the Divine Ms. L...

Took a trip yesterday to Santa Barbara with Stacy and Shelley. Part of an attempt to stretch my birthday as long as possible. It started sunday night with our second annual Doga (Greg and Jeremy brought donuts to my yoga class) and will maybe continue into mid march when a friend comes back to the country and says he might make a trip to see me. Laying across the back seat of stacy's car; its a different car now---her lovely klenex box with wheels--remebering how I have always liked to be in Stacy's car; listening. Listening to misuc and to thinking and, this time, to the rain.

This is an area I have driven through more than visited. However, I feel very connected to the land and to its ancestory. I know that I have some Native American guides and I can even remember the moment when some of them joined me. Laying in shavasana at the end of a class at a retreat at a lake not far from here. The teacher had covered me with a blanket (a gesture which, by itself, changed my life). I was having that sort of inside crying that hurts worse than if you could just simply tear; but then I felt both my hands get touched then held. It was undeniable. I have been getting to know them better since then.
I fell asleep listening to the rain wash away this moon. Talking to my guides and thinking about Greg's story of hiking up a mountian feeling hundreds of Indian women rush past him; feeling their hair, their clothes, in the wind. But when I fell asleep, I dreamed of how I would hold his hand--the boy who says he might visit. That is, if he really did come to see me again. That is, if we ever went further than to fuck.
That lake where they joined me: it has become my default image. For when a teacher says "reach for something that inspires you" when it feels like all my good has left me in its wake as it moved on. B series: arching up with the lake above me on my chest. Or me suspended, arched, face-down looking in. The perfect mirror of above to below that the reflection of the moutians remember. They say that the lake is a vortex, bottomless, a portal to the Channel Islands. I floated in the middle and it held me; as spacious below as above.
This trip: we are going to see Lucinda William and George Jones. Maybe not my guides, but certianly an archetype of mine. One contained--when I was little--by the way the Muppet Babies would ride off into the sunset. One manifest in my attraction to Dr. Pepper and Moon Pies. But one with, at the heart, a belief in the sweetness of a chord change and in the sort of frail goodness of humanity that can only be eeked from a drinking song (followed by a song about cheating, followed by a song about Jesus).
I had a chain of e-mails last week with Vicky (her birthday is also soon) about how Pisces rock. It is interesting that, until recently, I haven't known very many Pisces at all (I used to figure that most just couldn't make it through--I guess I used to know mostly about the negative side of the sign) but this year, I've met about one for each day. I didn't know Vicky was a Pisces--though, if I think of it now, it would have been my first guess. In one of her e-mails she told a mini history through astrology, saying that she was pisces and wouldn't have it any other way, and that she once married a virgo--which turned out to be not a good thing--but then found Aquarius was the way to go. I woke up in the car thinking about this, laughing. Catching myself seeing this boy in my dream. He is an Aquarius that I borrow from a Virgo.
The last time we went to this lake, on the last day, we went on a hike. The sides of the trail were lined with dandelions. The kind you blow the seeds off and make a wish. Only these were giant, almost the size of a fist. I have always had a thing for wishing on dandelions; maybe something always made sense about asking, letting go, and then seeing your wish carried off in the wind. I will pull over if I'm driving and see one. A couple of weeks ago I jumped the railings by the picnic table where we were having class to grab one, pray on it, and then jump back, running to beat the teacher to the class room as the class walked inside. I must have wished hundreds of times on that hike.
Later on the hike, a lady bug flew by and I looked down at the stones we were stepping on to see that we were literaly in a sea of lady bugs. Wishes, and good luck, abundance; clandestine.
Yesterday at work, Leah seemed sad that she had worked through a yoga class that she usually takes. I told her that I know that feeling and that I try to remember that everything operates on the law of sacrafice. I used to not like this concept---I heard it with a mind full of lack. But if you see sacrafice from abundance, first its about the power of choices, and then its about everything lining up perfectly to give you things exactly as they are. It becomes about gratitude for what you have been given, not what was missed. And as I watch situations move and time go by, I realize how it can't be about what was missed, or what you wanted, or what could have been. Just what you have, with no hesitations, drawbacks or disclaimers.

Posted by red at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Dina said that talking to me is like swimming. I'm beginning to understand how that must feel. I've never noticed it before--I've always been swimming--I only felt wierd when I tried to find the ground.

Ally said to me one time, "you don't seem like yourself", I asked her if I ever do...I don't know if I'm ever the same self twice. I know I shape shift. Maybe thats instable. Is being addicted to impermanace the same as just fear of commitment? I don't know---keep swimming--everything's equally instable and secure. Boundaries are about figuring out where I end. Most people; its easy to get lost in. I have one friend who is the moon, and I feel so pulled by her. And another who is the earth--I crash against her untill she finally snaps.
Dina also said that maybe I'm an energy that has been around a lot, but that hasn't been human very much. I've always felt that way. At Theosophy, they say that once you've got the 7th principle, you can't go back (they say that, though a human can act worse than a dog, they cannot become one (they really like to talk about dogs)). The first conversation I walked into there was on reincarnation. The old men asked me, "What do you think reincarnates?". I think they were looking for what part. But I think there are two questions.
If the question is what continues?, my answer is everything, If the question is what picks a body, my answer is whatever needs to. And, form or no form, its all still here...its not like there's anywhere else to go.
And on Sunday night class, I piss off the doctor. I find myself defending the soverignty of brocoli (as much as a poodle...as much as a human) again and again. However, trying to win at logic to dispute the superiority of logic just won't work. All I know is that, sometimes, it feels like there's more behind my eyes than in front of them--and I don't know if it's where I'm comming or going. And that, once you know that what you need to be doing has nothing to do with the form this doing takes, the continuity of this stream of self becomes even more subtle. And that sometimes, when I find myself down by the ocean; it feels like I finally remembered to go home.
And speaking of streams and rivers and oceans, this week I was struck by the obvious (actually, just a few days before my teacher started to explain it). I noticed that nada and nadi have the same root (duh): sound--river--energy channel. It both makes sense and unfolds in crazy ways. Everything is vibration, and vibrations stepping down into form; around these channels of vibration. The sound: both what manifests the form and what gives that sort of free-radical part so that its only certian in this moment.
"In the beginning there was the...." maybe not word, but logos---Brian explained it to mean concept before form---but really even sound prior to any concept. The unmanifest manifest, that single point, the place before dualism, and I wonder if the wave even vibrates here. Also, in the beginning there was darkness and light...but this sound, this river even prior to that; the one preceeds the two; the One behind the two.
And it gets more and more interesting to me how when you make it to silence that there is so much to hear. And it makes more and more sense how clear hearing of this is a perfection. To be a clear channel for this river to sweep through. Listening putting us right in the medium of manifestation.
Gill told a story of being in a class commenting on how a particular meridain followed the edge of a particular muscle. And his teacher said, "what if its the other way around?". The energy incarnating in the perfect form for this moment, totally fluid to each moment to come. These are not rivers carving through stone, they are currents through the ocean. In the scope of things, almost invisiable--the same stuff inside as out. Mysteriously manifest in different ways: all the same sound.

Posted by red at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I am the cause of the matter of my life;
I am not the effect.
I am the love I put out there;
I am not what I get back.
I am the effort, regardless of the consequence of that effort;
I am not the success, I am not the falier.
I am pure effort, nothing else;
That is all I am.

Last night we played a movement game with a class of 3 and 4 yr olds where we would use our bodies to spell out the word "love". "L", "O" and "V" are obvious, but "E" is a contorted one-leg balance shape: we would hold it as long as we could, then swoon and then fall to the ground (ie, we would "fall in love"). This was totally cool for the preschoolers--maybe just from the joy of crashing to the ground with 25 friends---but when Greg tried to do the same thing with a class of 5 to 8 yr olds, it was not okay. ewww. He had to change the sequence to be "L-O-V-E: Yuck!" and the girls would then walk away from the circle with their noses up switching their hips. Though the two classes felt differently about the whole thing--love is dangerous...love is yucky--in both cases, it was fun; and they wanted to do it again and again. It seems like our feelings about this change once love stops being a game (...or once it starts being too much of one).
Today, Greggy and I are making it our goal to collect as many valentines as we can. We are asking everyone we meet to be our valentine. We are attempting to reverse the normal polar trend of the holiday between thoes who are euphoric and thoes who are bitter--towards a sort of abundance--towards something that doesn't depend on anything--towards something that can't be ruined. Maybe that would be a good perspective in general: stepping back what you see as the core of something until you get to something that cannot be shaken. It is interesting to consider love without its opposites; without its rules. A sort of love that needs nothing and transcends everything. I realize as this day goes on that I am working to make everyone my valentine--even people I do not ask, even all the people in my heart who I know would most certianly say no.
The poem at the beginning of this--I wrote a couple of years ago. I was walking with some friends on thanksgiving, and we were talking about "marrying ourselves" and the sort of commitments we would make. Considering marriage--even to myself--and love with a pretty bad reaction; I was realizing how I had spent my life with an idea of love that intended something in return--or at least which responded to what it got in return. I was realizing how I had loved people and things and when I had not seen them love me back, my love had twisted into hate for myself--because I felt I had not been what I needed to be to get back what I was giving. I was realizing that I was identifying with the wrong side of the equation.
This poem and this story keep calling me back, asking me if I really mean it. The friend I was talking to in the story has talked to me badly since then (and I, her, as well), and now she won't speak to me at all. What is a love that gets hate in return? What is a love that ends in pain for yourself or others? It's hard to remember, but its all the same: just keep steping back the definition--the core--until you get to something that cannot be shaken. And that's what we need to be looking at. Today, she is my valentine, too (...like it or not). And, anyways, always, its not the bad undoing the good. Everything stays.
So. Today I collected about 15 valentines--whom I asked. And a lot more whom I didn't. To all my valentines willing and unwilling, thoes who know they are and thoes who don't: I send you my love...and I keep trying to remember that that is enough.

Posted by red at 07:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Last night, my mom and I sang to a rubber drum with salt on it. We watched the crystals arrange themselves differently to the shape of each tone. As we started a tone, they would start to move and as we sustained the tone, they would settle into their new picture. We were doing my sister's science project (my sister was doing something else). Every year my sister has to deal with the metaphysicist in her grade school project. Asking her: what does it mean, why's it important.

Last week, my teacher asked us what we are doing when we make sound (what does it mean, why's it important). She told a story of a beautiful sand mandala on a drum. Someone gave a tone and the design was shattered; but as they continued, it found a new design. It had been disrupted towards a new perfection. She answered herself that we sound to shake things up; to break up the stickiness of form---I thought about it as sort of returning to our elements with out their patterns, so that our same basic stuff can form something new...something more appropriate to the resonance of this tone.
This morning, a university student came to interview me about my experience of yoga. One of the questions had to do with---I think she said--"the course of my education", She had already gotten the idea that the cosmology I was talking about included more than asana, more than any single practice; an idea of path which trascends any particular path. Maybe she meant, "what texts had I read", but I started talking about yoga as being a student of your own life--a disciple to the part of yourself that glows, even when you can't see it. yoga gives us something to look to (even if at first we only see the superficial, at least there is something to see) when we "hear a call", "begin a hero's journey", or whatever. But its not an answer, its a request, a catalyst---life gets harder, not easier---and then (in the words of another of my teachers) "your life becomes your cirriculum".
"....education"?: okay, you take a pose and an energy channel starts to open, or you do a purification, or you hear a word, or you're just in the room and there's transmission: its a catalyst, and karma cracks open that was just waiting for you to be ready.
The tone is sounding and the crystals are dancing on the drum. I try to remember the old design and try to predict the new one. I try to judge the forming of the next by my memory of the last. And all I can see is the messiness. I call this place "transition", "formative", even though I know its all transition and its all formation as it all just reflects from what simply Is. In that moment, I think, the hardest thing is not to judge--and this fits in with yoga and its risks of "spiritual materialism" and your same old shit disguising itself as your practice--as you start to know more, you start to think you know how things should be. Beliefs, morality, loyalty as holding on?--gosh--I've noticed that, once the tone sounds, its hard not to check out based on some decidedly empirical "truth". To not pick the crystals off the drum and, one-by-one place them how they "ought to be".
I remember many conversations about the existance of free will. The other day, I found an old note book where I had written on the cover: "free will is not the question--it just simply exists as universal law. What it is that we must have, or, what we must chose to have, is willingness."
So. I got my sister to listen to me when I talked about sound waves. Wave height...frequency, etc. She talked about pitch and volume and texture, and we wondered where these "things" were located---in the origin, in the reciever, in the space between?. But when the tone sounds and the salt starts moving, or, when you look even closer and notice the salt is always moving...what does it mean, why's it important? Maybe it means that the space isn't empty and that we are so much bigger than we think. Maybe it means that our chains of consequence are so vast that we must resign ourselves to intention and not design. Maybe its important because the tone is always sounding, if willing, our elements are always free and any pattern, any picture we see emerging is only a snapshot in time.

Posted by red at 08:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Whatever cycle it is I've been going through has come to the phase where I listen to old Ani albums at deafening volumes. And though the cycle itself is unknown to me---I have no idea what I ought to be thinking about the things that have been happening, what they will lead to, or what any of this means--I know that, at least, in this very moment; I've been here before. That is, just in the sense of the [singing] to Ani--nothing else--but in that sense, I've seen this place before.

I went on a vision quest through Vons last night. 11 PM, 3 days of high fever, looking for orange juice. Orange juice, and garlic. Orange juice, garlic and whatever else I need. In my altered state, it became epic. At first, the world could only be described as "complicated": after 20 minutes, finally locating the garlic in the pear section while listening to the elevator cover of "Hakuna Matata", just as I heard the thunder-like rumble of the lettuce showers comming on. But soon, I just started to flow through the jumbled store; walking--or rather, floating--to exactly what I needed; a far cry from my usual shoping state.

Of course, this round of listening to Ani is not exactly like all the times that came before. What--like 5 years I've had this burnt CD and each time I find need to play it, it seems to struggle more and more through its skips and scratches and less songs will even play at all. And, clearly, I am different too: each time I hear it less and less like poetry and more and more like life. Of course, both are just forms of truth-speaking, but experience seems to draw a line between what is pure magic and what just fucking is, was or isn't or never was---according to how much sugar you can still afford to taste at any given moment.

After finding the garlic and after a short conversation with the gods of the alter candles, I thought to myself, "this is how it always should be"..."If I just let go, things stay complicated, but they work themselves out". And then I thought, "I need bread" and I turned the corner, the aisles parted, and there it was.

"See! I just have to let go---join the flow and everything I need will flow to me! Again and again I choose these situations where I have to trust that the universe will provide, but I hold on tight...but it always provides...but I still don't let go...I just need to trust...trust...trust!... Goddamnit, there's no pita!"

And I know it comes down to how much sugar you are willing to taste and how much sweetness you are ready to feel---not whether these things are actually there or not. Art and life would taste the same if not for the momentary burn of disenchantment...but that burn is life too, and it's also poetry.

Of course, when I asked the man, the pita was there, right where I'd been looking.

I remember how in the past I have criticised poets whos words sound more like sweat than honey. Who speak of life in dirty words and don't let it be pretty or simple. But I know that the more you get to live, the more you get to see that the sweat is in the honey and the honey is in the sweat, but that the more that you have worked to get there, the more you have to work to remember that the two are the same. And that nothing is too bitter, and nothing is too sweet.

But, alas! the pitas have risen up against me and I have failed. Failed! Failed even at pitas in the midst of a monologue on surrender. And then, I watch my thoughts become conscious: they start to think themselves as if they want to be seen. As if by designing themselves as they've thought before they could teach me to think different. That instant when you notice conciousness and thus become unconcious...or vise versa...or---it's a trap? it's the problem and the answer. I steped back from the pitas and watched myself think. I looked to the tabloids for answers. I went to the check out. I spent 5 minutes looking for my vons club card. I saved 11 cents.

Hooray for fevers. They fry your brain to the point where you surrender normal processing. they send you to a degree of distance from the events of the world that is probably closer to where you always should be. It allows you to watch as someone does something to that "thing" that you would normally identify as being "you" and think in some distant, disconnected, nonchalant way: "fuck you" and yet do or say nothing and not get hurt. They, for a time, break open the fabric of reality so that you can watch your infinitely complicated and rich life pour through the folds of your memory--just for the time that something hurts so bad that you have no choice but to let go. And, for that time, watch your mind stream before you like a movie with the distant, disconnected, distant hope that, this time, when I do step back into it, it might really be more real in a really more real way.

Posted by red at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Figure when you are feeling dazed a good thing to do is start a blog. (Another good thing is to write in 2nd person. ) You see, you feel overtaken by the sight of a cycle. Not that you are ever outside of cycles, but this is a particular one you've leared how to recognize. It is not a pattern, it is not a lesson; its just, for some reason, for a moment, seeing less the things and more the webbing that weves these things together. A familiarity of energy that lets you know what made what and who---the seemingly totally random origins that makes the smell of the ocean then the incense, then somebody's fire place enough to put you in the place of knowing that you both totaly know and don't know at all. And, though you are overtaken, you are not overwhelmed and at least you dont think you are taken over. You just know yourself to be swimming now in a space that is thicker. Touching the sky and watching your ripple. Feeling fate in the sense of: both --that you are exactly where you ought to be and that you ought to choose well.

Posted by red at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)