To be that porous..

The Supple Deer by Jane Hirschfield

The quiet opening
between fence strands
perhaps eighteen inches.

Antlers to hind hooves,
four feet off the ground,
the deer poured through.

No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.

I don't know how a stag turns
into a stream, an arc of water.
I have never felt such accurate envy.

Not of the deer:

To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.

What dreams are made of....

Excerpt from “The Tempest” Act 4, Scene 1

by William Shakespeare

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Excerpt from "The Tempest" Act 4, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare. Public domain
One of my favorite Shakespearean quotes

The imagined...

So true, what often happens ,between men and women...

Heroic acts and cup of chai latte....

Today on my way to work,I took a little detour.Whenever ,I choose to do detour,the rhythm of my daily routine shifts a little.I stopped for a chai latte at a small little vegetarian cafe that I like very much,but often don't have time to get there.For reasons,unclear to me,I felt I had lots of time ,which is unusual for me in a fast paced work day.I had come from a nice and deep felt yoga practice this morning.The cafe is known for its chai latte and also as a place to learn meditation.The young man at the counter knows me and greeted me affably.As I was waiting for my chai latte,a big fire truck parked in front of the cafe, in the middle of the street,an ambulance and a handful of paramedics.There was burly looking middle aged man crouched on the stairs at the entrance of the cafe with ,all intensely gathering around him.Inside,the cafe was quiet and serene,outside on the stoop was intensely quiet for what seemed to be an emergency.I asked the young man who was making my chai,what had happened.He said,the man on the stoop was doing some carpentry work upstairs and he sawed off one of his fingers.The scene of the paramedics,ambulance, blood on the sidewalk was noticeable,, but the quiet of the moment was more like a sacred moment than a life threatening emergency.The man's hand was carefully wrapped in a bandage,he then walked calmly into the ambulance.There was no hysteria, no crying,no state of shock.Once the man was in the ambulance,the paramedics huddled into the middle of the street and hugged and high fived with beaming smiles.It was a site,I shall not forget.
I left the cafe with my latte, in a hugely different state of awareness than when I walked in.I stopped in a plant store across the street and eyed a lovely cactus with elephant ear like leaves.I wanted something tangible to look at to remember what I saw.A man walked in to the plant store,I asked him ,did you see what just happened.He said yes,that man is by best friend of 35 years,we meditate together,he was doing work for me and screamed as his finger flew through the air.In a frenzy,I found it,put it on ice,and tied a an apron string tightly around his finger.He said, that is my friend,I will go meet him in the emergency room.....

New Petals

from "Poem a Day" ,today

The Level Path

Descend here along a shower of
             shallow steps past the potting shed with
                           its half-rotted ironbound door

to reach the level path. It winds
             northward, high hat, girdling
                           the waist of a limestone cliff

beyond earshot of the clamorous village below. The
             squeezed access bears us vaguely along
                           shifting digressions of the compass, past

eye-level seductions of violet, periwinkle, primrose, and petals
             like lisping yellow butterflies. Naked limbs
                           of beech, haggard liftings of pine,

a hairy upthrust of cedar beside a
             curving stone bench, all hint at eruptions
                           into Eros. Yet another seat displays

a cushion of undisturbed luxuriant moss around its clefts and
             edges. Thick harsh leaves
                           of holly, ivy, even of palmetto

thrust up, pathside, between tender new petals,
             while other friendly shrubs reach down
                           from overhead to fondle our faces.

There is no escape from the dreadful beauty of
             this narrow path. It leads nowhere
                           except to itself and
                           the black water below.

All that matters to me now

Staff Sgt. Metz by Dorianne Laux Metz is alive for now, standing in line at the airport Starbucks in his camo gear and buzz cut, his beautiful new camel-colored suede boots. His hands are thick-veined. The good blood still flows through, given an extra surge when he slurps his latte, a fleck of foam caught on his bottom lip. I can see into the canal in his right ear, a narrow darkness spiraling deep inside his head toward the place of dreaming and fractions, ponds of quiet thought. In the sixties my brother left for Vietnam, a war no one understood, and I hated him for it. When my boyfriend was drafted I made a vow to write a letter every day, and then broke it. I was a girl torn between love and the idea of love. I burned their letters in the metal trash bin behind the broken fence. It was the summer of love and I wore nothing under my cotton vest, my Mexican skirt. I see Metz later, outside baggage claim, hunched over a cigarette, mumbling into his cell phone. He's more real to me now than my brother was to me then, his big eyes darting from car to car as they pass. I watch him breathe into his hands. I don't believe in anything anymore: god, country, money or love. All that matters to me now is his life, the body so perfectly made, mysterious in its workings, its oiled and moving parts, the whole of him standing up and raising one arm to hail a bus, his legs pulling him forward, all the muscle and sinew and living gristle, the countless bones of his foot trapped in his boot, stepping off the red curb. "Staff Sgt. Metz" by Dorianne Laux, from The Book of Men: Poems. © W.W. Norton, 2011. Reprinted with permission This today from the Writer's Almanac.Often,daily ,my feelings resonate with the poet's; I don't believe in anything anymore: god, country, money or love. All that matters to me now is his life, the body so perfectly made, mysterious in its workings.... When one becomes a parent there is a serious psychological shift within,at least it is this way for me, that all convictions,beliefs,dogmas become somewhat useless,minuscule in comparison to the powerful desire for the well being of one's child,even as an adult child.

April in the Garden of Eden

Today was a beautiful spring day,the air crisp ,fresh, the true transition to touchable warmness, hazy blue skies,buds barely bursting,colors of the earth beginning to sing their songs, a day that
one has hints of the garden from whence we came. I heard this today on Krista Tippett's program,"On Being " on npr. It resonated with the glory of this day;
"Gardening in Paradise" by Vigen Guroian

There is an ancient Armenian tale about what happened to Adam and Eve when they were driven from the Garden of Eden:

After Adam and Eve were beguiled by the serpent and ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree, God commanded his angels to remove them from the Garden, and to guard the paths to it with a fiery sword. And so Adam and his wife were banished from the Garden and its light and abundant life and entered a place of darkness and gloom. They remained there in misery for six days, without anything to eat and no shelter. They wept inconsolably over what they had lost and where they were sent.

But on the seventh day, God took pity on the couple. He sent an angel who removed them from the dark place and led them into this bright world. The messenger showed them trees from which they could eat and satisfy their hunger. And when Adam and Eve saw the light and felt the warmth of this world, they rejoiced with exceeding gladness, saying, "Even though this place cannot compare with the home we have lost and its light is not nearly as bright or its fruit half as sweet, nevertheless, we are no longer in the darkness and can go on living." So they were cheerful.
—adapted from The Armenian Apocryphal Adam Literatur

"A Lark Ascending" for Earth Day

A patch of springtime daffodils...

from Dorothy Wordsworth's (sister of poet William Wordsworth)journal. It is believed that William wrote his famous poem,"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" with inspiration he had with his sister on a walk on this spring day in 1802 near Ullswater Lake in England when they came upon a patch of daffodils.

Dorothy wrote in her journal: "It was a threatening misty morning — but mild. [...] The hawthorns are black and green, the birches here and there greenish but there is yet more of purple to be seen on the Twigs. We got over into a field to avoid some cows — people working, a few primroses by the roadside, woodsorrel flower, the anemone, scentless violets, strawberries, and that starry yellow flower which Mrs C. calls pile wort. When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot and a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity and unity and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again."

Why I practice Ashtanga Yoga...continued....revised..again ....for life

Today is grey ,rainy , cold....It is friday a primary series day,it had a good start,we practiced a led primary led by Sharath Jois,the grandson of Patabi Jois,rip, via webcam as Sharath taught in NYC today.It felt like a supportive community that we all are exploring a daily practice that somehow not only adds insight to our physical being ,but to our souls as well. Today's greyness gets me down, makes both my inner and outer layers feel sore.As I practiced today via the rhythm called out by Sharath's counting in the primary series, I was aware of a different kind of focus that was generated from outside of he calling out the breaths in the series.This ultimately created a rhythm that I could ride ,so to speak, so I was freer to move deeper inside of myself.Today , the room felt a little chilled,my body a little stiffer,I was aware as my muscles expanded and contracted places that energy got stuck, that scar tissue had hardened,albeit healed.I was aware of old injuries that healed imperfectly and new energetic pathway had been forged inside of me.I recently had a knee injury that made my practice feel tenuous. ,I was aware that it was healing, less tenuous, less perfect ,but moving ,breathing ,changing, moving forward.On the mat, I am acutely aware via the sensations in my body of the tangible infinitesimal glacial time like quality of change.During the acute part of an injury when I can not see past the immediate pain, I am blinded.Each time I arrive on my mat and the physical movement of my body is realized,I embody change, movement, the antedote to stagnation.We are enslaved in some ways to our physical beings,yet, we learn through our sensations.Yoga happens when our physical sensations lead us to discoveries that we are not conscious of in our physical beings.Yoga gives me hope that we are indeed spiritual beings ,in essence,we all have capacity for potential of quiet yet intense change if we give ourselves the chance to quietly see within ourselves and in others who, they too, intheir own path, in their own time deserve that inherent right as well.



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"the goal of living is to grow"

in time of daffodils
by E. E. Cummings
in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how
in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)
in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes
in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

"what beauty is for"

The Swan by Mary Oliver
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

T"is just the hour...

again for poetry month this aril 2011, what we may ponder as we the night descends upon us
"I’ll Come When Thou Art Saddest"
by Emily Brontë (1818-1848)
I'll come when thou art saddest
Laid alone in the darkened room
When the mad day's mirth has vanished
And the smile of joy is banished
From evening's chilly gloom

I'll come when the heart's [real] feeling
Has entire unbiased sway
And my influence o'er thee stealing
Grief deepening joy congealing
Shall bear thy soul away

Listen 'tis just the hour
The awful time for thee
Dost thou not feel upon thy soul
A flood of strange sensations roll
Forerunners of a sterner power
Heralds of me

Spring Buds

Colors of Spring,by me

The earth awakens in a cloak of vibrant colors;

aurulent-gold colored

albicant-whitish,becoming white

citreous-lemom colored,lemony

citrine-dark greenish yellow

eau-di-nil-pale green color

flavescent-yellowish, turning yellow

goldenrod-dark golden yellow

hyacinthine-of blue-purple

ianthine-of violet color

jessamy-yellow like a jasmine

luteolus-yellowish

luteous-golden yellow

lutescent-yellowish

meline-canary yellow

porraceous-leek geen

tilleul-yellowish green

violaceous-violet colored

virescent-becoming green

virid-green

vitellary-bright yellow

willowish-of the color of willow leaves

chloranthus-green flowered

estriatus-beautiful green color

galbinus-yellowish green

laetesvirens-bright vivid green

springtime.......

Gnostics on Trial
by Linda Gregg

Let us make the test. Say God wants you
to be unhappy. That there is no good.
That there are horrors in store for us
if we do manage to move toward Him.
Say you keep Art in its place, not too high.
And that everything, even eternity, is measurable.
Look at the photographs of the dead,
both natural (one by one) and unnatural
in masses. All tangled. You know about that.
And can put Beauty in its place. Not too high,
and passing. Make love our search for unhappiness,
which is His plan to help us.
Disregard that afternoon breeze from the Aegean
on a body almost asleep in the shuttered room.
Ignore melons, and talking with friends.
Try to keep from rejoicing. Try
to keep from happiness. Just try.
"Gnostics on Trial" by Linda Gregg, from Too Bright To See and Alma. © Graywolf Press, 2001.
This again from "the Writer's Almanac"
The poet reminds me of what I think about much of time these days, how foolish and wasteful of me to disregard , ignore the smallest, most nuanced pleasures,beauty goodness that is always in my reach if I choose but to see and reach out to what may be in front if me, with me, right now......


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Yoga and the continued shedding of my arrogant shell

I have not posted something about me and my practice of yoga for a little while.This morning I was looking through my archives of this blog of posts around this time last year.I will repost one of the blogs later as it is symbolic to me of the birth of spring.It seems that spring came a tad earlier and warmer last April and the daffodils and tulips were more in full bloom by now last year.It seems that ,I too was in a more verdant blooming state.This year feels more subdued,that spring is more tentatively becoming, that I am more tentative,reflective and subdued.
A few weeks ago as I was practicing dwi pada shirshasana , I was practicing less thoughtfully and less attentively.As I lifted my left knee behind my shoulder, I heard a cracking,tearing sound in my left knee.I had not been warming up ,that weaker left side as I assumed greater mastery than really existed.I was not listening or paying attention as I usually do.Luckily,it is a minor I jury that is healing, but I have backed off now from going further than dwi pada for the past month. Initially , I was angry as I felt I had ,"worked so hard to get where I was, that I deserved to continue because of so much effort and dedication".I had practiced with regrets and loss for a few weeks that were not nourishing to my soul and only fueled hostility.
For the past few weeks,I am practicing with a new group of people, a new teacher as the place I had practiced no longer has mysore practice everyday. That too was a great loss of the comfort of a teacher, friends and a shala that sustained me for many years.
For the past two weeks,my new teacher has instructed me to back off, in effect, "took away" from me what I considered were my "hard earned poses".I was initially hurt and humiliated , but obliged to the wisdom of my teacher.My practice seems deeper now, more wholesome, less rushed.The reflection and quiet is returning.Somehow, less is truly more and surrender to what abides in me seems as it should be, just okay, nothing glorious, nothing sublime,just nice old okay.
I reflect now on the "things " that I hold onto, that I claim are mine because of" my effort, my dedication,my hard work, my desires".I am humbled by the absurdity of the notion of holding onto the permanence of anything other than the hope to take note and fully attend to when things are just okay and to celebrate when life is okay......



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"Singing to the Earth"

So my body went on growing, by night,
went on pleading & singing to the earth
I was born to be woven back into Love,
let me see if I can’t sink my roots
deeper into you, your minerals & water,
your leaf rot & gold, your telling & un-
telling of the oldest tales inscribed
on wind-carved rocks, silt & grass,
your songs & prayers, your oaths & myths,
your nights & days in one unending lament,
your luminous swarm of wet kisses
& stings, your spleen & mind,
yur outrageous forgetting & remembrance,
your ghosts & rebirths, your thunderstones
& mushrooms, & your kind loss of memory.


Yusef Komunyakaa, “Nighttime Begins with a Line by Pablo Neruda”

Honor thy Sabbath

Wellfleet Shabbat ,by Marge Piercy

The hawk eye of the sun slowly shuts.
The breast of the bay is softly feathered
dove grey. The sky is barred like the sand
when the tide trickles out.

The great doors of Shabbat are swinging
open over the ocean, loosing the moon
floating up slow distorted vast, a copper
balloon just sailing free.

The wind slides over the waves, patting
them with its giant hand, and the sea
stretches its muscles in the deep,
purrs and rolls over.

The sweet beeswax candles flicker
and sigh, standing between the phlox
and the roast chicken. The wine shines
its red lantern of joy.

Here on this piney sandspit, the Shekinah
comes on the short strong wings of the seaside
sparrow raising her song and bringing
down the fresh clean night.

The Search for Lost Lives : Sometimes we just need to be found...

The Search for Lost Lives : Poetry Everywhere : Video

The Search for Lost Lives
BY JAMES TATE
I was chasing this blue butterfly down
the road when a car came by and clipped me.
It was nothing serious, but it angered me and
I turned around and cursed the driver who didn't
even slow down to see if I was hurt. Then I
returned my attention to the butterfly which
was nowhere to be seen. One of the Doubleday
girls came running up the street with her toy
poodle toward me. I stopped her and asked,
"Have you seen a blue butterfly around here?"
"It's down near that birch tree near Grandpa's,"
she said. "Thanks," I said, and walked briskly
toward the tree. It was fluttering from flower
to flower in Mr. Doubleday's extensive garden,
a celestial blueness to soothe the weary heart.
I didn't know what I was doing there. I certain-
ly didn't want to capture it. It was like
something I had known in another life, even if
it was only in a dream, I wanted to confirm it.
I was a blind beggar on the streets of Cordoba
when I first saw it, and now, again it was here.

Our stories....would we beg for it again?

The Boxers

by Cathy Smith Bowers

When my father, after twenty years, came home
to die, circling, circling, like an animal
we believed extinct, it was my crazy aunt
who took him in, who told later
how the taxi had dumped him
bleached and whimpering on her porch.
And she who had not lived with him
thought his sons and daughters cruel
not to come when he began to call our names.

He died, and soon after, a package in brown wrapping
arrived at my address. My sister, who did not
attend the funeral, kept urging me to open it
and I kept saying I would, soon. Every day
when I came home from work, there it was
sitting at my back door, the remnants
of my father's life—years in the mill
spinning and doffing, then drinking into morning
as he railed at the walls, the cotton
still clinging to his fists. Weeks had passed

when finally my sister and I, after two stiff bourbons,
began to rip the paper, slowly in strips
like archaeologists unclothing a mummy.
And all that was there were a few plaid flannels,
the jacket to a leisure suit, and a pair of boxers,

white and baggy, Rorschached in urine—a smaller size,
my sister said, than the way she remembered him.
Then she offered to drop the things at the Salvation Army
store she passed on her way home. In July

we went shopping for swim suits and I could
see her in the curtained stall across from mine.
She was pulling her slip over her head when I saw
she was wearing them, her thighs like the pale stems
of mushrooms emerging from the boxers' billowy
legs, whiter, softer now, washed clean. I still

can't say why my sister, that day in the Salvation
Army store, glanced up, as I've imagined,
to see if anyone was watching
before she slipped those boxers from the soiled heap
of our father's clothes. Nor why
I took so long to open that package, both wanting
and fearing whatever lay inside. Like a child
huddled by the campfire who cries out in terror
at the story someone just told
and, still weeping, begs for it again.

"The Boxers" by Cathy Smith Bowers, from The Love that Ended Yesterday in Texas. © Texas Tech University Press, 1992

This again from today's Writer's Almanac

Life is  strange. I recently was telling someone that I had just met,who does not know
me,really,nor do I know them something about my life. I was struck as I told a brief synopsis of a small part of the history of my life and that of my ancestors, by the fact that I could account some tangible content by memory as it was told to me or as I remember having witnessed parts of the story. But the weaving of the story with the interconnections of adjective,adverbs, the intonation of my voice was really my personal narrative, really reflecting my vision of how things were and how they may be. I realized that those ineffable nuanced tones made this story uniquely mine and although the facts may be the same for a few of us in my family that lived or heard the same experiences,we each have a unique story that is based on what have personally imbued into our lives,that the story has been colored by all that I have lived.
This poem reminds me of this sentiment of somehow knowing something about the act of creating the stories that make up my life."Like a child
huddled by the campfire who cries out in terror
at the story someone just told
and, still weeping, begs for it again."

Such stories make up the fabric of who we are,would we trade the identities that we so arduously chiseled from bare untested stone to become the human form of who we are. When all is said and done, would we give up even the painful stories that have created us of any reason ,would we not, "beg for it again", because that "it" in a large part has formed us into the us that we are.....

Love or Fear?what motivates you?