Joy Harjo – Aug 23, Iyengar III

Harjo also has a deep activist streak, this is piece is quite mild as her advocacy work goes. I thought it was beautiful.

SINGING EVERYTHING

Once there were songs for everything,

Songs for planting, for growing, for harvesting,

For eating, getting drunk, falling asleep,

For sunrise, birth, mind-break, and war.

For death (those are the heaviest songs and they

Have to be pried from the earth with shovels of grief).

Now all we hear are falling-in-love songs and

Falling apart after falling in love songs.

The earth is leaning sideways

And a song is emerging from the floods

And fires. Urgent tendrils lift toward the sun.

You must be friends with silence to hear.

The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful—

They are the most rare.

Joy Harjo – Aug 22, Sunday Fun & Chair Class

From our insanely hardworking current U.S. Poet Laureate. Felt like Sunday…and twists!

DIRECTIONS TO YOU

Follow them, stop, turn around

Go the other way.

Left, right,

Mine, yours.

We become lost,

Unsteady.

Take a deep breath,

Pray.

You will not always be lost.

You are right here,

In your time,

In your place.

…

To find,

To be found,

To be understood,

To be seen,

Heard, felt.

You are,

Breath.

You are,

Memory.

More Cat Fun- 2 Portraits of Tomo Hahs

On the left, in his unadulterated state, natural lip curl. On the right, a little photoshop flair suits his personality. Don’t mess with this tough kitty!

Hafiz – Aug 15, Sunday Fun & Chair Class

Let your light shine a little today.

IF YOU JUST UNTIE THE SUN

All your problems can be solved. All your

problems can be solved, if you just untie

that sun that somehow got leashed on a

pole in you.

Hafiz – Aug 12, Iyengar II & I

Concerned about the affect rising Covid cases would have on my slightly more social, social life, I found this comforting. So far lizards and the wind seem to be Covid safe.

SOCIALIZE A BIT

Shortly after my rooster crowed a favorite tune of

his, a lizard appeared on a rock, close to where I

was sitting, and practiced some new jokes.

Then a rabbit popped out of her hole and we

discussed some essential matters, till an old dog,

another pal of mine, came by.

Some birds that knew I was an easy mark gathered

for their breakfast of seeds & crumbs.

The wind then whispered something in code,

and I started clapping.

As lively as things can get around me—and all the

friends I have, truth is:

I live in a dimension where there is only the Rose.

Not a trace of me.

But I can step from that sublime state and socialize

a bit.

Louise Glück – Aug 10, Iyengar II & I

Memory last week, this week a Memoir. Could you write a memoir in three words?

MEMOIR

I was born cautious, under the sign ofTaurus.

I grew up on an island, prosperous,

in the second half of the twentieth century;

the shadow of the Holocaust

hardly touched us.

I had a philosophy of love, a philosophy

of religion, both based on

early experience within a family.

And if when I wrote I used only a few words

it was because time always seemed to me short

as though it could be stripped away

at any moment.

And my story, in any case, wasn't unique

though, like everyone else, I had a story,

a point of view.

A few words were all I needed:

nourish, sustain, attack.

Louise Glück – Aug 9, Iyengar III

For those who will appreciate this kind of lullaby. I didn’t see fireflies in real life until I was an adult, at a Yoga workshop an hour north of New Orleans. I thought they were magical.

LULLABY

Time to rest now; you have had

enough excitement for the time being.

Twilight, then early evening. Fireflies

in the room, flickering here and there, here and there,

and summer’s deep sweetness filling the open window.

Don't think of these things anymore.

Listen to my breathing, your own breathing

like the fireflies, each small breath

a flare in which the world appears.

I've sung to you long enough in the summer night.

I’ll win you over in the end; the world can't give you

this sustained vision.

You must be taught to love me. Human beings must be taught to love

silence and darkness.

Louise Glück – Aug 8, Fun with Chairs

I garden this way, 15 minutes of effort followed by 15 minutes of contemplation. And, if I were going to have a conversation with the Divine, it would definitely be in a garden.

VESPERS

I don't wonder where you are anymore.

You're in the garden; you're where John is,

in the dirt, abstracted, holding his green trowel.

This is how he gardens: fifteen minutes of intense effort,

fifteen minutes of ecstatic contemplation. Sometimes

I work beside him, doing the shade chores,

weeding, thinning the lettuces; sometimes I watch

from the porch near the upper garden until twilight makes

lamps of the first lilies: all this time,

peace never leaves him. But it rushes through me,

not as sustenance the flower holds

but like bright light through the bare tree.

Jenny George – Aug 5, Iyengar II & I

The tricks, traps and mysteries of memory have take up a lot of space in my brain this week. This piece about the nature of memory from talented local poet Jenny George, helped.

Mncmonic

I forgot the prairie because it stood

so still. I forgot the clouds because

they were always moving. I forgot

the taste of water because it lay quietly

inside the taste of everything.

I forgot a childhood when it disappeared

through a hole in itself. Later, mushrooms

emerged from the damp soil.

The way to keep something is to forget it.

Then it goes to an enormous place.

Grass grows to the horizon like hair.

In the sky a cloud goes on naming

and unnaming itself.

T.S Eliot – Aug 3, Iyengar II & I

And every time I dip into the Four Quartets, I am in awe. From Little Giddings.

PS One translation of the eighth limb of Yoga, Samadhi, is Liberation, more commonly translated as bliss.

…

There are three conditions which often look alike

Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:

Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment

From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference

Which resembles the others as death resembles life,

Being between two lives—unflowering, between

The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:

For liberation—not less of love but expanding

Of love beyond desire, and so liberation

From the future as well as the past…

T.S Eliot – Aug 2, Iyengar III

Every time I dip into the Four Quartets, I find something new. I loved this passage from Dry Salvages, about being so absorbed in the moment that Incarnation occurs. We might also call this experience the State of Yoga.

…

For most of us, there is only the unattended

Moment, the moment in and out of time,

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,

Hints followed by guesses; and the rest

Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.

The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is

Incarnation.

Cats and Yoga – Aug 1

A friend sent this along, after seeing the EJY August Newsletter that include a section on Cat Yoga.

Michael Dickman – Aug 1, Sunday Fun & Chair Class

More from Days & Days. It occurred to me that Sundays feel more “normal” than any other day right now. A day I would “normally” be home doing the laundry, gratefully not expecting much else to happen. Spending a couple of hours in my yoga studio talking to myself (Zoom)while practicing isn’t such a stretch…ha!

In other places we felt much the same as we do today only

more so

Meanwhile a mayfly floats by another mayfly

A hard drive via a hedge

A Bluetooth via a squiggle

Oh look someone remembered to take out the compost

Meanwhile mites in a double clasp & peaked felt number wish you

well & more

White foam scours a polished floor

Michael Dickman – July 29, Iyengar II & I

When I first browsed through this collection, Days & Days, I was interested but didn’t love most of it. After a year and a half spent mostly in my home, I have a much greater appreciation of the splendid, boring oddity of daily living. The pop culture references work. Part of me is really hooked by a man’s take on domesticity. Part of me, less-charitably, wonders if this work would have been as well-received if it was by a woman. The language is beautiful.

If the day is tapered leaf stems with a white undersurface tolerating

the usual errands

A tree in the shade of a tree

An ozone inside a loophole

More a Lean Cuisine than anything else

We let the grass go yellow on purpose & drove straight

to the store ,

My daughter pulls the grass up with her fingers

My son uses scissors

Upile Chisala – July 26, Iyengar II & I

Amazing, right?!

Consider this:

Your body is a blessing.

Where it curves,

sags,

wrinkles.

Where it was scarred

and touched.

All of this is a map of your life.

Your body is memory,

some sweet,

some sad,

but memory nonetheless.

Your soul is living in a house of stories.

Your body is memory.

Upile Chisala – July 26, Iyengar III

From a Malawian poet, we all need to hear this from time to time.

You are beautiful

and your wings are made of things they threw in

your face,

the things that were meant to make you

even smaller

in this big universe.

But you wove them together,

those wretched old things,

and made something of your own.

What a beautiful creature you are.

What a beautiful creature you've always been.

Buson – July 25, Sunday Fun & Chair Class

Monsoon season is really here, creating rivers that appear and disappear just as fast.

A summer river

being crossed, how pleasing!

Sandals in my hands.

Rengetsu – July 22, Iyengar II & I

I’ll have eventually read every single one of her poems to a Yoga class. The book is a thicket of post-it notes! Full moon Saturday.

MOON IN THE SUMMER TREES

What a delight—

Leaves hide my little hut

From the hot sun by day;

At night, moonlight

Filters through the trees.

Elizabeth Bishop – July 20, Iyengar I

Even though it has been hot, I am trying to remember to appreciate Summer. I’ll miss the heat soon enough.

Song

Summer is over upon the sea.

The pleasure yacht, the social being,

that danced on the endless polished floor,

stepped and side-stepped like Fred Astaire,

is gone, is gone, docked somewhere ashore.

The friends have left, the sea is bare

that was strewn with floating, fresh green weeds.

Only the rusty-sided freighters

go past the moon's marketless craters

and the stars are the only ships of pleasure.

Elizabeth Bishop – July 20 , Iyengar II

For the early birds (an insomniacs), next time I can’t sleep I’ll be imagining Central Park!

Sleeping on the Ceiling

It is so peaceful on the ceiling!

It is the Place de la Concorde.

The little crystal chandelier

is off, the fountain is in the dark.

Not a soul is in the park.

Below, where the wallpaper is peeling,

the Jardin des Plantes has locked its gates.

Those photographs are animals.

The mighty flowers and foliage rustle;

under the leaves the insects tunnel.

We must go under the wallpaper

to meet the insect-gladiator,

to battle with a net and trident,

and leave the fountain and the square.

But oh, that we could sleep up there….