Monthly Archives: May 2009
Pathologies of Los Angeles • 30 May 2009
People aren’t afraid to merge on the freeways in Los Angeles, actually. They merge like fast little fish made smart by evolution. Especially on the weekends and at night, because it’s no longer about getting to work; and especially in June, when the cool cloudcover from the bay makes for perfect driving conditions. People deplore […]
Mysticism Kitsch • 26 May 2009
My favorite motto for the practice is still this one: Ashtanga yoga—reviving the grail quest one true believer at a time. Might be just me, though. I remember when the occult—even occult fiction (the kind where professors work out the secrets of the universe in medieval archives) —was something you didn’t really discuss. I read […]
Occult, optics, oy • 24 May 2009
New moon. I thought I’d go do some vinyasa flow with a minor celebrity later today, then drink tea out on Montana avenue while the locals lilt by with their poodles and chihuahas. I do love poodles. Yesterday after brunch with a suddenly right-wing friend who ranted for an hour about how it’s great that […]
Guru on the move • 20 May 2009
Another earthquake today. I was in my office, retrofitted, secure. Like the quake in ’00 in Seattle—I was five stories up in the Casy building at Seattle University—watching the quad sway back and forth while the psych professor next door screamed that we were all going to die. Strange. Today the sociologists all said, “Oh […]
18 May 2009 • 19 May 2009
DIY and Not-So-Private Minds • 11 May 2009
Somehow between Cross-fit and the apocalypse, I’ve got this idea that I need skills. I admire people with skills. You know… CPR, vegetable gardening, computer hacking, lock picking, multiple languages, fire-building, kombucha homebrewing. You never know when you’re going to be lost in the forest or trapped in a burning building or get a flat […]
Stealth Shala • 5 May 2009
It works like this. Mail the director 10 days in advance, asking for permission to drop in and directions to the shala. When he does not respond for four days, ask a student of his—who is also a friend of yours—to put in a word for you. Day five: send another email. Day six, find […]
Careful what you ask for • 1 May 2009
Exhibit A: Exhibit B: So I’m cornered. If practice in recent years has been a drilling down through a little sandstone, oil shale, hitting an aquifer or natural gas cave here and there…, well, this week I hit a vein of something black and opaque. Something that bites back. I finish as usual and find, […]