Monthly Archives: January 2008

  Words to memorize Words hypnotize Words make my mouth exercise Words all fail the magic prize   Nothin' I can say when I'm in your thighs  

Does using your practice as a scalpel for perfectionism prevent you from knowing that you are already perfect? Well, of course it does. Everyone knows this. Stupid perfectionism. But in the same way, is using your practice as a tool for awakening so much self-flagellation? Does it actually prevent us from realizing we are already […]

What is practice? a self-soothing routine we use to build up a stable, continuous sense of self in the face of uncertainty a forum for pursuing a vision of perfection an arena for self-mastery competition PERFORMANCE, duh a systematic daily pushing back of the veil between consciousness and the unconscious Yeah. REALITY CHECK on aisle […]

Singers and dancers and running backs work it for a living, but ashtangis would make it a mystery. It is hydraulic-pneumatic. It switches on and off. It exists in the world.  It is the flopping fish in a wise man’s throat, and the Boschian flowers that sprout from his down-dog when the coccyx does the […]

Little apocalypses here this week. Which is good, since 2008 as I knew it was not going according to plan. Now, I can’t stop listening to Prince’s end-of-the-world songs. I love the bat-out-of-hell sound effects. Was this stuff written during his Jehova’s Witness period, or is it full-on devil music? Party like it’s 1999 = […]

Can I say that? Yes. Breakfast with the ineffable again this morning. Probably, it is always this good but my mind forgets to note it. Oh who am I kidding??? This is special. Serious. Fucking. Alchemy. How many days in a row are we going to hit paydirt like this, kids? Are you wondering the […]

I was not kidding the other day. By the way. About Alice Coltrane. Bebop piano as a child; a young life all in jazz; then an India Period that never really ended. She founded the Vedantic Center of Los Angeles and produced a modest discography of sharply blended, yet beautiful, new age/ jazz/ indian/ soul […]

I am the taste in water, O Kaunteya; I am the radiance Of the moon an the sun,  The sacred utterance In all the Vedas, The sound in space, The prowess in humans. -Vr 7.8   Yoga is not a reclusive meditation in some distant mountain hermitage; rather, the hermitage is found in one's heart, […]

So. Speaking of dead brilliant women whose not-unbrilliant husbands got in their names. Dead brilliant women who will be remembered because of—and yet also so forgotten because of—those husbands. Last week, Laura Huxley. This week, Alice Coltrane. She died a year ago today. Brilliant Alice. I’m noting for the record that vocab around here has […]

Ok, let's wrap up this series before we all get thirsty. I started with the yoga the year after I stopped with the alcohol. And then when my first arresting ashtanga transformation occurred another year after that, a lot of ascetic tendencies got locked in. Stuff I’d put in my body, sensory stimuli I’d tolerate, […]