It's funny how sometimes we can strain so hard to discern a subtle truth while remaining oblivious to another, more apparent and probably more important truth. Let me tell you about a dream I had.
It was dark. I couldn't see; or maybe I just couldn't open my eyes. All I could hear was a warbley, constant chaos and every breath felt like being kicked in the chest from the inside. Surrounded and battered, I couldn't even move but to thrash about.
Then my foot touched something solid. I pushed into it. Coughing, wheezing, gasping- even puking a little- I stood bent over with my hands on my knees in about a foot and a half of water. In all directions to the horizon, I saw men and women making the seas gurgle, drowning in a foot and a half of water, just as I had.
Then I knew, just before I awoke: This is how we really live.
On my way to one of my two jobs the other day, I happened to see a car with one of those annoying, arrogant "Proud parent of an Honor Student at Dick Rickles Elementary" bumper stickers. Without too much bitching, I got the idea that there should be a secret roll at a sushi bar called the "Honor Roll". Don't ask how I came to this determination- eking by on three hours of sleep, every twelve hours or so, my powers of discrimination keep unusual rules.
Anyway, the Honor Roll would have to be something you could only learn about from someone else who's ordered the Honor Roll before. And when you order it, the waitress scurries away to the kitchen. A few minutes later, the cook comes out and talks to you for twenty-six minutes, speaking only in obscure puns, injokes and punchlines. It takes so long, and you want to stop him- but something holds you back. Perhaps your own honor holds you back. Or perhaps he was just On A Roll.
Without a care, we stroll down the circuit walkway, and almost immediately, my wife gets distracted.
"Ooo, I want to look at shoes while we're here."
I'm a good husband, right? So I oblige and we look at shoes for a moment. I notice at this point that I'm kind of stiff in my joints from not practicing yoga poses very much this past week, so I stretch as I walk, kick a leg out as I walk, and do some other weird movements that I'm sure embarrassed my lady. And of course, as we're walking away, another pair of shoes catches her eye.
"They're on clearance..." she says, but we both know it's because they're red.
We finally make our way to the dresses in the women's section. I don't know if you've thought about this before, but at Target, and a lot of department stores actually, the nook between the women's clothing section and the men's clothing section is where they shove the fitting rooms. She's looking at some dresses with unusual, striking stripe patterns. They remind me of propaganda posters, or optical illusions. You can tell by my prose just how bored I am at this point. My remedy: pull out a playing card I usually keep in my back pocket and start practicing some sleight of hand magic tricks.
She, after about ten minutes of indecision, decides that she's going to try them on. As we make our way to the dressing room. By this time, my ability to entertain myself is starting to wane, as we inch closer and closer to the dressing rooms, stopping every five feet or so to look at something else and illicit my opinion on this or that blouse. I start to entertain myself with the conversations of the people around me- the shoppers, even the workers. In fact, the workers have these walkie talkies that I especially like to listen in on. I'm still playing with my card and occasionally stretching this or that muscle as we move in on the dressing room.
And then, we stalled. Clearance racks right next to the rooms. Lucky for me, though, I saw myself in the surveillance monitor by the dressing rooms and started doing tricks in front of it. Something I always like to do when I'm bored and they're around. I like the thought that someone is actually getting paid to sit in a CCTV room and see someone do magic.
I hold the card in my right hand, take it away with my left and put it in my pocket, and suddenly, it's back in my right hand. I turn to the side, displaying the card with my right hand. Then I grab it with my left hand in a sweeping motion, and pause. I open my left hand to show both hands empty, front and back, and then pull the card out of an invisible deck in my left hand. It's just fun to do.
I start to head back to my lovely wife so I can light a proverbial fire under her ass. As soon as I'm around the corner of the clearance rack, still listening to the walkies, I hear something like "[static] between men's and women's?"
"Yes, we have straw hats," says the dressing room attendant.
The man on the walkie talkie repeats himself, "They're between men's and women's clothing?"
"Yeah, we sell straw hats here."
It struck me at first, but I brushed it off. It's probably like that Lewis Black sketch about the girl he heard saying, "If it weren't for my horse, I never would have made it through that year at college." But now we have another problem- My wife wants to go back and get the same dress in another color to try on as well. So we head back over there and she's looking at the dresses near as well. A security guard walks over to the pole right near the display we're looking at, and "puts" something into a service cabinet there. I didn't see anything in his hands, except a clip board, and he was still holding that. That's when it clicked. Straw Hats. They sell straw hats at Target. They think we're stealing shit. LOL. That's when I decided to put my playing card away.
You would think this is where I wrap the story up, but there's still more. We finally go to the dressing room, my wife totally oblivious of what's going on. It's not something to fault against her- she doesn't know retail like I do. Every company has, ironically, a Thief's Can't. (That's a coded language that thieves and gypsies used to talk about their illicit activities openly.)
As she's trying her dresses on, I'm standing in front of the dressing room counter, waiting. The attendant is listlessly folding clothes and handing out numbers. Every time she looks at me, it's scorn and suspicion. Now- I know that I've done absolutely nothing wrong, and if anything happens at all, nothing will come of it because we didn't do anything. My heart is racing anyway. Some time goes by, and my wife emerges. It seems neither dress suited her. The attendant takes the clothing with a dour look on her face.
So we head towards the front exit. As we're walking, I say, "Did you know, hun?"
"Know what?"
"That they sell Straw Hats here?" I said, less than quietly (but not loudly).
"Really?"
Then, out of nowhere, she sees the dress she wants. Halleluiah! We head toward the check stands, and of course, she wants to check out the jewelry. Now, this was supposed to be a somewhat whimsical trip, we had no pressing plans. But knowing what I know, I just want to get out of the store as quickly as I can. She still has no Idea. As we enter the jewelry department, I notice a display of straw hats, so I turn to my wife and note, "Oh- they actually do sell straw hats here!"
So nothing neat happened while we were looking at jewelry, except a few rude people (undercover LP agents? Nah, that's just paranoid...right?). But then, finally, lord, FINALLY! we're in the checkout line. I notice the security guard standing just ahead at the returns desk. So then she brings up the straw hats.
"Maybe I should get a straw hat," she said, facetiously. I just scrunched my face. "What, you don't like straw hats?"
"No, not really. But it is interesting, I think, that they sell Straw Hats here."
Immediately, a Costumer Service rep from the returns desk walks up to our line with a quick step. She points at the lady just in front of us in line and says they can help her at the Costumer Service desk, then tells us the same. But nothing to the people in front of us, still waiting in line, or the people behind us. Odd, huh? As we approach the returns desk, the guard ducks off into a side room (where they have the CCTVs and hold shoplifters until the cops get there).
Of course, nothing happened, she bought the dress, we walked out and no alarms went off. I waited until we got back to the car, though, to explain to my lovely, understanding wife what had happened, who proceeded to freak out a little bit.
And that's why you don't do magic tricks in retail stores.
No, not really. Politics are dumb. I've actually tricked you into reading more of my Hip Style Hoppings. You could call them works in progress, but I don't rewrite. So there.
Excelsior Milvi
"Boom, boom-
Om Mani Padma Hum.
Zoom, zoom, zoom-
Oh, money makes me cum."
I'm a syllable-
Indivisible and invisible.
Chiseled the Schism and kissed the Cristo,
Abysmal.
A visceral exploitation of the invincible.
Incense the bull and then combat it like I'm Cicero.
With emotional content Caesar's proppin' up his powers
In a sentimental mood that keeps ya' creepin' through the flowers.
The towers of babble will rabble because they're ours,
And stars- did I mention that we're fuckin' made of stars?
I'm a syllable-
Filling with silly and killing cereal.
Here we go: my name is Philly, I'm feeling cheery, yo'.
Swimmin' in zen again, gettin' giddy with Gideons.
Hit a spliff like a stiffy while differating my dividends.
I make sense, 'cause I be snatchin' up them dollars.
I faked Eminem and stuck his shtick into my collar.
I'm not a baller, but a clown- it's astounding when I holler.
I'll be found in a town where everybody thinks I'm taller
Than a Shetland pony, when I'm stoned and taking fiber
In the Kypher Belt, and getting Higher than Messiah
'Cause it's Do or Die- and I've got spit that's gettin' drier
Than theEin, Swei, Drei! So I'm kicking out the Kaiser.
Kine Bo'Shi
for Michelle
I know she needs Agapé,
But sloppy, I peer amid-
One eye, the other hid.
I died as I slid on Eros,
And there goes my kine' bo'shi.
I know she sighs in spirals
As I roll my eyes
Inside I'm the size
Of five tons of bo'shi.
I know she breathes the love of leaves
At a shapely aperture
Occurring three degrees
Above her eyes an' risin'-
My Kine' Bo'Shi.
Because, well, calling me a Hindu would probably be offensive, because I'm not, really. But Indian philosophy, what I know of it, is rather interesting. Of course, by Indian philosophy, I mean things like the Bagavad Gita, the Vedas, and the various myriad of Sutras on Yoga, Kundalini, Tantra, Weird Esoteric Shit Most Hippies Only Talk About To Sound Deep And Pick Up Chicks With... that sort of thing. But one problem with a lot of it is that in our modern culture, especially here in Amurrica, these ideas are too aloof and weird to digest. So I want to make it easy to pass, like those Lunchables™ that we all gobbled up as kids. One of the ways I'm going to do that is by taking modern, accessible ideas and relating them to these almost ancient ideas to, hopefully, provide a clearer context for most people that either aren't familiar with them, or have a hard time understanding these ideas. I'll start simply.
Let's start to get a general feel for the mentality before we Jump into source texts and start splitting hairs about context and meaning. I think the Bagavad Gita is really the essence of Indian Philosophy and their spiritual way of thinking. "Bagavad Gita" [bug-uh-vud ☼ GEE-tuh] literally means the "Song of God" in Sanskrit. This has a few meanings to it: Firstly, it is a conversation between two friends on the battlefield, before the start of a war. When Arjuna begins to falter before the battle starts, Krishna reveals himself as the source of all existence and counsels his friend Arjuna. So, it is the song of God, in that sense. But as the conversation unravels, and Krishna explains more and more to Arjuna, we find that Krishna is really just a vessel for this source. "The true essence of God creates all things, is all things and is also all things that are not," He tells Arjuna, "And so you are God just as I am." So in another sense, the book itself is the Song of God, a melody that reminds the listener that he or she is actually God, having a physical experience.
"Woah, dude. Pass the bong."
Well, that's the really heavy stuff, there. See, Hinduism is usually seen as this crazy religion that thinks there's thousands and thousands of Gods, and in many ways they do believe this, but there's also an aspect that there is only one Everything, and that's what "God" is- and more. God is quite possibly the worst name imaginable for it, though. And terms like "Source" and "Ultimate Reality" leave a grimy, New-Age taste in my mouth after saying them. An Indian saint was once asked what God is, and he replied, "Neti, neti!" (Not that, not that!)
Arjuna is quite taken aback by this, like most people would be, and shoots Krishna a quick, "Nigga' what?" Krishna goes on in length, then, about the nature of God and how to reach Union with it. Basically, he says: "It's already there, there's nothing really to add to make it come out, only stuff you've already added that needs to be taken away."
"Can you say, 'Brain Washing'?"
There's a lot of talk in the Gita about Yoga, and so it helps here to know what Yoga actually is. It's most common to be thinking of Yoga as a form of exercise and stretch routine that purportedly makes people calmer, more serene. Well, that is a yoga- Asana Yoga- but there are at least seven other types. I won't get into them all right now, but it's enough to know that "Yoga" means "Union" and is the ultimate source of our English word "Yoke" (something you put on Oxen to plow a field).
This Yoga has all kinds of connotations and applications regarding it, and to appreciate it, we need to know a bit more about how the concept of reality works in the Gita, and most Indian scriptures. We have the physical realm, created by Nature (Prakriti), which is our bodies, our planet, the Universe and the four forces of nature. Anything involving atoms is here. At a finer level, we have what pagans would call the "Astral Plane" (Akasha), where spiritual energies operate. This would be where the tinyGods (Devas) from mythology reside. The Hindus have their own Mythology, but the idea is that the gods of all cultures are present here, often called by different names in different times and places. At a level even finer than that, you have something you could call the "First Manifestation". This is the first point at which anything could be said to exist. Then, there's something beyond that- something beyond an ability to even imagine. "God" is all of these, combined. It's noteworthy to consider that only at the physical level is Time an applicable concept.
"No Ego- not a drop. No, sir-ee!"
Then, below all these ideas is the world of Illusion (Maya). What is meant by Illusion is our constructs and projections upon the world. What is the thing you are reading this on? Some kind of a computer, right? Well, it's not. What a thing is it will always be, for a thing only is what ittrulyis.
"What the shit does that mean?"
Smash your computer. Is it still a computer? No. It's a heaping pile of capacitors and transistor chips and other bits. But even those bits, once smashed, aren't even what we call them. What they really are, what we should recognize in them, is what is constant, unchanging. Maya is the illusion that this thing is a computer, simply because we use it as such.
All these levels of reality are very intimately connected. They aren't like alternate dimensions that you have to travel to, either by science or magic. In fact, you could look at them as fractal representations of each other. By practicing the Physical Yogas, Uniting yourself with the Universe, literally yoking yourself to the movements of existence, you synchronize these higher levels of existence as well. By performing Mental Yogas (meditations and study, or just intense observation), you synchronize those aspects in the higher levels. And you keep on reorganizing until there's a clear path to "God".
"Fine. Use whatever hippy term suits your agenda."
What about all those Indian Gods? Shiva? Ganesh? Kama? Etcetera? They exist in some sense. My thoughts are that Maya (our artificial conceptual world) and Akasha (our "spiritual" level of existence), while separate, interpret this Source as various aspects that are easier to contemplate, to manage, and then project them into a sort of collective-conscious space where they really do exist. This isn't much of a problem in Indian thought, since even the most unenlightened person is ultimately a manifestation of God. Of course, there are some Hindus that believe in the literal gods, but there are others, still, that only appear to believe in them. It's perfectly acceptable, according to the Gita, to accept that a limited mind can't think of the unlimited and use a representation that is itself limited. How else would you even begin to contemplate God without it? So there's some reason for the confusion of someone unfamiliar with Indian thought looking in from the outside.
"Getchyer spiritual loopholes! 3 for five, 10 a dozen!"
There's some severely technical stuff regarding further examination, especially when we start talking about the idea of the Energetic Body- through which the energy centers and pathways used in things like Acupuncture are laid out. In future installments, I intend on covering a wide array of these topics. You might think a lot of it is bullshit. You might be a True Believer™.
I can say that these systems of thought make sense to me, and that the philosophical practices I've adopted from them seem to work well. Again, I'm more of a Hindon't than a Hindu. I make no claims to being some ultra-enlightened guru whose every word you should hinge on. But if you think this stuff is bullshit, then test it. I'll include "Meat and Potato" style experiments/exercises in upcoming posts of the same name that anyone can try. But you have to earnestly leave your preconceptions at the door or you botch the experiment and misinterpret the results.
Perhaps you like to get drunk with your friends on the weekends, maybe smoke a little herb or snort crack, getting loud and raucous, forcing the neighbors to call the police. Hey- I don't know you, so maybe. Or maybe you like to sit around and play silly games for awkward adults, like Trivial Pursuit, or Crack the Case. Well, my friends and I found a way to combine both, for the low-low price of (almost) FREE! Since some of us are Discordian, and it's based off Apples to Apples, we called it Apples to Eris.
Supplies needed:
1000 Blank White Cards (Index, or whatever)
Pens (Of any color, but all the same color)
At least three people- more is better, though I'd cap it at ten people
Whatever "recreational" supplies you require, to taste
Optional:
Rubber Apple Stamp
The Game (You Lost It):
The game consists of an Apple Thrower and at least two Receivers. The Thrower plays a card from the Apple pile (explained in a moment), while the Receivers play answer cards.
Starting a Deck:
The deck is dynamic and grows/changes with each time you play the game. For the first game, Take about 20 - 30 of your cards, and stamp the backs with your rubber stamp. These will be your apple cards, set them aside. Deal each player 10 blank cards. If your cards are lined, obviously use the blank side as the back.
Phase 1:
Determine who will be the first Apple Thrower and you can start. The first Apple Thrower gives a question. It's not necessarily a Question, just a prompt, such as:
The Reason I love America
or
______ Is why I will never find Happiness
or
Sadly Ironic:
The Thrower will write this on the front of the card and play it. It's important to write in capital block letters, for the sake of uniformity.
Phase 2:
Each Receiver then comes up with the best response they can and plays their card Face Down. Make sure to also write responses in block letters- for uniformity, and also so it's more difficult to tell who wrote what card. Last person to play a card mixes the cards. Use the above examples for reference while reading these answer examples:
"The Male Orgasm"
"Chum"
"African Sleeping Disease"
"Your Smug Sense of Satisfaction"
Option 1:
We like, sometimes, to add flavor text to the bottom of our cards, for example:
Best of the best; or, Worst of the worst.
"Have you met my friend, Jesus?"
The italic line is the flavor. It's definitely not a have-to, but sometimes it helps give the players an idea of what the prompt means. Sometimes it's just fun. Sometimes, you have tons of waiting while other people write their cards, and you just have to do something. If you can't think of something for the flavor text, though, don't do it.Simple.
Phase the 3rd:
The Thrower picks the cards up, mixing them once more before looking at them, and reads them aloud. For maximum effect, it's usually best to read the prompt completely before each answer:
Best of the best; or, Worst of the worst: The Male Orgasm
The Reason I love America: Chum
African Sleeping Disease is why I will never find Happiness
Sadly Ironic: Your Smug Sense of Satisfaction
Phase 4:
Thrower selects a winning card (funniest, typically) and gives the Apple card to the winner. The apple cards serve as points, if you care to keep track.
Phase 5:
Each round has a new Thrower, and there are many ways you can determine this: Winner-Up is what we use most often- winner plays the next Apple card. You could just go clockwise or counter-clockwise. Or you could be especially ruthless and have the thrower pick a best AND worst card, making the loser play the Apple for the next round. It's up to you.
At the end of each round, Players draw cards back to a hand of 10.
Ending the Game:
The game ends as soon as people stop caring about the game, or get frustrated, or develop a nudging feeling that something more important has to be done, like picking children up from school, or bathing.
So you've played a few times and now what?Initially, you'll keep all your cards, just to make replay easier, but you'll want to focus on generating new cards. This is a living game, after all, and needs fresh blood, as well as to shed old, used blood. Well, there are some things you can do with your deck once you've generated some cards, and you can take the deck in any direction you want. The truly awesome thing about this game is that it's perfectly suited for you and your friends, and you can guide it's development however you want. Here's a few ways we've shaped our deck:
The Cull: After each game, it's customary to evaluate all the cards made in that session of the game, choose the very best, and get rid of the rest. You can decide the best way to do this. Usually, we vote. Alternately, you could have a more sinister, Machiavellian, more Darwinian approach: Set a percentage or ratio that survives. For example, say a total of 100 cards were made. We want to keep a Survival rate of, say, 70 percent. Get rid of 30 cards, then. These can be chosen at random, or voted, or you can go in a circle and each choose one card at a time to cull. The point is to keep the deck somewhat manageable and, ultimately, fresh.
Wild Cards: When you get to the point that you have a good deck of pre-made cards, you'll be playing mostly with those cards. Game play is much smoother and rounds will absolutely fly by that way, and you'll end up checking the time after a while to find it's 3 or 4 in the morning. Trust me. When you have enough cards to play that way, you'll be wanting to add new blank cards to the deck. Mix these in with the pre-made cards so that players get them randomly.
Player's Holiday: Alternately, you could have three draw piles: The Apples deck, The Pre-Made Deck, and the Blank Deck. When players draw into their hand, they can choose either a pre-made or a blank card. This is a better option for when you want tostart using premade cards, but still want to be growing the decks. The Thrower, as an option, can also Draw from the Blank Deck (just remember to stamp the back, if you did that with the others- and I recommend you do.)
Hoidy Toidy: At some point, you may want a nice looking deck. This part is time consuming, and will cost a little more, but it's rather nice. If you know how to use templates in your word processing program, then you can transcribe your cards into the program, print them out and cut them.
For example, if you have MS WORD, which I do, you go to the Tables menu, Table Autoformat, select "Table Grid" from the list and uncheck all the "special formats" boxes at the bottom, Then click the Apply button. This will take you to a new box window that says "Insert Table" and has some options. Go with what works for you, but I like 3 cells by 3 cells per page, with columns at 2.5". Click OK and you have a table. Drag the corner of this table to stretch the dimensions out so each card is 2.5"x3". Save this, blank, and use it as a template in the future. If you want a symbol or logo on the back of the cards, you can pre-print them on one side of the paper using the same template. Then put all the text from your cards into each cell. Print these onto card stock that's at least 80lb., but 110lb is pretty common and much better. Then, all you have to do is cut along the lines (use a paper cutter, not scissors).
If you want to spend more money and less time, you can make the cards in the template and save it to a file (Convert to PDF if you can), take it down to a print shop on a thumb drive, and have them print/cut them for you. Make sure you have some blank cards with a logo on the back for future write-ins. Also make sure you ask them to print any appropriate Logo you want on the back, or you won't get it. These can be assimilated in the same manner as making a nice deck, later on, and takes much less time than this whole mess.
To be honest, we've never done this one. We have re-written the whole deck before, to make it more legible, but index cards and a rubber stamp have served us rather well, if I may say so.
That's Apples to Eris. I hope you enjoy it as much as we have.
I have a persona I sometimes indulge, a pet ego if you will. Not the regular ego I have, the one we all develop though being raised and cultured. This one is even more artificial than even that. I named him Philly Fillet- for the reason that Philia is Fraternal Love in greek, and a Fillet is a (violent, almost sexual) cut of meat. Well, that and the hilariously awesome pun that arises when I tell you he has a variety program, "The Fillet Show". If that isn't funny, it's because you're hearing it in your retarded American Accent, not the true "Fill-Eh" as the croaking French would say it.
Alas, this semi-sweetened Austrian writes and performs "hip-style hoppings" as will be related here, in text form. I'll skip to the lyrical High Lights and spare you a spell...
Master Race
I've got ze final solution
To pollution of ze mind-
Expose an' close illusions
Zat are bruising up your line
Of reasoning.
I like ze season of spring.
Ze power flowers are gorging in orgies
An' starting to sing of zings
Ve never lack.
I smack ze anti-somatic
Mit a pneumatic Chinese fire drill
'Cause I'm a psycho-semantic
Hermetically Sealed.
I need a medic vit colonics
'Cause I'm feeling catatonic
From a bout of Bubonic plague,
But I've got it made.
You need a mnemonic device?
Hooked on Phonics is nice.
You strike as homophonophobic-
Zat means you're afraid of ze "sounds like..."
Burning ze German "Fox and the Hound"
Abounding 'round ze fact zat zey're astounding!
So I'll fight you mit verds,
It's absurd:
I've got blubs to burp
An' birds zat chirp
Und girders to perturbYour Jergen's hand softeners
3VOLUTION
It's called a "Folks Vaggon"
'Cause folks get to grabbin' a seat
Vile others laggin' and staggerin'
Stompin', dragin' zeir feet.
And y'alls vas hassled vit laughin'
Vile Taft vas vaxin' his meat.
My brothers bled in your sted
Vile others fled in ze street.
Ze heat is sveltering hot,
I've got a lot on my mind.
It alvays is vat it's not
Until you've got to revind
Und turn ze tape around
Ze Foundery is melting ze pot,
Smelting kine' und kindly
Giving everysing zat zey've got
To reach a higher state,
Elating indigents as ze go-
Taking hits as ze give zem
Und stealing rims off your
Low. Ride. Ers.
Higher. Is writer.
My lighter is brighter.
I fight might vit fire.
I'm tight like a miter,
But your style is biter-
Writing rhymes, like, a hundred times
Until time chimes and you expire...
So yeah... Thems is Hip Style Hoppings. I hope you didn't have to gouge your fucking eyes out after reading that.
I died on the first day of spring, and soared on the voice of a punctual songbird — up, beyond the tips of newly awakened blossoms, and the tops of reincarnated leaves. I was blinded, momentarily, by the sunlight. The warmth infiltrated my being, with the humid fingers of illuminating revelation…...
So I jarred my lower back at work last night/this morning. It's pretty awesome. See: I work two jobs right now. The second is an overnight stocking job at a large home improvement store. It's that lovely shift that starts at 11.30PM and rides into the sunrise, like a reverse cowboy.
"Oh no, not the sex jokes. Anything but the sex jokes!"
Anyway, the pain does something to my brain, and kicks my mind into the right hemisphere where I have all these crazy thoughts and observations that I don't usually entertain. For example: on my way home from work this morning, I noticed an elderly Muslim man sitting on a bench at the park. I see him fairly regularly (and yes, he IS Muslim, not a Sikh or Hindu or "Arab"- well, he's probably Arabic, but that's an aside). It's not that I noticed him today that caught my attention, it's what I noticed. He was wearing fully traditional garments, except for the reflective aviator glasses adorning his sun weathered face. That's when it occurred to me that he's always wearing those aviators. Then it occurred to me just how common it is to see middle eastern men, generally, wearing aviators.
"Here I thought I was going to suffer dick jokes, and I start spewing ethnic clichés."
Observation complete, I kicked back over to my left brain, desperately trying to work out some sort of explanation. I don't think I reached the correct conclusion, so I colluded not to conclude anything, but here's a list of thoughts my left brain tried to use to fill in the Building 7 sized gap in my observation:
☼ It's one of those foreign things, where countries get recycled American pop culture a few decades late.
☼ There's an undercurrent of Islamic Hipsters that wear aviators to ironically mock terrorism.
☼ One of his friends/family is a flea market type wholesaler, and he gets them on the cheap-free.
☼ He's blind, but fashion forward.
☼ He's thinking about converting to Scientology.
Really, he's probably just wearing sunglasses because the sun was bright. But that's not the way my brain works after staying up all night and working through moderate back pain.
"At least I didn't make a blatant 9/11 joke, oh wait..."
Pshhaw! Everyone knows that was an inside job, right?
Actually, I've been doing Yoga as exercise for several years, sporadically. This was while I was still thinking of Yoga as an exercise, but now I'm finding it goes much deeper than that. This is the story of my initiation.
A little over two years ago, I started to get back into a Yoga routine and got it in my head, somehow, to become a Yoga instructor. Some research online pointed me towards a few Yoga Alliance certified instruction studios, one in Manteca, a few more in Sac, with an average tuition of about 3000 dollars, plus expenses for travel, gear, etc. I know that's not much for school costs, compared to something like Sac State or UOP even- but for a simple man such as myself, that was a pipe dream. I'd need to get a car, pay insurance, buy gas. That's in addition to paying tuition and working a 20 hour a week job that barely paid the bills as it was (and sometimes it didn't even go that far...) Tentative plans were made, remade, forgotten, remembered and then placed on a back burner.
“Shut up- you know as well as I do that it was laziness.”
The last year of that was spent preparing for a wedding- my wedding. I'd like to clarify that I'm placing no onus on the wedding for postponing my Yoga instruction.
“Yeah, right.”
Anyhow, right after the wedding, which was fantastic, my recently acquired Mother-in-law showed me an ad that she had clipped from the news paper. Now and Zen yoga studio, here in town, was offering a Yoga Teacher Training program. For 2200 dollars. And, as it turns out, this is the Yoga instructor's second and (for now) final Instructor Class. What serendipity is this?
“Come off it, Shiva. You don't even know what that word means!”
So I went to the informational meeting about the class. Weirdness ensued, and has yet to cease, and that's kind of what this story is all about. The Weirdness.
I felt as though I had seen the instructor before. By which, I mean: I had the distinct impression that I had known her, quite well in fact, but had become so estranged from her that she seemed almost foreign to my senses. “Almost” being the operative word there. But wait, it keeps going...
From that day, my life has been kind of turning around, in ways that even my thick skull can't even filter out: I picked up a second job, so money isn't so tight these days; everyone I met at that job seemed oddly familiar, not-unlike the experience I had with my instructor; just when the scheduling of two jobs began to get overwhelming, the shift at the second job changed to overnights, which fit right in with my normal sleep cycle. And this is just stuff relative to one aspect of my life. It gets weirder...
“With this guy, it ALWAYS get's weirder, until you have to slip off somewhere unnoticed.”
When Yoga classes started, I had that same sense of familiarity with the other Teachers in Training, and I knew at this point that it can't be some forget-me-almost trick of the mind, since at least one of them is actually from out of state, and she's just as familiar as the rest. We started doing things like Karma Yoga in the class. Karma Yoga deserves a brief explanation here:
“Karma” means, literally, “Action” and “Yoga” means, literally, “Union” (like a yoke on oxen). When people think of Karma, generally they think of two half-truths dealing with Karma: “What goes around, comes around” and similar phrases; and the notion of a hedonic calculus, whereby your good deeds and bad deeds are weighed against each other. Neither view is totally accurate, but does contain some truth. Think of Karma more like the Greek idea of Telos- the Telos of a thing is said to be the ideal actualization of a thing. The classic example given by Plato is that the Telos of an acorn is to become an Oak tree. In this way, Karma is more about the causal chain between actions and outcomes; we do, say or think something, which plants a figurative seed in our consciousness, which later matures, ripens and bears us mental-emotional fruit. These are perceived as “good things” and “bad things” (really, they are neither good, nor bad- just things, and other Karmic Impressions [samskaras] are in place, bearing fruit that makes us see outcomes as “Good” or “Bad”).
“Fruit eaters are the bane of existence.”
So Karma Yoga is being United with your Actions, being one with them. This involves self analysis and introspection- of behavior, thoughts, motives, all that. Cultivating your mental-emotional garden, as it were. I do this by keeping a notebook in my back pocket. Each day I record a Dedication and a Gratitude, things to give my day focus and substance. Then beneath that, I make a grid. On the left column, I write the Yamas (Yoga's Social Ethics): Non-Harming, Right Speech, Right Thinking, Non-Greed and Moderation. Throughout the day, I'll pull out my notebook and make a check- plus for a good job, minus for poor, and a tilde for something that needs improvement.
“BORING!”
Well, let me just say this (one of my favorite Americanisms): actually seeing your self analysis recorded on paper like that makes you a LOT more aware of where you really are as a person. What you're feeling, some clues as to why, and some motivation to improve it. Okay, back to the weirdness.
After only a week of doing this, I started to notice people that were rather brisk and bristly towards me were noticeably softening their stance against me. That's not the weird part, that's something that should be expected according to common sense. There are meditation exercises that correspond to practicing Karma Yoga, one of them is called “Giving and Taking”. You meditate on someone with some pain or difficulty in their life, imagine your in-breath taking that thing away from them, and your out-breath replacing it with something wholesome they desire. It makes you feel really good after. A mellow, compassionate, everything-is-wonderful kind of good. What's weird is when people I was meditating on actually started to drift away from their ails and started drifting towards those things I was wishing for them. One of them took a renewed interest in their own health; another is beginning to mature as a person, sloughing off some of their more childish tendencies; still another at my new job looks less and less tweaked out each time I see him. It's totally bizarre, and utterly weird, but it seems to be working, and all of them without me having discussed any of it with them.
Everyone’s starting up blogs these days. It seems to be the “in” thing to do, again. So here I am, the perpetual Johnny-Come-Lately joining the bandwagon once more, about a month late and a life’s savings short. How’s that for an introductory cliché?
As the oblation of an introductory post, allow me describe what you’ll be coming to expect from this blog. The first thing is this; a preamble, mostly to establish my voice as a writer and set the overall tone of the blog (which is hopefully something you’ve picked up on by now: wry, dry wit and a predeliction for using words that my spell checker will inevitably correct, such as “predeliction”), and,
“Yes, I will be using proper grammar and English to articulate and express my thoughts in this Blog, you jerk!”
as that example shows.
Certain things must also be outlined here: when I use quotation marks, it will be in only two (2) instances: when I am quoting something, in which case I do my best to be vis-à-vis; or when I am using a word ironically. Some of you, my friends, I know need no explanation on either the grammatical characteristics of each, or the definition of irony- but not all of us are so wealthy in knowledge, so I’ll attempt an illustration. When I used the word “predeliction” (predilection) in quotations, it was because that’s what I wrote when my spell checker tried to correct me. But I decided to use it as an example here, so I consciously left it misspelled. (In short, if it’s in quotes, it’s not misspelled and should be read as if there were [sic] after it, always.) Immediately after that, I quoted myself speaking to myself, a sort of meta-voice. I mentally asked myself if I would pay attention to grammar etiquette, and verbally responded to myself. (Yes, I do it, too.) But that’s how this blog is going to be. See- I am me, but I am also not-me, so there must need be a second voice. Must. Otherwise, it’s just a petty internal monologue for me, and what I’m after-
“What We’re after, is a sort of internal dialogue.”
It’s also a nice, tidy way of appealing to peoples’ tendency to post “TL;DR” (too long; didn’t read). You may not get all of my jokes, since it’s really me talking to myself (in which case, every joke is an In-Joke). Some of them are specialized and have to do with what’s in my life at the moment, because I’m Zen like that. Sometimes I’ll explain them, sometimes I won’t. Like: I noticed, studying Sanskrit the other day that the sound “Balla’” means “child”. Now I could go a step further and explain this joke if I didn’t give it context, or (more likely) it will be relevant to whatever I’m talking about generally. The context, since I gave none for this joke, was that a lot of the kids that listen to hip-hop call themselves and their friends Ballas’ (bawlers; taken from 40’s and 50’s slang “to bawl”, meaning “to have sex”. In this sense, “Ballas” aren’t just children, their pedophiles, too!)
“I’m funny, mother fucker- deal with it.”
On the subject of humor, let’s get something rectified: some of my language can offend. It’s your job not to troll yourself into frenzy because you can’t recognize something as a joke. I use “profanity” (that’s meant ironically. I take the training wheels off after this post.) on occasion, either because something needs the punch of that supposedly naughty word, or simply because the shit feels right. I make the occasional race-based joke. This is because, even as we strive for social and cultural unity and equality, we still have these biases and prejudices around and in ourselves, even. It’s far more dangerous, in my mind, to say we don’t have these biases, because then they can go unchecked and unnoticed, like a strange lump on your inner thigh that you try to ignore. I poke fun at race issues with this idea in mind- to illuminate and elucidate, NOT because I am racist. I have my own biases and prejudices with which I deal just like everyone else. I would never say certain things in certain company, simply because I know that someone will only be hurt by it. But this is my Internal Dialogue, bitch. Grow Up or Get Out.
“Even a fag can be a straight shooter- and he doesn’t even have to get violent about it.”
That said, I’m an enlightened being, put in this place and time to grow as a person and teach my fellow beings that they are all light; beings of pure consciousness condensed into breath and distilled into flesh. Because, really, this Dialogue isn’t about me and myself, it’s really about me and you- which, really, is the same thing.
“If you don’t like intense Self-Referentialism™, this Internal Dialogue may not be for you. Try a Snickers™, instead!”
