Hearing the Breath of Others

Today from the Writer's Almanac
I read this poem early this morning. I think this poems speaks to me as to why I do yoga or perhaps what is yoga in action at any given moment or what is "kairos"/There are many times in my life that I do not always feel like listening to others, absorbing, containing the variable energies of the moment. Sometimes I just want my space,but then there are moments that we allow ourselves to be supple and receptive ,that the slate is cleared and something unspoken,noteworthy,glistening occurs between us. Emptying myself out ,so to speak ,in yoga sometimes allows me to rise to these occasions where the human need for connection,affirmation and attention to each other is realized and rewarded and if we are fortunate to listen to our own breath,perhaps we will hear the breath of another as well...
Arc

by Amy M. Clark

My seatmate on the late-night flight
could have been my father. I held
a biography, but he wanted to talk.
The pages closed around my finger
on my spot, and as we inclined
into the sky, we went backwards
in his life, beginning with five hours
before, the funeral for his only brother,
a forgotten necktie in his haste
to catch this plane the other way
just yesterday, his wife at home
caring for a yellow Lab she'd found
along the road by the olive grove,
and the pretty places we had visited—
Ireland for me, Germany for him—
a village where he served his draft
during the Korean War, and would like
to see again to show his wife
how lucky he had been. He talked
to me and so we held
his only brother's death at bay.
I turned off my reading light,
remembering another veteran
I met in a pine forest years ago
who helped me put my tent up
in the wind. What was I thinking
camping there alone? I was grateful
he kept watch across the way
and served coffee in a blue tin cup.
Like the makeshift shelter of a tent,
a plane is brought down,
but as we folded to the ground,
I had come to appreciate

even my seatmate's breath, large
and defenseless, the breath of a man
who hadn't had a good night's rest.
I listened and kept the poles
from blowing down, and kept
a vigil from the dark to day.

"Arc" by Amy M. Clark, from Stray Home. © University of North Texas Press, 2010. Reprinted with permission

"Summertime/Motherless Child"- Mahalia Jackson

In honor of the warm weather, the warm smooth voice of "Mahalia"

The sky,"solid and insubstantial at the same time"

Things I Didn’t Know I Loved: After Nazim Hikmet
by Linda Pastan

I always knew I loved the sky,
the way it seems solid and insubstantial at the same time;
the way it disappears above us
even as we pursue it in a climbing plane,
like wishes or answers to certain questions—always out of reach;
the way it embodies blue,
even when it is gray.

But I didn't know I loved the clouds,
those shaggy eyebrows glowering
over the face of the sun.
Perhaps I only love the strange shapes clouds can take,
as if they are sketches by an artist
who keeps changing her mind.
Perhaps I love their deceptive softness,
like a bosom I'd like to rest my head against
but never can.

And I know I love the grass, even as I am cutting it as short
as the hair on my grandson's newly barbered head.
I love the way the smell of grass can fill my nostrils
with intimations of youth and lust;
the way it stains my handkerchief with meanings
that never wash out.

Sometimes I love the rain, staccato on the roof,
and always the snow when I am inside looking out
at the blurring around the edges of parked cars
and trees. And I love trees,
in winter when their austere shapes
are like the cutout silhouettes artists sell at fairs
and in May when their branches
are fuzzy with growth, the leaves poking out
like new green horns on a young deer.

But how about the sound of trains,
those drawn-out whistles of longing in the night,
like coyotes made of steam and steel, no color at all,
reminding me of prisoners on chain gangs I've only seen
in movies, defeated men hammering spikes into rails,
the burly guards watching over them?

Those whistles give loneliness and departure a voice.
It is the kind of loneliness I can take in my arms, tasting
of tears that comfort even as they burn, dampening the pillows
and all the feathers of all the geese who were plucked to fill
them.

Perhaps I embrace the music of departure—song without lyrics,
so I can learn to love it, though I don't love it now.
For at the end of the story, when sky and clouds and grass,
and even you my love of so many years,
have almost disappeared,
it will be all there is left to love.

"Things I Didn't Know I Loved: After Nazim Hikmet" by Linda Pastan, from Queen of a Rainy Country. © W.W. Norton, 2006. Reprinted with permission. (


Linda Pasten once said: "I often write poems in my head to distract myself during hard times. ... Years ago, after a car crash, while I lay waiting for the ambulance, I actually finished a poem I had been working on, determined not to die before I had it right."
Today ,it is this poet's birthday.

Boggy Breath

Sometimes mysore practice is complicated,What feels good to the body does not always feel good to the breath.I am feeling finicky today, I want things just right, not feeling very compromising. Today I want it my way,I want the warm humid air for a bendy easy practice and the air to be just right as it coils down my trachea. I guess we all have days,that we want it just right and nothing else will do.Today was hot, muggy,stuffy.....fluid asana,fluid soma, breath boggy...mind boggy. There are days that the body, the mind, the breath each take on their own character, no integration...that is the truth. The air today... moist, in Latin from ;muscidus-slimy,moldy,musty.Moist like watery,wet,dank,dewy,humid ,damp,saturared-melts the body, but makes the breath heavy, the mind dense. breath/mind ;heavy,dense,sluggish,torpid,boggy,quaggy,squashy,sloughy,doughy,mucky,swampy,muddy,miry,marshy, mucky.
I just wanted integration today, some way to live in imperfection,in contrasts, in dilemmas

Truth to be admired

from the Writer's Almanac today

Confessions

by Lowell Jaeger

I once shoplifted
a tin of Vienna sausages.
Crouched in the aisle
as if to study the syllables
of preservatives, tore off the lid,
pulled out a wiener and sucked it down.

I've cheated on exams.
Made love to foldouts.
Walked my paper route in a snowstorm after dark,
so I could steal down a particular alley
where through her gauze curtains, a lady
lounged with her nightgown undone.

I've thrown sticks at stray dogs.
Ignored the cat scratching to come inside.
Even in the rain.
Sat for idle hours in front of the TV, and not two feet away
the philodendrons for lack of a glass of water
gasped and expired.

So many excuses I've concocted to get by.
Called in sick when I was not. Grabbed credit
for happy accidents I had no hand in.
Pointed fingers
to pin the innocent with crimes
unmistakably mine.

I have failed
to learn from grievous error.
Repeated gossip.
Invented gossip. Held hands
in a circle of friends to rejoice
over the misfortune of strangers.
Pushed over tombstones.
Danced the devil's jig.

Once, when I was barely old enough
to walk home on my own, I hid
behind an abandoned garage.
Counted sixteen windows.
Needed only four handfuls of stones
to break every one.

"Confessions" by Lowell Jaeger, from We. © Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2010. Reprinted with permission

There are days that lofty ethereal words are just fluff,and it is better to say it like it is,When one can say things simply,truthfully ,is most admirable,we are but human with interesting flaws

Photography and the capacity for Astonishment

Those of you have been following my blog for the past few months or those that know me in my life may have come to notice that photography is a passion of mine.So from time to time , I wonder and question why is the art of photography so compelling to me.

About a year ago, someone who hardly knew me at the time ,in his direct manner asked me how can I call myself a photographer when during the past few years I have not photographed very much and I had a paucity of work to share and show of my "passionate work". Needless to say, I was somewhat abashed by this truthful exposure. How can we say we love anything or anyone without the power of actions to uphold our words of passion.Although this person did not really know me, nor did he know of the paths I took in my life to get to the present moment, I took his words to heart. I started to remember the exhilarating wonder that I was imbued with in the days of many years before that I would pause to reflect, to see , to allow myself the gift of astonishment. Since that day,almost a year ago, my camera has returned to its familiar home swinging at my hip side with me where I go.My camera and I have rekindled and renewed a friendship. I see the world differently and in many ways with greater clarity than years before.I am more comfortable in taking time to make time for my life ,making the space for the ability to wonder,to be amazed.Small occurrences are more like sublime adventures,I feel I have no time to waste, that there is always something that beckons my attention because of its simple beauty,uniqueness or mere presence.There are times in one's life that we are more receptive,that words permeate to our core with greater ease and profoundly effect us. The bearer of such words may not know the indelible effect it has on the other as it is the other's personal odyssey that is evolving. Such experiences can and do change the tides of one's life in perceptible measures. Do we give thanks when we have such experiences happen to us ,in us,or is this the natural ebb and flow that occurs sometimes at random between human beings, just because it is that way at some times in one's life.

Yesterday , again I had such an experience,thus it reminded me of the one I just spoke of. A young photo-ethnologist of great burgeoning talent was teaching me of some technical matters in photography. He asked me very respectfully and with attention ,"so , why do you photograph?"His tone was inquisitive ,and reflective as if he was also asking himself that same question. I paused to think of an answer that would describe my feelings and something about the journey to this present moment and question. The day before I had been pondering the same matter. I was walking near dusk in a small nature reserve to collect my thoughts after a day at work.It was unusually warm for May, the air moist,thick, the kind of air that you can touch, hold its heavy,yet still delicate velvety moistness in the palm of your hand. Dusk, by nature has its owm misty,elegant smooth softness. I came upon a great grassy field, the sun barely beginning its westerly setting , birds faintly chirping. The fading sunlight's color, a soft heathery subdued violet. Words could do no justice to the simple but comlex astonishing beauty. The quality of time was eternal like.

I remembered that field as I gave my answer to the young photo-ethnolgist. Why?because looking through the lens calls me to attention, brings me to astonishment,to rapture, to tears , to prayer,to all that is part of me, greater than me, to the present moment and beyond, as if time could almost stop . I want to remember these moments as life can get challenging and I can forget easily.For me, as I look through the lens ,the imprints of what is finest,worthy of my abiding astonshment and admiration,perhaps love takes form for me to carry always and try to share at times.

I am grateful to those who take the time to question me, so I may in turn continue to question myself.We can never really predict the profound effect we can have on each other ,much the same way we can not predict the power of what enters our visual fields, our minds, our souls, our memories that linger ....

Poetry in Battery Park

Bill Murray reading poetry with construction workers at Battery Park, N.Y.- near the fallen ghost of the World Trade Center , poems arise from all men and women of the world

Thoughts on a River Walk today

As i walked along the river on this warm day I thought of this song by Susan Werner
MAY I SUGGEST
From: New Non-Fiction (2001)
Copyright © Susan Werner

May I suggest
May I suggest to you
May I suggest this is the best part of your life
May I suggest
This time is blessed for you
This time is blessed and shining almost blinding bright
Just turn your head
And you'll begin to see
The thousand reasons that were just beyond your sight
The reasons why
Why I suggest to you
Why I suggest this is the best part of your life

There is a world
That's been addressed to you
Addressed to you, intended only for your eyes
A secret world
Like a treasure chest to you
Of private scenes and brilliant dreams that mesmerise
A lover's trusting smile
A tiny baby's hands
The million stars that fill the turning sky at night
Oh I suggest
Oh I suggest to you
Oh I suggest this is the best part of your life

There is a hope
That's been expressed in you
The hope of seven generations, maybe more
And this is the faith
That they invest in you
It's that you'll do one better than was done before
Inside you know
Inside you understand
Inside you know what's yours to finally set right
And I suggest
And I suggest to you
And I suggest this is the best part of your life

This is a song
Comes from the west to you
Comes from the west, comes from the slowly setting sun
With a request
With a request of you
To see how very short the endless days will run
And when they're gone
And when the dark descends
Oh we'd give anything for one more hour of light

And I suggest this is the best part of your life

Guru Parampura

"Guru Parampura"-The unbroken succession by transmission directly from teacher to student
Although, I have not had the privilege of meeting Sri K Pattabi Jois during his lifetime on earth, I feel I know him well through of all of those who now teach me and have been taught by him. I am often a late bloomer in many things in my life and with ashtanga yoga as well, I have found it or "it" has found me closer to the middle of my life.There are many paths and practices to self knowledge, but for me right now a practice that is practical and does not take for granted that we are but layers and layers of matter that contains our spirit,our soul.Ashtanga yoga implicitly makes us aware that to find and question something about ourselves,we must dig and dig past all of those dense energetic layers. And if we are once in a while fortunate enough to see things a little more clearly, what then do we do with such wisdom.Wisdom ,truth,goodness,kindness is not designed to be a hoarded treasure.Our self knowledge fades and transfigures if we do not open ourselves up to be part of the unbroken succession of this transmission, the kind of light like a torch to be handed on to those are ready to take part in this great joy and responsibility that we share with each other. In fondest memory to a great man with the kindness and generosity to hand over his torch to us. Hari Om !

Does Yoga have anything to do with living?

Yes, of course,the answer should be simple, obvious , why else would we twist and bend and contort ourselves at 5 or 6 am in the morning, if not to improve upon ourselves, our lives ,or at least question the patterns that we sometimes blindly repeat.So this morning as I was getting into dwi pada ,and my right foot slowly started crawling,creeping ,wiggling over my left behind my head, I had this memory as a wee person learning to ride my bike without training wheels. Sometimes it would be for a second or two before I lost my balance , but gradually and also what seemed kind of suddenly after much practice and falling, one day, I began pedaling, gliding soaring on my own. This morning was reminiscent of the beginning of a simillar sensation arising in me as one foot curled around the other and for a few brief seconds I was balancing on my own. Yoga reminds me of how with practice, perseverance and dedication the challenges soften, but just as I think I have mastered something difficult,alas a new aspect of myself surfaces as I progress and the challeges renew , continue for me so I may question, reconfigure , to move beyond the comfort of what I thought I knew, but never really will....

In the mood for grace today...

The english translation for the song reads : " I am a truthful man ( Yo soy un hombre sincero ), From the land of the palm trees ( de donde crece la palma ) . .. And before I die ( Y antes de morirme quirero ) , I like to share the songs of my soul (echar mis versos del alma) . .. My songs are like soft whisper ( Mi verso es de un verde claro ) , And of a crisom red (y de un carma an encendido ). ..My songs are a wounded doe (Mi verso es un cievo herido), That search of a protected mountain (que busca en el monte amparo ). .. With the poor of the earth / land (Con los pobres de la tierra ), I would like to cast my fate (quiero yo mi suerte echar ). ... The stream of the mountain range (El arroyo de la sierra ), Pleases me more than the sea (me complace mas que el mar) . from Guantunamera

The graceful Pete Singer singing words of grace....

Keeping Earth Alive

The Trail
by Barry Lopez

On a winter afternoon, along a trail in the Sierra Madre in the state of Mensajero, beneath an immense rampart of rising cumulonimbus, a deeply imperfect man bent over to collect a small piece of black glass. He recognized its kind: obsidian, a thick sliver of it. When the molten interior of the Earth is thrown into the frigid sky and it cools quickly it becomes a stone like this. People say of its edges that no knife is sharper, and of its color that it is transparent but bottomless, like the sea’s, so it cannot be rendered on paper or canvas.

The man turned the spalled flake over in the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other. He tested the edge with his thumb and held it up to the sun. He knew of no volcanoes in these mountains, but the trail was many centuries old, and people had carried red coral, abalone shells, and turquoise up and down it for generations. Someone dropped this, he thought, in the time when his grandfather was alive, or in the year of his own birth, or a pilgrim might have dropped it, only days ago.

It glittered in his palm, like sunlight in ice, and he wondered, as the heaving clouds encroached on the sun and the shard of glass darkened, what his obligations were. Should he give it back to the trail or pocket it for the single daughter he was traveling to see? In another age he would not have hesitated to take it to the girl. Now he felt he must put it back, even if later someone else might take it. He believed he had come upon a time in his life when everything, even the things of God, needed protection. When he met his daughter, he would tell her he had found a black tear in the dust of the narrow path and understood he must leave it be. And she would ask whose tear it was, and he would have to use his imagination in the way his people had once done.

fromhttp://www.350.org/350-writers

Poem from project,350.org, "in strong hope"

Optimism
by Jane Hirshfield

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs—all this resinous, unretractable earth.

for Project 350, in strong hope

Memory

I have been thinking lately about the nature of memory, that is my memories and how they form and transform over time. Usually a memory is vivid ,immediately after the actual event happened in real time. Then with time, the image that has formed changes,like an old photogragh, printed the old way,where the tones oxidize over time with the the vapors permeating the air it lives in. So too, our memories ,their hues and tones,recolored and reconfigured by new experiences layering on top of the original memory. I am finding that there are few memories that retain the tone,vibrance and deep dimensions of the original experience. The type of memories for me that retain that primal ,visceral quality that they began with are the ones attached to fierce emotions associated with the people in my life that I have the deepest and most complex relationships with. It is as if those memories are stored in a treasure chest where time can not penetrate them.They remain as they were when they formed.Perhaps that is how we come to be these beings that are voyagers in the past,present and future and we never really can catch ourselves in time .

In honor of all mothers and children of mothers on this Mother's Day

I need a sign to let me know you're here
All of these lines are being crossed over the atmosphere
I need to know that things are gonna look up
Cause I feel us drowning in a sea spilled from a cup
When there is no place safe and no safe place to put my head
When you can feel the world shake from the words that I said

And I'm calling all angels
And I'm calling all you angels

And I won't give up if you don't give up
I won't give up if you don't give up
I won't give up if you don't give up
I won't give up if you don't give up

I need a sign to let me know you're here
Cause my tv set just keeps it all from being clear
I want a reason for the way things have to be
I need a hand to help build up some kind of hope inside of me

And I'm calling all angels
And I'm calling all you angels

When children have to play inside so they don't disappear
While private eyes solve marriage lies cause we dont talk for years
And football teams are kissing queens and losing sight of having dreams
In a world where all we want is only what we want untill it's ours

And I'm calling all angels
And I'm calling all you angels
And I'm calling all angels
(I won't give up if you don't give up)
And I'm calling all you angels
(I won't give up if you don't give up)
Calling all you angels
(I won't give up if you don't give up)
Calling all you angels
(I won't give up if you don't give up)
Calling all you ange

Daffodils

BY ALICIA OSTRIKER

—for David Lehman

Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
—William Wordsworth

Going to hell so many times tears it
Which explains poetry.
—Jack Spicer

The day the war against Iraq begins

I’m photographing the yellow daffodils

With their outstretched arms and ruffled cups

Blowing in the wind of Jesus Green

Edging the lush grassy moving river

Along with the swans and ducks

Under a soft March Cambridge sky

Embellishing the earth like a hand

Starting to illustrate a children’s book

Where people in light clothes come out

To play, to frisk and run about

With their lovers, friends, animals, and children

As down every stony back road of history

They’ve always done in the peaceful springs

—Which in a sense is also hell because

The daffodils do look as if they dance

And make some of us in the park want to dance

And breathe deeply and I know that

Being able to eat and incorporate beauty like this

I am privileged and by that token can

Taste pain, roll it on my tongue, it’s good

The cruel wars are good the stupidity is good,

The primates hiding in their caves are very good,

They do their best, which explains poetry.

What explains poetry is that life is hard

But better than the alternatives,

The no and the nothing. Look at this light

And color, a splash of brilliant yellow

Punctuating an emerald text, white swans

And mottled brown ducks floating quietly along

Whole and alive, like an untorn language

That lacks nothing, that excludes

Nothing. Period. Don’t you think

It is our business to defend it

Even the day our masters start a war?

To defend the day we see the daffodils?

"Daffodils" from No Heaven, by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, © 2005. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Alicia Ostriker,the poet says it poignantly, "Life is hard,but better than the alternatives". Spring is upon us now with its

brilliant fields of daffodils. Because life can get hard,let us indulge our senses with "slashes of brilliant yellow"....

Mauve Iris of Spring

In your neat garden iris grows
Bright yellow, mauve - in stately rows.
This one you’ve picked’s a lovely thing,
I know it brightens up our spring.
But in the forest, springtime’s child,
A purple iris growing wild,
Can melt my heart as spring melts snow,
It’s spoilt me for the sort you grow!"
- Jude, Wild Iris
the word "iris" in greek means "eye of heaven".The goddess Iris would carry messages from the gods to humans gliding on a rainbow.Iris is the personification of the rainbow and a swift footed messenger.In Homer's Iliad ,Iris is noted to"run on rainy wind"She carries a message from Zeus to the gods as to not encourage the Trojans in war.Iris is also the goddess who leads the souls of women to the Elysian fields, hence in Greece iris blossoms are placed at the grave site of women to evoke the goddess, Iris so she may be a guide on this journey.
Dark blue,purple irises denote royalty, yellow iris;passion.

Knights in Hazmatic Armour

A crude car bomb was found in a smoking suv on Saturday afternoon in Time Square.Two street vendors, ex Vietnam vets alerted NYPD to avert an impending tragedy in the bustling Saturday night crowd of leisuring human beings.Members of the bomb squad clad in hazmat garb quickly and efficiently descended in rescue mode.

When I first saw the NY times post,the vision seemed surreal,remote as if I was watching a futuristic scifi movie unfold, however this was captured in real life and real time ,this time ,again. Perhaps the immediacy of today's lightening fast media has desensitized me .Later ,on a long drive to work, I could not stop seeing the image of the "hazmatic Knights" in their protective armour in my mind's eye.The image of the impending doom and disaster was real to me,then, as I imagined the worst of the worst that was thwarted. I pondered upon the fragility of my freedom that I regularly take for granted.I thought of the countless Knights of the world who silently, humbly, bravely , protect my daily freedoms as I practice and live my life. There would be no practice of yoga, no space to appreciate the gifts of life, if not for those ,who never ask for recognition or praise as they put themselves in harms way, so that our lives continue. So on this bountiful May day where I am given these abundant gifts of freedom, I give at least, gratitude and honor to all of you who so quietly and selflessly give this gift of freedom to me...To all "Hazmatic Knights", I give thanks to thee

In honor of all poets who love to swim

It's been exactly 200 years since Lord Byron swam across the Hellespont, on May 3rd, 1810. The Hellespont, now called the Dardanelles, is a strait connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara, an inland sea in Turkey — another strait, the Bosporus, continues out of the Sea of Marmara and into the Black Sea. Together the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosporus form a waterway that separates Europe from Asia.

So by swimming across the Hellespont, Lord Byron became the first known person to swim from Europe to Asia. According to Greek mythology, the lovers Hero and Leander lived on opposite sides of the strait — Leander on the Asian side, and Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, on the European side. Every night, Leander would swim across the strait to see his lover, who hung up a lantern to guide him. Byron was inspired by this story. He loved to swim. And he was 22 years old, on the Grand Tour that many young men undertook.

In its narrowest spot, the Hellespont is only about a kilometer across, or .62 miles. But because of the strong current, it isn't possible to swim straight across, and the swim is about four and a half kilometers, or 2.8 miles. Byron did the breast stroke the whole way, and it took him an hour and 10 minutes. But even though it wasn't very far, it was the first famous open-water swim, and the first swim from Europe to Asia, and Byron's feat was glorified. He certainly contributed to his own glorification — for one thing, he told his servant than when people asked, he should say the distance was three and a half mile, from the Writer's Almanac

We, who love to write,read and listen to poems, also love to listen to the fluctuations of the musings of our soul as we glide through the rippling waves of the water and in the beating of our heart. Such are the delights of all swimming poets....