Saturday XXXI · 10 November 2007
Not much going on here. Taking the car to the shop. Taking the skates to the beach. Taking the Editor to a contemporary dance thing, which I don’t expect to understand all that well. No contortion today as there is a small piece of concrete occupying my stomach and making no signs of assimilating.
Last month I found an independent, spotless coffee shop with loose genmaicha and sturdy tables, where I’ve had a few excellent Sunday afternoons. But then I had my 2-year old niece and her folks meet me there last week. I am always overlooking distance, assuming that people experience the world in basically the same ways. But the truth is anyone in my family is so culturally distant that there are few public spaces we can equally share. Sad. I didn’t care that they were loud and filthy because delighted to see them, but the owner was horrified. I suppose my BIL rolling in and ordering “a Diet” and a mass of whipped cream in a cup for the kid didn’t set the best tone. The owner shuddered at the mess when they left.
The episode complicated our business relationship. Both because I felt rotten about it, and because I was disappointed at her lack of sophistication. Does it really have to spoil your aesthetic identity to have some simple people pass through your space (especially if escorted by your regulars)? I could ease up in that way too. A lot. Flirting with cultural boundaries (of inter-class mingling, food, and acceptable exercise forms) is the theme this week for that reason. Meanwhile, I need a place to work on Sundays.
After months of asana-free moondays and an abnormally grouchy afternoon, I broke down and took a flow class last night. Full on corporate flow, with music (Dntel, Radiohead, Elliot Smith and… this?). Interesting that mention or marketing of Diwali was nowhere to be seen at the corporate studio, which I suppose is a good thing. Very sweet and skilled teacher, although I see after a long break from the flow world, the distance between this and my practice is laaaarge. Still it did take the edge off the monkeymind. I think this is because the astanga method has trained me decently well: just assuming some postures does this pavlovian thing of mind calming and body releasing. But I doubt it would have that effect if I weren’t trained in a silent, contemplative, non-performative version of asana practice.
I’m wondering whether the American invention of Flow yoga might have more in common with ecstatic dance, modern choreography and pilates than with krishnamacharyan contemplative asana practice. Flow yoga is either self-expressive or transports you out of yourself entirely. Contemplative asana is different in the mind-state it cultivates and in its intention. Both are good. I probably need to dip into the strange subculture of spontaneous ecstatic dance—not “trance dance” (which sounds horrific, though please correct me if you like) but the grassroots stuff akin to raving—in order to understand better how it relates to this unique American creation of Hatha Flow.
Definitely a crack in my cultural comfort zone, that ecstatic dance stuff....
● Mary Taylor and Richard Freeman started a blog. When I lived alone last year, on rare (and I do mean rare) nights I’d want to hear the sound of another voice in my house. R's recordings are good for that. I have not yet listened to those archived here.
● Junot Diaz is so good. So fucking good. There’s been a ton of press, including a boring interview with Terri Gross. But this week, Michael Silvelblatt (the national treasure) truly got him talking. About how reference-dense writing is encyclopedic of the world; about the fear of abandoning the OLD stories and the OLD masculinity because this means a man has to put his body out into the world and be so much more open to whatever experience is there for him. About Trujillo’s rape-dictatorship and the de-fetishization of sex. And about reading as a collective act. “Reading is a debt we owe to a collective even though we may practice it alone.” LISTEN.
● For Norman Mailer, who is dead today. A short 1971 news story in which he condescends to feminists ("diaper Marxists") at Town Hall, with all the NY literati there to watch. A comic snapshot of the ideas and alliances of the day. “We broke our hearts trying to keep our aprons clean.”
● The Blog Readibility Test. I am Junior High School Level. Nice!
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: arbitrage
, astanga yoga
, having a body
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I took the Blog Readibility Test and came out “College, Post Grad”. I do not know what caused that. Perhaps I have a few too many titles of blog entries with sanskrit asana names? Speaking of which, asana is a sanskrit word. :)
Cheers, Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Nov 10, 03:53 PM · #
I put my soc website through the ringer and it came out “Genius.”
Posted by: R · Nov 10, 04:00 PM · #
I think those blog test people need to work on their algorithm. A lot.
Posted by: jlafitte · Nov 10, 04:07 PM · #
Maybe… :)
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 10, 04:12 PM · #
High school level.
Which is good, since that is the demographic my sponsors are going after.
First time trolling down ashtangi.net in a long time. Thanks for the Junot Diaz link, which I just downloaded. Reminds me of “The Feast of the Goat,” by Vargas Llosa, about Trujillo. Excellent read. T
Posted by: Tim · Nov 11, 04:16 AM · #
Junior high. What is it about a doctoral degree that makes one so very….junior high?
Posted by: patrick · Nov 11, 08:14 AM · #
Sentence structure fatigue. Fragments. Neologism-ism.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 11, 08:20 AM · #
Well I just tried it out on my website, which has a hierarchical structure. Only the bottom tier pages have text content; it ranks those pages as genius or postdoc. But if I give it the base url it seems to think the website is elementary overall. Technology is overrated.
Posted by: jlafitte · Nov 11, 08:57 AM · #
If I remember correctly, it runs on a really basic algorithm where the main criteria is the number of syllables in the words you are using.
Posted by: Vanessa · Nov 11, 10:56 AM · #
Sad that Mailer is gone now. A triumphant life of electric outrage and glory. An entirely unique expressionist. He never surrendered to cynicism. God had better be a good counter-puncher unless he wants a broken nose. Bless You Norman!
Posted by: tristan · Nov 11, 11:29 AM · #
neologism-ism sounds like something dirty. :)
Posted by: patrick · Nov 11, 02:50 PM · #
Your blog readability-meter is likely using Flesch-Kincaid, which charts words in sentences and syllables per word, like so:
(0.39 × Average Sentence Length) + (11.8 × Average Syllables per Word) – 15.59
But each of your links to other blogs or prior entries, your titles, etc., are counted as sentences (I tested this out with my own, using varying URLs), which will dumb you the heck down.
Rest assured. You’re totally high school. (Incidentally, on their watch, mine’s also Junior High.)
But: thanks for the Junot Diaz interview. I only yesterday had to defend him against the charge that he was just a middling latecomer to the cash-in-on-your-identity crew. As if he somehow had anything to do with dreck like Sandra Cisneros. Looking forward to finally reading his new book, eight years after I came across Drown.
Posted by: dailymiltonian · Nov 12, 03:28 PM · #
Speaking of Yancy, that is how I came across JD.
After having sloshed the both of you with JD at Black Butte Ranch some winters before, now that I think of it.
I am aware that my writing is horribly dense. Blogging is only slowly teaching me to be more readable. Sad to learn the Junior High designation was so mistaken in so many ways.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 12, 05:31 PM · #
Sorry if my comment contributed to that impression – I was just thinking out loud about the algorithm, the way computer scientists on the mildest end of the Asperger spectrum do.
Posted by: The Mindbender · Nov 14, 08:45 AM · #
Hee hee. No, Vanessa!
I always like it when you think out loud.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 14, 11:29 AM · #
Clarity of thought and prose is a fantastic goal, I think, but is ill-described by Flesch Kincaid. For example, the following (historically apropos) text by E.B. White, who in my mind remained unassailable for music and clarity throughout the length of his career, and maybe even in all of his unrecorded life:
“The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now; in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest editions.
All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.”
Flesch-Kincaid level: 14. I.e., college level. But I promise you that the ideas and even the basic-level content is just as a clear as in any meticulously 6th-grade level newspaper. It’s just that with the clarity came richness.
Ain’t no sin to be in high school. Jack Hart, go to hell.
Posted by: dailymiltonian · Nov 14, 04:47 PM · #
uh no…what’s that mean about my site’s “genius” rating???
Posted by: R · Nov 14, 08:37 PM · #
It means you’re incomprehensible, Rob.
Posted by: dailymiltonian · Nov 15, 09:30 AM · #
lakjsdjni fosjnijfisn anwbner nin sdfnunslnk. irtngt sit!
Posted by: R · Nov 15, 09:58 AM · #
I couldn’t agree more.
Posted by: dailymiltonian · Nov 15, 10:21 AM · #
I think the blog rating is pretty much rubbish, mine came out as college post grad and I know Owls is so much more cleverererer than mine. Owl has smart stuff to say I waffle pointlessly :-)
Posted by: skelly · Nov 16, 02:54 PM · #