Saturday XXXX: Family Jewels · 8 February 2008
Battered re-re-recycled box arriving in the department on Thursday: a stash of antique family jewelry, nestled inside the delicate old wool blanket I requested from the homestead (without disclosing I will use it for meditation practice, having wrapped up to read inside it as a girl).
Sweet mom. She loves her shit, but she lets it go so easy. She’d almost thank us for breaking priceless thises and thats when we were ruddy little nakeds running around the house in winter.
And what will I do with these (unfortunately unbreakable) preciouses I’ll never wear? Thank god I’m not responsible for the giant diamonds or the furniture or the china. Oppressive preciouses.
She comes from middling Denver beer barons but halfway abandoned that family history, and for good reason. The once thriving clan up and sank mid-century like a big tragic cruise ship in a drunken sea of skitzophrenia and suicides, its fragments parceled into lifeboats that drifted in all directions. I’ve re-forged some of the lost connections in adulthood, even as its physical detritus drifts in to my life here and there.
The waves of objects from some lost fantasy family are psychically heavy, but do make me feel slightly less alien in a working-class rural conservative clan that regards me with suspicion. I have the scrappy little physique of my dad’s Irish mongrels, but the increasingly angular aspect of the Bavarian brewmistresses in their old daguerrotypes. The best of both worlds, in some ways, now that it’s more or less clear my personality isn't going to split like the skitzophrenics' do in the early 20s.
Oh, wait.
Right.
It’s been three weeks since I posted on a Saturday, and links are stacked up. You know, Pema Chodron went on Ophrah; the TM yogi died; the aliens in Stephenesville just got more and more exciting. Also, an insightful teacher finally made the connection between fundamentalist yoga and the larger political moment (!), and CP kept the conversation going. And a lot of other stuff. But in lieu of links today I’m going to empty the cache and give you headlines from my life.
● Actually, despite the confusion, the “true” new moon was Thursday. How do I know? Because that’s the day the migraine hit. This is what I get for messing with my hormones. Lame.
● Wednesday I finally went in for the cheaper, more absorbable spirulina. The powder, rathen than the compacted little tablets. OH MY GOD! Why didn’t someone warn me? The color and consistency are sludge, and the taste…. God, if anything can inure me to pure unadulterated spirulina, it’ll be the next two months it takes me to get through the one pound jar of it. Curses!
● No. I am not on Facebook. No!
● And yes, working for the ivory tower is still a tragedy. Two friends did get jobs, but on balance the market is busy crushing souls. Why do we humans do this—create these viscious markets?
● Yes there will be some kind of ashtangi gathering next week as things come to a close. Do send me your email if you’d like to be invited.
● Sunday I am finally making the first of many meetings with Anna from New York! The first agenda items is scratching the muffins. If you don’t know what that means, lucky you.
● With all these weekday outdoor breakfasts in the yoga idyll that is my life, my hair has turned a horrific strawberry blond. This might call for an intervention.
● People out there are actually running the google search: “Yoga three years suck your own dick.” Lots of people. I wouldn’t put that in print but they’re coming here anyway. Sorry, guys.
● Boys with sledgehammers are wailing on the pink concrete walls of my apartment building. Having a great dusty old time of it, day after day. Either the owner is replacing the plumbing or someone is pretty mad at him.
●The restlessness index climbed back into the double digits this week. Forecast cloudy.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: astanga yoga
, evolution
, having a body
, self-deception
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I can’t wait to see the goodies that your Mom sent . . .
Posted by: RE · Feb 8, 08:56 PM · #
I guess a good time to re-christen the giant filigree brooch & clip-ons or the funny jade choker and ring (both ’20s sets for a society lady) would be our date/ Anais Nin 100th birthday party on Tuesday night?
Maybe I’ll dye my hair black and cut it in fringes.
Excited to see you there.
Posted by: (0v0) · Feb 9, 07:17 AM · #
Black and fringes is MY FAVORITE. I swear to be an old crone rockin’ the same do…
You know, there is this awesome designer named Frocky Jack Morgan at Flutter. She reworks old pieces of jewelry into very beautiful new wearable items. Mainly necklaces, but a few bracelets and brooches. Just an idea.
Posted by: Susan · Feb 9, 07:43 AM · #
There was, probably still is, some story about two guys attending a female friend’s yoga class, and with great enthusiasm, for many months. What she finally discovered is that they were developing the flexibility to auto-fellate. Apparently the discovery was something like overhearing a phone conversation, “Dude, can you do it! I did it yesterday” or words to that effect. I found that on some one of the hundreds of “random shit” sites like Boingboing, but you can probably find it on Literotica by now, hah! Anyway, that’s almost certainly what the searching is about.
Posted by: patrick · Feb 9, 11:31 AM · #
autofellatio makes me think of dogs eating their own excrement. i don’t think women ever think, if only i could lick my own clit…
and scratching muffins?
making muffins from scratch?
Posted by: cranky housefrau · Feb 9, 06:31 PM · #
Invite me. invite me, then I can say“honey Im going for a night out” and disappear to the US for a week
Posted by: skelly · Feb 10, 02:24 AM · #
About the preciouses: you could go, if this is your flavor, in a sort of “20s drag,” if all of that stuff fits the image. You’ve got the fringe idea; go flapper. Sure we’ve missed Halloween, but let’s reappoint, say, March 31 as Spring Halloween and….
Posted by: patrick · Feb 10, 06:43 AM · #
Autofellatio certainly seems to redefine the term ‘self-absorbed,” doesn’t it?
Posted by: karen · Feb 10, 07:26 AM · #
I think it might be more along the lines of ‘self satisfied’.
Posted by: Susan · Feb 10, 10:56 AM · #
or both?
Posted by: cranky housefrau · Feb 10, 11:29 AM · #
Facebook? No
MySpace? No
LinkedIn? Sadly, yes.
Yikes – I’m more corporate wanker than college kid!
Posted by: cody · Feb 10, 01:19 PM · #
I’m very amused by the autofellatio thing. Love those crazy obscene search strings, of course. But also I think, why not learn how to suck your own dick? If I had one, I would certainly have tried it by now.
I wonder if anyone who started yoga with that purpose ever became a serious ashtangi.
Posted by: Katie · Feb 11, 09:44 AM · #
SK, we’d love to have you of course.
Susan, the black fringes idea was for you, but yes Patrick in general I’m thinking of going flapper. The jewelry modernization would be pretty special and my family would love to see me wear this stuff, so maybe.
I have been strongly disliking the strawberry blonde (insofar as I even notice); and it just keeps getting lighter and redder. People think it’s the work of some creative colorist. How insane that someone would pay to look like this, I’ve been thinking.
But this morning, driving up the ramp to practice, I had this image of my brother’s hair when it was about 1/4 inch long, growing in after he had to shave it for surgery in the 8th grade. As he made a miracle recovery, he just let the hair grow down past his shoulders. It was the same color mine is turning now — lighter, even — and in that context I thought it was THE best thing I had ever seen in my entire life.
So maybe I should learn to own this.
Posted by: (0v0) · Feb 11, 12:24 PM · #
About the somewhat recent addition of Baddha Konasa B to the first series. I mean… about autofellatio (Patrick, I never knew the verb form; wow)... this has got to be the most offensive conversation I’ve started in this space. I wonder if the lurkers are offended. Lurkers?
The self-absorbtion crack is over the top! I do not approve of puns! But it makes me think…
Ashtanga Yoga: Taking Navel Gazing To The Next Level.
Posted by: (0v0) · Feb 11, 12:34 PM · #
When Gilles Deleuze jumped out of a window in 1995 or whenever that was, EVERY cool academic suddenly had to tongue-wrap the term “autodefenestrate.”
More about autofellatio: there’s a representation of it early on in the film Shortbus and you’d have to have MASSIVE flexibility in the thoracic, in order to do it in Baddha B. Well, either that or you’d have to be beastly hung, and of course, both would probably be the most optimal combination.
Didn’t you once upon a time link to a page on Siddhasana which referred to the pose’s relationship to masturbation and kundalini-gathering, and so forth?
(leave it to me to wax academic about autofellatio)
Posted by: patrick · Feb 11, 01:26 PM · #
For the first time ever in the blogosphere, let me just say,
LOL.
Yes, I have been holding off on suggesting that autofellatio isn’t that far afield from some of the self-stimulating tantric practices… which are, um, ultimately geared toward a more pre-emptive kind of “self-absorbtion.”
I cannot believe I’m about it take it here, but the thing about bringing yourself off while in a state of massive forward bend in the thoracic… is that at the moment of climax that might be, if one is paying attention, sort of the exact opposite of what the body wants to do?
(Random.)
Posted by: (0v0) · Feb 11, 02:07 PM · #
(The siddhasana link.)
Posted by: (0v0) · Feb 11, 02:16 PM · #
I don’t know Owl, do you arch backward at the moment of climax? As a male I can say that the hollowing of the abdomen that’s part of whichever male-on-top positional arrangement you care to imagine can be pretty vigorous. I’d guess that guys that autofellate probably have no problem with the extreme forward bend. And, really, I don’t know if that forward bend is all that extreme. What about adapting Karna pindasana instead of konasana? Maybe call it carnal pindasana. But I do see your point. Thinking back, I recall that almost all the women I’ve “known” tend to direct most of their physical response into arching their backs and opening the legs.
No honest inquiry can be offensive. It’s only when we don’t care to see the facts that trouble arises. I guess I should apologize for the carnal pindasana joke though. I’m sorry about that.
Posted by: Carl · Feb 13, 10:15 AM · #