first time in several days. Sun salutations to Baddha Konasana, which is an odd stopping place. But that pose released or cracked open or otherwise caused or was related to a MASSIVE change in energy, a body-wide jellification, a huge, melting fatigue. I couldn't even really press up into a bridge, after. I know that Baddha K opens the hips, rotates the femurs in the sockets to quite a degree (and I get my face to my feet in both the straight backed and rounded forward bends these days), and so I suspect that it broke into long-held tension, now releasable based on my ETS revelation.
The release was massive; so intense that I gave myself a sort of Reichian massage after, pre-svasana, just shaking, breathing, expanding the relaxation, spreading the fatigue, losing control, rocking the spine in a wave, and then lying out on the floor. It was brilliant, a little spooky, but brilliant. I can better this thing.
it is the first day of spring, and I am well pleased. Sunshine warming the house to a toasty 61. Black and white art cinema and a malty beer. Soon I will teach David Cronenberg and Judy Chicago. I played "Blink" with a student in my class, after today's test. They seem to have mostly done well on it.
If you like Antonioni--or if you don't know his stuff--see _The Adventure_ and _The Night_, which are the other two in this trilogy. The Italian is _L'Avventura_ and _La Notte_. See _Blow-up_ any which way you can. It will rock your world. Look for Jimmy Page onstage with the Yardbirds. See _A Walk in the Clouds_. See _Red Desert_. And then, for commentary, see his marvelous, perceptive interview in Wim Wenders' _Room 666_. All of that Italian art cinema might well lead you to Fellini and Pasolini, which in my case, led me to Godard and Marxism, MUAH-HAH-HAH!!!! We all know how that's played out. Ah, and I forget about Bertolucci. Anyway, go from all that radicalism over to Alain Resnais and then to Marguerite Duras, and get into the American Underground from there, get into Paul Sharits and Michael Snow and Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren and then go on up into camp in the sixties and hit Warhol and the Kuchar brothers and the Cinema of Transgression and wind up with Richard Kern and then put on your copy of Sonic Youth's EVOL and chill out to "Madonna Sean and Me #9" or whatever that song is called. "We're gonna kill...the California girls...."
And they won't hire me. Why? Isn't it obvious that I'm completely insane in the most brilliant way? Don't you want me teaching your students?
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Anna's meme
1. What is your occupation?
I have an occupation? One-year fellowship teaching art history. I also teach yoga, but that essentially pays my gas for the insane travelling I have to do, to do it.
2. What color are your socks right now?
Blue-gray; big, wooly and warm.
3. What are you listening to right now?
A killer, and I mean really FABULOUS, Phil Lesh and Friends show that Cody hooked me up with. If you know what Help-Slip-Eyes is, you understand.
4. What was the last thing that you ate?
I went old school: PBnJ.
5. Can you drive a stick shift?
Really, really badly.
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?
Indeed, same as Anna: Blue.
7. Last person you spoke to on the phone?
My mom.
8. What's your favorite yoga pose?
Ever a hard call: Dhanurasana? Garbha Pindasana? Tittibhasana?
9. How old are you today?
37, but closer to 38 all the time.
10. Favorite drink?
Alcoholic? Gin and tonic. Non? Water, probably, it's always reliable.
11. What is your favorite sport to watch?
I watch sports? Do yoga videos from YouTube count?
12. Have you ever dyed your hair? If so what color?
Nope, but I used to live with a woman with blue hair.
13. Pets?
Two cats: the Ferox (for his once-feral status) and Raku (who looks like pottery).
14. Favorite cake?
Chocolate of any sort.
15. Last movie you saw?
Travellers and Magicians (check it, yo).
16. Favorite day of the year?
May 3 (really any day of May will do, but that one's "mine" if you get me).
17. What do you do to vent anger?
If I can, I climb. If not, I often talk to myself, set up dialogues, break it down. It depends on exactly what I'm angry about.
18. What was your favorite toy as a child?
Probably all the Star Wars gear we had (I was 7 in 1977).
19. What is your favorite, fall or spring?
Spring, by ten thousand miles, are you kidding me?
20. Hugs or kisses?
Both rule.
21. Cherry or Blueberry?
Blueberry by two miles, are you kidding me?
22. Do you want your friends to respond?
Whatever.
23. Who is most likely to respond?
Of my scattershot readership? Are you kidding me?
24. Who is least likely to respond?
For the other side of this coin, please see #23.
25. Living arrangements?
House in Indianapolis.
26. When was the last time you cried?
Sometime in 2004, maybe? Divorce trauma was good for that. Dissertation and job search trauma really aren't good for that; too much cognition.
27. What is on the floor of your closet?
Shoes and some old box of something or other that apparently I don't check into much.
28. Who is the friend you have had the longest?
I don't know; people move, I keep scattershot touch, people cycle through...
30. Favorite smell?
Baking bread; cut grass (yes, both cheezy, but really, hard to beat). Ginger. Just the right, subtle, hint of patchouli (not the too-much overdone way everyone does it).
31. What/who inspires you?
My long list of heroes (see prior posts for some idea of the membership).
32. What are you afraid of?
I'm not too terribly keen on spiders. Gigantic debt is also pretty spooky.
33. Hamburgers?
Sometimes buffalo, but always, and I mean ALWAYS, if they're veggie/black bean/etc.
34. Favorite car?
Meh, whatever: my Saturn rules the earth, but cars? Whatever.
36. Number of keys on your key ring?
A bunch, too many to easily count. Old office keys, car key, a few keys I can't recall any use for. A big old hunk of metal that clinks together interestingly.
37. How many years at your current job?
I have a job? If you count teaching, generally, of any kind, 10 years.
38. Favorite day of the week?
Monday for yoga; Friday for the workweek.
39. How many states have you lived in?
MA, CT, IN. But I've visited something like 37 out of 50. Wait, does the month I lived in CA for teacher training count?
40. What’s your dream job?
Hell if I know. Witch doctor.
I have an occupation? One-year fellowship teaching art history. I also teach yoga, but that essentially pays my gas for the insane travelling I have to do, to do it.
2. What color are your socks right now?
Blue-gray; big, wooly and warm.
3. What are you listening to right now?
A killer, and I mean really FABULOUS, Phil Lesh and Friends show that Cody hooked me up with. If you know what Help-Slip-Eyes is, you understand.
4. What was the last thing that you ate?
I went old school: PBnJ.
5. Can you drive a stick shift?
Really, really badly.
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?
Indeed, same as Anna: Blue.
7. Last person you spoke to on the phone?
My mom.
8. What's your favorite yoga pose?
Ever a hard call: Dhanurasana? Garbha Pindasana? Tittibhasana?
9. How old are you today?
37, but closer to 38 all the time.
10. Favorite drink?
Alcoholic? Gin and tonic. Non? Water, probably, it's always reliable.
11. What is your favorite sport to watch?
I watch sports? Do yoga videos from YouTube count?
12. Have you ever dyed your hair? If so what color?
Nope, but I used to live with a woman with blue hair.
13. Pets?
Two cats: the Ferox (for his once-feral status) and Raku (who looks like pottery).
14. Favorite cake?
Chocolate of any sort.
15. Last movie you saw?
Travellers and Magicians (check it, yo).
16. Favorite day of the year?
May 3 (really any day of May will do, but that one's "mine" if you get me).
17. What do you do to vent anger?
If I can, I climb. If not, I often talk to myself, set up dialogues, break it down. It depends on exactly what I'm angry about.
18. What was your favorite toy as a child?
Probably all the Star Wars gear we had (I was 7 in 1977).
19. What is your favorite, fall or spring?
Spring, by ten thousand miles, are you kidding me?
20. Hugs or kisses?
Both rule.
21. Cherry or Blueberry?
Blueberry by two miles, are you kidding me?
22. Do you want your friends to respond?
Whatever.
23. Who is most likely to respond?
Of my scattershot readership? Are you kidding me?
24. Who is least likely to respond?
For the other side of this coin, please see #23.
25. Living arrangements?
House in Indianapolis.
26. When was the last time you cried?
Sometime in 2004, maybe? Divorce trauma was good for that. Dissertation and job search trauma really aren't good for that; too much cognition.
27. What is on the floor of your closet?
Shoes and some old box of something or other that apparently I don't check into much.
28. Who is the friend you have had the longest?
I don't know; people move, I keep scattershot touch, people cycle through...
30. Favorite smell?
Baking bread; cut grass (yes, both cheezy, but really, hard to beat). Ginger. Just the right, subtle, hint of patchouli (not the too-much overdone way everyone does it).
31. What/who inspires you?
My long list of heroes (see prior posts for some idea of the membership).
32. What are you afraid of?
I'm not too terribly keen on spiders. Gigantic debt is also pretty spooky.
33. Hamburgers?
Sometimes buffalo, but always, and I mean ALWAYS, if they're veggie/black bean/etc.
34. Favorite car?
Meh, whatever: my Saturn rules the earth, but cars? Whatever.
36. Number of keys on your key ring?
A bunch, too many to easily count. Old office keys, car key, a few keys I can't recall any use for. A big old hunk of metal that clinks together interestingly.
37. How many years at your current job?
I have a job? If you count teaching, generally, of any kind, 10 years.
38. Favorite day of the week?
Monday for yoga; Friday for the workweek.
39. How many states have you lived in?
MA, CT, IN. But I've visited something like 37 out of 50. Wait, does the month I lived in CA for teacher training count?
40. What’s your dream job?
Hell if I know. Witch doctor.
Back to the yoga.
Monday night, I was subbing for my teacher, who usually leads about a half-Intermediate. When I sub there, I lead Primary, because aside from that one opportunity, there is, now get this, NO led Primary in the city, not anywhere. How is that possible in any town that claims to have yoga in it? NO led Primary? So I do what I can, to remedy this.
This past Monday there were some serious mixed levels coming in, and by the time I got to class, I had a student from NY who knew her Ashtanga, a student I'd taught before in other classes where I'd subbed, and I knew she'd never had a full Primary, and a couple regular Ashtanga folks who had had exposure but had various levels of memorization and self-knowledge re: the series, and for whom I'd be showing various and different modifications. And then the regulars, the people who really have it down, even if they don't know that, began to come in. Eight students in all (that's, as I've said before, a BIG class for Indianapolis yoga).
So I ran the class Mysore-style. I had my cheat-sheets with me (people like those, and it increases my attendance, to be honest), and told folks what the rules were, and then variously taught, adjusted and, you know, ran it. It was fantastic. We also got out in 90 minutes, whereas I can just NOT get my led Primaries to run anything under two hours.
Tuesday night I hit the same vinyasa class that I like, and I was in need of some serious hip decompression, so during standing flows, I'd break out a camel or a bow pose, and I'm realizing more and more that it's cool if I do whatever, in that class; all digressions welcome. So during the extended play with Bakasana, I jumped into it (second try) and then decided I'd see how the tripod headstand arm balances REALLY feel. I kipped up into a tripod (didn't jump in, as I hear you do in third series) and then lowered into an Eka Pada Bakasana on the one side, stuck it, but just could NOT hold the core power to set up the tripod again. I did get my head down with control, but couldn't lever the legs up and keep anything like peaceful breathing.
So I took a few breaths rest, kipped into tripod, lowered down into the pose on the second side. Instantly, intense burning made its appearance in the shoulder cap, the tricep, also into the outer pec and even the bicep. I came up with the "unarmed" leg bent, but was able to stick the balance and extend. That pose is SICK!!! But it's also fun as hell. I can't imagine (yet) doing seven arm balances in that fashion; steady strength (sthira bhaga) indeed!
You folks doing third out there already know this, but you are hard CORE.
I wanted to know what the total, holistic experience of such a pose would be: what's the breathing, the energy, the physical effort like? What is the TOTAL experience? If you like, what are the various body sheaths doing? The energy payoff is the biggest rush; that's always been true for me and arm balances. The physical effort is remarkable. To breathe peacefully into that, to simply "inhale, exhale the shape," if you will, would be pretty sweet.
This summer will be the summer of the dropback. Summer 2006 was the summer of Kurmasana; I got that pose done that summer. Summer 2007 was the summer of the Rocket, just post-teacher-training. Handstands, arm balances, overuse injuries. Summer 2008 will be the summer of the standing dropback and up. Saturday I was in the climbing gym setting a mid-five-ten for this competition they're doing, and I took a few dropbacks against the wall to get the ab-clenching out of my front body. The cool thing about dropping back on a climbing wall is that there are holds to measure your distance. You can say, "hey, I dropped back to the little yellow crimper!" and then you can actually measure how high up the wall said hold is, to know where, approximately, your dropback is.
I urged my front body to hold me upright and long, and worked on lowering the hands. By about the seventh dropback and spring-up, I was dropping about knee-high. Both hands back at once, extended all the way (no prayer hands, not even at start), touch the wall at the same time, bend elbows, spring up on an inhale. I should drop back without a wall, but I just wasn't in the mood that day. Soon. Thus, my predictions for the summer.
The yoga is good. Monday this coming week, Intro to Intermediate. Y'all know I love that stuff. Then the weekend of the 29th and 30th is workshop central; arm balances and inversions on Saturday, and a 2-hour version of my modified Primary out in Brownsburg on Sunday, followed by teaching my Mysore-style gig downtown. Probably, in teaching, I'll do seven or eight hours that weekend alone.
This past Monday there were some serious mixed levels coming in, and by the time I got to class, I had a student from NY who knew her Ashtanga, a student I'd taught before in other classes where I'd subbed, and I knew she'd never had a full Primary, and a couple regular Ashtanga folks who had had exposure but had various levels of memorization and self-knowledge re: the series, and for whom I'd be showing various and different modifications. And then the regulars, the people who really have it down, even if they don't know that, began to come in. Eight students in all (that's, as I've said before, a BIG class for Indianapolis yoga).
So I ran the class Mysore-style. I had my cheat-sheets with me (people like those, and it increases my attendance, to be honest), and told folks what the rules were, and then variously taught, adjusted and, you know, ran it. It was fantastic. We also got out in 90 minutes, whereas I can just NOT get my led Primaries to run anything under two hours.
Tuesday night I hit the same vinyasa class that I like, and I was in need of some serious hip decompression, so during standing flows, I'd break out a camel or a bow pose, and I'm realizing more and more that it's cool if I do whatever, in that class; all digressions welcome. So during the extended play with Bakasana, I jumped into it (second try) and then decided I'd see how the tripod headstand arm balances REALLY feel. I kipped up into a tripod (didn't jump in, as I hear you do in third series) and then lowered into an Eka Pada Bakasana on the one side, stuck it, but just could NOT hold the core power to set up the tripod again. I did get my head down with control, but couldn't lever the legs up and keep anything like peaceful breathing.
So I took a few breaths rest, kipped into tripod, lowered down into the pose on the second side. Instantly, intense burning made its appearance in the shoulder cap, the tricep, also into the outer pec and even the bicep. I came up with the "unarmed" leg bent, but was able to stick the balance and extend. That pose is SICK!!! But it's also fun as hell. I can't imagine (yet) doing seven arm balances in that fashion; steady strength (sthira bhaga) indeed!
You folks doing third out there already know this, but you are hard CORE.
I wanted to know what the total, holistic experience of such a pose would be: what's the breathing, the energy, the physical effort like? What is the TOTAL experience? If you like, what are the various body sheaths doing? The energy payoff is the biggest rush; that's always been true for me and arm balances. The physical effort is remarkable. To breathe peacefully into that, to simply "inhale, exhale the shape," if you will, would be pretty sweet.
This summer will be the summer of the dropback. Summer 2006 was the summer of Kurmasana; I got that pose done that summer. Summer 2007 was the summer of the Rocket, just post-teacher-training. Handstands, arm balances, overuse injuries. Summer 2008 will be the summer of the standing dropback and up. Saturday I was in the climbing gym setting a mid-five-ten for this competition they're doing, and I took a few dropbacks against the wall to get the ab-clenching out of my front body. The cool thing about dropping back on a climbing wall is that there are holds to measure your distance. You can say, "hey, I dropped back to the little yellow crimper!" and then you can actually measure how high up the wall said hold is, to know where, approximately, your dropback is.
I urged my front body to hold me upright and long, and worked on lowering the hands. By about the seventh dropback and spring-up, I was dropping about knee-high. Both hands back at once, extended all the way (no prayer hands, not even at start), touch the wall at the same time, bend elbows, spring up on an inhale. I should drop back without a wall, but I just wasn't in the mood that day. Soon. Thus, my predictions for the summer.
The yoga is good. Monday this coming week, Intro to Intermediate. Y'all know I love that stuff. Then the weekend of the 29th and 30th is workshop central; arm balances and inversions on Saturday, and a 2-hour version of my modified Primary out in Brownsburg on Sunday, followed by teaching my Mysore-style gig downtown. Probably, in teaching, I'll do seven or eight hours that weekend alone.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
New space is on the way.
I used to have cyclical feelings that change would occur, in October. Every October, through the early nineties, something new and bizarre occurred and my psycho-emotional living space changed.
If you undertake intoxication with this kind of mindset, you can set up intoxication as a ritual experience--maybe creep out of western civ for a peek at how the Aztecs used to really like their hot chocolate, or how (or better, WHY) the Mayans built these massive, intricately-textured buildings with NO ACCESS FOR LIGHT, but with much sonic intricacy. Sound echoes and the fingers and feet are delighted, but the eyes are denied. Hmmm....
New space is on the way; I can tell, I can sense it. I'm not sure if it's better, different or superior or if it will better or worse equip me for, well, whatever, but I feel a transition. This probably has nothing to do with job searching; it's always about my own psycho-emotional balance or unbalance rather than any prescience about what is going on outside me (except, perhaps, in terms of weather or lunar cycles or something along those lines).
There's always a sense of disorientation, of being far away from everything familiar, which cues this. Blogs which are often friendly, seem alien somehow. I start seeing light on people and cars instead of being "in the action" of the conversation or the drive or whatever it is. Action decreases, something that's not quite as passive-sounding as "contemplation" increases. It's heightened perception, it's sensual, it's not an inward-looking meditation. It's still expressive, in how it emerges, but it seems also to COME FROM WITHIN. The direction is wrong, for it to be contemplation. But it feels contemplative, has the distance, has the quiet of it. It's very strange but I've learned to run with it. Like a gut instinct that you feel for three days rather than three seconds.
I'll still be "me" in ego terms, probably, and I doubt that my external circumstances will alter at all, but new space will be welcome; it's almost always a good thing, or at least good for the curiosity. Perhaps it's a skin-shedding from winter to spring.
If you undertake intoxication with this kind of mindset, you can set up intoxication as a ritual experience--maybe creep out of western civ for a peek at how the Aztecs used to really like their hot chocolate, or how (or better, WHY) the Mayans built these massive, intricately-textured buildings with NO ACCESS FOR LIGHT, but with much sonic intricacy. Sound echoes and the fingers and feet are delighted, but the eyes are denied. Hmmm....
New space is on the way; I can tell, I can sense it. I'm not sure if it's better, different or superior or if it will better or worse equip me for, well, whatever, but I feel a transition. This probably has nothing to do with job searching; it's always about my own psycho-emotional balance or unbalance rather than any prescience about what is going on outside me (except, perhaps, in terms of weather or lunar cycles or something along those lines).
There's always a sense of disorientation, of being far away from everything familiar, which cues this. Blogs which are often friendly, seem alien somehow. I start seeing light on people and cars instead of being "in the action" of the conversation or the drive or whatever it is. Action decreases, something that's not quite as passive-sounding as "contemplation" increases. It's heightened perception, it's sensual, it's not an inward-looking meditation. It's still expressive, in how it emerges, but it seems also to COME FROM WITHIN. The direction is wrong, for it to be contemplation. But it feels contemplative, has the distance, has the quiet of it. It's very strange but I've learned to run with it. Like a gut instinct that you feel for three days rather than three seconds.
I'll still be "me" in ego terms, probably, and I doubt that my external circumstances will alter at all, but new space will be welcome; it's almost always a good thing, or at least good for the curiosity. Perhaps it's a skin-shedding from winter to spring.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Would it have been easier? (parlor game)
Would it have been easier to not have such a spiritual drive? To not be so select to the point of neurosis in my choice of people to whom I get close? To have been more consonant with certain cultural imperatives? Would it? Really?
1) I might well have more income than I do now, and less debt. MIGHT.
2) I might not be less actually ignorant, but I would very likely be less AWARE of how ignorant I've been in the past.
3) I would lead with my quest, less than I do now.
4) I would probably have, and have had, more company of less select character.
5) I might well have more fear, but a more acceptable, normalized SET of fears.
6) I might never have left that relationship.
7) I might not have survived years of bad behavior in my youth.
Only numbers one and, in a half-assed way, two, are really positives. Four sounds like it would have been a positive, but it comes with things like six, which are definitely not worth it.
What are the major benefits of the value system by which I have lived?
1) Aggressive, proud, willfully defiant separation from certain cultural mores.
2) De-emphasis of all forms of property; ease in leaving it all behind.
3) Put more broadly, a welcoming of death which America more largely does not encourage in its citizens.
4) Shamelessly clear access to the inner quest and stoking of its flames.
5) Exterior manifestations of same inner quest.
What are the major drawbacks?
1) Indebtedness, which does not actually come from the inner quest, but from fear of manifesting the inner quest.
2) Lack of membership in virtually all hegemonic groupings, particularly those based in gender, age and certain assumed social privileges.
3) Almost all of the rest are a rephrase of 2).
So:
the major benefits are acceptance of physical transience, the ability to be aware of this and to pursue it, and clarity about actual priorities.
the major drawbacks are the seemingly uncrossable chasm between my inner priorities and those of my external culture, and long-term, painful, deeply agonizing loneliness.
Nietzsche would have wished the latter drawback upon me. He did, in fact, even if he didn't know he was speaking explicitly to me. In fact, he would have wished them BOTH upon me.
Who would, for the sake of human company, wish themselves greater interior BLINDNESS? This does not sell, no matter how appealing it is, or WOULD HAVE BEEN.
I stand off again, and prouder. Lack pours off of me like rain, like it always has. Lack of America, lack of community, lack of belonging, lack of communicable experience, lack of membership in all of the great national granfalloons.
I am harder than this suffering. I am stone, I am the Ice Age, I move mountains. I step off even FURTHER from these comforts, these illusions and "might have beens" and wishes of old men for forgotten, impossible youth.
The hell with belonging, with community, with ease and comfort! Be damned! The depressive slope to a fear-soaked comfort! Resentment, anxiousness and clinging! What possible ease can a half-remembered transitory uncoverable granfalloon provide when the famous thief in the night comes to the window? None!
(but some people can have them both, can have that AND this)
I know of no such people. Or, put perhaps a truer way, I am not of that tribe. Certain lacks are accorded me; always have been. There are certain badges of achievement I shall simply never wear. Show me these achievers at their transition, and let me see the comfort their conquests have brought them.
1) I might well have more income than I do now, and less debt. MIGHT.
2) I might not be less actually ignorant, but I would very likely be less AWARE of how ignorant I've been in the past.
3) I would lead with my quest, less than I do now.
4) I would probably have, and have had, more company of less select character.
5) I might well have more fear, but a more acceptable, normalized SET of fears.
6) I might never have left that relationship.
7) I might not have survived years of bad behavior in my youth.
Only numbers one and, in a half-assed way, two, are really positives. Four sounds like it would have been a positive, but it comes with things like six, which are definitely not worth it.
What are the major benefits of the value system by which I have lived?
1) Aggressive, proud, willfully defiant separation from certain cultural mores.
2) De-emphasis of all forms of property; ease in leaving it all behind.
3) Put more broadly, a welcoming of death which America more largely does not encourage in its citizens.
4) Shamelessly clear access to the inner quest and stoking of its flames.
5) Exterior manifestations of same inner quest.
What are the major drawbacks?
1) Indebtedness, which does not actually come from the inner quest, but from fear of manifesting the inner quest.
2) Lack of membership in virtually all hegemonic groupings, particularly those based in gender, age and certain assumed social privileges.
3) Almost all of the rest are a rephrase of 2).
So:
the major benefits are acceptance of physical transience, the ability to be aware of this and to pursue it, and clarity about actual priorities.
the major drawbacks are the seemingly uncrossable chasm between my inner priorities and those of my external culture, and long-term, painful, deeply agonizing loneliness.
Nietzsche would have wished the latter drawback upon me. He did, in fact, even if he didn't know he was speaking explicitly to me. In fact, he would have wished them BOTH upon me.
Who would, for the sake of human company, wish themselves greater interior BLINDNESS? This does not sell, no matter how appealing it is, or WOULD HAVE BEEN.
I stand off again, and prouder. Lack pours off of me like rain, like it always has. Lack of America, lack of community, lack of belonging, lack of communicable experience, lack of membership in all of the great national granfalloons.
I am harder than this suffering. I am stone, I am the Ice Age, I move mountains. I step off even FURTHER from these comforts, these illusions and "might have beens" and wishes of old men for forgotten, impossible youth.
The hell with belonging, with community, with ease and comfort! Be damned! The depressive slope to a fear-soaked comfort! Resentment, anxiousness and clinging! What possible ease can a half-remembered transitory uncoverable granfalloon provide when the famous thief in the night comes to the window? None!
(but some people can have them both, can have that AND this)
I know of no such people. Or, put perhaps a truer way, I am not of that tribe. Certain lacks are accorded me; always have been. There are certain badges of achievement I shall simply never wear. Show me these achievers at their transition, and let me see the comfort their conquests have brought them.
And on St. Patrick's Day, you may find me...
Seated here at 4 in the afternoon debating whether or not to organize the slides for tomorrow's Intro to Contemporary Art test, with a Primary to lead in three hours.
Exciting stuff, eh?
I've never really made much of any holidays since college; my family adores holidays and, if they're able, they make a big production of many of them (New Year's Day a notable exception for whatever reason).
Today marked the return to school after spring break (I spent much of spring break seated right here, having debates with myself, just like this one). This came with what should have been a totally predictable psoas freakout from stress and angst; intense clenching and pain in the low belly and the lower back (hmmm, what muscle might THAT be?). Sun salutation B has been impossible. So be it.
Most of this comes from the video class which meets on Mondays and for which, even on good days, I am never totally prepared. I've just barely learned what I teach in there, and it always feels like a knife edge, all class long, and then it's over, and I do it all again the next Monday.
We are about to engage multicultural art and postmodernism, in the Contemporary class, and I'll just be polite and say that those aren't exactly my favorite things in art.
So school, in April, won't be much more fun than it was in, say January. Whatever.
The job sit remains a job sit; I have figured out recently that in a way, I feel that the November wave of applications is "over," even though I've not heard from at least a dozen schools to which I sent applications in November. What's that about?
It's not a matter of not feeling worthy; I'm just not in the mood to get calls, go on campus visits, play the whole pretty game. Somwhere between February and now, the show got boring and I walked away from it. Sure, I sent out a couple more applications and I will continue to, but a fairly stout case of "eh, whatever, fuck this bullshit" is setting in.
I was busy this morning hating the academy with great heat and eagerness, but now that that class I despise teaching is done, the hate mellows out into a cynical indifference. I don't have positive emotions about the academy anymore. I notice that I still, sometimes, draw up spontaneous syllabi, but those are for people who want to learn things, not for committees and paperwork files.
I feel like everything is boring right now. But spring begins in three days. A year ago I was regularly nailing Garbha Pindasana at about 6:30 am, newly freed from dissertation (the publication date of which was March 30, 2007).
This year it's all pointless, grey anti-agency; nothing exists. But I do not despair, because the old adage is true: if you despair, the gods will give you something to REALLY despair about. So I maintain some smouldering anger in order to protect myself from the incessant numbing poison that this job search is.
Thanks, America; thanks, Academy; thanks for everything.
Exciting stuff, eh?
I've never really made much of any holidays since college; my family adores holidays and, if they're able, they make a big production of many of them (New Year's Day a notable exception for whatever reason).
Today marked the return to school after spring break (I spent much of spring break seated right here, having debates with myself, just like this one). This came with what should have been a totally predictable psoas freakout from stress and angst; intense clenching and pain in the low belly and the lower back (hmmm, what muscle might THAT be?). Sun salutation B has been impossible. So be it.
Most of this comes from the video class which meets on Mondays and for which, even on good days, I am never totally prepared. I've just barely learned what I teach in there, and it always feels like a knife edge, all class long, and then it's over, and I do it all again the next Monday.
We are about to engage multicultural art and postmodernism, in the Contemporary class, and I'll just be polite and say that those aren't exactly my favorite things in art.
So school, in April, won't be much more fun than it was in, say January. Whatever.
The job sit remains a job sit; I have figured out recently that in a way, I feel that the November wave of applications is "over," even though I've not heard from at least a dozen schools to which I sent applications in November. What's that about?
It's not a matter of not feeling worthy; I'm just not in the mood to get calls, go on campus visits, play the whole pretty game. Somwhere between February and now, the show got boring and I walked away from it. Sure, I sent out a couple more applications and I will continue to, but a fairly stout case of "eh, whatever, fuck this bullshit" is setting in.
I was busy this morning hating the academy with great heat and eagerness, but now that that class I despise teaching is done, the hate mellows out into a cynical indifference. I don't have positive emotions about the academy anymore. I notice that I still, sometimes, draw up spontaneous syllabi, but those are for people who want to learn things, not for committees and paperwork files.
I feel like everything is boring right now. But spring begins in three days. A year ago I was regularly nailing Garbha Pindasana at about 6:30 am, newly freed from dissertation (the publication date of which was March 30, 2007).
This year it's all pointless, grey anti-agency; nothing exists. But I do not despair, because the old adage is true: if you despair, the gods will give you something to REALLY despair about. So I maintain some smouldering anger in order to protect myself from the incessant numbing poison that this job search is.
Thanks, America; thanks, Academy; thanks for everything.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Old school!
For some reason I got up at 5:25. I don't, usually, do early morning practice in what you might call the "old school" mode as I did a year ago at this time. Mostly, if I get up early like that now, it's to panic about school stuff or work stuff or future stuff or money stuff; early morning is not fun time these days.
But today I was up early and made coffee and thought, "you know, you could do some yoga before you search libraries online and try to figure out the day's teaching, drive to Bloomington, article feedback, and perhaps some climbing." So I rolled out the mat in the utter dark, like last year, and was able to scrap together Prana shorts and tie-dye, and had at it, at 59 degrees. Sun salutations were really lovely; I was definitely interested in more than 10. Triangle was friendly; even revolved. Revolved twists were downright HARD. Not painful, not unpleasant, even, just restricted, balance-challenging, tough.
Prasaritas were fine, head to floor in all four (uncommon for a 6 am practice). But Utthita Hasta was a total mess, and as I fell out of the side version of it on both sides, I realized that I was also way too cold; the inner heat wasn't cutting the fifty-nine degree room temperature, so I laid out under a terrycloth robe and was soon covered with both cats.
It was a decent little practice, and parts of it were really pleasant, but there was some cracking open of "depression nodes" in my outer hips (that's, again, where I keep all of that stuff), and this has given me a chance to realize that these emotions really are physical things; I'm fairly certain that my outer hips are a reservoir of depression and fear and anger about job business and that this is why my twists are restricted this year. Must be careful cracking that open.
It's really emotionally savage, this job market thing. It's quite a task.
But today I was up early and made coffee and thought, "you know, you could do some yoga before you search libraries online and try to figure out the day's teaching, drive to Bloomington, article feedback, and perhaps some climbing." So I rolled out the mat in the utter dark, like last year, and was able to scrap together Prana shorts and tie-dye, and had at it, at 59 degrees. Sun salutations were really lovely; I was definitely interested in more than 10. Triangle was friendly; even revolved. Revolved twists were downright HARD. Not painful, not unpleasant, even, just restricted, balance-challenging, tough.
Prasaritas were fine, head to floor in all four (uncommon for a 6 am practice). But Utthita Hasta was a total mess, and as I fell out of the side version of it on both sides, I realized that I was also way too cold; the inner heat wasn't cutting the fifty-nine degree room temperature, so I laid out under a terrycloth robe and was soon covered with both cats.
It was a decent little practice, and parts of it were really pleasant, but there was some cracking open of "depression nodes" in my outer hips (that's, again, where I keep all of that stuff), and this has given me a chance to realize that these emotions really are physical things; I'm fairly certain that my outer hips are a reservoir of depression and fear and anger about job business and that this is why my twists are restricted this year. Must be careful cracking that open.
It's really emotionally savage, this job market thing. It's quite a task.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Catch-up.
Much like having a streak of off days, once I feel ready to write again, most of the obstacles and events escape me. In some ways, reading a blog like this one must be something like being a character in _Memento_. "Ok, where am I? Oh, I'm doing Primary" or something like that.
Tuesday saw me head to Bloomington for a day off in the sun; it's spring break right now, after all. I went to set some stuff in the climbing gym, but they are preparing for a competition in there, so I received the task, "Set a five-nine for everyone; no reaches, even four year olds need to climb this." That means, approximately one hold every six inches. The walls in that place are 34 feet high. I spent two hours at it, and I think I did OK. Competition routes are hard, because they need to suit young people, often, who aren't necessarily as reachy as bigger people, and so the setter needs to select HOLDS which are "rating-suitable" and not necessarily rely on technical movement, assumptions about reach or core power. That is a BIG challenge in setting, even if you're setting mid five-eleven or higher.
Anyway, I did it. Then I went over to Wendy's place and did a full Primary, including even the poses which regularly get skipped over there (often Janu C, Mari D, Garbha Pindasana). The room was heated to about 80, which is DECADENCE when you practice at 59 in sweats at home. I had big fluid EVERYTHING, including backbends, which I desperately needed. Also, I dropped off some anti-gravity flyers for my end-of-month workshop, and hopefully some arm-balance junkies down there will come on up. It was good times; I learned Ashtanga down there in those two rooms, and people still know me (there's a photo or two of me on Wendy's page).
Wednesday I continued the cut-and-paste festival of working on my article about New Queer Cinema, and then taught my Rocket class, which is still getting small but steady attendance (and I mean small: two students, often). I've laid off handstands for the most part, to heal the left wrist, but I had to have just ONE during class, as a model, and I went up crooked, wobbled some, but steered with my hands and didn't touch the wall! It ruled! Came down legs straight, not really controlled, a little ballistic, but landed softly and continued teaching. Rawk!
Thursday I spent all morning and afternoon, here and in a local coffeehouse, working on the article, cursing it with some enthusiasm (it's a reduction of a diss chapter, which is a bit like boiling down a boulder into a ring-sized stone). I really wanted to practice, but returned from said coffeehouse with a sore lumbar spine and a grumpy mood, only to be greeted by my copy of Sweeney's book Astanga Yoga As It Is (which you can order from here), and in a few pages of leafing through that, on breathing, on bandhas, on vinyasa, on splitting, I was totally taken, paper forgotten about, and I rolled out the mat and had a big, bandhas-intensive sun salutations-to-standing-and-first-two-poses-of-seated half Primary, and then did backbends, which were suprisingly pleasant, a few springy wall-dropbacks, and closing. It was powerhouse! I couldn't hold the upward headstand for more than 3 breaths, but that was fine. I got up off the floor, had some food and dashed to my class over on the westside; five students and still only two signed up for the 2-hour version of my regular yoga class, to be done at the end of the month. That was depressing, but I wasn't in the mood, so I didn't depress.
I came back at about 8, got my work act together, and finished the article preparation in three hours. Went to bed at midnight, and here we are on Friday.
This week has included some family drama as well: my father fell and broke his arm on Monday, and this has meant surgery and a metal rod, all of which was done last night. I didn't know, for a while, whether I was going to fly out there or not (the question which came with money angst and such) but all seems to be going well, so I didn't go. Discussions about my parents' continued living in their house or thinking about "home help" and such are on the horizon, because this is the beginning of the "careful don't fall, you could break a hip" days. By the end of 2008 they'll both have just entered their seventies, and the future seems to be calling with a bit more urgency than it was in their sixties. This will be one of the new things that develops.
The job market, of course, remains silent as a stone. There are days I forget to worry about it, it's so quiet.
Tuesday saw me head to Bloomington for a day off in the sun; it's spring break right now, after all. I went to set some stuff in the climbing gym, but they are preparing for a competition in there, so I received the task, "Set a five-nine for everyone; no reaches, even four year olds need to climb this." That means, approximately one hold every six inches. The walls in that place are 34 feet high. I spent two hours at it, and I think I did OK. Competition routes are hard, because they need to suit young people, often, who aren't necessarily as reachy as bigger people, and so the setter needs to select HOLDS which are "rating-suitable" and not necessarily rely on technical movement, assumptions about reach or core power. That is a BIG challenge in setting, even if you're setting mid five-eleven or higher.
Anyway, I did it. Then I went over to Wendy's place and did a full Primary, including even the poses which regularly get skipped over there (often Janu C, Mari D, Garbha Pindasana). The room was heated to about 80, which is DECADENCE when you practice at 59 in sweats at home. I had big fluid EVERYTHING, including backbends, which I desperately needed. Also, I dropped off some anti-gravity flyers for my end-of-month workshop, and hopefully some arm-balance junkies down there will come on up. It was good times; I learned Ashtanga down there in those two rooms, and people still know me (there's a photo or two of me on Wendy's page).
Wednesday I continued the cut-and-paste festival of working on my article about New Queer Cinema, and then taught my Rocket class, which is still getting small but steady attendance (and I mean small: two students, often). I've laid off handstands for the most part, to heal the left wrist, but I had to have just ONE during class, as a model, and I went up crooked, wobbled some, but steered with my hands and didn't touch the wall! It ruled! Came down legs straight, not really controlled, a little ballistic, but landed softly and continued teaching. Rawk!
Thursday I spent all morning and afternoon, here and in a local coffeehouse, working on the article, cursing it with some enthusiasm (it's a reduction of a diss chapter, which is a bit like boiling down a boulder into a ring-sized stone). I really wanted to practice, but returned from said coffeehouse with a sore lumbar spine and a grumpy mood, only to be greeted by my copy of Sweeney's book Astanga Yoga As It Is (which you can order from here), and in a few pages of leafing through that, on breathing, on bandhas, on vinyasa, on splitting, I was totally taken, paper forgotten about, and I rolled out the mat and had a big, bandhas-intensive sun salutations-to-standing-and-first-two-poses-of-seated half Primary, and then did backbends, which were suprisingly pleasant, a few springy wall-dropbacks, and closing. It was powerhouse! I couldn't hold the upward headstand for more than 3 breaths, but that was fine. I got up off the floor, had some food and dashed to my class over on the westside; five students and still only two signed up for the 2-hour version of my regular yoga class, to be done at the end of the month. That was depressing, but I wasn't in the mood, so I didn't depress.
I came back at about 8, got my work act together, and finished the article preparation in three hours. Went to bed at midnight, and here we are on Friday.
This week has included some family drama as well: my father fell and broke his arm on Monday, and this has meant surgery and a metal rod, all of which was done last night. I didn't know, for a while, whether I was going to fly out there or not (the question which came with money angst and such) but all seems to be going well, so I didn't go. Discussions about my parents' continued living in their house or thinking about "home help" and such are on the horizon, because this is the beginning of the "careful don't fall, you could break a hip" days. By the end of 2008 they'll both have just entered their seventies, and the future seems to be calling with a bit more urgency than it was in their sixties. This will be one of the new things that develops.
The job market, of course, remains silent as a stone. There are days I forget to worry about it, it's so quiet.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
No Country for Old Men
Briefly, because I have an article draft (not on this) due on Saturday:
I have finally seen this film (thank you Netflix! You don't cost me 9.50, like a theatrical ticket does!) and here is my film student two cents.
Violence remains McCarthy's transcendence-principle, the same way it does in his books like _Blood Meridian_ and _The Crossing_ and _All the Pretty Horses_. Metaphysics remains a dark, foreboding but rather inescapable bramble, like it is in _Outer Dark_ and the vast majority of _The Road_.
The narrative, again as in McCarthy's books, could be said to be "horizontal." There is no decay and no ascent into a fever-pitch of violence (put another way, this is not Taxi Driver; is not, in fact, any New Hollywood film). If a "regular" narrative has a beginning, middle and end, with a conflict, climax and resolution imbedded within, then this film (and probably McCarthy's book on which it is based, which I have not read) does in fact begin, and establish a conflict, but the climax is "diffused" into metaphysics, because in McCarthy the climax is always so diffused.
This is not open-endedness; we are certain about the film's worldview early on, and we are not deceived when things do not "tie up" nicely. Chigurh lives, we assume, to kill another day. Moss does not. The sheriff retires, probably pleasantly, with dreams to deciper and ponder into older age.
This is also not either nihilism or moral relativism. McCarthy is a moralist, to be certain, but he is not a prescriptive moralist; he is not calling for us to "rise" to that agenda or to "sink" to this one. His morality is horizontal, flat; violence is the transcendent principle. NOT, for the record, "evil" or "killing" or any what you might call "moral judgment or comprehension" of violence, but violence ITSELF. This is why McCarthy cannot be said to be a moral relativist. His violence is the same as this table. Knock knock. There it is. If you'd like to be an utter solipsist, you can see it as a product of your imagination.
Men (and notably MEN, which is a wholly different topic, and a good one) move over the face of the earth. Violence occurs. God probably exists but is agnostic, is busy, is inscrutable. Violence sometimes allows men to perceive his movement, or else to imagine that they do. This is McCarthy's world as far as I can figure it.
This is not nihilism because the world is never destroyed; violence is not an opponent for the world, not even an opponent of civilization (as Freud might have understood it), but is part and parcel of being, of walking, of standing on the land. This frontier mentality is not about progress or conquest or EVEN about decay or destruction or suicide. Violence does not destroy, in McCarthy, not really. It does, certainly, end lives, but it is also very much the material of life. His characters speak it, breathe it, express themselves in it, think it, philosophize it.
So it is, that after the "conflict" comes to an end, we get a series of philosophical statements made, one after the other, and the film ends. This is, indeed, no country for old men. Note, throughout the film, the various parallels between the characters: two drink the same milk in the same RV. Two track their opponent (each the other) by spills of blood. A beige rug segues by a dissolve into the plain. This is, in a fashion, not a film, but a SNAPSHOT. One moment is the whole narrative, and the narrative is consistent at every moment.
Chigurh is not an ur-villain, not like the villains of _Seven_ or any comic book adaptation. He is not, profoundly NOT, a force of "evil" which from the outside, terrorizes the "good" people within. In that sense, this is also NOT a "western" where, for example, the bandits live off the "good people" as in _The Magnificent Seven_. Carson puts it best: "Oh, he's a psychopathic killer, but then there's plenty o' them runnin' round."
If Eastwood's more recent westerns establish a black-white moral code in a gray universe (as much of his filmmaking can be said to do), then here the moral code is, perhaps, black. Morality is solid in McCarthy, but it is also flat, in a certain way, unimportant. The "truth of the land" or "truth of the gun" is BIGGER than any sense of "morality" here. Morality comes from that larger truth, that transcendent violence, and is consumed by it.
Coen brothers: I have seen all of their films, and I like their work. See here echoes of _Blood Simple_ in the opening narration, and see echoes of _Fargo_ in the nearly-lost money, money as, if you will, the "Macguffin" here too. See the various and wonderfully eccentric characters, whose faces we remember long after the film ends. The woman who refuses to give Moss' job information to Chigurh. The salesman who, when Moss asks, "Ever seen a man with no clothes on come in here?" answers, "Well sir, it is unusual." Those eccentrics are pure Coens.
Roger Deakins, for what it's worth, remains a cinematographer dead-set on rivalling the brilliant Robbie Muller for landscape, cityscape and light.
Did I say this was going to be brief? Hah, I should have known better. Enjoy!
I have finally seen this film (thank you Netflix! You don't cost me 9.50, like a theatrical ticket does!) and here is my film student two cents.
Violence remains McCarthy's transcendence-principle, the same way it does in his books like _Blood Meridian_ and _The Crossing_ and _All the Pretty Horses_. Metaphysics remains a dark, foreboding but rather inescapable bramble, like it is in _Outer Dark_ and the vast majority of _The Road_.
The narrative, again as in McCarthy's books, could be said to be "horizontal." There is no decay and no ascent into a fever-pitch of violence (put another way, this is not Taxi Driver; is not, in fact, any New Hollywood film). If a "regular" narrative has a beginning, middle and end, with a conflict, climax and resolution imbedded within, then this film (and probably McCarthy's book on which it is based, which I have not read) does in fact begin, and establish a conflict, but the climax is "diffused" into metaphysics, because in McCarthy the climax is always so diffused.
This is not open-endedness; we are certain about the film's worldview early on, and we are not deceived when things do not "tie up" nicely. Chigurh lives, we assume, to kill another day. Moss does not. The sheriff retires, probably pleasantly, with dreams to deciper and ponder into older age.
This is also not either nihilism or moral relativism. McCarthy is a moralist, to be certain, but he is not a prescriptive moralist; he is not calling for us to "rise" to that agenda or to "sink" to this one. His morality is horizontal, flat; violence is the transcendent principle. NOT, for the record, "evil" or "killing" or any what you might call "moral judgment or comprehension" of violence, but violence ITSELF. This is why McCarthy cannot be said to be a moral relativist. His violence is the same as this table. Knock knock. There it is. If you'd like to be an utter solipsist, you can see it as a product of your imagination.
Men (and notably MEN, which is a wholly different topic, and a good one) move over the face of the earth. Violence occurs. God probably exists but is agnostic, is busy, is inscrutable. Violence sometimes allows men to perceive his movement, or else to imagine that they do. This is McCarthy's world as far as I can figure it.
This is not nihilism because the world is never destroyed; violence is not an opponent for the world, not even an opponent of civilization (as Freud might have understood it), but is part and parcel of being, of walking, of standing on the land. This frontier mentality is not about progress or conquest or EVEN about decay or destruction or suicide. Violence does not destroy, in McCarthy, not really. It does, certainly, end lives, but it is also very much the material of life. His characters speak it, breathe it, express themselves in it, think it, philosophize it.
So it is, that after the "conflict" comes to an end, we get a series of philosophical statements made, one after the other, and the film ends. This is, indeed, no country for old men. Note, throughout the film, the various parallels between the characters: two drink the same milk in the same RV. Two track their opponent (each the other) by spills of blood. A beige rug segues by a dissolve into the plain. This is, in a fashion, not a film, but a SNAPSHOT. One moment is the whole narrative, and the narrative is consistent at every moment.
Chigurh is not an ur-villain, not like the villains of _Seven_ or any comic book adaptation. He is not, profoundly NOT, a force of "evil" which from the outside, terrorizes the "good" people within. In that sense, this is also NOT a "western" where, for example, the bandits live off the "good people" as in _The Magnificent Seven_. Carson puts it best: "Oh, he's a psychopathic killer, but then there's plenty o' them runnin' round."
If Eastwood's more recent westerns establish a black-white moral code in a gray universe (as much of his filmmaking can be said to do), then here the moral code is, perhaps, black. Morality is solid in McCarthy, but it is also flat, in a certain way, unimportant. The "truth of the land" or "truth of the gun" is BIGGER than any sense of "morality" here. Morality comes from that larger truth, that transcendent violence, and is consumed by it.
Coen brothers: I have seen all of their films, and I like their work. See here echoes of _Blood Simple_ in the opening narration, and see echoes of _Fargo_ in the nearly-lost money, money as, if you will, the "Macguffin" here too. See the various and wonderfully eccentric characters, whose faces we remember long after the film ends. The woman who refuses to give Moss' job information to Chigurh. The salesman who, when Moss asks, "Ever seen a man with no clothes on come in here?" answers, "Well sir, it is unusual." Those eccentrics are pure Coens.
Roger Deakins, for what it's worth, remains a cinematographer dead-set on rivalling the brilliant Robbie Muller for landscape, cityscape and light.
Did I say this was going to be brief? Hah, I should have known better. Enjoy!
Saturday, March 8, 2008
I know it's Saturday, but ahhh, Practice.
You know by now, if you read me a lot, that I do Primary on Saturdays because there's a led class and, honestly, I love the human energy. So much easier to go than to confront home practice (which, still, I often do anyway).
Today I needed it; stressy, depressive week, and that stuff gets into my muscles, particularly into the low abs and the outer hips. Twists and backbends, here we come!
A nice full room, about 10 people or so, and a led Primary with excursions; the teacher led a full split, and some warmups, and I kept on ahead with my Primary-by-the-book (this is how I do it there, and it's cool with her).
Sun salutations big, flexible, easy; toe in Trikonasana; nice thigh opening in Parsvakonasana; ten breaths in Parivrtta Parsvakonasana with the right leg forward, to see if that left hip wants to crack open (today, it didn't); head to floor in all four Prasaritas; ok balance in Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana (a little dancing, but not a lot).
Starting to lose the breath count in the sun salutation to Virabhadrasana, so I concentrated on it more, and it evened out. Really pleasant, lightish vinyasa (still foot scraping, but not nearly enough to slow the movement) early on. Barely a wrist grab in the third Paschimottanasana, easy jumps into the pose in both Purvottanasana and both sides of Tiriangmukhaikapada Paschimo.
Rewarding, intense Marichyasanas, including C where I took a hand, not my usual wrist. I bound D, both sides, with less effort than usual on the second side (with right foot tucked in). It's still "spring-loaded" and ready to pop, but it was easier than usual. Navasana was suprisingly agreeable today; no shaking, no difficulty breathing.
Jumped up, landed the feet on the floor on the entries to both Bhujapidasana and Kurmasana. Someday I'll float that again. I'm going to take Arturo's comment about the guy who jumped into a "wide Tittibhasana" to heart and do it that way.
Both poses were really nice today: feet clasp, roll forward, hover over floor, for five in Bhuja; Titti to Bakasana exit. Jump, pick feet up, sit butt down, extend into Kurmasana (feet not up off floor; I tried but they didn't want to). Fold arms back, teacher assists me into feet-behind-head expression of Supta K. I come up with the feet STILL BOUND (that's regular, with her help, but I can't seem to do it solo unless I'm practicing outside in the summer heat), Tittibhasana, Bakasana, jump. TOTALLY out of breath after that, but I kept it nasal and calmed it down; took about 10 breaths to get ujjayi back on pace.
Garbha was well-behaved, although it took me three tries to stick Kukkutasana for five breaths. Baddha Konasana was very big; sides of feet together, eyes beyond toes in the first bend, crown of head to floor in second bend! Hurrah! I also touched my chin to the floor in Upavistha Konasana, chin-to-shinned the first side of Supta Padangusthasana, and had a really fun energy arc in Setu Bandhasana (the forehead roll, not the bridge). Two bridges and three wheels, which were all about the low abs pulling open, the armpits cracking open, the mid back getting into it. Too many days off; but I expected this, they were fine. Four standing dropback attempts; hands to about hip height on the wall, spring up.
Closing was downright meditative, which I liked, given how ramped up my energy was from practice. I mean, jagged and shaking, but steadied by mantra breathing. I really cracked open the past few days depression and irritation. Necessary.
Ten breaths in the headstand liftoff. Greater ease in Baddha Padmasana.
Ahhhhh.
And here's a political footnote for you: What is Bush THINKING when he vetoes a bill designed to ban waterboarding? Have you seen his rhetoric? Words to the effect of "We cannot risk an attack by terrorists, by giving up what has been proven to be an effective tactic in the war on terror"? IS HE SERIOUS? Waterboarding keeps us from having "another 9/11"? Ok ok, rant over before it begins. Let's just say that I find his logic specious.
Today I needed it; stressy, depressive week, and that stuff gets into my muscles, particularly into the low abs and the outer hips. Twists and backbends, here we come!
A nice full room, about 10 people or so, and a led Primary with excursions; the teacher led a full split, and some warmups, and I kept on ahead with my Primary-by-the-book (this is how I do it there, and it's cool with her).
Sun salutations big, flexible, easy; toe in Trikonasana; nice thigh opening in Parsvakonasana; ten breaths in Parivrtta Parsvakonasana with the right leg forward, to see if that left hip wants to crack open (today, it didn't); head to floor in all four Prasaritas; ok balance in Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana (a little dancing, but not a lot).
Starting to lose the breath count in the sun salutation to Virabhadrasana, so I concentrated on it more, and it evened out. Really pleasant, lightish vinyasa (still foot scraping, but not nearly enough to slow the movement) early on. Barely a wrist grab in the third Paschimottanasana, easy jumps into the pose in both Purvottanasana and both sides of Tiriangmukhaikapada Paschimo.
Rewarding, intense Marichyasanas, including C where I took a hand, not my usual wrist. I bound D, both sides, with less effort than usual on the second side (with right foot tucked in). It's still "spring-loaded" and ready to pop, but it was easier than usual. Navasana was suprisingly agreeable today; no shaking, no difficulty breathing.
Jumped up, landed the feet on the floor on the entries to both Bhujapidasana and Kurmasana. Someday I'll float that again. I'm going to take Arturo's comment about the guy who jumped into a "wide Tittibhasana" to heart and do it that way.
Both poses were really nice today: feet clasp, roll forward, hover over floor, for five in Bhuja; Titti to Bakasana exit. Jump, pick feet up, sit butt down, extend into Kurmasana (feet not up off floor; I tried but they didn't want to). Fold arms back, teacher assists me into feet-behind-head expression of Supta K. I come up with the feet STILL BOUND (that's regular, with her help, but I can't seem to do it solo unless I'm practicing outside in the summer heat), Tittibhasana, Bakasana, jump. TOTALLY out of breath after that, but I kept it nasal and calmed it down; took about 10 breaths to get ujjayi back on pace.
Garbha was well-behaved, although it took me three tries to stick Kukkutasana for five breaths. Baddha Konasana was very big; sides of feet together, eyes beyond toes in the first bend, crown of head to floor in second bend! Hurrah! I also touched my chin to the floor in Upavistha Konasana, chin-to-shinned the first side of Supta Padangusthasana, and had a really fun energy arc in Setu Bandhasana (the forehead roll, not the bridge). Two bridges and three wheels, which were all about the low abs pulling open, the armpits cracking open, the mid back getting into it. Too many days off; but I expected this, they were fine. Four standing dropback attempts; hands to about hip height on the wall, spring up.
Closing was downright meditative, which I liked, given how ramped up my energy was from practice. I mean, jagged and shaking, but steadied by mantra breathing. I really cracked open the past few days depression and irritation. Necessary.
Ten breaths in the headstand liftoff. Greater ease in Baddha Padmasana.
Ahhhhh.
And here's a political footnote for you: What is Bush THINKING when he vetoes a bill designed to ban waterboarding? Have you seen his rhetoric? Words to the effect of "We cannot risk an attack by terrorists, by giving up what has been proven to be an effective tactic in the war on terror"? IS HE SERIOUS? Waterboarding keeps us from having "another 9/11"? Ok ok, rant over before it begins. Let's just say that I find his logic specious.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Moon Day, Moon Practice.
My calendar (and Tim's site) say that today's a moon day. Yesterday might well have been the actual moon, but I treated today as if it were (it's cloudy, and even if it weren't, it's not like I can look up and not see the new moon, you know?).
Anyway: I went to Matthew Sweeney's site, dialed up the "larger view" of the Moon Sequence poster, and transcribed it (yes, I'm a junkie). It's a NICE little practice. No jumps, lots of hip work, seated twisting, backbending. Revolved Janu Sirsasana, pigeon lunges and twists, a whole Ustrasana sequence. Lovely stuff.
On with a led most of Primary tomorrow (as student, not teacher).
Enjoy!
Anyway: I went to Matthew Sweeney's site, dialed up the "larger view" of the Moon Sequence poster, and transcribed it (yes, I'm a junkie). It's a NICE little practice. No jumps, lots of hip work, seated twisting, backbending. Revolved Janu Sirsasana, pigeon lunges and twists, a whole Ustrasana sequence. Lovely stuff.
On with a led most of Primary tomorrow (as student, not teacher).
Enjoy!
Aha! "The horror, the horror." I get it.
About an hour ago, I played the "Nazi card" on Integralist philosophy, and I feel bad about doing that, but processing WHY I pulled that one from the deck has been really enlightening about how I deal with philosophical/religious/mystical belief systems. Here's the adventure:
When I first saw Coppola's "Apocalypse Now," it was maybe 1991, and I loved the whole "descent into..." idea, but when it came down to it, I couldn't understand Kurtz's project. "One must make a friend...of horror...of moral terror....or else they become enemies, they become true enemies."
That sounds deep and cool, but WHAT does it actually MEAN? What is Kurtz trying to TELL ME?
Of course, because of how my mind works, you can NOT just toss something like that down my personal well and not have me chew it over for ten or fifteen years.
I realized, this morning, why I pulled the Nazi card: now, I haven't read more than about twenty minutes worth of internet site reading (including Wikipedia) on Integralism and all of that, but I believe that if one is going to carry around a philosophy of enlightenment, or immortality, or something else promising and beautiful, one should also have a belly full of the OPPOSITE; this is only philosophically HONEST, in my thinking.
For example: Roman Catholicism is a highly rational, reasoned belief system. Look at Augustine. Those folks have thought out their beliefs, their religion, their doctrine, for CENTURIES. They have asked themselves, serially, VERY HARD QUESTIONS. This is how Catholicism has fire-tested itself. Ever try to beat a doctrine-educated Catholic in metaphysical arm wrestling? Those folks have centuries worth of rationalized self-interrogation to rely on. They are POWERHOUSES.
One of the things that REALLY annoys me about the current wave of evangelicalism in the States is that, apparently from its public rhetoric and its websites (check out an evangelical chat forum sometime), there is NOT the same emphasis on fire-testing, on auto-critique, on SEEING IF the belief system has any SOLIDITY to it.
When I was in college, I had a set of beliefs in my head (and behaviors and cultural standards and all kinds of other things) that I wanted to change in various ways, but I couldn't do it, I couldn't find a way to, if you will, PUT MY HANDS inside my head and get the wheel.
I found numerous different ways to do this, the most legal of which were film and literature, and insomnia, and what I began to do was not to establish different beliefs and behaviors (although that also happened) but to understand WHAT IT IS to fire-test a belief system. I fooled around with Christian Fellowship in college, looking for community, for metaphysics, for human company, for a lot of things. But I found, with time, that Christianity couldn't "hold my weight," as it were. I started describing religion/philosophy/metaphysics in terms of "panes of glass." It sounded like this: "I want to make sure that what I choose to stand on, can actually HOLD me, and not crash under my own weight like a pane of cheap glass."
So, I was looking for "truths" of the universe which were HEAVIER than I was. However, I was also interested in SEEING THE REAL, not in agreeing to compromise, agreeing (as Moby did a few years ago; yes, THAT Moby) that Christianity was simply "the easiest way to believe in immortality."
Yes, "seeing the real" is a complicated project, and it's perhaps impossible. But I chased it anyway. It is, for the record, a matchless, absolutely peerless, way of interrogating everything.
So what's all this about horror? Well, I'd been reading WAY too much Nietzsche, and seeing a lot of New Hollywood, a lot of violence and surrealism, blood and idealism and existentialism, a lot of Camus and Taxi Driver, that sort of thing, and this mix crossed certain wires in my head: Travis Bickle, for example, is an insane, murdering idealist. His belief system and his actions match, on one level, but on another, they profoundly do NOT match. He has a certain inner beauty. This was interesting to me.
How many examples of this are there? Check out these beautiful, archetype killers, libertines, and idealists, philosophers all: The Man with No Name. Marquis de Sade. George Bataille. Salvador Dali. The nameless protagonists of Man Bites Dog. The female duo of Baise Moi. Or, in short, look at the entire history of French literature and cinema from Sade to Lautreamont to Rimbaud to Dada, to Surrealism, to Antonin Artaud, then over to the Living Theater, Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Situationist International and May 1968. Look at, as you've read before, my hero list.
Sade, Bataille, Foucault on punishment. Bodies, micromanagement, internalized surveillance. Dirt, big toes, houseflies. Surrealist uncovering of sex, violence, incest, and other horror in the unconscious, and SUBLIMATING IT into art. Dali's fetishistic relationship with masturbation. Do you think that my youth spent being Catholic laity, and inheriting all that never-explained body hatred, didn't love this?
I was, on a cetain level, horrified by puberty and all of the testosterone that came with it. One day I was all purity and mind, and the next day I was TOTALLY body, corruption, all desire and cannibalism and blood and lion-voice, and it has stayed that way, forever. By college I decided that purity (in the Christian sense) was impossible, and I ALSO decided that I wasn't going to participate in what I considered a "commodified" pool of sexual activity in college parties and so forth. In a way, I hopped directly from Christianity to Nietzsche-inflected Marxism.
My divorce in 2002 set me off back into the body, after a long stay of taming it, living under the radar. Back into the body meant another full interrogation of all morality, another Nietzschean revaluation of all values. Non-normative sexual practices ensued (no, you don't get details about that). I returned to my hero list, experiencing those philosophies along with my new sense of embodiment.
The attention I give Catherine Breillat's films belongs here: they have "extreme" graphic footage, which is almost always intimate/sexual, but in her interviews, she talks about enlightenment. Body, enlightenment? SURELY those are opposites, yes?
No: not there, not even in Bataille's anti-transcendentalism, not even, to go back to the origin of much of what I think, in Nietzsche's own anti-transcendentalism. Rimbaud saw poetry in the bodies of hanged men. Kerouac experienced moments of satori while picking cotton in Mexico. Travis Bickle, the idealist killer.
This tension, between ugly/beautiful, ideal/real, horror/sublime, set up in me. I do not operate without it. It's too chewy and fascinating. Reality seems CONSISTENTLY to operate on it. Films about cannibalism, like PERFUME, which operates on EXACTLY this same and only ever APPARENT DICHOTOMY, absolutely thrill me.
And so: one must make a friend of horror, of moral terror, or else they become enemies, they truly become enemies.
Those things, which exist fairly indisputably in the world (Roman Coliseum? Crucifixion? Crusades? Abu Ghraib? Nazi Holocaust? Rwanda? Monks self-immolated in protest of the Vietnam war? Napalm? Rape? Apartheid torture? Waterboarding? Shall I go on?) are a challenge to any belief system which calls for peace, for non-violence, for enlightenment. Not that they necessarily exceed such a belief system, but IF you want to TEST A BELIEF BY FIRE, this is the best way to do it.
I believe that one always keeps an eye on the opposite of what one claims to believe, or put another way, the question, the enemy, the problem: Nietzsche wrote INSISTENTLY about Christianity and ressentiment, for example. Augustine says QUITE A BIT about bodies and how to manage them.
One must make a friend of horror. That's not, I think, a claim to be allied to horror, to BE HORRIFYING (although Kurtz is), but an invitation TO HORROR ITSELF, a permitting-it-in-the-house. With horror "in the house," Kurtz can forge an idealism which no longer risks being toppled from the outside, by an invasive, return-from-the-repressed, horror. Horror and moral terror.
The problem, of course, is that horror and moral terror are what they are. It is TOUGH to build an idealism with them in the house. Kurtz, arguably, fails. Would it be possible to say that, at the end of STORY OF THE EYE, Bataille "succeeds"? Do we want to go that far? Rimbaud's "line of flight" to one-legged piracy is another wonderful failure, another Travis Bickle. So is Tim Leary's big downer, his addiction to cocaine and maintenance of a dated, crumbling "freeze me forever" ideal. Hunter S. Thompson's ashes blasted, via cannon, into the air. Thompson specifically cultivated paranoia; would we call this "success"? "Failure"? Or something else? Bataille wanted to form a cult of human sacrifice.
So, when I read something about human consciousness evolving to the heights, I immediately look for the horror, the desublimation, the baby from Eraserhead. If I don't see something like that there, I feel like a certain essential element of REALITY ITSELF is missing. Have we made friends with horror and moral terror? Are they even accounted for, anywhere, are they even repressed? Even repression is better than pretending they don't exist (not that that is what any given philosophy has done).
This is why I played the cheap card. But I don't want this to turn into a justification of whatever philosophy or even an interrogation of whose approach is wrong and whose is right. It is simply a matter of this: if you expose me to a philosophy of beauty, I will ask where ugly is, how ugly is reckoned with, how ugly is understood and thought about. It's my first question.
When I first saw Coppola's "Apocalypse Now," it was maybe 1991, and I loved the whole "descent into..." idea, but when it came down to it, I couldn't understand Kurtz's project. "One must make a friend...of horror...of moral terror....or else they become enemies, they become true enemies."
That sounds deep and cool, but WHAT does it actually MEAN? What is Kurtz trying to TELL ME?
Of course, because of how my mind works, you can NOT just toss something like that down my personal well and not have me chew it over for ten or fifteen years.
I realized, this morning, why I pulled the Nazi card: now, I haven't read more than about twenty minutes worth of internet site reading (including Wikipedia) on Integralism and all of that, but I believe that if one is going to carry around a philosophy of enlightenment, or immortality, or something else promising and beautiful, one should also have a belly full of the OPPOSITE; this is only philosophically HONEST, in my thinking.
For example: Roman Catholicism is a highly rational, reasoned belief system. Look at Augustine. Those folks have thought out their beliefs, their religion, their doctrine, for CENTURIES. They have asked themselves, serially, VERY HARD QUESTIONS. This is how Catholicism has fire-tested itself. Ever try to beat a doctrine-educated Catholic in metaphysical arm wrestling? Those folks have centuries worth of rationalized self-interrogation to rely on. They are POWERHOUSES.
One of the things that REALLY annoys me about the current wave of evangelicalism in the States is that, apparently from its public rhetoric and its websites (check out an evangelical chat forum sometime), there is NOT the same emphasis on fire-testing, on auto-critique, on SEEING IF the belief system has any SOLIDITY to it.
When I was in college, I had a set of beliefs in my head (and behaviors and cultural standards and all kinds of other things) that I wanted to change in various ways, but I couldn't do it, I couldn't find a way to, if you will, PUT MY HANDS inside my head and get the wheel.
I found numerous different ways to do this, the most legal of which were film and literature, and insomnia, and what I began to do was not to establish different beliefs and behaviors (although that also happened) but to understand WHAT IT IS to fire-test a belief system. I fooled around with Christian Fellowship in college, looking for community, for metaphysics, for human company, for a lot of things. But I found, with time, that Christianity couldn't "hold my weight," as it were. I started describing religion/philosophy/metaphysics in terms of "panes of glass." It sounded like this: "I want to make sure that what I choose to stand on, can actually HOLD me, and not crash under my own weight like a pane of cheap glass."
So, I was looking for "truths" of the universe which were HEAVIER than I was. However, I was also interested in SEEING THE REAL, not in agreeing to compromise, agreeing (as Moby did a few years ago; yes, THAT Moby) that Christianity was simply "the easiest way to believe in immortality."
Yes, "seeing the real" is a complicated project, and it's perhaps impossible. But I chased it anyway. It is, for the record, a matchless, absolutely peerless, way of interrogating everything.
So what's all this about horror? Well, I'd been reading WAY too much Nietzsche, and seeing a lot of New Hollywood, a lot of violence and surrealism, blood and idealism and existentialism, a lot of Camus and Taxi Driver, that sort of thing, and this mix crossed certain wires in my head: Travis Bickle, for example, is an insane, murdering idealist. His belief system and his actions match, on one level, but on another, they profoundly do NOT match. He has a certain inner beauty. This was interesting to me.
How many examples of this are there? Check out these beautiful, archetype killers, libertines, and idealists, philosophers all: The Man with No Name. Marquis de Sade. George Bataille. Salvador Dali. The nameless protagonists of Man Bites Dog. The female duo of Baise Moi. Or, in short, look at the entire history of French literature and cinema from Sade to Lautreamont to Rimbaud to Dada, to Surrealism, to Antonin Artaud, then over to the Living Theater, Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Situationist International and May 1968. Look at, as you've read before, my hero list.
Sade, Bataille, Foucault on punishment. Bodies, micromanagement, internalized surveillance. Dirt, big toes, houseflies. Surrealist uncovering of sex, violence, incest, and other horror in the unconscious, and SUBLIMATING IT into art. Dali's fetishistic relationship with masturbation. Do you think that my youth spent being Catholic laity, and inheriting all that never-explained body hatred, didn't love this?
I was, on a cetain level, horrified by puberty and all of the testosterone that came with it. One day I was all purity and mind, and the next day I was TOTALLY body, corruption, all desire and cannibalism and blood and lion-voice, and it has stayed that way, forever. By college I decided that purity (in the Christian sense) was impossible, and I ALSO decided that I wasn't going to participate in what I considered a "commodified" pool of sexual activity in college parties and so forth. In a way, I hopped directly from Christianity to Nietzsche-inflected Marxism.
My divorce in 2002 set me off back into the body, after a long stay of taming it, living under the radar. Back into the body meant another full interrogation of all morality, another Nietzschean revaluation of all values. Non-normative sexual practices ensued (no, you don't get details about that). I returned to my hero list, experiencing those philosophies along with my new sense of embodiment.
The attention I give Catherine Breillat's films belongs here: they have "extreme" graphic footage, which is almost always intimate/sexual, but in her interviews, she talks about enlightenment. Body, enlightenment? SURELY those are opposites, yes?
No: not there, not even in Bataille's anti-transcendentalism, not even, to go back to the origin of much of what I think, in Nietzsche's own anti-transcendentalism. Rimbaud saw poetry in the bodies of hanged men. Kerouac experienced moments of satori while picking cotton in Mexico. Travis Bickle, the idealist killer.
This tension, between ugly/beautiful, ideal/real, horror/sublime, set up in me. I do not operate without it. It's too chewy and fascinating. Reality seems CONSISTENTLY to operate on it. Films about cannibalism, like PERFUME, which operates on EXACTLY this same and only ever APPARENT DICHOTOMY, absolutely thrill me.
And so: one must make a friend of horror, of moral terror, or else they become enemies, they truly become enemies.
Those things, which exist fairly indisputably in the world (Roman Coliseum? Crucifixion? Crusades? Abu Ghraib? Nazi Holocaust? Rwanda? Monks self-immolated in protest of the Vietnam war? Napalm? Rape? Apartheid torture? Waterboarding? Shall I go on?) are a challenge to any belief system which calls for peace, for non-violence, for enlightenment. Not that they necessarily exceed such a belief system, but IF you want to TEST A BELIEF BY FIRE, this is the best way to do it.
I believe that one always keeps an eye on the opposite of what one claims to believe, or put another way, the question, the enemy, the problem: Nietzsche wrote INSISTENTLY about Christianity and ressentiment, for example. Augustine says QUITE A BIT about bodies and how to manage them.
One must make a friend of horror. That's not, I think, a claim to be allied to horror, to BE HORRIFYING (although Kurtz is), but an invitation TO HORROR ITSELF, a permitting-it-in-the-house. With horror "in the house," Kurtz can forge an idealism which no longer risks being toppled from the outside, by an invasive, return-from-the-repressed, horror. Horror and moral terror.
The problem, of course, is that horror and moral terror are what they are. It is TOUGH to build an idealism with them in the house. Kurtz, arguably, fails. Would it be possible to say that, at the end of STORY OF THE EYE, Bataille "succeeds"? Do we want to go that far? Rimbaud's "line of flight" to one-legged piracy is another wonderful failure, another Travis Bickle. So is Tim Leary's big downer, his addiction to cocaine and maintenance of a dated, crumbling "freeze me forever" ideal. Hunter S. Thompson's ashes blasted, via cannon, into the air. Thompson specifically cultivated paranoia; would we call this "success"? "Failure"? Or something else? Bataille wanted to form a cult of human sacrifice.
So, when I read something about human consciousness evolving to the heights, I immediately look for the horror, the desublimation, the baby from Eraserhead. If I don't see something like that there, I feel like a certain essential element of REALITY ITSELF is missing. Have we made friends with horror and moral terror? Are they even accounted for, anywhere, are they even repressed? Even repression is better than pretending they don't exist (not that that is what any given philosophy has done).
This is why I played the cheap card. But I don't want this to turn into a justification of whatever philosophy or even an interrogation of whose approach is wrong and whose is right. It is simply a matter of this: if you expose me to a philosophy of beauty, I will ask where ugly is, how ugly is reckoned with, how ugly is understood and thought about. It's my first question.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Let's brighten this up, shall we?
I'm always annoyed with a post about job search depression. The options seem to be these:
1) Don't post those, and give up the catharsis they do, in fact, bring.
Well, that won't work.
2) Post those, and then erase them. Nah, sets bad precedents. Next?
3) Find success in, or don't participate in, academic job searches. HAHAHAHA!!
4) One strategy that can be put a thousand ways: Be Present. Experience Space. Meditate. Read your copy of the Sutras. Asana Practice. Long Walk. Something else, but SOMETHING. DO something.
Ok, I'm going to go make food that involves molasses. Molasses, they say, is rich in B vitamins, and B vitamins are anti-depressive, and, they're cheaper than medication and perhaps more effective (I wouldn't know).
Off to the molasses.
1) Don't post those, and give up the catharsis they do, in fact, bring.
Well, that won't work.
2) Post those, and then erase them. Nah, sets bad precedents. Next?
3) Find success in, or don't participate in, academic job searches. HAHAHAHA!!
4) One strategy that can be put a thousand ways: Be Present. Experience Space. Meditate. Read your copy of the Sutras. Asana Practice. Long Walk. Something else, but SOMETHING. DO something.
Ok, I'm going to go make food that involves molasses. Molasses, they say, is rich in B vitamins, and B vitamins are anti-depressive, and, they're cheaper than medication and perhaps more effective (I wouldn't know).
Off to the molasses.
A handful of thoughts about job searching and so on.
As cloud cover gradually breaks today, I become happier, lighter in mood.
I'm not seasonally affective, but under the influence of the job search, I become more in line with metaphors about light and dark. When it's cloudy, rainy and cold, it's easier for me to become depressed. When it's sunny and looking like spring, I'm more extroverted (which is my tendency anyway).
Silence continues, on the job front, with the exception of a rare rejection letter. I'm not counting anymore, but I'm something like 0-8-and-30. Thirty silent institutions. Joseph K never DOES get to the Castle, you know.
This weekend there is a big annual "film studies" conference. I put that in quotes because while it DOES seem to be "the discipline's" annual conference, there are only a few schools which interview at it. What's the deal with that? I had three interviews at the big literature conference in December, but I've only even HEARD OF two schools who will interview at this one. Further, it's in MARCH. Who freakin' INTERVIEWS in March, when much of the actual interviewing for tenure-track film gigs got underway in DECEMBER? Hello, calling Film Studies...when is our disciplinary conference? Is it December, or March, or some other time? Or is the discipline dissolving and so no one is sure? Why did about two dozen film jobs advertise in November, with applications due in 2007, if the "hiring conference" is in March 2008? Or, if this IS the hiring conference, WHY DO ALL OF THOSE SCHOOLS NOT USE IT? HELLO???????
Is any part of this ever going to prove itself not to be loaded with contradictions and nonsense? At all?
Well, in any case, I got a plane ticket for the big east coast city where this thing is being held, but I didn't register for the conference, largely because I can't afford to do anything like that, I can't even afford the plane ticket. I didn't, at least as of this morning, get any requests for interviews anyway, so now I have a plane ticket I'll probably re-use for some travel later.
In January I was freaked out, depressive and anxious. Now that it's March, the dominant emotion is anger. Anger at the total incoherence of the whole process, at the silence, at the fairly undiluted bureaucracy of the academy. This is no ivory tower, it's a Kafkaesque castle. My disenchantment is deep and painful, and I'm pissed off about it.
This leads me to another tangent: I remain on Bloomington's comparative lit email list, which means I see all kinds of graduate student announcements, most of which aren't relevant to me anymore. Recently, however, there was a forwarded email from a candidate for a fellowship in that department. Apparently, said candidate came to campus for a visit, met with people in CL and in another department, and then wrote a very overtly gracious and friendly letter, which included phrases like these:
"I have found my home here"..."met my future dissertation advisor"...and so on.
I read this with some disbelief. To FIND A HOME, in an academic department? For that matter, to find a home ANYWHERE, doing ANYTHING? To actually EMBRACE interviewers, to have what in all ways appears to be a HUMAN INTERACTION with ACTUAL POSITIVE ENERGY?
SURELY she was making this up.
I find myself torn about this: in large part, I think she's either overly emotional or manufacturing the experience. My cynicism about the academy DOES NOT PERMIT ME to take her words at face value. It simply does not permit this.
But, it's alluring to think that somewhere, somehow, a human relationship like this MIGHT EXIST, might even BE POSSIBLE at ALL.
Can it be possible that academics actually ENJOY relationships like this, that all of the mythologies are NOT, in fact, cold, hard lies?
I went to graduate school at 24, after spending a year at home with my parents, with no car (and no license, actually; I didn't learn to drive until I was 28), and I didn't know what graduate school was, what it was for, and I didn't know ANYTHING about questions like "who do you want to work with?" (work with? what the fuck does THAT mean?). But I did read 66 books that year, including Finegans Wake (twice), Gravity's Rainbow (twice), and a pack of Camus, Kerouac, Tom Robbins, and so forth and so on. I read Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, I think, three times, and really dug into it hard; I have pages and pages and pages of notes, written that year, about eternal return and how language rephrases experience in ways that allow experience to eternally recur and so forth.
So I went to graduate school with my characteristic intellectual fire and my characteristic TOTAL ignorance of bureaucracy and "the real world." Predictably, in course work, I followed whatever incited, permitted, and fed the intellectual fire. I wound up with art cinema, Guy Debord and Dada. Finally, as Kafka writes about the mouse, the corners of the room closed in, and the cat ate it up. I had to face the bureaucracy of writing a dissertation prospectus, then a dissertation, and then dealing with the academic job search. I'm still fired up by intellectual subjects and particularly by teaching, but the bureaucratic edge, and the ways that my ignorance of it has sharpened that edge, is a deeply bitter little pill to swallow.
I used to operate in a "get away with it" mode, in the academy. Comp Lit let me, for a few years, teach whatever I wanted, with virtually no supervision. So I taught courses about insanity and censorship and post-war masculinity and Fight Club and stuff like that. I taught a course on transgender politics and pornographic bodies. A room-sized "boardgame" called "Seize the Phallus" was organized. Sexual positions were analyzed in terms of visuality and social power. A festival of Dada, which involved people SPITTING on a cardboard photocollage, was held. I felt dangerous and experimental, and I got a reputation, and I liked it. THAT is the academy in which I want to work. THAT, my friends, is teaching and learning.
But now I am all paperwork and envelopes and stamps and silence. The closest I get to border-pushing is giving my article a sassy title. Actually, that's not true. I did, after all, introduce my current class to Vienna Actionism and Otto Muehl (google it). Mona Hatoum and Rosemarie Trockel are pretty cool.
The academy and I simply do not seem to value the same things. In teaching, I value the ability to work within and between disciplines, at will. I value theatricality and performance. I value from-the-hip, spontaneous, on-tip-toe presentation. Thinking on one's feet. I value rhetoric about revolution, I value manifestoes, I value shocking the bourgeoisie, I value conceptualism, I value intelligence, multiple discourses, channel-switching, formalism, intensity; I value binary-breaking and cracking open the head.
In my mirror, I see myself as making education USEFUL. It's amusing to realize, for myself, what I actually mean by that: When I say USEFUL education, I mean useful for self-realization, for actualization, for active critique, for separation from nation, community, family, for a REAL self-definition, for a confrontation with God, for a revalutation of all values, for a CHOICE in ethics, for existential choice, for responsibility which is a CHOICE not a SADDLE. USEFUL education is that education which allows one to put one's hands in the ACTUAL HUMUS of the earth, to touch the MATERIAL OF REALITY, and to see through, with fire, the many pseudo-realities of modern civilization.
I realize now, that that is NOT what everyone means by "useful" education. Many people mean the ability to integrate well into communities, to "make progress" either socially, financially, or other, to "succeed" (in the same or other categories) and so forth. Admittedly, those goals are good for a life in finance or in politics or in most other daily aspects of life, including perhaps relationships and domestic life, to say nothing of jobs and self-sustaining work and so on. It is true, no matter what I value, that THIS is more ACTUALLY USEFUL than what I like.
But, I have wanted to be the witch doctor, ever since college. I read, imbibed, otherwise consumed what I thought FIT the witch doctor, did things which suited the witch doctor, emphasized the witch doctor, and eventually, what started as illusion and hope, became real. I'm the witch doctor. But I have no village and no tribe, other than my inner multitudes.
I do, however, have job applications and maybe interviews. What do I say there? What role do I play? What is the MOST ACCURATE false face that I can put on, the one that will MOST EFFECTIVELY allow me to enter a world in which I MUST take part, whether or not I ACTUALLY WANT TO, and where I can only ever, AT BEST, partially get anything I value?
Do you see how and why it is hard for me to believe that she "felt at home" in the academy, anywhere?
What do you do for money? When I ask myself this question, I realize that the most honest answer is that I do not do ANYTHING for money. Money is incidental to my activities, no matter how much debt I have to repay. With sufficient foresight, I might have, at 15, at 18, at 21, not chosen the path of the witch doctor.
I AM interested in staying alive; this is not about living off the masses or anything like that. It is not that I DO NOT WISH to make money, it's that I don't VALUE IT FOR ITSELF. I realize, finally, that I live in a culture where the predominant value is to sustain oneself materially, through money. Trade. Work, earn, feed oneself. That is how it goes, and no amount of ritual will change this. But even when I get a temp job and work 8-5, I do not DO THAT for money; the disconnection here is between my BODILY MOVEMENT and the idea of INCOME. That linkage is incoherent. I understand, INTELLECTUALLY, that a job is the earning of income and that income is traded for goods, and from there, one prospers (or at least eeks out "a living") but I am not willing to accept that series as INTELLECTUALLY COHERENT, no matter how indisputably ACCURATE it is.
I understand my teaching as simply that: I teach people. If I spend all day typing data entry, then I am typing. If I am talking to people in an interview, I am speaking. Am I "earning money"? Yes, in that typing example. But the disconnection I'm describing happens RIGHT THERE: I am not ACTUALLY making money, with my bare hands. In fact, even a paper bill is, in existential light, NOT MONEY. This is not just bullshit philosophizing: money is a term which communities AGREE EXISTS.
If it were possible to break into certain computers, my debt could be made to disappear. In fact, look at identity theft: is it ACTUALLY possible for you to have three, or fifteen bodies? Of course not. But in identity theft, IT IS. You can spend your money, and not even BE YOU while you do it. Look at surveillance: are we going to start using voice recognition, fingerprint scanning? Are YOU, YOU? How do THEY know? Anyway, this is getting even more tangential.
My point is this: I do make money. Not, currently, as much as the "need" I have earned, requires, but that's fine. My debt, my "need" for money, isn't mine; it's the product of my ignorance of bureaucratic imperatives. Perhaps I should have aspired to grow up to be a proper bureaucrat, and then I wouldn't be in debt. But who aspires to that? Or, put more interestingly, why do we NOT ASPIRE TO BE BUREAUCRATS? Wouldn't that be, precisely, the BEST, the SMARTEST, career path?
I value the changing of minds, the broadening of awareness, in my teaching. Why can't I put that on a CV? Why are the "proper" terms different? It's probably that those units are DIFFICULT TO MEASURE. Anyone can say they "broaden minds"; how is a committee to decide? Number of publications, courses taught, however, THOSE can be measured.
The academy wants "more" than teaching. Obviously. I'm a talented teacher, and my current teaching CV is larger than that of some people who already HAVE tenure-track gigs. I've taught for TEN YEARS. That's a freakishly large quantity, and it's uncommon, in CV's sent to committees. I am POSITIVE that that's true. So why am I not getting more calls? Hello? Committees? Knock knock?
What more can they want; what can they want INSTEAD or IN ADDITION? More committee work? For someone to write that "I'm a good colleague?" What? WHAT????
A more accurate way to describe my relationship to earning: "making money" isn't high in the mix, when I commit a physical activity. If I'm doing data entry, I'm also talking to people around me, racing with them maybe, getting the punchline to that joke. Human interaction, high. Making money, incidental. If I'm teaching yoga, I'm checking out how bodies move. Modifying, adjusting. Relating to bodies? High. Making money? Incidental. If I'm teaching, getting the concept across is high; performativity, keeping attention at a peak, high. Making money? Incidental.
Of course, my indebtedness ramps up the importance of making money, but I just don't WANT to value it. Money is so intangible to me, that I feel like if I decide to jump on the "git it" train, I'll fall down a bottomless slope of depression, an addiction, like in _Requiem for a Dream_.
This job search has such potential: it can put me in a classroom, maybe with students who are maximally receptive to what I know and how I convey it. It has SUCH promise to put me even illusorily in touch with something I love. But it also has such heartbreaking potential to wear me down so deeply into cynicism that I never want to teach in a classroom again.
It just seems designed NOT to pay close attention to the "human story" here, if you will. There is discussion of "institutional fit": do you fit our institution? See how that's already detached from humanity?
Are you "what we're looking for"?
Why is job searching not organized on what the seeker loves? Why is it instead organized on what the seeking institutions THINK they want, complete with the middleman of cover letters?
Yes, I know it's all about "keeping the discipline up to date" and "building a small program" and so forth and so on. Institutions need to live and feed themselves, too, and to compete for accreditation and so forth. I do, despite my "me me me" rhetoric, see the bigger picture.
But it's hard to focus on it in the midst of suffering this bone-deep. Thus all of the interrogation, thus all of the sounding like a 5-year-old who doesn't understand "how grownups do things."
Do ya really like things as they are, grownups of the world? Do ya? REALLY?
I'm not seasonally affective, but under the influence of the job search, I become more in line with metaphors about light and dark. When it's cloudy, rainy and cold, it's easier for me to become depressed. When it's sunny and looking like spring, I'm more extroverted (which is my tendency anyway).
Silence continues, on the job front, with the exception of a rare rejection letter. I'm not counting anymore, but I'm something like 0-8-and-30. Thirty silent institutions. Joseph K never DOES get to the Castle, you know.
This weekend there is a big annual "film studies" conference. I put that in quotes because while it DOES seem to be "the discipline's" annual conference, there are only a few schools which interview at it. What's the deal with that? I had three interviews at the big literature conference in December, but I've only even HEARD OF two schools who will interview at this one. Further, it's in MARCH. Who freakin' INTERVIEWS in March, when much of the actual interviewing for tenure-track film gigs got underway in DECEMBER? Hello, calling Film Studies...when is our disciplinary conference? Is it December, or March, or some other time? Or is the discipline dissolving and so no one is sure? Why did about two dozen film jobs advertise in November, with applications due in 2007, if the "hiring conference" is in March 2008? Or, if this IS the hiring conference, WHY DO ALL OF THOSE SCHOOLS NOT USE IT? HELLO???????
Is any part of this ever going to prove itself not to be loaded with contradictions and nonsense? At all?
Well, in any case, I got a plane ticket for the big east coast city where this thing is being held, but I didn't register for the conference, largely because I can't afford to do anything like that, I can't even afford the plane ticket. I didn't, at least as of this morning, get any requests for interviews anyway, so now I have a plane ticket I'll probably re-use for some travel later.
In January I was freaked out, depressive and anxious. Now that it's March, the dominant emotion is anger. Anger at the total incoherence of the whole process, at the silence, at the fairly undiluted bureaucracy of the academy. This is no ivory tower, it's a Kafkaesque castle. My disenchantment is deep and painful, and I'm pissed off about it.
This leads me to another tangent: I remain on Bloomington's comparative lit email list, which means I see all kinds of graduate student announcements, most of which aren't relevant to me anymore. Recently, however, there was a forwarded email from a candidate for a fellowship in that department. Apparently, said candidate came to campus for a visit, met with people in CL and in another department, and then wrote a very overtly gracious and friendly letter, which included phrases like these:
"I have found my home here"..."met my future dissertation advisor"...and so on.
I read this with some disbelief. To FIND A HOME, in an academic department? For that matter, to find a home ANYWHERE, doing ANYTHING? To actually EMBRACE interviewers, to have what in all ways appears to be a HUMAN INTERACTION with ACTUAL POSITIVE ENERGY?
SURELY she was making this up.
I find myself torn about this: in large part, I think she's either overly emotional or manufacturing the experience. My cynicism about the academy DOES NOT PERMIT ME to take her words at face value. It simply does not permit this.
But, it's alluring to think that somewhere, somehow, a human relationship like this MIGHT EXIST, might even BE POSSIBLE at ALL.
Can it be possible that academics actually ENJOY relationships like this, that all of the mythologies are NOT, in fact, cold, hard lies?
I went to graduate school at 24, after spending a year at home with my parents, with no car (and no license, actually; I didn't learn to drive until I was 28), and I didn't know what graduate school was, what it was for, and I didn't know ANYTHING about questions like "who do you want to work with?" (work with? what the fuck does THAT mean?). But I did read 66 books that year, including Finegans Wake (twice), Gravity's Rainbow (twice), and a pack of Camus, Kerouac, Tom Robbins, and so forth and so on. I read Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, I think, three times, and really dug into it hard; I have pages and pages and pages of notes, written that year, about eternal return and how language rephrases experience in ways that allow experience to eternally recur and so forth.
So I went to graduate school with my characteristic intellectual fire and my characteristic TOTAL ignorance of bureaucracy and "the real world." Predictably, in course work, I followed whatever incited, permitted, and fed the intellectual fire. I wound up with art cinema, Guy Debord and Dada. Finally, as Kafka writes about the mouse, the corners of the room closed in, and the cat ate it up. I had to face the bureaucracy of writing a dissertation prospectus, then a dissertation, and then dealing with the academic job search. I'm still fired up by intellectual subjects and particularly by teaching, but the bureaucratic edge, and the ways that my ignorance of it has sharpened that edge, is a deeply bitter little pill to swallow.
I used to operate in a "get away with it" mode, in the academy. Comp Lit let me, for a few years, teach whatever I wanted, with virtually no supervision. So I taught courses about insanity and censorship and post-war masculinity and Fight Club and stuff like that. I taught a course on transgender politics and pornographic bodies. A room-sized "boardgame" called "Seize the Phallus" was organized. Sexual positions were analyzed in terms of visuality and social power. A festival of Dada, which involved people SPITTING on a cardboard photocollage, was held. I felt dangerous and experimental, and I got a reputation, and I liked it. THAT is the academy in which I want to work. THAT, my friends, is teaching and learning.
But now I am all paperwork and envelopes and stamps and silence. The closest I get to border-pushing is giving my article a sassy title. Actually, that's not true. I did, after all, introduce my current class to Vienna Actionism and Otto Muehl (google it). Mona Hatoum and Rosemarie Trockel are pretty cool.
The academy and I simply do not seem to value the same things. In teaching, I value the ability to work within and between disciplines, at will. I value theatricality and performance. I value from-the-hip, spontaneous, on-tip-toe presentation. Thinking on one's feet. I value rhetoric about revolution, I value manifestoes, I value shocking the bourgeoisie, I value conceptualism, I value intelligence, multiple discourses, channel-switching, formalism, intensity; I value binary-breaking and cracking open the head.
In my mirror, I see myself as making education USEFUL. It's amusing to realize, for myself, what I actually mean by that: When I say USEFUL education, I mean useful for self-realization, for actualization, for active critique, for separation from nation, community, family, for a REAL self-definition, for a confrontation with God, for a revalutation of all values, for a CHOICE in ethics, for existential choice, for responsibility which is a CHOICE not a SADDLE. USEFUL education is that education which allows one to put one's hands in the ACTUAL HUMUS of the earth, to touch the MATERIAL OF REALITY, and to see through, with fire, the many pseudo-realities of modern civilization.
I realize now, that that is NOT what everyone means by "useful" education. Many people mean the ability to integrate well into communities, to "make progress" either socially, financially, or other, to "succeed" (in the same or other categories) and so forth. Admittedly, those goals are good for a life in finance or in politics or in most other daily aspects of life, including perhaps relationships and domestic life, to say nothing of jobs and self-sustaining work and so on. It is true, no matter what I value, that THIS is more ACTUALLY USEFUL than what I like.
But, I have wanted to be the witch doctor, ever since college. I read, imbibed, otherwise consumed what I thought FIT the witch doctor, did things which suited the witch doctor, emphasized the witch doctor, and eventually, what started as illusion and hope, became real. I'm the witch doctor. But I have no village and no tribe, other than my inner multitudes.
I do, however, have job applications and maybe interviews. What do I say there? What role do I play? What is the MOST ACCURATE false face that I can put on, the one that will MOST EFFECTIVELY allow me to enter a world in which I MUST take part, whether or not I ACTUALLY WANT TO, and where I can only ever, AT BEST, partially get anything I value?
Do you see how and why it is hard for me to believe that she "felt at home" in the academy, anywhere?
What do you do for money? When I ask myself this question, I realize that the most honest answer is that I do not do ANYTHING for money. Money is incidental to my activities, no matter how much debt I have to repay. With sufficient foresight, I might have, at 15, at 18, at 21, not chosen the path of the witch doctor.
I AM interested in staying alive; this is not about living off the masses or anything like that. It is not that I DO NOT WISH to make money, it's that I don't VALUE IT FOR ITSELF. I realize, finally, that I live in a culture where the predominant value is to sustain oneself materially, through money. Trade. Work, earn, feed oneself. That is how it goes, and no amount of ritual will change this. But even when I get a temp job and work 8-5, I do not DO THAT for money; the disconnection here is between my BODILY MOVEMENT and the idea of INCOME. That linkage is incoherent. I understand, INTELLECTUALLY, that a job is the earning of income and that income is traded for goods, and from there, one prospers (or at least eeks out "a living") but I am not willing to accept that series as INTELLECTUALLY COHERENT, no matter how indisputably ACCURATE it is.
I understand my teaching as simply that: I teach people. If I spend all day typing data entry, then I am typing. If I am talking to people in an interview, I am speaking. Am I "earning money"? Yes, in that typing example. But the disconnection I'm describing happens RIGHT THERE: I am not ACTUALLY making money, with my bare hands. In fact, even a paper bill is, in existential light, NOT MONEY. This is not just bullshit philosophizing: money is a term which communities AGREE EXISTS.
If it were possible to break into certain computers, my debt could be made to disappear. In fact, look at identity theft: is it ACTUALLY possible for you to have three, or fifteen bodies? Of course not. But in identity theft, IT IS. You can spend your money, and not even BE YOU while you do it. Look at surveillance: are we going to start using voice recognition, fingerprint scanning? Are YOU, YOU? How do THEY know? Anyway, this is getting even more tangential.
My point is this: I do make money. Not, currently, as much as the "need" I have earned, requires, but that's fine. My debt, my "need" for money, isn't mine; it's the product of my ignorance of bureaucratic imperatives. Perhaps I should have aspired to grow up to be a proper bureaucrat, and then I wouldn't be in debt. But who aspires to that? Or, put more interestingly, why do we NOT ASPIRE TO BE BUREAUCRATS? Wouldn't that be, precisely, the BEST, the SMARTEST, career path?
I value the changing of minds, the broadening of awareness, in my teaching. Why can't I put that on a CV? Why are the "proper" terms different? It's probably that those units are DIFFICULT TO MEASURE. Anyone can say they "broaden minds"; how is a committee to decide? Number of publications, courses taught, however, THOSE can be measured.
The academy wants "more" than teaching. Obviously. I'm a talented teacher, and my current teaching CV is larger than that of some people who already HAVE tenure-track gigs. I've taught for TEN YEARS. That's a freakishly large quantity, and it's uncommon, in CV's sent to committees. I am POSITIVE that that's true. So why am I not getting more calls? Hello? Committees? Knock knock?
What more can they want; what can they want INSTEAD or IN ADDITION? More committee work? For someone to write that "I'm a good colleague?" What? WHAT????
A more accurate way to describe my relationship to earning: "making money" isn't high in the mix, when I commit a physical activity. If I'm doing data entry, I'm also talking to people around me, racing with them maybe, getting the punchline to that joke. Human interaction, high. Making money, incidental. If I'm teaching yoga, I'm checking out how bodies move. Modifying, adjusting. Relating to bodies? High. Making money? Incidental. If I'm teaching, getting the concept across is high; performativity, keeping attention at a peak, high. Making money? Incidental.
Of course, my indebtedness ramps up the importance of making money, but I just don't WANT to value it. Money is so intangible to me, that I feel like if I decide to jump on the "git it" train, I'll fall down a bottomless slope of depression, an addiction, like in _Requiem for a Dream_.
This job search has such potential: it can put me in a classroom, maybe with students who are maximally receptive to what I know and how I convey it. It has SUCH promise to put me even illusorily in touch with something I love. But it also has such heartbreaking potential to wear me down so deeply into cynicism that I never want to teach in a classroom again.
It just seems designed NOT to pay close attention to the "human story" here, if you will. There is discussion of "institutional fit": do you fit our institution? See how that's already detached from humanity?
Are you "what we're looking for"?
Why is job searching not organized on what the seeker loves? Why is it instead organized on what the seeking institutions THINK they want, complete with the middleman of cover letters?
Yes, I know it's all about "keeping the discipline up to date" and "building a small program" and so forth and so on. Institutions need to live and feed themselves, too, and to compete for accreditation and so forth. I do, despite my "me me me" rhetoric, see the bigger picture.
But it's hard to focus on it in the midst of suffering this bone-deep. Thus all of the interrogation, thus all of the sounding like a 5-year-old who doesn't understand "how grownups do things."
Do ya really like things as they are, grownups of the world? Do ya? REALLY?
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Trapezoid man, II.
Last night's Intro to Intermediate was more of a workshop environment, or maybe an Ashtanga playground. We generally did the sequence (with a dozen variations, people doing whatever they like) up into the leg-behind-head moves, but with all kinds of detours and skips.
Some specific notes: Pasasana remains par for the course. Feet flat going right, toes going left. I eased off in Krounchasana because my right sit bone/hamstring has had some warning "crank not on me" pain before a tear sets in. Shalabhasana was nice and big; feet shaking in the last couple breaths, but that's fine. Bhekasana was great on the feet (I can palm-down both feet in that pose, without much trouble) but I would LOVE a "shoulders back, arch in back increases" adjustment. Dhanurasana was nice and big and rewarding; low ribs just barely on floor in front, so not my biggest bow ever, but pleasant all the same.
Ustrasana is getting easier. Laghu, I'd like some instruction in: I tend to come down with elbows still touching the floor, some energy there. On the way up, they help me get vertical again. I seem to remember reading that that's legal, and if it's not, my head doesn't lower to the floor.
And then the playground began: I call, as you know, Kapotasana, "Trapezoid Man," because if I ever do it, I'll look trapezoidal. Last night I did my Kapo (drop back, hands quiet, press up, walk in, press up) but my hands really weren't as close to my feet as I wanted them to be, so I took the pose to the wall, knelt, arched back, put my hands flat and worked on pressing the arms STRAIGHT there (shins on floor, hands on wall). This creates an arc of exploration, between the very VERY bottom of the rectus abs, and all the way up into the armpits, and for my money, it's MUCH more effective than a hands-on-floor pressup.
Soon everyone was exploring this kneeling-wall-dropback move. I must have approximated a Kapo arch four times, at least. I clearly felt the arch in my lumbar increase, and that pulling sensation come in under the ribs and also just over the pubic bone, really low in the rectus abdominis. Then I got back on the mat, because someone asked me what the "hands over head" was all about, so I said, "it's about THIS" and did my Kapo dropback, after which my teacher helped press the elbows in and down to the mat, and even when that happened, I STILL could not find my feet. Where the heck are they????
Trapezoid man, you remain a mystery. Fun little mystery.
So then I did a hands-not-to-feet Supta Vajrasana (this, I see, is connected to the thoracic bend in Kapo; when I can keep my hands on my feet is SV, this bodes well for my Kapo), both Bakasanas, both twists, and then Eka Pada and an adjusted Dwi Pada. The right hip has tightened up again; it was hard to even keep the foot behind the head. The left hip still cooperates; A B and C with no slippage.
I managed to keep my spine straight in Dwi Pada, well, approaching it, at least, but then when I was just about to hook the feet, I rolled backwards instead of the feet slipping off forwards. Hilarious! With someone standing behind me, I was able to hook the feet, but I was too round in the pose and I knew it. You and me, Dwi Pada! Some day!
We did Tittibhasana as a group, and some folks were even invited to put hands to ankles to approximate the Titti walk; that was cool to see. I stuck Pincha on the first try, and nailed the exit (but again, hit the right big toe heavily).
Then there was playing with scorpion and some other stuff, so I took a Mayurasana (which I still like) and then did the seven deadlies (I never get to do them in that class). Well, to be honest, I did SIX deadlies, because I just could NOT get vertical in the pincha-hands variation. It's the most difficult by far, of the headstands, in my experience.
Finally, backbends. Or so I thought. I set up for the wheel, pressed my head off the floor, and got what I can only describe as a full-body emotional warning that if I straightened the arms at all, I'd have a "hippie acid freakout." The pose was light, and the back willing, but something emotional loudly declared, NO!! No no no no no!!!" and so I let it go.
This was NOT physical pain, was NOT some kind of "breakdown," was NOT a warning of failure or pain of any sort. It was, I think, more a warning of intense emotional release: my first REAL hint of those "everyone cries in it" stories about Kapotasana. I think the warning was that it was not EMOTIONALLY safe to do that, in that room.
Processing: I feel that transformation is real, and here's how that works. Apparently, I put myself, PHYSICALLY, into a series of positions, the EMOTIONAL consequences of which I only discovered later. New territory entered, but territory which is LARGER than my awareness. Put another way, "I" am larger than "I" am aware of; Whitman said it best, "I contain multitudes." Put in asana terms, how many poses do I contain? What limits? Sure, the Purusha never transforms, but the mind in that DARK MIRROR, does. Or at least, if it doesn't, it perceives, as an illusion, that it DOES, and so for its own illusion, the transformation is REAL.
More processing: Some poses require a certain amount of maturity, of confrontation, of what is, really, asceticism. That word is wrong; let me try to address this. In a group practice, where most of us know each other (and many of the students who attend are also students of mine), there are certain poses I do for which I'm given "wow" acclaim--the leg-behind-head poses are obvious here. But there are other poses, where the inner experience SO DIFFERS from the external, that the lines of communication CANNOT BE ESTABLISHED. Kapo is this experience.
For example, I can describe to people how the hamstring, the hip, the neck, the back, the foot, works in an approach to leg-behind-head. They may not be able to grok the pose or some of what I say, but that pose is largely physical, exteriorizable, communicable. Put another way, it is extroverted.
Trapezoid man, as I'm discovering, doesn't feel anything like it looks. I can and have told people, "Oh, you drop back and grab your feet" (and I've gotten various looks of "you're crazy" or "ok, sure dude" and so forth), but I can't describe what's important about it, I cannot CONVEY it. I talked a bit about the abdominal pullings-open, but that's not Kapotasana. The wheel freakout, that warning, those jagged lines of white and blue that flashed through my head, THAT is Kapotasana. It is introverted, ascetic, not for the masses. It is, if you will, avant-garde, Abstract Expressionist. Kapotasana is Arshile Gorky, maybe. Or Barnett Newman.
I remember, in my processing while the rest of the class did closing, a feeling of MASSIVE loneliness, unasked for asceticism. I nodded at those people who have a teacher who has walked the coals of Kapo, really done it, really had the interior experience, and who can convey, understand, sympathize as necessary (or stand flintily off; that too, is a way of relating to someone's experience of Kapo).
Monday afternoon I showed a video by Bill Viola, called, "I Do Not Know What It is I am Like." Viola is into Zen (and did you know that Adrian Piper is apparently big into Ashtanga?) and consciousness and the ways in which the viewed object can change the viewing subject, but this change is more meditative than overtly political (insert followup here about the political potential for meditation). There are extreme-close-ups of the eyes of birds, and fish, and a long sequence dedicated to a Hindu fire ritual involving walking on hot coals. Finally, there are cycles of life and death (a big thing in Viola, consistently). My Kapo experience is not unlike that film. See it, somehow; put it in your head.
Some specific notes: Pasasana remains par for the course. Feet flat going right, toes going left. I eased off in Krounchasana because my right sit bone/hamstring has had some warning "crank not on me" pain before a tear sets in. Shalabhasana was nice and big; feet shaking in the last couple breaths, but that's fine. Bhekasana was great on the feet (I can palm-down both feet in that pose, without much trouble) but I would LOVE a "shoulders back, arch in back increases" adjustment. Dhanurasana was nice and big and rewarding; low ribs just barely on floor in front, so not my biggest bow ever, but pleasant all the same.
Ustrasana is getting easier. Laghu, I'd like some instruction in: I tend to come down with elbows still touching the floor, some energy there. On the way up, they help me get vertical again. I seem to remember reading that that's legal, and if it's not, my head doesn't lower to the floor.
And then the playground began: I call, as you know, Kapotasana, "Trapezoid Man," because if I ever do it, I'll look trapezoidal. Last night I did my Kapo (drop back, hands quiet, press up, walk in, press up) but my hands really weren't as close to my feet as I wanted them to be, so I took the pose to the wall, knelt, arched back, put my hands flat and worked on pressing the arms STRAIGHT there (shins on floor, hands on wall). This creates an arc of exploration, between the very VERY bottom of the rectus abs, and all the way up into the armpits, and for my money, it's MUCH more effective than a hands-on-floor pressup.
Soon everyone was exploring this kneeling-wall-dropback move. I must have approximated a Kapo arch four times, at least. I clearly felt the arch in my lumbar increase, and that pulling sensation come in under the ribs and also just over the pubic bone, really low in the rectus abdominis. Then I got back on the mat, because someone asked me what the "hands over head" was all about, so I said, "it's about THIS" and did my Kapo dropback, after which my teacher helped press the elbows in and down to the mat, and even when that happened, I STILL could not find my feet. Where the heck are they????
Trapezoid man, you remain a mystery. Fun little mystery.
So then I did a hands-not-to-feet Supta Vajrasana (this, I see, is connected to the thoracic bend in Kapo; when I can keep my hands on my feet is SV, this bodes well for my Kapo), both Bakasanas, both twists, and then Eka Pada and an adjusted Dwi Pada. The right hip has tightened up again; it was hard to even keep the foot behind the head. The left hip still cooperates; A B and C with no slippage.
I managed to keep my spine straight in Dwi Pada, well, approaching it, at least, but then when I was just about to hook the feet, I rolled backwards instead of the feet slipping off forwards. Hilarious! With someone standing behind me, I was able to hook the feet, but I was too round in the pose and I knew it. You and me, Dwi Pada! Some day!
We did Tittibhasana as a group, and some folks were even invited to put hands to ankles to approximate the Titti walk; that was cool to see. I stuck Pincha on the first try, and nailed the exit (but again, hit the right big toe heavily).
Then there was playing with scorpion and some other stuff, so I took a Mayurasana (which I still like) and then did the seven deadlies (I never get to do them in that class). Well, to be honest, I did SIX deadlies, because I just could NOT get vertical in the pincha-hands variation. It's the most difficult by far, of the headstands, in my experience.
Finally, backbends. Or so I thought. I set up for the wheel, pressed my head off the floor, and got what I can only describe as a full-body emotional warning that if I straightened the arms at all, I'd have a "hippie acid freakout." The pose was light, and the back willing, but something emotional loudly declared, NO!! No no no no no!!!" and so I let it go.
This was NOT physical pain, was NOT some kind of "breakdown," was NOT a warning of failure or pain of any sort. It was, I think, more a warning of intense emotional release: my first REAL hint of those "everyone cries in it" stories about Kapotasana. I think the warning was that it was not EMOTIONALLY safe to do that, in that room.
Processing: I feel that transformation is real, and here's how that works. Apparently, I put myself, PHYSICALLY, into a series of positions, the EMOTIONAL consequences of which I only discovered later. New territory entered, but territory which is LARGER than my awareness. Put another way, "I" am larger than "I" am aware of; Whitman said it best, "I contain multitudes." Put in asana terms, how many poses do I contain? What limits? Sure, the Purusha never transforms, but the mind in that DARK MIRROR, does. Or at least, if it doesn't, it perceives, as an illusion, that it DOES, and so for its own illusion, the transformation is REAL.
More processing: Some poses require a certain amount of maturity, of confrontation, of what is, really, asceticism. That word is wrong; let me try to address this. In a group practice, where most of us know each other (and many of the students who attend are also students of mine), there are certain poses I do for which I'm given "wow" acclaim--the leg-behind-head poses are obvious here. But there are other poses, where the inner experience SO DIFFERS from the external, that the lines of communication CANNOT BE ESTABLISHED. Kapo is this experience.
For example, I can describe to people how the hamstring, the hip, the neck, the back, the foot, works in an approach to leg-behind-head. They may not be able to grok the pose or some of what I say, but that pose is largely physical, exteriorizable, communicable. Put another way, it is extroverted.
Trapezoid man, as I'm discovering, doesn't feel anything like it looks. I can and have told people, "Oh, you drop back and grab your feet" (and I've gotten various looks of "you're crazy" or "ok, sure dude" and so forth), but I can't describe what's important about it, I cannot CONVEY it. I talked a bit about the abdominal pullings-open, but that's not Kapotasana. The wheel freakout, that warning, those jagged lines of white and blue that flashed through my head, THAT is Kapotasana. It is introverted, ascetic, not for the masses. It is, if you will, avant-garde, Abstract Expressionist. Kapotasana is Arshile Gorky, maybe. Or Barnett Newman.
I remember, in my processing while the rest of the class did closing, a feeling of MASSIVE loneliness, unasked for asceticism. I nodded at those people who have a teacher who has walked the coals of Kapo, really done it, really had the interior experience, and who can convey, understand, sympathize as necessary (or stand flintily off; that too, is a way of relating to someone's experience of Kapo).
Monday afternoon I showed a video by Bill Viola, called, "I Do Not Know What It is I am Like." Viola is into Zen (and did you know that Adrian Piper is apparently big into Ashtanga?) and consciousness and the ways in which the viewed object can change the viewing subject, but this change is more meditative than overtly political (insert followup here about the political potential for meditation). There are extreme-close-ups of the eyes of birds, and fish, and a long sequence dedicated to a Hindu fire ritual involving walking on hot coals. Finally, there are cycles of life and death (a big thing in Viola, consistently). My Kapo experience is not unlike that film. See it, somehow; put it in your head.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
I am a super-villain! With a sore wrist!
First off, thanks Vanessa!
Your results:
You are The Joker
Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...
Now then:
in prepping for my arm balance workshop at the end of the month, I've overused the left wrist again, and it hurts right around the little round bone at the outside of the hand, directly over the bony ends of the ulna and radius. I should just check a wrist diagram, but it's the round bone, pinky-side, which is on the "hand" not the "arm." There's soft tissue all around it which gets scrunched (and bruised, and feels it) when I balance too much or without enough warmup. Vinyasa seems to be ok, but handstands in particular must go, probably until the workshop.
Happy March! It's sunny as all get out here, and due to hit 60 degrees (that's warmer than my house heat is set, yo!)
Your results:
You are The Joker
| The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand. |
Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...
Now then:
in prepping for my arm balance workshop at the end of the month, I've overused the left wrist again, and it hurts right around the little round bone at the outside of the hand, directly over the bony ends of the ulna and radius. I should just check a wrist diagram, but it's the round bone, pinky-side, which is on the "hand" not the "arm." There's soft tissue all around it which gets scrunched (and bruised, and feels it) when I balance too much or without enough warmup. Vinyasa seems to be ok, but handstands in particular must go, probably until the workshop.
Happy March! It's sunny as all get out here, and due to hit 60 degrees (that's warmer than my house heat is set, yo!)
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