It's So Friday

The Pretenders' My City Was Gone, played on the radio this morning as I made my way, late, for work. There it was, that faint smell of longing. I lifted my nose to catch the scent of childhood memories that swirled past like a breeze. I was a cat who senses something that's almost there, and then it's not. So that was a moment.

Water Dances

Have you seen Rango? No? Get thee to a theater, man!




My favorite scene is a rather insignificant one in the overall plot of this existential homage to spaghetti westerns: At high noon on Wednesdays the citizens of parched Dirt line up on Main Street, empty bottles in hand, and do a little dance. They perform this absurd ritual with deadpan sincerity and particular care to detail. They do this dance on their way to the Great Spigot where they hope to receive their ration of a dwindling supply of water. I like this scene because it highlights an obvious mass-scale OCD quality of human behavior. If we pray just right, eat the right foods, do the yoga workout with precision, then every little thing will be all right.

I had to include yoga here. It's my pet ritual, and one I have to take with a little grain of salt even as I take great pleasure in it and feel it is a useful vehicle for waking up to my life. It is a dance though, and there is a fine line between it becoming an inane rote performance in quest of something else and being simply a kinesthetic meditative experience of the moment. I will continue to practice as long as there are instances of the latter. There are plenty of other rituals in my life that I've shed off like a rattler's unneeded, too-small skin. That's how a snake grows, right? When the skin's too small, it's molt or die.

Anyway, do go see Rango, and then talk to me about it. It's an escape, but a good 'n.

When I Say "We,"

I do mean "we." We human beings. As in we human beings do some nutty things. I'll be the first to admit my neurosis. I attempt to see clearly, to act rationally, but I get caught up in stories as easily as the next guy. So I've been feeling a little, er, shall we say paranoid about my last post. It was reactive even as it criticized what I consider to be a highly reactive group. But the thing is, it's easy to make a "they," and then to blame them for all that ails you. The aforementioned fringe group does, to be sure, but then I made a "they" out of them, too. Ah, life.

We all feel a little vulnerable. I hear it every day in colleagues' voices, in the radio DJ's, on the news. How to deal with the fear? My point on Sunday was to say that it must surely be less effective to tighten up, close your heart and mind, and get all reactive. It will not bring the fruits any of us desire to try to control everything, including other people. These are the lessons I hope I get through my yoga practice and through meditation. It's not bliss I'm seeking, but an ability to wake up and experience, deal with, face what is. That's all.

Rigidity

I'm here in lovely Park City, Utah getting away, celebrating in a rather unusual way my 19th wedding anniversary. I say unusual because we've brought along our daughters and two of their friends. They'll keep each other entertained when Chris and I slip away for a tasty meal and an hour or two to be alone as seems expected on such occasions. I know this sounds really unromantic of me, but I happen to think that's a good thing. It seems relevant to mark the anniversary, but why do it mindlessly following some sort of idea of what one should do? What I appreciate about my relationship to Chris is a fluidity and flexibility we've developed over these years through transitions and even a few major upsets. What we have is an emerging acceptance of who we actually are as human beings, colored less and less with our projections and fantasies. That's worth celebrating, even if it's quietly at a small vegan-friendly Persian restaurant with a rather friendly chef and absent-minded waitress.

It's a bit of a sobering weekend, anyway, with the news of Japan's earthquake and tsunami and an acknowledgement of our fragility despite any precautions we might make.  Surrealistically I witness the disaster, we all do here in our corner of the globe, as entertainment. I searched around a bit online for insight and came across some pretty shocking shit out there. First was to read a collection of randomly stupid Facebook comments on the tragedy--people taking pleasure in this revenge for Pearl Harbor or whatever. I don't know why I'm still surprised when I discover more people don't think like me. The next was when a YouTube search on Japan earthquake 2011 brought up a clip made by The Sons of Liberty. I'm not sure who these people are, but they are apparently a militia group of white supremacist "Christians" who foresee an unspecified great disaster affecting the West Coast in April or May that will catalyze a new American Revolution in which white Christians will be fighting an epic battle against Zionist Jewish Satanist elites. I do not breathe easy that Utah falls in the "friendly" states in which beleaguered white Christians should seek refuge. The language used by this group is suspiciously similar to that used by our own were-they-really-elected-by-us state legislature: an insistence of calling the United States a republic, vilifying the word "democracy." I watched the clip, full of provocative name calling, and clean images of people in colonial dress firing cannons along with cries of "Liberty!" "Freedom!" I do not know what these words mean to these people, and I'm left with one question: Can people really be this nutty? Wouldn't you rather face a natural disaster head on, dealing with the difficulties and troubles with rationality, than live in a space ruled by sons and daughters of WTF who happen to have stockpiled a few weapons?

This leads me to thoughts on rigidity and a lack of self reflection. We humans, it seems, get these ideas in our heads of how things OUGHT to be and these ideas ossify. The Sons of Liberty are looking at these colonial dress pictures and canons and glorifying this as some sort of place of security and freedom. I'm certain that if these people achieve the kind of outcome they seek: a place where THEY are in control and everyone at least appears to go along with their ideology, life will still suck for them. It takes so much effort to keep an illusion going, and can you imagine the burden of keeping everyone else in line so that you can't see the cracks in your fantasy? This may be merely my opinion, but it does seem a better option for we folks to breathe a little more, soften up the areas where we tend to clench, and at least TRY to see things as they are. Trade in a need for certainty for a little curiosity.

I don't know. I think it's time to turn off the computer, go outside for a walk in the Park City sunshine, get a kick out of my kids' antics, breathe in the air. This is the ride we're on--absurd as it appears to be at present. Oh, for a little fun and escape, and a look at how nutty we get, go see the movie "Rango." This was a delightful departure from the expected corporate message animated flick. I especially liked the little water dance the townsfolk do at high noon on Wednesdays. I hope you do, too.

I'll opt for lazy, unoriginal, this morning and simply share a few readings and one book title to be placed on my virtual to-read list. It's a Sunday morning saturated with gray here in Orem. I've drunk my daily green smoothie, which happened to be purple on account of the addition of frozen berries and in spite of the addition of the fresh green peas I paid too much money for at Costco yesterday. My yoga clothes are in the dryer, but I'll soon slip into a pair of stretchy pants and a breathable cami and make my way to the blind shop ersatz yoga studio to take a group through the asanas. To tell you the truth, I'd rather be practicing than teaching this morning, but it's all right.

Twenty Reasons

GMOnslaught

On Bullshit

Mink River

Hardcore Zen on Emptiness

Yogi Cat