30 November 2006

The size and shape of our exteriors doesn't matter as much as we think. Six foot three, four foot ten. Our internal eternal self is of the same stuff as the next guy gal baby grandpa Canadian Nigerian Tibetan dancer logger number cruncher.

We get so distracted by the shell, we lose touch with our strength, our peace, our healing fire.

To shed the distractions and find the energy within is not very easy, not very hard. Running around with a stick happens to help me in that regard.

29 November 2006

what kind of physics is this?

to lift the bo straight to blue sky
and run while lowering it to horizon

is it the bo that grows shorter
or its bearer who grows larger?

28 November 2006

Jim teaches yoga at the little place on Chenery.

At the end of each of the two grueling ‘beginner’ sessions I’ve participated in—he has softly chanted during relaxation--svasana. He has a nice voice and like any voice, its many layers-tempo, timbre, pitch, volume, resonance—communicate a lot.

His voice is like a parent singing a lullaby to a much loved child.

One of the Shintaido teachers told me about a group of volunteers who come on request to quietly sing at a person’s deathbed. Human song to bring peace.

A mother is reading to her young child at Nervous Dog Coffee. Her voice sounds tight, ragged, but her son is looking at her, rapt.

27 November 2006

He’s wearing a neatly groomed goatee, a plaid shirt, and camouflage pants rolled up to mid-hairy-calf. A dingy, matted pink polyester fur helmet sits snugly on his head. It has two conical ears. Perhaps a part of a costume retrieved from a garbage bin.

Young, attractive and otherwise clean-looking, he sits by himself in the black bolted seats. He’s gazing toward his knees, his face blank, tight, maybe a little desperate.

The other passengers waiting to board the flight from Phoenix to San Francisco are actively not looking at this Hello Kitty man. There is palpable tension.

He is going to be on their flight. Our flight.

Two seats to his right is a young man whose chin folds into flaps. His pale hair is pasted into horizontal perfection and he’s wearing a sweatshirt with an enormous full color eagle against the red white and blue of Old Glory. He does not seem to attract as much attention though perhaps he and Hello Kitty Man are embracing the same right.

Everyone else regardless of ethnic group, gender or age wears variations of a more mainstream formula: jeans or pants with a drab shirt, blouse or jacket. A few tattoos and studs, two people with go-to-church hats. These don’t alert passenger antennae.

Once we are on the plane, I see a little girl walk down the aisle in a fuzzy pink jacket. What if she were wearing the pink headpiece?

26 November 2006

Things shift.
Softened by sun
ice cracks and crashes
a natural pushing
good noisy hurt
this fracture of floes
this calving of ice.

It’s not spring
in this hemisphere, but
it’s spring somewhere
and flowers bloom
even by late autumn moonlight
and you have something to offer
as effortlessly as a magnolia
releases its fragrance
call it
November magnolia blooming

You’ve got something to give again
as effortlessly
as a river runs
call it
November water flowing

24 November 2006

I noticed him with his long, oddly-shaped instrument case in the Oakland airport, but when he sat next to me in Phoenix, I had to ask. He took it out. A stringed instrument with a body of polished wood that made me think of a double-bowled gourd. Four strings I believe and many movable frets made of something that looked like sinew.

He said it was a tar, a traditional Persian instrument of ancient heritage. He played a piece, then played and sang a song. The music had little melody or form, many of the notes not used in western music. An old and wandering sound. The travelers and airline staff nearby--their faces were still with mild wonder, an openness with traces of confusion.

So. Here is a small crowd in black riveted seats looking out at the pink dust colored hills of Phoenix listening to Irani music played by a mowhawked American in a busy airport on Thanksgiving day.

22 November 2006

From my 3rd level perch, I see a goldfinch in the top of a tree, three gulls circling, two crosses, one on each steeple of St. John's, and lots of pale-colored houses shoulder to shoulder on the hillsides. Emma the calico is curled and snoozing atop a bin in the hazed sunlight. I had a class at Washington High School last night, and one at Glen Park this morning. I love my teachers--they are beautiful and deep. I worked today on fududachi, a solid stance from which you are not easily tilted off balance. My homework from last night is to practice a longer, more solid gait. These things should keep me from floating off like a helium balloon. Landlady brings me newspapers, friends send eye-candy angels and poems, give drawing lessons and just check in. The owner of Nervous Dog gave us samples of apricot-apple pastry. So many thoughtful, intricately designed people. We balance the day-to-day awkwardnesses with peaceful intent. There's travel early tomorrow, and a lot to do this afternoon, but I am thankful now.

21 November 2006

“Despite the lack of stars, the Dark Ages were not completely dark. A rare process caused hydrogen gas to glow dimly.”

Abraham Loeb
“The Dark Ages of the Universe”
Scientific American
November, 2006


Maybe we’re not supposed to be content, but hungry, thirsty enough to move forward.

The brain is hungry to assemble the pieces. The heart is thirsty for communion.

Maybe we’re meant to learn the logic behind the inexplicable epiphanies, just like our ancestors did regarding eclipses and thunderstorms and why the sun rises every day.

The hunger to know, the thirst for communion have carried humans around the globe and into the sea and up to the moon, to the internet and cell phones and photoblogs and videoblogs and chatrooms. They may well carry us to newer (perhaps very old) ways to communicate, ways to travel that we have scarcely imagined. Ways to experience the opposite of aloneness.

We pretend we are not hungry, we are not thirsty.

I have been hiding these last weeks. Hiding stories about fish, ecstatic hunger propelling me from class to class, experiences of shooting upward, of diving straight as a bo into a pool, of eating perfect food, of watching a gull devour the abdomen of a living crab.

It’s scary. I worry I’m too different to belong anywhere. I hide, afraid to be seen. But then I learn from dear and honest friends that I’m not so alone.

I’m just taking notes.

20 November 2006

A hawk appeared before the start of the Saturday morning class at Lake Temescal. It circled the water and later coursed the field and bordering trees. Perhaps a Northern Harrier? I know Redtails and American Kestrels and Cooper's Hawks. Adult Bald Eagles. I am familiar with harriers but not confident. I know they are here, that they like marshy areas. I remember their tendency to skim the earth. And somewhere in me is the imprint of their flight movement, the way they move their wings. But I don't know. I was distracted, not paying close attention. It could have been a juvenile bald eagle--which would be much larger. (I am very much the amateur.)

Before the Saturday afternoon class at Bernal Heights Park, there was a pair of hawks, same as the week before, with glowing burnt red undersides. Short necks, broad wings. Joyfully acrobatic flyers. Most likely Red-Shouldered Hawks I suppose. I see in the Sibley guide that California specimens are much redder than elsewhere.

In my whole life I haven't seen as many hawks as I've seen here in San Francisco in one month. Who knew? And at Bernal Heights there are different species. A number of Red-Tailed Hawks there as well, and a peregrine falcon. And I haven't even gone birding yet. Next time I'll bring binoculars and guide.

Some say it isn't important to recognize the species, to give them names. Just enjoy the co-existence. Some take identifying species to the excruciating fine points. That's why--along with shifts in range--bird guides are updated every few years. Same birds, new ID tags, new locations.

Maybe it's good practice in awareness to notice details, to recognize in how many intricate patterns the energy of life can be expressed. And maybe it's good practice to let that identifying process go, and see not Red-Shouldered Hawk, but be with its flight.

19 November 2006

There is jazzy jazz playing at Nervous Dog this afternoon--Louis Armstrong, now Chick Corea. The man sitting next to me has knocked his chair over twice. I’ve eaten half my ginger cookie. I think Holly Park is only a couple of blocks up the hill from here; I see familiar trees above the traffic and the neon Modelo sign across the street. Conversation is gentle around me, human jazz with its own not-quite-random tempo.

16 November 2006

Ichi
Ni
San
Shi
Go
Roku
Shichi
Hachi
Kyu
Ju
Yesterday I walked home from class carrying my bo and a flowered cloth bag with the jacket part of my gi and the belt. I saw some school kids in navy blue heading my way, so I stepped aside, my back to a garden, to let them pass.

Only there was a flowing stream of them, chattering, laughing. Middle-schoolers maybe. Their faces bright and animated. On and on they came. There were teachers and chaperones. Every once in awhile a kid would look at me and say, Hi! Not always the ones closest to me, but kids from the middle of the stream. I said hi back. The kids were happy to be on an outing.

After the end of the parade, I walked on and came upon an unusual car parked on the corner.

Red, blue, white, yellow: the car was covered by a single layer of Legos. No apparent arrangement except to fit as many as close together as possible.

And on the dashboard, a single row of pre-shaped pieces: a flower, a human, another flower...

Someone glued them on, one after the other after the other, learning about blocks, not building a thing.

I feel like a kindergartener in an old, honorable school. (A kindergartner disguised as a woman in her 50s!) I'm the only kindergartner, so I'm thrown into the 5th grade curriculum doing simple equations when I don't know how to count yet.

I'm looking for the colored building blocks.

I can see the beauty and the bruising of the universe, and I'm looking for its smallest parts.

Today I'm going to Google. I'm going to learn to count, one to ten, in Japanese.

15 November 2006

I should be taking dance.

I am struggling.

There is this basic, integral, core issue with shintaido. The martial arts foundation. The martial part.

Today, to understand better the movement I was trying to learn, I asked--ok, is the bo a weapon?

Yes, indeed.

How is it used to cause injury?

And I received a demonstration. Cutting. Jabbing. And I could see my teacher being shredded to bloody ribbons as the other student showed the different moves. I felt rather sick the rest of the class.

As I walked home carrying my 'weapon', I thought about aiming it as I'd tried to learn today, and my mind turned it into a telescope.

Sunday, I learned some very basic sword techniques. I had trouble integrating the concept of the wooden edge as a blade. The formal eloquance of the moves held me as long as I did not think blade.

Something deep within is resistant.

If I were reading this, I'd say, Come on. You're this far along and you're not getting what martial arts are about? And I remind myself, the martial arts concept appealed to me initially in the sense of developing inner and outer strength.

I am lost.

I am drawn to tenshingoso: five heavenly phenomena

And I am quite fond of my bo. It is simple, weighty, reflective, and profoundly beautiful. Perhaps it has the capacity to be used as a weapon, but will not. And therein lies its strength.

14 November 2006

I have been doing lots of moshekiyei (forgive the spelling) this week--shifting hand position on a staff or bo over and over and over. With the repetitions, my body is gradually getting the hang of it. Some thoughts from practice:

No decision is static. Continual shifts in balance lead to a need for flexibility with decisions.

Ego gets in the way of friendship. [I dropped one end of my bo. I literally let my friend down. I stopped to remember what I had been thinking about when I dropped it. I'm afraid I was thinking about my own (ha!) arm strength.]

When your friend hurts, you feel it too. The bo reverberates when it falls--and my bones seem to reverberate with it.

13 November 2006

The less you expose of yourself, the less vulnerable you are.
The more you expose of yourself, the less vulnerable you are.

What do you think?
...as minerals in the ground rise inside trees
and become tree, as a plant faces an animal
and enters the animal, so a human
can put down the heavy
body baggage and
be light.

Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks
from 'When We Pray Alone'

11 November 2006

After class at Lake Temescal, I came upon a black-crowned night-heron.

It did not know how beautiful it was, the elegance of the black-green back against the white and gray. The eyes underscored in white above such a powerful beak. Its poised stance so inviting to the eyes. The heron was there to fish, hungry for fish, its focus on the moving creek.

Our teacher was surprised to find 3 students in the cold drizzle. The parking lot like dark glass reflecting sky.

3 students hungry, hungry for fish.

10 November 2006

A red-tailed hawk rocked gently above my head, not much higher than a rooftop. Pale phase, just hanging, suspended, going neither forward nor back. We considered each other. The sun pushed from behind a house full into my face and I stood agape, dazzled.

And I don't know what this is about but it's surely amazing. It's like being in love with no specific object for that love. It's a lot like joy.

08 November 2006

...the origin of the word "aggression" is completely neutral: simply "to go forward."

Going forward is one of the most basic expressions of life. Even bacteria, among the simplest single-celled animals, have been found to move toward sources of food. In some way they are behaving "intentionally." They are not just passively sitting there, letting the chaos of their environment take over. They are making an effort to stay alive, going forward to seek something they need from their world. They are expressing some kind of self-organizing principle, which is about as close as we have come to defining "life."

David Franklin
"Go Take a Flying Leap"
Body Dialogue Issue 7
Love is bright water
from a limitless well

take your pitcher
and fill

pour water
on your head
your neck
your fingers
your back
ah.
wash the dust from your feet

Fill the pitcher
again and again
and pour gently
on everyone you see--
How we all are parched!

07 November 2006

War.

We started a war.

The reasons are obscure. Before we invaded, I thought this is happening because Hussein tried to assassinate President Bush's father. President Bush is getting revenge--consciously or unconsciously. (I thought Hussein tried to assasinate the elder President Bush because during his administration, we bombed his home and killed his adopted 1 year old son. Is that even true? I remember a news article from long ago-)

I thought perhaps President Bush is his mother's favorite, not his dad's. Bush is an insecure man in a job way over his head. He is trying so hard to prove himself a man in front of his dad that he would play dice with thousands of lives.

I saw the towers crumbling on 11 September 2001. That the great pain inflicted on us with those acts was being transferred to others by our government without consciousness.

I thought President Bush has the support of his administration and many large companies because war is good for making them money. And many Americans including me haven't a clue who the terrorists are. Americans might support a war that felt like we were taking action, even though Osama bin Laden was still on the loose and not even in or from Iraq.

Still, the months before, I wrote my letters. I couldn't believe the congress and senate would really let this happen. But they did--the Republicans and many Democrats.

I feel certain we would not be fighting a war in the country of Iraq if the Republican Party had not appointed Bush to run for President based largely on his name recognition, and supported him no matter what. Thousands and thousands of people would not be dead. Children maimed. Children in both countries orphaned. Damaged children with damaged parents. Our treasury not only empty but in great debt. Many, many citizens having difficulty taking pride in being American.

We have become a lopsided country, our checks and balances hobbled.

When I was young, I considered myself an 'independant' because I like to consider each person who ran for office based on his or her own merits and agenda. Later, I became a Democrat because the issue of protecting the health of our country's natural resources: rivers, parks, air, trees, mountains, was so important to me, and the Democrats were the only party that seemed to pay any attention to ecology.

I am not comfortable talking politics. I have no expertise. But this is about war. We pass on the pain we receive. The pain we inflict is passed on again. So. This is the truth--that this is what I am thinking about today. Voting day. I hope we all will think.

06 November 2006

If you were a brain cell--what kind would you be?

So many many kinds to choose from.

Maybe you would be in the occipital lobe--helping to interpret the data the eyes were sending in.

Maybe you would be on the left frontal lobe--one of the motoric cells in charge of moving the pinky on the right hand.

What if there were only right hemisphere cells? Or only left? How would the body walk?

What if there were no corpus collosum cells, to connect the two sides of the brain? The left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing?

What if there were no cells in the middle brain or brain stem? To maintain core functions?

What if all the brain cells were exactly like me? Or exactly like you?

05 November 2006

the dog on the leash pulls faster than you want to go
and there you are
running in the cool air
being pulled
as though the dog knows
yes yes it’s time
to fly and laugh in the morning fog
among silver and orange trees

03 November 2006

I'd get to yoga early sometimes. Upstairs, wood floor, mirrors along 2 walls, no windows. Those pilates class giant exercise balls--most recently all silver--gave the space a bit of an out-of-this-world feel. Sometimes, someone new would show up. More often than not, they'd look a little nervous. I hadn't been doing yoga all that long, but maybe because I'd turn on the floor lamp, and turn off the fluorescents, or just because I was already on a mat, they'd say something about not knowing what they were doing here, just checking it out, etc.

I'd say, if you can breathe, you can do yoga. You'll be fine.

It was that kind of class. The teacher left her ego at the door. No correct and incorrect. Different aspects are challenging for different people on different days on different sides of the body. Do whatever feels right for you today. Have your own experience.

Then, she would share from what she knew. Her physical and spiritual knowledge ran deep. And somehow, the gate to awareness of body, self, others and light was through breath. At least for me. I can't report for anyone else.

There was quite a range of experience and flexibility and confidence within the room, but she never seemed aware of that. There were many reasons a student might show up. Every student had great worth. Why would a student come if they already knew everything?

Last night, I did a little yoga on my own. Found parts of my body that said--we thought you forgot about us! When I was done, I was pleased that I had practiced. I felt relaxed. But still, something was missing.

I forgot! Breathe!

02 November 2006

A surprise phone call
(love over 100 times)
built the ark
for the flood of mixed lessons
-gifts
gentle not so gentle
-no
received and tentatively given
-practice
in creating focus, vacuum, defense
-practice
in politeness
how deeply failures in etiquette go
-insight
to give from the heart not the easy pocket
-a listener
whose deep silence reminded me, reminded me
what is core

Magritte's gray suit and bowler
bicycled across the gray sky
it was a day-
a surrealist's holy day-
the phone call cradled it all.

Lessons without love
close doors;
lessons with love
open them

01 November 2006

...Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who's there.


from The Sunrise Ruby
Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks