GOING IN SOME DIRECTION

View from the desk.

“Oh, I show my butt crack every day. (Pause.) I didn’t really get it before, but now I get it. I get it.”

These were the words that came out of the coffee shop proprietor’s mouth as I got in line to spend a lot of money buying not enough coffee to get me through this morning. B was talking to someone else and the next thing I knew they were talking about masks. Being non-caffeinated, I couldn’t really make any sort of rational connection, so I just let it go (I did worry that they were some sort of reenactors or furries or something I neither wanted to think nor know about). Later, B told me they were talking about coronavirus masks, but I didn’t even want to know the connection between butt cracks and coronavirus masks.

So here it is. The day of destiny, in my mind somehow. I am much calmer today. Is it a big day? I am still trying to understand why I was so deeply in meltdown mode yesterday. Maybe embracing the new is truly letting go of the old in ways that are too deep for the naked mind’s eye. My friend/teacher KF said it must have been cleaning out old karma to make way to the new or Mercury in retrograde.

I have been working the Saturday morning desk shift at the yoga studio since November or so. Which reminds me I haven’t done all the checks I am supposed to. (Thanks for reminding me. The paper towels needed refilling and we could use a couple of spare rolls of toilet paper.)

Flurry of check-ins later.

That cartoon is sooooo Oona Minnie Pearl Moonlight. She thinks she is so badass. And she thinks a mere hiss will abruptly stop whatever displeases her as if she were the queen and the stakes for not ceasing and desisting were beheading or flaying. 

I am pretty sure this is how Oona sees herself. Please note, I am the canine at her feet.

This is how I see her.

I am sure that dragons are descended from cats. When Oona hisses, it begins in her belly (she must have some prana training). She sinks into herself, opens her mouth and then nano-moments later, something that she thinks is force and fire disperses into the air, sure to disintegrate anything or behavior that displeases her.

If I were a better co-exisiting creature, I would not find this so amusing. I should be thankful that she is not much of a scratcher or biter. Her extreme umbrage should be a cautionary for any that dare cross her. Might ruin her imagined manicure to touch skin.

This here piece of concrete got stuck under my car last night, just to keep a bad day going and the stress level high. Someone had annihilated a curb and the parking lot managers had not deigned to clean it up at all. I was avoiding some dead person attempting to drive a car and this got caught under my back wheel. I stopped. I did not panic, although I dismayed mightily. I called Triple A. The fellow who jacked up my car said it was an inch from my brake line, but nothing was damaged. Except my psyche. 

On the other hand, it was a bad thing. It was dealt with. It is over.

There is a ballerina, or so she is dressed, outside the window who fell and now wants her daddy to kiss her ass where she fell. Same as it ever was.

I did go to bed pretty early last night and slept okay, but was not able to actually drag myself out of bed. The leisurely, organized morning did not transmute to reality. The alarm starts at 5:45, then goes off at random-ish increments until I generally get up around 7. But I didn’t get feet to floor until 7:18 and given that I have a 20 minute drive to get here, there wasn’t much time for breakfast and coffee making, cat feeding, or coffee-making for my mother. And I left without the coffee I did make.

I may have to sneak out to my car, which is in a lot behind the studio, to nap before teacher training starts. I even have a blanket (yoga) to cover myself. There is undoubtedly more coffee in my future as well. 

When I got into the car this morning, all prepared to play an Oyster Band disc I had dug up, Lowell George started singing "What Do You Want the Girl to Do?" came at me, so I had to listen to that a  few times. This one is about romance and that doesn't obtain for me in the knowable moment, but the question is a damn good one. (Lyrics at the very end, should you want to sing along.) The question is one that I asks I pretty often.

I had not meant to write this morning. Hell, I have not even looked at the NYT or WaPo yet. There could be problems in the world. It is nearly time for the next flock of humans to come in, so I will end this for now. See you on the flip side.


THE FIREFLY

Few master a form to be conspicuous in the night.
Sometimes I think I am the night,
Having nothing, not even a broken line.
The winter night across the neighborhood

Of past fireflies. Having lost their slow
Radiance, their disconnections of someone
Pacing back and forth before a lamp,
Their teasing flight like the doubt in two voices.

Can I see you? and Do you really see me?
Day might see one,
Stopped, eating from the yellow ray-end
Of a dillblossom. But night after night

I am the stretch it once bit into
With hard catchable light,
Going in some direction, I never knew which
Until I saw it twice.

— Sandra McPherson, The Antaeus Anthology, Bantam, Toronto/New York, 1986

WHAT DO YOU WANT THE GIRL TO DO?

— Allen Toussaint

So you think the girl is crazy

To eat up your lies like it's good

(Your lies like apple pie)

(She don't even cry)

She is not a fool

She's just tryin' to do what her heart says to

To love you

And as you take to the wind

(to the wind again she breaks down)

And as she breaks down within (within, within)

She waits for you patiently

Hopin' that someday you'll see

[That] all she really wants to be

Is yours and yours alone, eternally

 What do you want the girl to do

[Don't you know] you're breakin' the child in two

[Can't you see]

What do you want the girl to do

All she really wants is you

She knows what you are

Still she'll be your queen if you let her

(Just say the word today)

(Build the world around her)

Now and then you'll promise

All the way-out things you're goin' to get her

(You will see, you will see)

(You're so damn glad you found her, found her, years ago)

Cause ma she knows better

As she watched you come and go (all you'll show)

And as she watched your promises erode

She waits for you patiently

Hopin' that someday you'll see

[That] all she really wants to be

Is yours and yours alone, eternally

What do you want the girl to do

[Don't you know] you're breakin' the child in two

[Can't you see]

What do you want the girl to do

All she really wants is you

She knows what you are

Still she'll be your queen if you let her

(Just say the word today)

(Build the world around her)

Now and then you'll promise

All the way-out things you're goin' to get her

(You will see, you will see)

(You're so damn glad you found her, found her, years ago)

'Cause ma she knows better

As she watched you come and go (all you'll show)

And as she watched your promises erode

What do you want the girl to do

Don't you know you're breakin' the child in two

What do you want the girl to do

Can't you see you're breakin' the child in two

I KNOW WHERE I AM GOING BY GOING

(Bed-making deterrent.1)

I know, you thought this blog was ooooover and that I had lost interest (and maybe so had you). The last time I sat down to write was apparently November 19 of last year. I think about writing all the time and somehow, most likely lack of discipline because always give yourself the worst motives, it rarely happens. I have taken some notes here and there for a personal project I hope to write in the next year or so. And I have even tried writing some actual letters to people instead of dashing off an email which seems so transient and has such a good chance of being ignored or overlooked.

I began writing this blog ten years ago, in the misty mists of time. After having lost a job, and, as it turns out, my career and ability to earn a living wage, and having my car stolen, and having lost a beloved younger brother only a year after my mother’s boyfriend died way too soon, I was invited to be a guest at the Ojai Yoga Crib. I had pretty much stopped practicing when I moved out of Manhattan to Brooklyn in 2004 after a good nine years of solid practice in San Francisco and New York (shout out to excellent teachers Dana Trixie Flynn and Susannah Bruder who were the keystones of my practice). 

Kira, who ran the Ojai Yoga Crib with her then husband, E, must have known I was floundering in depression and invited my mother and I to go as her guests. The Ojai Yoga Crib gave specialized programs to each attendee. I hadn’t practiced much for several years so her prescription for me was gentle yoga and talks by Erich Schiffman and Ravi Ravindra. And it helped.

I have always been challenged by discipline, preferring to be productive where whimsy and passion took me. (Read some more blog posts to find how that turned out.) Yet I could see a relationship between the writing (which I have always wanted to do) and yoga practice (not as much). For those of you new to this blog, here’s a link to my first postwhich says largely the same things as this post.

Tomorrow, I begin my 200-hour teacher training. 

How the decision to become a yoga instructor at age 65.9 is a tale which will likely be spun as I do the training and hopefully continue to write and examine this process. 

Commitment and discipline. Two very scary words for me. 

And I am anxious today and more scattered than usual. I can start off in disappointment that my house is still a disaster, my desk not really work-worthy, and in the midst of a dental crisis of sorts. (Emergency root canal this week, but more on that, too. I am basically fine.)

I opened my Kay Ryan volume to see if I could find some inspiration and grounding. 

WHY ISN’T IT ALL MORE MARKED

Why isn’t it all

more marked,

why isn’t every wall,

graffitied, every park tree

stripped like the

stark limbs

in the house of

the chimpanzees? 

Why is there bark

left? Why do people

cling to their

shortening shrifts

like rafts? So

silent.

Not why people are;

why not moreviolent?

We must be 

so absorbent.

We must be

almost crystals,

almost all some

neutralizing chemical

that really does

clarify and bring peace,

take black sorrow

and make surcease.

WITNESS

Never trust a witness.

By the time a thing is

noticed, it has happened.

Some magician’s redirected

our attention to the rabbit.

The best life is suspected,

not examined.

And never trust reverse.

The mourners of the dead

count backward from the the

of the event, rehearsing

it’s approach, investing

final words with greatest weight,

as though weight ever

carried what we meant;

as though he could have

told us where he went.

LEARNED

Whatever must be learned

is always on the bottom,

as with the law of drawers

and the necessary item.

It isn't pleasant,

whatever they tell children,

to turn out on the floor

the folder things in them.

Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, Grove Press, New York, 2010

Well, that gets to some of the heart of some of the matters. 

Haven't done much gardening at all and other than weeding and tending, I won't be ambitious this year, although the back is a happy weed jungle. The hummingbirds greatly enjoy the several bougainvilleas and I see other sorts of butterflies and bees. The artichoke plant I thought I had destroyed has three blossoms or whatever you call them that need to be harvested ASAP. I bought some ranunculus bulbs at the 99cent store, managed to plant them in a newly-from-the-thrift-store acquired box, and by jiminey, if they aren't coming up.

It's weird. Very faintly over the the back fence and under some lively chirping and bird flirting, I can hear the Fifth Dimension warbling 'whisper a little prayer for you, my baby" which kind of brings me back to summer at the beach listening to a transistor radio. (Here's the Mamas and Papas version of Dedicated to the One I Love which I like less.) Back to birds and saws.

I woke up with Buffalo Springfield in my head, wondering why Stephen Stills hasn't written an autobiography.  Sit Down I Think I Love You, the guitar part is quite sweet.

I have been fortunate and blessed to have pals who are helping me by contributing to a gofundme. Here's the link should you want to check it out. Or you can just PayPal me at sasyberg@gmail.com.

Why isn't it all marked, indeed.