Monthly Archives: September 2007

I am ADD striving to be OCD. But unlike the rest of you all, I’m not naturally OCD. It’s really unfortunate. No perfectionism anywhere in here. But I am striving to become anal, and instituted a simple new system this week to that end. A dissertation journal. All it is is four lines and a […]

Ok. Holy Shit. It was decided that I should be edified. By a sort of direct experience of free jazz, which in its recorded form can make me irritable. Ornette Coleman and his drummer son Denardo and three bassists played here, the premiere of Sound Grammar; and I figured that twenty years from now when […]

I’ve thought over this matter in the past week, thanks to the many people who have emailed me. Thank you, everyone. Sometimes it amazes me that there is true community here, and that these are relationships where we work out aspects of our practice as much as we participate in creating a bottom-up side of […]

Ruth: [hearing chanting] What's that? Dr. Moreau: The natives, they have a curious ceremony… Ruth: Tell us about it, Edward. Edward: Oh, it's… it's nothing. Dr. Moreau: They are restless tonight.                                                          –Island of Lost Souls (1932) Yeah, the natives are restless. Phone calls. Email. Politics. Or, as they say, shalatics. Schedule changes. All […]

I accidentally flew first class back into Los Angeles late-late on Monday. And for the first time after this restless desultory summer, it feels like a place I want to stay for a while. So now I will go down to the workshop and construct a machine. This is my life for fall: practice, research, […]

This is not a rant. Maybe it ought to be.  This is a request for someone to help me find humor in a dark bit of tabloid-quality ashtanga flotsam. This is not a rant because I’m trying to find a middle path between two thoughtful, true perspectives. One, Lax’s reminder that Astanga Yoga is a […]

I kept it short-short for a while in college, after the dred lock period (itself the result of a month on a winter wilderness ski trip, aided by a little cross-country skiboot grease… then maintained for the thrill of taking that hair to my parents’ church on winter break). When I cut it all off, […]

Been thinking about Puerto Cabezas this week. A category five laid down there on Thursday. A few years ago I spent a week on the isolated Nicaraguan coast, lying around in hammocks, drinking batidos sin leche, experiencing an awfully advanced stage of giardia, and avoiding eye contact with the various America’s Most Wanted characters slithering […]

A migraine woke me at four in the morning last Saturday, three days into silence. The headaches started two years ago and I take them like the scrappy little RockyMountain pioneer my dad raised, but this time the entire tone of the thing was different. Intense. Hard-edged. Guess that’s what it feels when you have zero options […]

Last Thursday morning, Isaac Brock appeared to me floating in a cartoon cloud and hissed: “Sharpen your nerves!” Then he cackled and grinned at me with a mouthful of teeth filed down to points. Screamed: “Sharpen your nerves! Ahh haa haa haa!!” Fine Isaac. I’ll stop being a lazy ass, sitting here on the cushion […]