Looking to the New Year: What's on My Mind?

Tremendous gratitude for the great joy people and animals brought into my life in 2014: family, friends, teachers, abures, clients, and Gem Gem. Listen, most demonstrations of gratitude stop there; yet, it's never inappropriate to appreciate ourselves: at minimum, just for showing up. For being able to forgive ourselves: each of us makes a lot of mistakes; so we try to make them right. If we can't, be grateful that we have the mindfulness treat others and ourselves gently. Be grateful that though so much sticky negativity tries to glom onto us with every step, that we dust ourselves off and stand up again. Let's show gratitude to ourselves for staying the course, having faith in ourselves, changing flexibly when necessary, focusing on the future, pulling something beautiful from sunrise to sunrise, staying socially conscious, believing that we belong to all others and that they belong to us--and telling them as often as possible. Be grateful that, against the odds, we continue to act with humanity, compassion, and empathy. Be grateful that we choose to give and serve over any other temptation. By the way, laugh, laugh at yourself, cry when it strikes you, but keep a sense of humor. Gentle irony accepted. Happy New Year.

A Gift from a Beautiful Spirit

 

 

A beautiful Mantra to the Goddess Green Tara. Female incarnation of the Buddha of compassion.

 

There must be a Yoga dynamic I'm only beginning to learn about. The more my heart opens up through the practice, the more arrows seem to be aimed at it, and the more I'm having walk on eggshells around other people, even my closest friends. The keystone of that learning curve seems paradoxical to me now, but no less essential: the more my heart opens outward, the more I need to go back inside as in meditation. The rest will take care of itself, I imagine.

Vinyasa Yoga and Capoeira

I want to link Yoga and Capoeira in parallel or sequential fashion, or use one to reinforce the other (not an original idea, but I want to do it myself). Capoeira de Angola was my love and life when I was footloose and fancy free, before I was sidelined by family and business. Now that I've given myself to Vinyasa , I realize how much the muscle memory, strength, body awareness, mindfulness, and flow resonate with capoeira and prepared me to take on power Yoga. Indeed, the radical inversion, "inverted tadasana"-hands-on-the-earth work, and flow are defining features of capoeira, which surprise-attacks the colonial order upside down. Each "move" is an Afro-Brazilian "asana" of sorts, but they are connected by dynamic movement--an elegant flow. We could say that capoeira de angola is the ritualistic, spirit-inspired Tai Chi of the Afro-Atlantic danced "martial arts." If you are a yogi, look at the delicious dance driven practice of Shiva Rea or Tias Little, for example, you will immediately get it, even if you don't know capoeira directly. I would love to dialogue with anyone who continues to practice dance, martial arts, and yoga. As I write this, I think immediately of two beloved members of our Yoga community. Don't be shy. (The first video is a didactic introduction and is, technically, the fast "up" style of Capoeira Regional; the second video is a staged and produced representation of Angola Capoeira).

Click here: http://youtu.be/DF9o9hJ2-ic

A New Student's Revelation

Yoga encourages us to stay present on the mat and take joy in our practice: this happens in-and-through the breath and our growing expression of asana. So, this type-A personality, who has worked all his life just a bit too hard for success, discovers one day in a deep pigeon pose (ah, emotions stored in the hips!) that it's actually possible to relax and enjoy asana. It's not a moral or intellectual mandate. It's the practice, stupid. No one can do it for you; certainly not your head. "The body speaks and the breath responds," a teacher close to my heart recently told me; still, what I took away from her class was the profound impression of her joy. I thought about these words and her joy for a month, but they had no effect until three minutes into the pigeon, when the practice permitted my body to relax. Then I knew joy. It was fleeting but certain--and portends good things ahead.

Better Than Anything

Janine's Vinyasa flow and Yin class this morning was masterful and transformative, nothing less than a smorgasbord of neurotransmitters. And it gets better and better on and off the mat. Oh, just for the sake of metaphor, imagine Al Jarreau's or Patti Cathcart Andress' version of "Better Than Anything."

Better than sailing at midnight
Better than diving for pearls
Better than skiing in Aspen...
Better than feeding the squirrels
Better than finding a horseshoe
Better than losing your head
Better than anything thought of
Better than anything said
Better than singing right out loud
Or being spotted in a crowd

Better than anything except being in love

I'm talking about being in love....

Better than four sets of Dizzy
Better than Count Basie's band
Better than Rollins and Coltrane
Better than being on the stand
Better than Ella Fitzgerald
Better than Miles' latest news
Better than Bill Evans' ballads
Better than Joe Williams' blues
Better than hearing Lady Day
Or checking in at Monterey

Better than anything except being in love
We're talking about being in love...

Better than Lucy and Desi
Better than Route 66
Better than Kildare and Casey
Better than quiz shows on Pix
Better than Huntley and Brinkley
And Singing with Mitch
Better than Hitchcock and Karloff
And clicking the switch
Better than movies late at night
And watching Emile Griffith fight.

Better than anything except being in love
We're talking about being in love....

Elephants dancing
Clowns on parade
Better than peanuts and popcorn
Fresh lemonade
Better than rides on the midway
Better than seals blowing horns
Better than men shot from cannons
Better than fresh ears of corn
Better than balancing on a wire
Or watching tigers leap through fire

Better than anything except being in love...say now...being in love...
[Talking 'bout] being in love....Skat, Skat, Skat....Better than anything except being in love.

Our America

  

This is how beautiful and complex it is. It's not just "Cubans" vs. "Americans"--that's a neo-nationalist idiom. I heard an English speaker from the 786 area code call me. After all, she's 29, born here, but a (second generation "Cuban-American") santera for 24 years. The first words she spoke had me confused. I first greeted her in Spanish and then turned to English once she responded to me in English. She said: "oh, you speak really good English," having thought I was Hispanic (after all, I run "Folkcuba"). So, we started speaking "perfect English" together. After the WTF reactions, we then began to speak to each other in "Spanish" again, and then in the more restricted idiom of  santeros. Our conversation "switched" between "perfect English," Cuban Spanish, and "Osha," which "Spanish" speakers, non-santero Cubans, or Americans would understand. So, she's at least "tri-cultural" and probably has Spanish and creole ancestors, not to mention African. I am--descending from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with roots in the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires--perhaps, tri-, quad-, pent-, hex-cultural. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. More to come...

Selfies and Narcissism

YogaAnonymous tells us: "Research | Scientists Link Selfies To Narcissism, Addiction & Mental Illness."
http://yoganonymous.com/research-scientists-link-selfies-to-narcissism-addiction-mental-illness/
Will Wonders Never Cease. I've not read the article but it seems dubious on its face, confusing cause and effect. It would seem that Narcissism, Addiction, and Mental Illness lead to Selfies. Or not. Way back when, they were worried about blobs eating Philadelphia. Now anxiety about runaway technology produces a ridiculous Jeremiad twice a day. Why not focus on more pressing concerns such as global warming, world hunger, environmental destruction, genocide, social inequality, invasive surveillance, fundamentalism, etc, which will make us all dead way before Selfies make us crazy maladaptive alcoholics.

Yoga on Instagram

YogaAnonymous tells us: "A picture might be worth a thousand words, but in the world of yoga on Instagram, a photo could mean a whole new career."
http://yoganonymous.com/yoga-instagram-turned-lucrative-business/

Yoga itself has been a lucrative business since it hit these shores in force--for some people with certain ambitions. In cases, it's gone multinational. The Starbucks story might soon be applied, for example, to the Paul and Sonia Tudor-Jones' corporatized luxury "Jois" studios, which have moved in next to the humbler original students of Jois himself. So the "lucrative business" angle is nothing new. Instagram and other social media are potentially revolutionary social media technologies--witness the Arab Spring. Careful. If the medium is the message, then one major internet capability is to efficiently commoditize anything and suck us consumers into its vortex. So, perhaps Yoga photos might be a "lucrative business." Do we yet have criteria for evaluating them, not to mention their business model? I would want to go on a case by case basis. Can any of us look at just one more Bikram speedo photo shot against a background of 500 sweaty bodies or 40 Rolls Royces? The gorgeous Equinox YouTube videos are as notable for their magisterial poses as they are for their soft-core porn allusions. On the flip side, the communicative and community-building possibilities of the internet offer to (mostly) women and very small businesses the possibility not only to survive and flourish, to surprise us with gorgeous poses and individual creativity we thought not possible, and to offer some visual competition to the daily round of bears driving cars, drunken teens, and wardrobe malfunctions. As well, from this new marketplace of Yoga photos, we can sharpen our criteria for discriminating good poses and virtuous teachers from bad snapshots and crass propaganda. So much out there begs the attention--especially of wide-eyed new students. If we potentially benefit from a grand visual array of beckoning photographs, would we not also benefit from a public exchange as to what content makes us the Yogis we want to be?

Wounded Healers

"Affix your own oxygen mask before turning to your child." We've heard that endless times. Those of us caring for others, whether teachers, therapists, or parents, are human, hence, imperfect, and invariably still smarting from our own past hurts. That makes us "wounded healers." A contradiction? Not if we are ethical, seeking to walk in the present. Heal yourself first, then turn to your charges. Accomplishing both at once is a tricky proposition. This is  where we can get confused and cross boundaries. In reality, in the present, teachers, therapists, and parents do not require their students, patients, and children, respectively, to treat their own past hurts and needs--clearly an impossibility, except in fantasy or delusion. This, indeed, is confusion, and leads nowhere but to abuse. Seek your oxygen and then breath life into your charges.

"Zombies" and Nzambi: There's Oh So Much Confusion

For those of you who don't know, in variants of Kongo cosmology, Nzambi-Mpungu can be conceived of as the "High God;" more specifically, he reigns over both Ntoto, the mountain of the living, and Mpemba, or Kalunga, the world of the dead beneath the water, which is chalk white, like the kaolin at the bottom of the river. A special category of the dead, very close to Nzambi Mpungu, consists of "Nzambi creatures," chalk-white beings. "Zombies" are the stuff of American hysteric...al legend, originally brought to these shores and immortalized in ethnocentric fiction by soldiers returning from the US occupation of Haiti in the early twentieth century, just as was "Voodoo." In Haitian Vodou, people believe in "Zombi," but they are not at all the stuff of ludicrous and endlessly repeated American B-movies. Though many and varied, some Zombi are purgatorial anti-social persons, who have been condemned, captured, and taken "to the north" to labor eternally as slaves--the greatest fear that a Haitian can have, given the torturous history of the island. Therefore, contrary to popular conception, the Zombi does not come after you; a priest charged with carrying out the "sentence" comes after the anti-social person, adjudged as such by local secret societies. (Please correct any errors you see here, my knowledgeable friends.)

My Android, My Zombies

Zombies? Facebook is an insatiable Zombi and David has likely become one. I awoke to a Brave New World. Facebook inserted 1,120 "friends"--a swarm--into my Android phone's contact list. Someone opted into the Facebook "sync" app linking a mobile device and Zuckerberg's global social media circus. Having no conscious memory of opting in, I ask: who did this? Was it a butt call? David in a sleepwalking episode? David bitten and possessed by a Zombie? If I were possessed by a ni...neteenth-century doctor, he'd have no social media skills. The only conclusion: a millennial who had met an untimely end possessed me. So, now I've got 1,120 souls crashing my lonely little corner of New Jersey. I want my life back. Nothing personal, Facebook friends.

The Verizon wireless representative, a media saavy baby boomer, sympathized with me; but no one can "unsync" what's been done wholesale. So, this morning I spent two hours individually terminating all of you Zombies. Sorry good people.

Oscar: An Accident Waiting to Happen

How do we want to approach a traumatized person--in this case, who has committed a heinous crime? Bracket for a moment Oscar Pistorius' guilt or innocence and focus on the court-appointed psychologist's characterization of the session: the "double-amputee athlete had sometimes cried, retched, perspired and paced up and down during sessions in which she tried to assist him....Some of the sessions were just him weeping and crying and me holding him." Her sentiment was, though sympathetic, driven by pity and her takeaway that he was a "broken" man; this, as if there were something else he was supposed to perform in the session, such as remorse. Legal institutions require the cleanliness of remorse and the ultimate assumption of responsibility; this pure human wreck should, ideally, stand up like a man and face the music, or be simply warehoused in a psychiatric institution.

No apologist for the crime, I understand that a normative, and here, forensic, therapy serves as critical data in any legal consideration of an insanity defense. Still, the psychologist had unwittingly succeeded just enough in creating a safe space for the patient's discharge of lifelong trauma (the tip of the iceberg): perspiring, pacing, weeping, crying, retching, need to be held. These are progressively more profound levels of emotional discharge--like the peeling of an onion--for early-installed humiliation, brutal hurt, and existential terror.

Should it be a matter of "sane" people standing trial or their incapacity to stand trial, wherein you should drool, in a drug-induced stupor in a corner, until you are no longer a threat to society (perhaps neutralized with electroshock therapy). Is this healing? In the latter context, he would, undoubtedly never receive the kind of treatment he fortuitously received in his initial "sanity session."

Who knows, if that "accident waiting to happen" had received genuine therapeutic resource, instead of re-enacting the narrative of miraculous and salutary triumph over adversity, which we all prefer. It's no coincidence that we encounter recurringly, like clockwork, young celebrities falling all around us, like bleached skeletons in the desert. We love heroes and we lament their fall. We celebrate Bill Cosby's triumphant career and lament his "fall." Why is it that no one cared to bat an eyelash over almost five decades?

It's of course lonely at the top. Our celebrities, heroes, and leaders need no support--they float our dreams. Aren't they really our charges rather than the reverse, wherein we avidly devour them for diversion? This is why I love celebrity culture and the institutions that support it and utilize celebrity for its own ends.

(this is a work in progress; go easy)

 

Agent Provocateur

Agent Provocateur. From the 19th century French: literally "provocative agent". I can be really bad. Yo estoy malito. Right after the Shavasana final Yoga relaxation pose today, two male students start on baseball and their favorite teams. This is just where I want to go after meditation. So one says, "My brother loves the St. Louis Cardinals and I have a bet with him". I chime in, "the only thing you can bet on in St, Louis is how many more black teenagers the police are going to kill this year". He says," that's a little harsh." I say, "what's harsh is that they killed him with his hands in the air." I am très obnoxious; baseball fans deserve their practice, too. Obviously, I need more Yoga. Alas, said the Bard, "get thee to a [monastery]."

 

See Paris First

SEE PARIS FIRST

Suppose what you fear,
could be trapped,
and held in Paris.

Then you would have the courage,
to go everywhere in the world.

All the directions of the compass,
open to you,
except the degrees east or west,
of true north,
that lead to Paris.

Still, you wouldn’t dare,
to put your toes smack dab,
on the city limit line.

And you’re not really willing to stand on a mountainside,
miles away,
and watch the Paris lights,
come up at night.

And just to be on the safe side, you decide to stay completely,
out of France.
 
But then danger,
seems too close,
even to those boundaries,
and you feel the timid part of you,
covering the whole globe again.

 

You need the kind of friend,
who learns your secret and says,
“See Paris first.”

 

—M. Truman Cooper

The Moment

View of Little Bighorn Battlefield, Montana

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,...
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
No, they whisper.
You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

--Margaret Atwood

Elena Brower

David with Elena Brower after her "Art of Attention" Yoga workshop, Stanhope, NJ, September 14, 2014. Just a lovely practice.

Belonging

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

                                       
- Max Ehrmann

Our Israelites

 

So rocking was the summer of 1968 that, when I was eleven at Boyscout camp, my whole troop hoisted my tent flaps at 6:30 a.m. as I sang The Israelites at the top of my lungs and danced. No self-respecting Boyscout had ever heard this music, much less seen a strange Jew singing and dancing it as it rained torrentially in Stokes State Forest, New Jersey. Let's just say that I was driven out of camp for doing a "strip tease" unbecoming of the reigning creed.

The question remains, do you remember the days of slavery?* At eleven I had no idea what "Israelites" Desmond Dekker was talking about, except, that in my little head, I was one of them. We had celebrated Passover only a couple months before and all I was thinking about were the Exodus and Promised Land stories. Well, it wasn't coincidence that so was Desmond Dekker.

*see Burning Spear.

Manny Padron: Autobiographical Essay

Manny Padrón

Mrs. Garrity/ Mrs.Borrenstein

English II

17 January 2014

Benchmark Essay

Atticus Finch said, “you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point view-until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” In my life this quote means so much; coming from a dictatorship like Cuba it’s harder than people think.

On the exact date of  March 6, 1998 my life began, and from then on my life would be a rough rollercoaster ride. By the time I could walk and talk my parents were divorced so I never really had an idea of what a true happy family looked like. I still remember having to go from house to house between my mom and dad’s house. I would always cry when I was away from either one of them, I used to miss my mom when I was with my Dad and vice-versa. Between all of the moving, leaving, and crying I had a little bit of depression. As a little kid, I would love being with all of my family and it hurt me a lot knowing that it could not happen all the time. I remember being happier with my Dad instead of my mom because he would let me do anything I chose to do and he would always keep me safe. Being with my Mom would be rough because she, at the time, lived with an abusive boyfriend and he would mostly hit her in front of me and I remember doing everything I could to get him off of her and I would cry so many times a day because of that. Sometimes he would try to threaten me and my mom would yell and tell him not to touch me so he got mad at her. One time he told my mom that he would kill my uncle and that’s when my mom and I knew it was time to get out and put him behind bars. I remember exactly how we got him arrested because it was so cool to me. We went to the police and told them the story and they told us what to do. We were instructed to put a brick outside the steps when the guy was home. In the middle of the day he came home and I put the brick on the stairs. When we were all about to fall asleep we heard a helicopter above us and they said in Spanish “we have you surrounded come out with your hands up,” and then the ground troops came in and took him away. I remember being so happy I hugged my mom and we cried tears of joy. To this day I think about those days and say to myself I wish he would try to do something like that now.

After that problem was out of my life I still had more problems. I never really had my own bed; I would sleep on hammock and I also could not drink the water because it was dirty. My mom used to be so stressed that when I did something wrong she would hit me and scream at me but my Grandma would always save me because I was her favorite grandson. I would see my dad only a couple times a month and my feelings kept getting hurt over and over. After a year or so I was suddenly getting happier; I began seeing my father more and being with all of my family and having fun.

Then suddenly a man my Mom met by the beach came to our house one day. He introduced himself to me as David and as soon as I saw him I loved him; he made me happy. When he was around I would never cry; I would always laugh and smile; even when I got mad and put a frown on my face he would sing me a special song. The song would go something like this, “you cannot cover the sun with one finger; the truth is the truth; so don’t frown at me.” Although it sounds better in Spanish it always put a smile on my face. From the day my mother met David she would always be happy and calm. As the days passed I would see him regularly and I began to love him as my real dad, he would show me so much love and affection that not even my own family could give me. He was basically my savior and my new hope for a better life.

My mom later got serious with him and ended up marrying him. I, of course, was the ring boy at the marriage. A year or so later he told us that he wanted to take us to America. I was not happy leaving my family but it was up to my mom and my dad also agreed because he knew I would have a better life there. My father spoke to David about keeping me safe and making sure he makes the right decisions.

Later in the year my Mom, David, and I got on a plane to the U.S and when we got there I had a weird feeling. For some reason I was feeling cold. As a boy from Cuba where it is always hot I thought I was sick. When we got out of the airport I saw white colored drops coming from above. I stuck my tongue out and tried to eat them. David laughed and told me that it was not food and we got into his car and left to some place called a house. At this place I had my own bed and room! I was happy being in America.

After a few years in America it all seemed to be going so well until my mom decided that she wanted to live with her cousin instead of David. When she was about to leave she was crying and looked at me and said the most painful words I have ever heard, “are you coming with me or are you staying with David?” I didn’t know what to do. I loved them both. I was stuck between my mother and my stepdad. I wanted to go with her but I had friends where I lived and I had started school already, plus I had better opportunities with David so I ended up saying “David.”

At present, I barely see my mom but we speak every day. My father lives in Cuba still and so does the rest of my family. David has been my biggest supporter throughout my hard life and we get along fine. But the things I deal with still hurt. When people look at me they automatically assume that I am a delinquent and that I don’t care about anything. To be honest I am none of that. I am just a person who has been to hell and back, so like a turtle, I keep my outer shell hard so that my inner weakness does not show. So this is why the quote, “you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point view [and] you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it,” means so much to me because people think they know what I am all about and try to judge, but they have no idea what I have been through and still am going through.

Works Cited

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: HarperPerennial (1930]). p. 85-87

Tunturuntu: Casa Cerrado

In it's own way, it's just precious. Still, go figure. Misericordia.