SLI: Dirty Feet, Dirty Concepts, Ashtanga on Demand · 25 April 2008
Skipped work Friday and took my two-year-old niece to the beach. We rode the creepy carousel on the Santa Monica pier, me just zoning out to the nightmare calliope, staring into the spiraling mirrors, and waiting for it to end.
Then we rode it again. And again.
She’s so excited by her environment, her huge slate blue eyes beneath hair the same weird color as mine are wide, glinty, always hypnotically changing. She misses her mom and attaches to the thing that most resembles her… a big plushie owl. The intense, preternatural need in her, the rawness of emotion in this, her first transference relationship. Her trust and love for me, as perhaps with students’, come from other associations that map easily on to me. (I am not too maternal, but don’t throw up much static for someone who might want to see that here). It is wonderful to be there for it. I will be her Aunt her whole life. I feel myself reciprocating the bond, letting her pull me out to the water with my jeans on, even though there’s nothing I hate like dirty feet and sand in my things.
What else? This week, the longstanding rivalry between yogis and hipsters dissolved when Time magazine equated the two.
It’s not that a cultural boundary has changed so much as that both concepts have lost their crispness enough that the middlebrow milquetoast magazine can throw them around like nothing. As a notorious, maddening, extremely cute, French sociologist reminded me Thursday, our concepts are little animals and when we take them out to play, sometimes they get dirty. That’s when we bring them home and clean them up again for future use, so our thoughts become clear again.
I’m all for cleaning up “hipster,” restoring it as a properly circumscribed term of abuse. But maybe we’ll leave the concept of “ashtangi” a little more dirty?
Meanwhile, until the hipster/ashtangi boundary gets redrawn, I will celebrate yoga-hipster nonduality by publicly demonstrating the primary series, on a Saturday, at a yoga lifestyle store I often ridicule. (Turns out their labor practices are improving a bit). The friend who set up this event is upset that there is no ashtanga awareness in the culture this corporation is generating.
Ok. So I’m taking my manifestly nerdy ass over there in my anti-brand-name clothes. Will they dress me up in trademark garb to get a on my Marichyasana D?
It’s one o’clock Saturday at Lululemon, and don’t you dare bring a camera if you swing by. I’m feeling weird enough about it already, but I know two hours of secret Saturday ritual beforehand will mellow out the introverted awkwardness. Saturday after SS is when my wheels finally, briefly spin to a stop every week, so it’ll be interesting to see how public ashtanga-on-demand fits in to the energetic cycle.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: astanga yoga
, having a body
, markets-networks-society
, social theory
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Some people live so far away from the ocean they dream of getting sand in their things! Not long now. Maybe you can tour the lulus further north in May!
I liken ideas to little rocks. Sometimes we throw them at people, sometimes they catch them, and often they burnish them like an apple and give them back. I hope to always throw them in the ocean when they get smooth… without trying to pick another rough one from the shore…
Posted by: Gregor · Apr 25, 07:33 PM · #
Wear your Star Trek dress to Lululemon . . . that’ll show ‘em!
Posted by: RE · Apr 25, 07:39 PM · #
Aww come on, no cameras? You could be like Eugene doin’ his demo in that shoe store or whatever it is where he does floating chaturanga and such.
Posted by: patrick · Apr 26, 04:32 AM · #
there’s an anusara teacher here who did pinca in a hoop-skirt, “frankly lulu i don’t give a damn”? when they had her there. btw it’s taken me this long to figure out how to comment on your new layout. yay! have fun, wish i were there, lino would be impressed.
Posted by: eeyore · Apr 26, 06:17 AM · #
Lululemon seems like a perfect place to bring the little animals to play — for surely they will get dirty, and likely in a most interesting way.
Posted by: karen · Apr 26, 07:08 AM · #
Lulutour! Hook it up! (Lulupalooza 2008!)
Posted by: R · Apr 26, 11:22 AM · #
Lulupalooza
ROTFL, if you will…
Posted by: patrick · Apr 26, 12:40 PM · #
I wish I could go!
Yes, they may dress you up. Lulupalooza!
Posted by: Anna · Apr 26, 01:17 PM · #
Hi (0v0)
Exciting news!
Cheers
Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Apr 26, 02:34 PM · #
I demonstrated yoga in Lulu windows once, but my motives were very utilitarian – I wanted a tank from them which I could not afford. Well, I could, but I would feel bad about spending $70 on it. It was an interesting experience! A friend who works for them is very unhappy about their labor practices.
Posted by: Alfia · Apr 27, 03:07 AM · #
forget stills…we want videos, and lots of them, posted to youtube.
the best thing is that you’ll probably end up being someone’s “manju on a rock,” inspiring them to pick up the practice after seeing your demo. how cool is that?
Posted by: cody · Apr 27, 07:16 AM · #
I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were doing this! I missed it! I’m SO BUMMED!
Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Apr 27, 09:10 AM · #
Hello friends. Why am I always the thirteenth comment here?
Gregor: I’ll let you know about the Owl tour. If you keep leaving me rocks as shiny as these well tumbled agates I will continue to be tempted. Also, my brother is in Portland these days and Susan, also a denizen, needs me to kick her ass.
RE: I did not wear the Trekkie dress because it was DIRTY! I wore it last week. We need to find me a little golden pin for teleporting.
Patrick: NO! I am working this edge all I possibly can. I have a blog for godsakes. INFJ, remember?
Eeyore: I adore you. Thanks for coming back from the ether.
Karen: you always make the connections. Always. While you are reading DFW and we are talking about little animals, have you read his short story “Little Expressionless Animals” in Girl With Curious Hair? It is perfect for you on several levels… fodder either for your upcoming brilliant tech talk or because one of the characters somehow feels on the page like some of your poetry. (Not Alex Trebek, who is one of the characters.) The rest of the collection is kind of bad by comparison to that lead story.
R: punny. (R is thinking of starting a blog called Punhunter, people. To document puns in everyday life, such as on commercial signs and in newspaper article titles. Just to clarify: PUNS ARE THE LOWEST FORM OF HUMOR. OWL OPPOSES PUNNING. But lulupalooza is funny. ROTFFL, IYKWIM.
Anna, yes they dressed me. I went in in my awesome very old yoga clothes but didn’t last.
Arturo, thanks.
Cody, I think a couple of people were inspired to crossover from their bikram and “power” practices. Sound familiar?
LIA, I’ll make it up to you.
Alfia, I’ll write a bit more about the labor practices thing when I get a second.
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 27, 07:19 PM · #
What is this sticky black hole you are refering to called Astanga? The gravitational pull of Bikram was weak, but strong enough to awake my inherent need for a practice involving strength and stretch. Is this Astanga the real diligencia? If you say ‘read all my posts’, I will. :)
Posted by: Gregor · Apr 28, 07:27 AM · #
Oh damn, you know I’m such a sucker for wordplay that I’ll not wait til the blogging hour.
Yes it can be the real diligencia. If you mean the royal road: deeleehaynseeah hoyale. If you mean the catwalk. Tightrope? Portuguese: desfile em devaneios. (Sounds like Machado, doesn’t it? Or Lorca.)
But the catwalk also goes here (Especially because, as I think Mike D said somewhere, “everyone knows ashtanga gives you a beautiful body”).
My posts began as owl salvoes… I don’t know if there is anything of value to you there. Though I did edit, and write in more complete thoughts, at the beginning.
Bikram is a shadow on the wall of the cave. Ashtanga is free, and frees you by binding you up. (The mind likes to be bound, and bodies are unique but then again not.) This is so much more sticky, and psychosomatically deep it’s not even funny. It’s also got creepy transpersonal shakipat tendrils running throughout, and those don’t come through the books.
But it is also a rabbit hole. I have sent you the Toronto and Montreal listings, but you have to swallow the pill yourself.
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 28, 12:07 PM · #