Seneca - June 1st, Iyengar II & I

I picked up a collection of Seneca’s essays at a bookstore in Rome, 2019. It was the end of my trip and although I had wandered into several bookstores, the English language sections hadn’t yielded much in the way of poetry - lots of mysteries and John Grisham. I jumped on the Seneca. The father of Stoic philosophy, despite how that sounds, a beautiful thinker. For Standing Pose week, “eager and upright”.

On the Shortness of Life

…The world you see, nature's greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our own everlasting possessions and will remain with us as long as we ourselves remain. So, eager and upright, let us hasten with bold steps wherever circumstances take us…

Issa - May 27, Iyengar II & I

I have a very loud cricket in my Yoga studio, who is starting to feel like family. So loud my classes can hear it’s song.

On a branch

floating downriver

a cricket, singing.

Izumi Shikibu - May 25, Iyengar I

Wind and weather, lunar and hail, it’s been quite a dramatic few days. That’s a pretty ordinary reading of this lovely multi-layered piece. I suspect this woman was often underestimated.

Although the wind

blows terribly here,

the moonlight also leaks

between the roof planks

of this ruined house.

Emily Dickinson - May 25, Iyengar II

Before the lunar eclipse on 5/26, in Yoga traditions, The lotus, and the moon may be used interchangeably, often to represent the soul. Plus as an Iyengar teacher, how could I resist Props?

The Props assist the HOUSE

Until the House is built

And then the Props withdraw

And adequate, erect,

The House support itself

And cease to recollect

The Auger and the Carpenter

Just such a retrospect

Hath the perfected Life—

A past of Plank and Nail

And slowness—then the Scaffolds drop

Affirming it a Soul.

New Yorker Magazine

Clearly the staff at the New Yorker have taken up Zoom Yoga. Sent to me by Barbara Forslund, who reads more than the cartoons!

Uvavnuk First Nations - May 24, Iyengar III

After Saturday’s crazy wind and hail, this caught my eye/ear. So beautiful.

Untitled Shaman Song

The great sea

frees me, moves me,

as a strong river carries a weed.

Earth and her strong winds

move me, take me away,

my soul is swept up in joy.

Anthony Bourdain - May 23, Iyengar Sunday Fun & Chair Class

I’ve always loved his writing, passionate, human. Nice to hear his voice again, from World Travel. This fragment almost made me want to go back to India, almost…

RAJASTHAN

"Rajasthan [is] one of India's harshest and most desolate regions, located in the northwestern tip of the continent. For centuries, [it was] home to numerous independent feudal kingdoms, and a fierce warrior class who resisted the influence and domination of invaders and neighbors alike. It's one of the most magnificent areas of India, a storybook land of mountaintop castles and forts. [There are] bleak monochrome deserts festooned with flashes of bright color, where even modest homes can be over a thousand years old. There's nowhere else like it on earth. It really doesn't matter where the road takes you here. It doesn't matter where you find yourself when you wake up. Of all the places in the world, it has perhaps the biggest heart and the most beautiful things to see. Whether you wake up in a maharanah's palace or a swank hotel or a cheap hostel or a sand dune in the desert, you're grateful to be alive and still in India."

Kathy Park Hong - May 20, Iyengar II & I

From Dance Dance Revolution, a poem-sequence that mixes a little science fiction with social/historical consciousness. The whole thing made me think. And even review how my own use and views about language, how language can be used to define status, even by the most well-meaning.

FOREWORD

In the Desert, the language is an amalgam of some three hundred languages and dialects imported into this city, a rapidly evolving lingua franca. The language, while borrowing the inner structures of English grammar, also borrows from existing and extinct English dialects. Here, new faces pour in and civilian accents morph so quickly that their accents betray who they talked to that day rather than their cultural roots. Fluency is also a matter of opinion. There is no tuning fork to one’s twang…

Italo Calvino - May 18th, Iyengar II & I

From Invisible Cities, still my favorite of Calvino’s work. Every time I dip in something new strikes me. This time, it was the certainty in uncertainty of living in a spider-web city. Yoga builds resiliency in all kinds of ways, perfect for Covid, post-Covid.

Now I will tell how Octavia, the spidcr-web city, is made. There is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks. You walk on the little wooden ties, careful not to set your foot in the open spaces, or you cling to the hempen strands. Below there is nothing for hundreds and hundreds of feet: a few clouds glide past; farther down you can glimpse the chasm's bed.

This is the foundation of the city: a net which serves as passage and as support. All the rest, instead of rising up, is hung below: rope ladders, hammocks, houses made like sacks, clothes hangers, terraces like gondolas, skins of water, gas jets, spits, baskets on strings, dumb-waiters, showers, trapezes and rings for children's games, cable cars, chandeliers, pots with trailing plants.

Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long.

Ko Un - May 17th, Iyengar III

Urdhva Dhanurasana, be your own umbrella! Shelter under the lightness and brightness backbends cultivate naturally.

Do I have a love

to wash away people’s hate?

I opened an umbrella

then closed it, and

let the rain fall down on me.

Ko Un - May 16, Sunday Fun & Chair Class

Feeling unsupported? Ko Un says the world has your back!

Rhododendron is in bloom.

Over there the crepe-myrtle sulks bloomlesslv.

In this way the world holds each' life in its own life;

I wander in glee.

Maya Angelou- May 13, Iyengar II & I

Art, truth, and more…

In that little town in Arkansas, whenever my grandmother saw me reading poetry she would say, "Sister, Mama loves to see you read the poetry because that will put starch in your backbone."

Never put your sheroes and heroes up on pedestals; placing them on pedestals is setting yourself up for disappointment. You must take the good that people do and put the bright light on that good, but human beings can never withstand such light without showing their shadows and warts. All mortals have their shortcomings and weaknesses. Their skills and deeds are what we must applaud. Don't fall victim to the cult of personality.

Only poets care about what happened to the snows ofyesteryear.

Henry David Thoreau - May 9-10, Iyengar III, II, & I

A student’s husband, brought forward this book, collecting Thoreau’s journal entries from 1851. I have been opening it and reading from time to time over the last 6 months or so. Checking in to see what Thoreau was observing or thinking about at the particular day/month I was in. When I opened up to early May (1851), this is what I found…couldn’t believe it, yoga! And more that struck me.

Monday, May 6th 1851

The Harivansa describes a "substance called Poroucha, a spiritual substance known also under the name of Mahat, spirit united to the five elements, soul of beings, now enclosing itself in a body like ours, now returning to the eternal body; it is mysterious wisdom, the perpetual sacrifice made by the virtue of the Yoga, the fire which animates animals, shines in the sun, and is mingled with all bodies. Its nature is to be born and to die, to pass from repose to movement…

…

Thus the Yogin, absorbed in contemplation, contributes to his part Part to creation: he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes he acts, as animating original matter.

May 10th

Heard the Snipe over the meadows this evening

May 12th

….

If I have got false teeth, I trust that I have not got a false conscience. It is safer to employ the dentist than the priest-to repair die deficiencies of Nature.

Walt Whitman - May 9, Sunday Fun & Fun with Chairs

I always appreciate Whitman’s connection of the body to the mind to the soul.

Song of the Universal

I

Come said the Muse,

Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,

Sing me the universal.

In this broad earth of ours,

Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,

Enclosed and safe within its central heart,

Nestles the seed perfection.

By every life a share or more or less,

None born but it is born, conceaFd or unconceal'd the

seed is waiting.

I Do This More Than You Might Expect…

But I’m a Yoga Teacher, so this is what I have to say right? It really is true though…Thanks to Barbara Forslund for keeping an eye out in the always wonderful New Yorker.

Rudolfo Anaya - May 6, Iyengar II & I

I’ve always meant to read this piece during “Lilac Season” here in Santa Fe, but somehow have never managed it. This year the Lilacs are spectacular and I finally remembered.

Water May 1st, 2007, Jemez Springs

There is water in my soul.

Sometimes it runs so strong

I am afraid I will drown.

Acequia water sprinkles the lawn.

Moth and wasp come to drink.

In Jemez Springs the mayordomos

guard the water.

Water runs in their veins.

Water runs in the elm seeds that

fall like tiny helicopters,

Turning round & round.

They cover me like moss

covered Rip Van Winkle.

I smile at nature.

That old bitch is pure water.

She guards the water

in rock & tree & lilac blooming.

In Jemez Springs colors so pastel,

those without water in the soul

do not see them.

I am in nature.

I guess I am a poet, because

water runs in my soul.

I cannot stop it.

I dare not. I am

becoming green…

N. Scott Momaday - May 4, Iyengar II & I

For dancing in Yoga. Fun fact: N. Scott Momaday was the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize, in any category - 1969.

When we dance the earth trembles. When our steps fall on the earth we feel the shudder of life beneath us, and the earth feels the beating of our hearts, and we become one with the earth. We shall not sever ourselves from the earth. We must chant our being, and we must dance in time with the rhythms of the earth. We must keep the earth.

N. Scott Momaday - May 3, Iyengar III

I picked up this beautiful little book - EARTH KEEPER Reflections on the American Land - at Maria’s in Durango. Took a crazy day trip there recently. My husband wanted a drive…I loved this piece, perfect for a rainy day. After class a student wrote to me and said she went outside and saw both sunlit rain and a double rainbow!

The waters tell of time. Always rivers run upon the earth and quench its thirst. Bright water carries our burdens across long distances. Without water we, and all that we know, would wither and die. We measure time by the flow of water as it passes us by. But in truth it is we who pass through time. Once I traveled on a great river though a canyon. The walls of the canyon were so old as to be timeless. There came a sunlit rain, and a double rainbow arched the river. There was mystery and meaning in my passage. I beheld things that others had beheld thousands of years ago. The earth is a place of wonder and beauty.

Lily Lee - May 2nd, Sunday Fun & Fun with Chairs

Lily Lee (unknown - but was a student at the Cherokee Female Seminary in Oklahoma around 1855), Cherokee - also from the new Norton’s Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, edited by Joy Harjo. Fun to read out loud, made me want to know what the Bird Nation in my neck of the woods is actually talking about…

LITERARY DAY AMONG THE BIRDS

Dark night at last has taken its flight,

Morn had come with her earliest light;

Her herald, gray dawn, had extinguished each star,

And gay banners in the east were waving afar.

That lovely goddess, Beautiful Spring,

Had fanned all the earth with her radiant wing;

“Had calmed the wild winds with fragrant breath,”

And gladden’d nature with an emerald wreath.

Within the precincts of the Bird Nation,

All was bustle and animation;

For that day was to witness a literary feast,

Where only Birds were invited guests,

The place of meeting was a leafy nook,

Close by the side of a sparkling brook.

Soon were assembled a merry band,

Birds from every tree in the land.

Mrs. Dove came first, in soft colors drest;

Then Mr. Canary, looking his best.

The family of Martins, dressed in brown,

And Mr. Woodpecker, with his ruby crown.

The exercises opened with a scientific song,

voices of the feathered throng.

Then was delivered a brilliant oration,

By 'Squire RAVEN, the wisest bird of the nation.

Master WHIP-POOR-WILL next mounted the stage,

Trying to look very much like a sage.

Eight pretty green Parrots then spoke with art;

Though small, with credit they carried their part.

Again an oration by Mr. Quail,

Spoken as fast as the gallop of snail.

And lastly. Sir BLACKBIRD whistl'd off an address,

Of twenty odd minutes, more or less.

Then came the applause, so loud and long,

That the air echoed the joyous song.

But the sun was low, so soon they sped

To their quiet nests and their grassy beds;

And rocked by the breeze, they quietly slept,

Ere the firstling star in the blue sky crept.

Frank Lapena - April 29, Iyengar II & I

Frank Lapena 1937-2019, Nomtipom Wintu - from the new Norton’s Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, edited by Joy Harjo. This multi-talented poet was also a professor, dancer, visual and performance artist. Some of that shows in this piece, “fragrances are footprints”, at least to me. Also loved the joyful mouse!

THE UNIVERSE SINGS

Spring days

and winter nights

have beautiful

flowers shining

they make themselves

visible

by whispering

in the color

of blue pollen

Their fragrances

are footprints

lightly traveling

on the milky way

Once I was given

a bracelet of

golden yellow flowers

on velvet darkness

Reenie said that

a mouse was painted

in the color of the sun

and that he danced for joy

on seeing flowers

blossom into stars

dancing across the universe

and singing,

singing, singing.