Louise Glück - Fun with Chairs, Oct 18
Louise Glück won the Nobel Prize this year!!! Thrilling! Perhaps a challenging time requires a challenging poet? Personally I think this is hopeful news. I thought this piece felt like this time of year and this year in general.
BURNING LEAVES
The dead leaves catch fire quickly.
And they burn quickly; in no time at all,
they change from something to nothing.
Midday. The sky is cold, blue;
under the fire, there's gray earth.
How fast it all goes, how fast the smoke clears.
And where the pile of leaves was,
an emptiness that suddenly seems vast.
Across the road, a boy’s watching.
He stays a long time, watching the leaves burn.
Maybe this is how you'll know when the earth is dead—
it will ignite.
Joy Harjo - Iyengar II, Oct 13th
For Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which was exciting in Santa Fe this year. Protestors pulled down the Civil War monument at the center of the Plaza. Stories some of us take for granted as positive have a VERY different meaning for others. At the very least we need to be willing to hear each other’s stories, to go forward together.
EXILE OF MEMORY
…
Don't look back.
In Sunday school we were told Lot’s wife
Looked back and turned
To salt.
But her family wasn't leaving Paradise.
We loved our trees and waters
And the creatures and earths and skies
In that beloved place.
Those beings were our companions
Even as they fed us, cared for us.
If I turn to salt
It will be of petrified tears
From the footsteps of my relatives
As they walked west.
Laughing on a Saturday
If you can’t laugh at yourself these days you are in trouble! Those of you who know me, at all…., know I have a chihuahua obsession. A friend sent me this hilarious “comparison”. It is so spot on I had to share. I am laughing at myself and my “muffins”.
Louis Jenkins - Iyengar All Levels - Sunday Fun Oct. 11
On the lighter side…is this happening to anyone else? Even if you don’t have a basement…?
BASEMENT
There's something about our basement that causes forgetting. I go down for something, say a roll of paper towels, which we keep in a big box down there, and as soon as I get to the bottom of the stairs I have forgotten what I came down there for. It happens to my wife as well. So recently we have taken to working in tandem like spelunkers. One of us stands at the top of the stairs while the other descends. When the descendant has reached the bottom stair, the person at the top calls out, "Light bulbs, 60 watt." This usually works unless the one in the basement lingers too long. I blame this memory loss on all the stuff in the basement. Too much baggage: 10 shades of blue paint, because we could not get the right color, extra dishes bicycles, the washer and dryer, a cider press, a piano, jars of screws, nails and bolts.... It boggles the mind. My wife blames it on radon.
Autumn Blaze!
Autumn Blaze is the name/variety of the Maple Tree I bought last Fall, 2019, right before a trip to Italy. I couldn’t resist it, on trip to the nursery for something else, as often happens to me. I was busy before my trip and didn’t get it planted in the ground. After my trip I was busy “catching up” on work, business, etc. and I didn’t get it planted in the ground. Then it got cold and I got lazy, and I stopped even watering it. So it stood all winter, in the middle of my yard, without water, a guilty reminder of unfulfilled intentions. I was certain it was dead. At some point it was going to the dump.
Then Covid-19 March lockdown happened and the hysteria of trying to shift YogaSource and my own teaching online was nearly overwhelming, nearly. One morning, on my way across the yard to my yoga studio, to figure out how to email Zoom class links to students and teachers desperately adjusting to new ways of practicing Yoga together, I happened to notice the dead tree had tiny leaf buds. I thought I was seeing things. The next day, one tiny bright green leaf started to unfurl; a distinctly maple leaf shape. HOW could this tree have survived a cold, dry winter, exposed in a plastic pot?! The next day another leaf started. That weekend the tree was finally, finally planted in the ground. Watching this tree slowly leaf out got me through some of the worst weeks of the Spring. (For those of you serious gardeners, I did start watering it.)
The tree thrived this summer, brilliant green, then lat week it started to turn. It’s coloring reminding me of how I was seduced in the first place, Autumn Blaze indeed; now a dear and forgiving friend! Sharing it’s glory below.
Henry David Thoreau - Iyengar Level II & I, October 1st
First day of October, and a full moon, a sense of fullness and gratitude fills me this beautiful day. I love the whole essay but shared just a bit. Something about the shape of the apples and the tree bowing felt right. From Wild Apples…
…In October, the leaves falling, the apples are more distinct in the trees. I saw one year in a neighboring town some trees fuller of fruit than I remembered to have ever seen before, small yellow apples banging over the road. The branches were gracefully drooping with their weight, like a barberry-bush, so that the whole tree acquired a new character. Even the topmost branches, instead of standing erect, spread and drooped in all directions; and there were so many poles supporting the lower ones, that they looked like pictures of banian-trees. As an old English manuscript says, "The mo appelen the tree bereth, the more sche boweth to the folk.” Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits…
IYNAUS…
…develops a sense of humor. The Iyengar Yoga National Association of the United States, has not always been notable for a sense of humor (an understatement!)!But there are signs that might be changing. My Brother has a very elderly pug, so this recent IYNAUS Facebook post made me laugh out loud. Had to share.
(From SE-B- Triang Mukhaikapada Paschimottanasana for the Sanskrit geeks)
David Hinton - Iyengar Level II & I Sept. 24th
Seeing the word “reassuring” , and the hope of the world coming into some kind of balance, I am reassured. Many thanks to the talented Mr. Hinton.
It’s reassuring. Here
in this desert
empty of
meaning, it’s
reassuring the way
words always
return, each time less
a destination
reached or
left behind. Things
somehow tend
toward balance.
Books
A student mentioned that one of the things we do on Zoom, is peek at any books in the background. We are naturally curious about other people’s books. What we think a person’s books say about them; instinctually understanding that our books are glimpses into our histories, passions, the core of our being. I loved that observation, and confess, I do check out other people’s books whenever I can. To be fair, here are some of mine.
Rainer Maria Rilke - Iyengar Level II & I, Sept 17
I loved the way Rilke described how we see/don’t see/use air to see in this fragment from his Early Journals. I bet my artist friends recognize the correlation between air and “seeing” form.
I am learning to see something new. In addition to sky and land, a third thing has equal significance: the air.
Things usually appear to me as finite and limited in comparison with the great body of Earth. But here there are many things that seem like Islands —alone, bright, caressed on all sides by ever-moving air that makes their forms stand out so clearly.
Jane Hirshfield - Iyengar Sunday Fun, Sept 13
For my first Ever Joyful Yoga class, I chose to focus on humble Tree Pose (Vrksasana). Despite being one of the first asanas we learn in the Iyengar tradition, for many it remains challenging. Stability in particular, is elusive. Vrksasana has always been a favorite of mine, I believe that it’s component parts prepare us for many, many other asanas. Its overall essence, balancing between grounded roots and open sky, is beautiful and a little mysterious. Jane’s poem is the same.
Tree
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
Marianne Moore - Iyengar II, Aug 28
Iyengar Level II on Thursdays was my first class at YogaSource six years ago. I took over the class from my beloved mentor JaSoon Kim. Many of the students had been my fellow Yoga travelers for years, but they gave a brand-new teacher a chance. New students came as other moved on, as is the way of things. Somehow the maturity, stability and wisdom of the group overall never changed. Such an incredible group of humans, I am blessed to have had them as my teachers. Thank you!
What Are Years?
What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt,—
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourages others
and in its defeat, stirs
the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.
So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.
Oshima Ryota (1718-87) - Iyengar II, Aug 26
From the commentary in this fabulous collection, Japanese Death Poems - Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death, “For a Fraction of a second, the gap between reality and illusion, the eternal and the momentary, closes.” Suits my mood this final week of 15 years studying, teaching at YogaSource…
Moon in the water
somersaults
and streams away.
Uncle Frank
A student sent this to me. Funny, and I thought the graphic was beautiful. My Brother, Father, Grandfather & Great Grandfather are all Frank or Franklin. All have, had a side to them that would have appreciated this sentiment.
Alain de Botton - Iyengar All Levels, Aug 21
From a contemporary thinker with a knack for making philosophy accessible, nuts enough to spend a week inside the the Heathrow airport (Remember airports…?); and write about the experience. The whole short, book is a gem!
A Week at the Airport, excerpted
…
At moments when I could not make headway with my writing, I would go and chat to Dudley Masters, who was based on the floor t)dow me and had spent thirty years cleaning shoes at the airport. His day began at 8.30 a.m. and, around sixty pairs later, finished at 9.00p.m.
I admired the optimism with which Dudley confronted every new pair of shoes that paused at his station. Whatever their condition, he imagined the best for them, remedying their abuses with an armoury of brushes, waxes, creams and spray cleaners. He knew it was not evil that led people to go for eight months without applying even an all-purpose clear cream polish. He was like a kindly dentist who, on bringing down the ceiling-mounted halogen lamp and asking new patients to open their mouths ('Let's have a look in here, shall we?’), remains aware of how complicated lives can become and so how easily people may give up flossing their teeth while they try to save their companies or minister to a dying parent.
Though he was being paid to shine shoes, he knew that his real mission was psychological. He understood that people rarely have their shoes cleaned at random: they do so when they want to draw a line under the past, when they hope that an outer transformation may be a spur to an inner one…
Kay Ryan - Iyengar II, Aug 18
I loved the imagery of this piece from our former US Poet Laureate 2008-2010. Do we always understand, ever understand what we organize our lives around? Internally and externally?
Odd Blocks
Every Swiss-village
calendar instructs
as to how stone
gathers the landscape
around it, how
glacier-scattered
thousand-ton
monuments to
randomness become
fixed points in
finding home.
Order is always
starting over.
And why not
also in the self,
the odd blocks,
all lost and left,
become first facts
toward which later
a little town
looks back?
Clouds
My husband and local artist/architect, Tom Easterson-Bond, designed these Social Distancing Clouds. Using the same field marking paint you might remember from school sports, the Clouds are installed at Alto Park, near the pool. A perfect place for a socially distanced visit with a friend. He was inspired by a similar project at Dolores Park in San Francisco and the work of Georgia O’Keefe. Financial and even more important, institutional support was provided by a local, women-owned, business Falling Colors. Their staff also volunteered to do the bulk of the installation last Sunday. The City of Santa Fe approved the project as part of an effort to safely occupy and enhance our outdoor community spaces during the Pandemic. Awesome! Thank you to all!
HeeDuk Ra - Iyengar II, Aug 13
By a contemporary Korean woman, this whole piece is one long beautiful sentence, that spoke to me about life these days and Yoga always. Here’s a fragment.
The Crucial Moment
I’ve always known how to shake in the wind how to make noise in the rain how to turn into beautiful hues in the autumn sunlight but fulfilling the life of a leaf depends on how to fall not where to fall and even after falling it doesn’t mean I’m not a leaf even though it seems I’m summoned by the wind it doesn’t mean I rely on coincidence and at least I know how to land…
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras -August 11
Sutra II.46 - stihirasukham asanam The posture should be steady and relaxed. - trans. Rohit Mehta
I love this contemporary Indian translation of the Yoga Sutras. Here’s a bit more from the commentary about this first of three sutras about asana practice. “The posture that is steady and relaxed - sthira and sukha - is meant to give a certain dignity and grace to one’s bodily movements. It aims at imparting a proper gait and carriage to one’s body. Steadiness denotes strength or dignity in one’s carriage and bearing, while relaxation signifies grace.”