Ashtanga Ann Arbor · 4 September 2009
Monday I drove Pico Blvd from Santa Monica toward downtown, straight toward the wildfire smoke roiling in the east—smoke so dense that for days it generated its own precipitation, perfect white cumulonimbus billowing over the greys and ashen browns of the destruction. For once I sympathized with the forward-thinkers, the Editor among them, who say the dream is dead and life here is a mindless pillage of resources long depleted. It was earthquake weather this week; and gas was well over three dollars a gallon. The state is closing parks and libraries and selling off its treasures, its many-jeweled crown of the University of California is putting professors on furlough and grad students in the gutter. Apocalypses and lost causes rather turn me on, but I thought I’d come out to Ann Arbor for a while anyway.
The flight was horrible—a red eye next to a woman suffering hot flashes and large enough to need more space than just our armrest. What do you do but defer to the good mother? She blasted the air and I folded myself up like a beatle (thank you, ashtanga) and froze through the night, sleeping never and marring my record for idyllic air travel experiences. Using Shinzen's practice of finding the image stream and disentangling it from emotion, the mini re-traumatization showed me the seeds of the bitter hate that I have for cold: two incidents in my early twenties that have left an abiding, personal anger toward weather under 60 degrees. (One, a monthlong ski-camping trip during which I frostbit my right toes on riverside subzero nights, and the second a night on the shores of Lake Ometepe with nothing to keep warm but a bottle of Nicaraguan rum. It’s funny that, for all the trauma I witnessed as a child, the main scars in my body were collected late in life. And they are in a sense trivial—almost comic moments of fun taken too far. Still, I can almost not bear the cold—emotions of victimhood and fear overwhelm me.
By the time we landed in the pink sunrise over Lake Huron, I was fully, bitterly dissatisfied, albeit grateful that the loathsome circumstances would deepen my love for Detroit the second I stepped out in to its 80 degree heat wave. But then I didn’t. It was fifty degrees on the ground—cold enough to chill both produce and owls in T-shirts. The subliminal voices telling me to run back to California began to scream and I slid from regular dissatisfaction (a loss of equanimity) in to the swamps of despair (dissatisfaction + drama). But the Editor—now Professor to the likes of us—doesn’t have the option of leaving. He’s faculty now in one of the finest departments in the country, so even as I remain professorly free labor in the original sense, I am going to have a more than passing relationship to this place.
The chill-induced hate and fear hollowed out depths that have, in the days since, been filled beyond capacity with delight and pleasure. This exaggerated ambivalence is the calling card of culture shock: and it still happens, no matter how jaded I pretend to be, no matter that by now I’ve lived in four countries and eight states. When I’m in culture shock I get a temporary case of borderline personality syndrome—in which every one and every thing is either perfect or from hell, and every new experience is a new up or down vote in the referendum on the new culture.
Sound like your last trip to Asia? In the first days, Ann Arbor’s approval rating pendulumed between zero and 150. Characteristically for my manic body politic, the euphoric, delighted, yes side wants to annihilate the dissatisfied side. Though ultimately, if joy is to win, I don't want it to happen through dishonesty or repression. But at some point, I guess I’ll just learn to let satisfaction resume her natural place at the wheel.
Last night in the front yard, the sleekest, cutest creature of black and white wrestled imaginary playmates in the grass (this morning I found a beehive she’d unearthed in the front bushes—poor bees). Who knew skunks were so beautiful? The light of the streetlamp—yes, this is downtown Ann Arbor, we’re four blocks from Main Street even if this place has an enormous back yard that feels like a campsite on the Olympic Peninsula—made the fluffy blinding-white of her head and stripes shine out as she tumbled and undulated her potent, gorgeous fan of a tail. The creature rolled over and over, batted the air, danced and jumped, burrowed in to the grass. She made what felt like eye contact with me as I stood in the beveled lead-glass front windows of this ornate old house—but like the other creatures all over this zone, she views humans as benign. I thought of my first grandfather, a mink farmer who killed himself when furs became unpopular and he lost the farm… does my chest of inherited furs contain no skunks because consumers associated the most gorgeous pelt ever with skunk perfume? Very good… I’m happy I will never have the option of throwing one of this girl’s own grandparents round my shoulders when Ann Arbor gets bitter fucking cold.
Meanwhile, I’ve acclimated to 50 and it takes next to nothing to steam up what is surely the finest solo practice space that is. The Editor would lure me here with this; and it is better bait than any. The building is a restored townhouse, maybe 90 years old, with knotty pine floorboards and engraved brass fixtures, heavy mouldings, a clawfoot tub, and blue tilework in the kitchen. The practice space is about ten feet by twelve, with a north window that looks into pine trees and a west window opening up over the roof to the forest out back. It’s so motherfucking juicy in there I don’t understand it. What could be the power of this little room? It may be that the space is the perfect size for one (I could fit three, if the locals—who tend to like a lot of mat space—can pretend to be New Yorkers), or that the previous resident—an artist for Google—was very good at clearing spaces to make energy flow. But I suspect there is something deeper and older going on around here…I don’t understand this town yet, but it has some weird power and grace, and some kind of intelligence that has nothing to do with its having the highest social capital in the country.
I rolled in with a paltry mess kit: seven tealghts and a stick of incense superstitiously lifted from the home shala, doubts about Ann Arbor, and samskaras about the cold. But on Wednesday I woke at 5 (2 o’clock in LA; and having not slept the previous night) drawn to the little room’s gold floors waiting across the hall in the dark. The heavy walls—a whipped plaster just painted pale yellow—echoed breath back to me; one of the floorboards creaked loudly under each jump-back and crashed when I fell out of a handstand.
This space will make me quieter. Working the echo in the floor, getting light enough to make its reverb disappear, letting whatever forgotten history and strong energy this place contains lift me out of the dark and the confusion.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: arbitrage
, astanga yoga
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I like this.
Posted by: RE · Sep 4, 11:28 AM · #
sounds like you landed in a good place, and for the warmth, i am sure you can create your own
take care
Posted by: fatou · Sep 4, 01:01 PM · #
I think the space has a high ceiling? That would make the space more church like…! Pics!
The weather is nice this week though, and you will be surrounded by pumpkins and leaves in just a little while! Get fat over winter, natures best defense!
Posted by: Gregor · Sep 4, 01:16 PM · #
Testing…. Sorry if anyone was temporarily banned. I think I’ve fixed that.
Yes, there are high ceilings on the first floor. And a neighbor up the street is growing pumpkins that are already bigger than me. Root vegetables are everywhere. As for fattening up for winter… well, I’ll admit I’m pretty hostile to the midwest winder pudge.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 5, 12:54 PM · #
hi (0v0)
sorry about your horrid flight. good thing you didn’t catch a cold. it is a problem when we’re traveling next to morbidly obese people. i feel sorry for them. congratulations to the Editor on his new job. the apartment sounds lovely. how wonderful to be looking out onto such greenery. would you be open to finding an academic position there too?
i was accepted to UofM but went to ND instead. i visited Ann Arbor while in college, i’ll always recall a peaceful walk through a cemetery next to my host’s home. there was a tomb to a girl named Nadia Ferneli who died probably at age 6. the family had placed her image painted on enamel, attached to the tombstone. i have never forgotten that name. the fragility of her life and the love the parents must have had for her touched me.
hugs
Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Sep 5, 03:46 PM · #
I’m skeptical. They are open to it; but the dep’t and students would need to be amazing for me to settle here. I’m not interested in advice or even discussing this… it’s a year for me to experiment and explore.
BTW, shot the ceiling.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 6, 04:04 AM · #
ann arbor is a nice college town, although a bit boring. 50s is nice 2 me, but i’m rugged from living in chicago most of my life. when i lived in cali, i missed the seasons :-( ur place looks sweet
Posted by: bindifry · Sep 6, 05:36 AM · #
I seem to always wind up sharing part of my air space with someone who can’t fit into just one seat. It’s frustrating. I always leave feeling I ought to qualify for some sort of discount or kickback.
You are very resilient. I wonder how long you are staying there!
Posted by: boodiba · Sep 7, 10:40 AM · #
That last sentence keeps reminding me of asato ma sadgamaya. (My favorite!)
Posted by: karen · Sep 8, 04:15 AM · #
Asato ma sadgamaya (translation at the link). That’s beautiful. From darkness to light? The past two weeks have been unexpectedly chaotic—so much more than I could have guessed; so maybe what I can expect is for that chaos to continue. I am not sure why I have put myself in this situation. Maybe to test my own groundedness, force myself to mature quickly (ha!), or just see what interesting things sprout up in the interstices. I don’t know. Funny you said resilient Boodi… my mom has always said that about me. It used to infuriate me because she’d use it as an explanation for things like not providing lunch money in high school or helping pay for college, which at the time I resented. But… it seems to have worked the way she planned… bless her.
As for Ann Arbor, I just walked all over town in the pouring rain and had two university staff be incredibly cold to me. Low grade irritants like these are new to me. (Native Michiganers are cold—I can’t imagine having my everyday background of warmth and delight with neighbors and workers in my environment replaced with this kind of frigidity… it also means that my usual way of making everything run quickly and smoothly by being easy and empathetic does not function here. It’s like my minor powers have been switched off. I wonder if I can be creative enough to make them work again, or make this work for me.)
Bindi’s right that it is is a boring town, especially in terms of food and music. It’s a diverse zone ethnically and culturally because of the U, but… still oddly dull. I am fairly in love with Detroit; and Chicago is four hours away by train, but this is different from living in a real city. That said, I suspect that for me, the university may be the most exciting one that exists anywhere. It’s a crazy powerhouse. Across from my office sits a hilariously Soviet-esque/Edward Scissorhands Suvero piece in blazing red; and in the front window of the adjacent museum they’re showing a great collection I saw this summer at the Hammer. A lot of people come through the institution—and the diversity and cosmopolitanism they bring is exciting. The university sells itself as an idyllic, cheap place for top academics to settle and live the good life. A nice pitch. But I have zero interest in settling down.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 8, 07:27 AM · #
Holy moley, di Suvero’s Orion near by?! Forget the Soviet flag: that’s your mind moving. It’s the finger pointing at the moon! :-)
Posted by: karen · Sep 8, 03:22 PM · #
You’re finding Michiganders cold? Oh no.
Posted by: joy · Sep 9, 07:03 AM · #
This Orion thing is just unavoidable. I just took a break to go watch people interact with it. It’s basically a fake Calder (since every other campus has a giant red one of those), but instead of being perfectly balanced, slightly understated and self-contained, the Orion is exactly as you say—a reference to something elsewhere. Being both bright red and enormous, It demands attention but then points it away to the sky. I understand why people hate it. Certain kinds of hatred might even be a higher compliment than liking it. But, since this zone can use a little audacity, I like it.
Joy, I am trying to figure this out. I think it’s more accurate to say that what feels strange is that people are not as relaxed or as trusting as I expect. Admittedly, in Cali I know most people who cross my path every day, and am on affectionate terms with most of them… it’s very weird to have hundreds of familiar people who I may never see again. Here, people here are more physically rigid and require about 4 times the personal space than I’d like to give them. In Cali, there is a background trust not only in acquaintances but that things are just going to work out fine. You don’t nail down plans or ways of doing things. Here there is much more spelling out of expectations, making dates, exactitude… the relationship to time is as tight as the relationship to space is expanded. Also, just a lot of tie dye and polar fleece, godhelpus. I feel more at home in Latin America or Western Europe! But… when I recognize the foreign-ness of this zone, it does get more amusing.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 9, 10:12 AM · #
The best part about apocalypses is being able to watch all the golden calves get trundled out again. Where do people manage to stash the damned things during the ‘good times?’
And skunks are wonderful! Kinda smelly sometimes, but beautiful nonetheless.
Posted by: Carl · Sep 9, 10:42 AM · #
Well, I went to Michigan State and we thought the entire city of Ann Arbor held the greatest concentration of self-important assholes in the northern hemisphere. Have you seen those “Harvard: The Michigan of the East” t-shirts? Ask anybody from East Lansing.
Posted by: Jamie · Sep 9, 11:22 AM · #
Now that is funny. Went to a faculty meeting today. I’m not used to people with bad haircuts being so alpha dog. They dominate and they know it. Good thing they have Harvard to look down on. Admittedly, Harvard deserves it.
In fairness though, I think this explains the cold attitude of the staff yesterday. Strong hierarchies, which is what California was created to subvert.
Maybe I should just watch for a while before generalizing…
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 9, 12:56 PM · #
Alpha dogs with bad haircuts, people needing 4 X more personal space… Yes, yes, yes. I hear you! My ex went to law school there.
You need some excursions to Detroit. Go hear some blues or something?
Posted by: joy · Sep 10, 02:14 AM · #
Good idea.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 10, 02:39 PM · #