I’m turning 40 in a couple weeks; A time often ripe with action(s) that get labeled a midlife crises or perhaps a touchstone of personal achievement. Following a somewhat disorienting few years, the later tends to feel untrue; I’m consistently hopeful that actions deviating from my “norm” will be considered not as a crises, but a consistent effort to avoid tragedy, or to be less dramatic, missed opportunity. I regard myself as a “slow mover” but I tend to be moving.
“There is nothing so beautiful as to approach the Divinity and spread its rays for the human race.”
-Beethoven
There are few things one needs to make great art of any kind. Technique and talent are certainly helpful tools to this end, but we have all seen popular artists reach millions while embodying a foundation that pedagogues would denounce as beyond the pale.
I see two essentials: discipline and meaning.
The Yoga community sometimes refers to back-extension postures (such as the attached image of wheel/gymnastics bridge) as heart openers. This image of “heart-opening” implies an increase in compassion, a word we might attach moral value of goodness too. But is compassion synonymous with goodness?
A good friend and Patreon subscriber posed an inspiring inquiry into my thoughts on the balance between tension and relaxation in movement.
This inspired me to think on the Taoist concept of Wu Wei “Effortless Effort.”
Hello Friends,
Having been a month since our last correspondences (an eternity in the ever shifting 2020 reality), it feels bewildering where to start. Many of you reading this will have overlap in where you have given your attention these past several weeks, though it is possible for a vast array of narratives.
“I think therefore I am” Descartes ...has been amended by countless others before me to: “I am therefore I think”
I find practices of embodiment, practices that put consciousness “in the body” have a profound ability to recognize that the “thinker” is not you, but rather you are a being who thinks.
Hello Friends,
I’m hoping this correspondence finds you well. I have written and discarded many emails since our last communication and with the Autumnal equinox having now come and gone I feel a pressing need to touch base. Each year I am most apt to notice the end of summer by the decrease in daylight. Anxiety for lack of sufficient time is a common theme for me that generally shows its face strongly during the last third of the year. While I still notice the bodily sensations that accompany this habitual anxiety of “time is running out” the overall character, of what seems like a more existential reality, is very different in this year of vast uncertainty.
5pm
There is a mandatory meeting this afternoon for the camp I was staying at last week... Wait! I mean 2 days ago, goodness the days are so long here. I still have a prepaid meal plan to redeem there. I mean it isn’t my camp exactly, they are mostly lovely people. Not all of course, any group has some folks I have a trickier time being pleasant to. I have a few that I’ve grown distaste for... The type of person who would say “I thought you were supposed to be a yogi” when you express honest feelings. Yeah, that dick. I go and fake some of the interactions while feeling others genuinely and appreciative to feel honest efforts to welcome me into the group. I still feel like an outsider on the periphery accompanying an outsider.
The one (monad) is a fallacy in manifestation. To recognize the individual is to also note that which it is not; The creation of two. In the realization of duality we have three: The individual (one), the other (two), their relationship (three), and from that interplay all infinity springs forth from that fountain. Many religious systems have their symbol to represent duality (few notice 2 is never only 2)
Hello Friends,
It has been a while since we connected and much has happened in the interim. Pending who you talk to the story of our collective will contain different highlights and a variety of shadows, though much of the plot will contain similarities. We are all paying attention to similar events, though solutions, concerns and condemnations may come from different directions.
In listening to a psychotherapist / mindfulness teacher, I was struck by the assuredness that the methodology he employs is “best practice.” Over and over, he declared what the “research” shows regarding mindfulness vs. “other” “focus” based practices of meditation. Proof existing in studies focusing on Vipassana meditation showed superior results to the “other” methodologies used in the control group.
Memoirs From a Burn
8.30.2019 (Friday: The man burns tomorrow)
5:30am
The Day’s are so very long here.
I woke at 5:30am. 10 minutes before my alarm is set to sound. I am determined to great the sun while meditating at the temple. Peddling furiously across the desert, fellow riders look to playfully engage. I am somewhat disappointed that I can not entertain their efforts in this moment; “I”, have ways. I see the neon of the Playa’s temporary human contribution fading as the sky shows signs of crimson and the blue has become fainter than the darkness that was present just a quarter of an hour prior.
I meditate with open eyes. Taking in the light show as this beautiful life providing celestial body appears to begin its journey across the sky transforming into the loathsome unavoidably oppressive gaseous star it is assuredly on its way to becoming and that anyone who has spent hours under its influence can confirm. After 108 breaths and what additional I decide to be a sufficient amount of time taking in this moment; I staple my contribution to Sunday’s impending Temple burning. My “Burning Man” neighbor, and new friend Tom, is hoping to burn images of the father he lost this year; I have contributed images of the personal “self” I wish to destroy.
7:30am
Memoirs From a Burn
8.29.2019 (Thursday: The man burns in three days)
We have moved. This instability is very shocking to me. I had found quiet(er) places to engage with the routines I have at home: Meditating and Yoga. My more in depth movement practice is tricker to engage with here because of my own personal social anxieties. I spent four years at a conservatory avoiding practicing the violin in practice rooms when certain people were around because I felt judged (even when I was the only one doing the judging).
I will be able to maintain the routine I’ve developed, we aren’t far from our old camp.
I am well, I am breathing and I am well
-
The black water in the RV is full…
Systasis: A setting together, a union.
This beautiful word was first posited by Jean Gebser: a philosopher, linguist and poet of the mid-20th century. Combining words such as system and stasis in what I see as an attempt to encourage a practice of integrating systems as opposed to creating new and better reductions of the whole they intend to model…
Memoirs From a Burn
8.28.2019 (Wednesday: The man burns in four days)
I’m laying in a hammock on my perch high above the spectacle that is Burning Man.
Today was the third day of this reality. I’m adapting and also heavily long for the life I have left behind for this experience…
Explicit Content:
8.27.2019 (Tuesday: Second Day of “My Burn”)
“How’s Yer Burn going man?”…
Memoirs From a Burn 2019.08.26 (Arrival)
Metamorphosis
Four men got in a discussion.
Each one said:
8.25.2019 (1 day before arriving at Burning Man)
A gift has arrived and I cherish it:
The Laughing Heart
your life is your life…
Memoirs From a Burn
2019.08.23 (Departing Philadelphia)
At the center of my circumstances with a full and heavy heart. I soar through the air and notice this momentary and yet overwhelming lack of stability. Having felt love in its many forms: physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation, gifts and acts of service, it feels ungrounding to fly away from the places warmth and acceptance are present…
