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Made three layer cornbread this morning. Yes, I cooked! I guess the holidays got to me. The Cop got up, poured his coffee, looked at the cornbread on the counter and said, “What’s this for?” Kind of like he’d found an alien or something. He did enjoy a nice big hunk of it, though, slathered with butter.

The recipe is from the Tassajara Bread Book, and it’s the best cornbread ever. A thick layer of cornbread, a thin layer of custardy sweetness, and a top layer of crispy whole-wheatness. Mmmmm. And it’s really easy to make.

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Here’s a quote I read in Esquire magazine, courtesy of Michael J. Fox: “Discipline is just doing the same thing the right way whether anyone’s watching or not.”

It got me thinking about self-practice. Which then got me thinking about something Tova wrote last week: “i love my self practice so much. i wonder how much of the internal stuff would come to light if i felt the pressure of a teacher and other practitioners.”

I wonder the same thing. I’ve been practicing on my own since I got back from Singapore at the beginning of November. My self-practice feels sweeter and more intimate than it does when I am attending a shala. It is less driven by other people’s perceptions or expectations (or rather, I suppose, my perception of their perceptions and expectations) — either way, it’s easy to see that when other people are involved, there is more energy in the air. Which can be good if you want motivation, and which can be good if you want direction. Not so good, if you want quiet and a minimum of energy, so that you can “hear” the internal stuff. It may just be me, but when I am struggling with a pose, it is much easier to “listen” to what is happening when I am on my own. When other people are around, I get self-conscious. Not self-conscious enough not to do the pose, but there’s enough static in the system that I can’t be as sensitive to what I’m experiencing.

And I guess since I’m writing, I might as well go there: when I am practicing around other people and I do something well, I feel proud of myself. And when I bobble something, I feel abashed. And then I have to work those energies out. When I’m alone, no pride and no feeling abashed. Everything just is what it is at that moment. Minimalist.

So anyhow, right now my motivation feels very strong, and my direction very clear. The home practice is perfect and I really love it. It doesn’t feel like discipline at all. It feels like I’m in the middle of a book that’s really good and I want to keep returning to it. I get absorbed into it, and forget about “me.” When I am in the shala, “me” is strong. Which is fine, just not what I’m interested in right now.

Over on the Ashtanga Voices site, Eeyore was talking about favorite books. I immediately thought of the book I’d nominate for best book ever written: Ulysses. I also thought of Joyce’s great short story, “The Dead,” which I always think of as a Christmas story. Primarily because of the image of a social gathering in a warm house as it snows outside.

I also thought of my all-time favorite short story, “A Country Doctor,” by Franz Kafka. Now that I think of it, this story always reminds me of Christmas time, too. Again, the omnipresence of snow. It’s a twisted Christmas with Kafka, though, for sure!

Moon Day. No practice. Just stories and Art in America magazines. Nice.

Yesterday I watched “Who the Eff is Jackson Pollock?”” A very amusing documentary about a 73 year old female long-haul truck driver who may have unearthed a Jackson Pollock painting in a thrift shop. Astonishing, to watch the clash of cultures — and I must say, the art elitists came out looking especially bad. Teri (the truck driver) hires a forensic scientist to examine the painting, and he finds a fingerprint. Pollock’s fingerprint. The art experts snottily explain that the beliefs of expert connoisseurs is how authenticity is determined, not something so gauche as a fingerprint. Hilarious.