Left to my own devices, I tend to drift around in space. Over the years, I’ve been called to now by My Gift as a child (and still, as an adult), by my brother when he was ill, by Ty as a puppy. I am called to now by the needs of people at work, by deadlines and decisions. Basically, I guess I am called to the now by others’ needs. This isn’t inconsistent with what I’ve been taught by zen teachers.
At this point I’m floating (and struggling), because I was so called to now by Tyler’s needs, and then they disappeared suddenly.
God, that’s a cool picture.
***
Quadratus lumborum. Left side. Owie.
Not sure what’s going on. Lots of sensation, feels tight, but then when I practice it actually seems stretchier than usual. I know I have twisty things in my baseline alignment. Maybe they are resolving?
In the meantime, I feel mentally tentative, like I’m afraid I’m gonna make a false move and the QL’s gonna do something bad. Nevertheless, when I DO actually move/stretch/challenge it, it seems to be responding better than ever. So now it’s a battle between my expectations/fears, and the plain old what’s-actually-happening-now.
***
Richard Freeman quote for the day:
Hatha yoga is where we use the impulses of the mind, and we go with them in order to dovetail them back so we can observe them. In a sense, hatha yoga is like sitting practice with a lot of squirming. Whereas in sitting practice you just let it be. The urge to squirm arises, but it doesn’t translate out. You sit on the urge rather than squirming. In yoga we actually do both practices.
***
I’ve been reading and listening to some Frank O’Hara poems. O’Hara was a man who was deeply connected to the now.
What I’m always confused by, though, is the way other poets read his poems. Everyone over-reads them. You can verify this by listening to an audio of someone reading O’Hara, then listening to O’Hara reading O’Hara.
O’Hara was certainly gregarious and exuberant, but it’s hard to tap into and represent someone else’s exuberance, particularly when you are reading their words off a page. Everyone makes FO sound so campy and overwrought. Gah! What’s best are his little crystalline moments of feelingfulness, which are just bulldozered by all the over-reading.
Okay, so it’s agreed. Read O’Hara in a quieter voice.
In Memory of My Feelings
My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent
and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.
He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals.
My quietness has a number of naked selves,
so many pistols I have borrowed to protect myselves
from creatures who too readily recognize my weapons
and have murder in their heart!
though in winter
they are warm as roses, in the desert
taste of chilled anisette.
At times, withdrawn,
I rise into the cool skies
and gaze on at the imponderable world with the simple identification
of my colleagues, the mountains. Manfred climbs to my nape,
speaks, but I do not hear him,
I’m too blue.
An elephant takes up his trumpet,
money flutters from the windows of cries, silk stretching its mirror
across shoulder blades. A gun is “fired.”
One of me rushes
to window #13 and one of me raises his whip and one of me
flutters up from the center of the track amidst the pink flamingoes,
and underneath their hooves as they round the last turn my lips
are scarred and brown, brushed by tails, masked in dirt’s lust,
definition, open mouths gasping for the cries of the bettors for the lungs
of earth.
So many of my transparencies could not resist the race!
Terror in earth, dried mushrooms, pink feathers, tickets,
a flaking moon drifting across the muddied teeth,
the imperceptible moan of covered breathing,
love of the serpent!
I am underneath its leaves as the hunter crackles and pants
and bursts, as the barrage balloon drifts behind a cloud
and animal death whips out its flashlight,
whistling
and slipping the glove off the trigger hand. The serpent’s eyes
redden at sight of those thorny fingernails, he is so smooth!
My transparent selves
flail about like vipers in a pail, writhing and hissing
without panic, with a certain justice of response
and presently the aquiline serpent comes to resemble the Medusa.
