Monthly Archives: December 2008

Death Valley • 28 December 2008

Things are going wrong in academia: not the right year to do your coming-out. The anonymous rumor mills online are full of despair and rage, people who can’t insure their kids, can’t imagine themselves as anything else, but do envision pistols in their temples. Ain’t no “positive thinking” superstitions among scientists, that’s for sure. Hello, […]

These are a few… • 21 December 2008

… Envelope breathing. Begin the inhale just before the arms rise. Complete the movement then let the inbreath conclude. Exhale a tiny moment, then the arms move, following the breath. And so on. If I must breathe in order to move, I follow the breath. This is something MW teaches– not easy but over time […]

SLVI: The Present • 20 December 2008

When you wrap the presents, just wrap the presents. Or listen to these. Six minutes with Pema Chodron. This is about staying with the breath. About “non-life-threatening” distractions, about how quieting the mind is piercing holes in the clouds of the sky. No habit nor bowl-cut can repress her growing adorableness. Especially that moment when […]

The hazards of seeking sage advice • 17 December 2008

Last summer I got to feeling it was time for wise feedback. For a nonpartisan perspective. I went and found MW, Krishnamacharya’s western student. I would have sat at his feet but he’s so far beyond that nonsense. He levels comfortably, like his other teacher, U.G. We spent some time, established something ongoing. Hilarious guy, […]

ZANORG • 15 December 2008

Tonight I turned my tender-monkey grooming ways to my laptop. Burnished the old girl with pointy little q-tips intended for home manicures, and removed all the keys to see what was going on with the sticky e. Ohhhh. The keyboard was filled with flax seeds (three varieties), chia seeds, hemp seeds, and lint. The keys […]

Great Vibes (For Your Toes) • 11 December 2008

KS up in the Portland office clipped this from the current US Weekly. Looks like ad prices are going down. More of the same to come…? I wonder what they will think of next. Maybe… -Electro-stimulation sensors to hook up to your spine at night. Let it raise your kundalini for you, while you sleep! […]

On Madness • 8 December 2008

I wanted to keep myself sane in my practice. Like in Solaris, the Tarkovsky film, wherein a cosmonaut journeys far to a planet where something has gone very wrong among a crew of explorer-scientists. A mysterious presence, some animus in the planet’s living ocean, has driven them mad; and our new explorer must find the […]

For V. • 3 December 2008

Shoulda known it would come around to the master key eventually. It took almost two years, which is about right. But wow. What am I doing? Stop me now? This’ll stop everything. Go grab a tennis ball, right now, and sit on it. Right in your perineum in the Janu-C style. Keep sitting on it. […]

Field of Battle, Song of God • 1 December 2008

Hrmmm…Thanksgiving. Up—dinner outside right over the ocean, salt breeze and corn-celery-sage stuffing and that slanting yellow glow you get south of the California boot spur. Sneaking off Friday to US Ashtanga central headquarters, now located in an elite outdoor mall and dripping mint condition prana all down the quick-decay façade of Anthropologie. Everything about the […]