HĀNAU KA UA Hawaiian Rain Names– Oct 12, Iyengar II & I
by Collete Leimon Akana with Kele Gonzales
‘ehu Rain
Like a bird, the rain swoops diagonally
Swirling above the trees
The leaves of the kukui droop, numb from the rain
The pouring rain roils the ocean
Ruffled, flustered, frightened is the voice of the palila bird
The 'ehu mist of the rain rises to the forest
Extending to the face of Maunakea
The voice of the rain on the trees is indiscernable
Speaking gibberish near the face of the cliffs
The constant, unceasing, persistent rain
HĀNAU KA UA Hawaiian Rain Names – Oct 11, Iyengar All Levels
by Collete Leimon Akana with Kele Gonzales
From the most beautiful book I’ve found in a long time! Also from Talk Story, the western-most bookstore in the USA. The Hawaiians have literally hundreds of names for rain, specific to place and character. I may have experienced the one described below on the last day of my trip. The place, time, and pattern of the rain is what I experienced.
Alanilehua Rain
This rain is sometimes called Wailehua. It is associated with the nectar of the lehua blossoms. When this rain starts to come from the waters edge at Hā’ena and from above the upper heavens of that place it will travel to the west, sprinkling the buds of Puna's hinano blossoms and pouring down over the clusters of Pana’ewa’s lehua trees. It won't ever come close to town, but these raindrops will appear outside of the western border of Panaewa. Then it turns and circles to the south, ascending the uplands of Pā’ie’ie, and disappearing within the watery mists of the forest. It has a delicate nature, is rarely seen, and is visible only between the hours of 10 and 12 in the morning.
Gary Snyder – Oct 10th, Fun with Chairs
Coming back from a lovely trip to Kauai, I appreciate both Hawaii and the importance of PLAY! Picked up this collection of Snyder’s at Kauai’s only bookstore, Talk Story.
Sunday
Well I know Sunday is Sabbath
but who ever does it?
Except Berry. Nice poems.
It just happens I'm free
the first time in weeks from
chores and promises,
cracked valves, late bills,
and I think I'll take time
to brush the dog. She likes that.
& oil dry hard leather for sheath for shears,
for the tape rule, hatchet —
read a recipe for an aubergine salad,
this isn't work —
Then go for a hike
toward the bobcat dens and gravels,
hope no wildfires start today
—I'll get there and back
and just for a second,
maybe play.
Denise Levertov – Sept 2I, Iyengar II & I
Happy Full Moon, Happy Autumnal Equinox early. Happily it is not November yet, but this piece makes it sound enticing , as today’s beauty promises.
Air of November
In the autumn brilliance
feathers tingle at fingertips.
This tingling brilliance
burns under cover of gray air and
brown lazily
unfalling leaves,
it eats into stillness zestfully
with sound of plucked strings,
steel and brass strings of the zither,
copper and silver wire
played with a gold ring,
a plucking of crinkled afternoons and
evenings of energy thorns under the pot.
In the autumn brilliance
a drawing apart of curtains
a fall of veils
a flying open of doors, convergence
of magic objects into
feathered hands and crested heads, a prospect
of winter verve, a buildup to abundance.
Denise Levertov – Sept 20, Iyengar III
What we do, this practice, is not common, or simple or easy. Why do we choose it? For the light ? Because it it is “the path between reality and the soul”?
A Common Ground
III
. . . everything in the world must excel itself to be itself.
Pasternak
Not 'common speech’
a dead level
but the uncommon speech of paradise,
tongue in which oracles
speak to beggars and pilgrims:
not illusion but what Whitman called
'the path
between reality and the soul,
a language
excelling itself to be itself,
speech akin to the light
with which at days end and day's
renewal, mountains
sing to each other across the cold valleys.
Denise Levertov – Sept 19, Sunday Fun & Chair Class
This reminded me of a bit of Wendell Berry’s Resting in the Peace of Wild Things. Maybe through our asana practice, taking shapes inspired by animals, we take on some of their other qualities as well. I hope so.
Come into Animal Presence
Come into animal presence.
No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn’t
quicken his trotting
across the track into the palm brush.
What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings
in white star-silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
An old joy returns in holy presence.
D.H. Lawrence – Sept 16, Iyengar II & I
I’ve enjoyed watching the hummingbirds the last couple of weeks as they migrate south. So feisty, yes, but Lawrence puts a whole new spin on their aerial battles.
Humming-Bird
I can imagine, in some otherworld
Primeval-dumb, far back
In that most awful stillness, that only gasped and hummed,
Humming-birds raced down the avenues.
Before anything had a soul,
While life was a heave of Matter, half inanimate,
This little bit chipped off in brilliance
And went whizzing through the slow, vast, succulent stems.
I believe there were no flowers, then,
In the world where the humming-bird flashed ahead of creation.
I believe he pierced the slow vegetable veins with his long beak.
Probably he was big
As mosses and little lizards, they say were once big.
Probably he was a jabbing, terrifying monster.
We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time,
Luckily for us.
Española
Yusef Komunyakaa – Sept 14, Iyengar II & I
Thinking about journey’s as I prepare to get on a plane at the end of next week. I haven’t flown in almost two years, something I used to think was ordinary, now feels like an adventure! I thought this piece was beautiful, plus I’d never heard of a fish skin drum.
WITH MY FISH-SKIN DRUM
I shall sing the caravan home again,
bone & muscle holding me together,
earth & sky beneath my feet,
my fingers on the tabla, a red lotus
opening into the Great Rift Valley
till I am called to the reed boats.
I shall sing the whiskered tern's
lament I stole for occidental nights
as villagers walk toward big cities.
The caravan swallows the dust
of those before, woven into a dance
caught in a glow of night fires,
& I hold to my drum, waking voices
under the singing skin, the shish & tap
of fish skin on waters of a lost road.
August Kleinzahler – Sept 13, Level III
Because of the recent 20th anniversary of 9/11, I’ve been thinking about my time in the Northeast. This felt familiar.
POETICS
I have loved the air above ShopRite Liquors
on summer evenings
better than the Marin Hills at dusk
lavender and gold
stretching miles to the sea.
At the junction, up from the synagogue
a weeknight, necessarily
and with my father—
a sale on German beer.
Air full of living dust:
bus exhaust, airborne grains of pizza crust
wounded crystals
appearing, disappearing
among streetlights and unsuccessful neon.
Ted Kooser & Jim Harrison – Sept 12, Sunday Fun Chair Class
Two old friends began to correspond entirely with brief poems, “because that was the essence of what we wanted to say to each other.” And we are fortunate that they shared!
From the Braided Creek collection
…
My stopped clock is always
jumping ahead,
a sure winner in the race with time,
with every day as long as I wish it to be
…
You asked. What makes you sure?
I have the faith of the blind,
I answered.
Chelsea Jennings – Sept 9, Iyengar II & I
And now, ensorcelled!
THE INVENTION OF BLUE
Before blue blindness
fell at dusk
Clouds composed the sky
Before blue sun never
entered water
Distance fit into a window
.
Blue came last as it was
an ending
A pose night took until
the gold was gone
.
Then on the ocean's grey waves
came ultramarine
Blue had been a species of darkness
Now applied as pure pigment
it tore a hole in the world
.
Blue had existed in dreams of course
This color beside which life
appears ashen
.
Blue that shines in the shadows
Brightens the milk
Makes room
for the lead-white daylight to fill
Chelsea Jennings – Sept 7, Iyengar II & I
I am fascinated, viscerally!
ETYMOLOGY OF YELLOW
Where the roads run straight and long
and the orderly fields show the shape
of the land, wind moves in from the distant
present, the acres of canola shudder
like sunlight, it hurts to regard so much
of a single color (the mind itself in flower),
this, the only yellow on earth
—bright and shining, crying out
Chelsea Jennings – Sept 6, Iyengar III
A poet writing brilliantly about color?! Orange! Two of my favorite worlds collide.
SHADES OF ORANGE
Adriatic
Helen Frankenthaler
Acrylic on canvas
1968
The sun sets all at once. The world
goes orange and stays that way.
Orange soaks, spills over, burnt, persimmon,
still we have no name for the sun
that stains the dusk-violet strip of sea.
Anything large will immerse you or serve
as scenery. So what do you do with the corners
of pictures? There is nowhere else
to go. Orange, an empire of sorrow.
The closer you stand the greater the scale.
Louis Jenkins – Sept 5, Sunday Fun and Chair Class
Thanks to Louis Jenkins for always lightening the load. This is why we practice Yoga…
EXERCISE
Here is a Zen-inspired exercise for all you older guys. Dress comfortably in your shorts and a tee-shirt, hold your trousers in front of you with both hands. You will need to bend forward somewhat in order to hold your pants at knee level or below. Then while balancing on your right leg, lift your left leg and insert it into the left pant leg. Repeat this process lifting your right and balancing on your left leg. See if you can do this without tipping over. Practice without using a chair or other support. This exercise is best done quickly and without thought. But, of course, now you have thought about it.
Richard Powers – Sept 2, Iyengar II & I
Having a tree-themed week. My friend Patricia Wallace sent this beautiful quote after seeing the September newsletter. Sharing genes with trees makes me feel less alone in the world!
The Overstory, excerpted
"You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes. ..."
Amanda Jernigan – Aug 31, Iyengar II & I
On the brink of a new month, and feeling the weather and light changing. I am comforted by the certainty of the changing seasons.
Summer to autumn,
how do we travel,
autumn to winter,
one to another,
winter to springtime,
how do we travel,
springtime to summer,
one to another.
Erica Hunt – Aug 29th, Sunday Fun & Chair Class
I loved the description of interacting with computers. Poetry can come from anywhere.
On occasion, we produce history, the present's surprise
We measure speed by the absence of interruption.
We measure safety by the string of near misses.
We anticipate the end by who is telling the story.
At this time of night, there is a machine that calls you by name and
talks to other machines where you live, where you dance by your
fingertips over the globe, an address at a time, day into night.
This machine feigns a reckless intimacy with you, corrects your
spelling errors, as if reading your mind, but skips over others, like
replacing eros with errors and spiraling with spelling.
…
Erica Hunt – Aug 26, Iyengar II & I
This poet is one of my favorite finds of 2020. By “finds” I mean new -to-me, not that I found her. I loved this description of light.
Verse
…
Light is composed by experience. Without correction it stands still
and is almost invisible collecting dust. Without it, we tend to see
lumps, and not the landscape the voices of people fall out of.
The light in the brain is you.
Langston Hughes – Aug 24, Iyengar II & I
The House in Taos
RAIN
Thunder of the Rain God:
And we three
Smitten by beauty.
Thunder of the Rain God:
And we three
Weary, weary.
Thunder of the Rain God:
And you, she and I
Waiting for nothingness.
Do you understand the stillness
Of this house in Taos
Under the thunder of the Rain God?
I found this piece embedded in an autobiography of Hughes. He described being a college student in the 1920’s, going to Greenwich Village on the weekends to be around writers and artists. Many of these folks were talking about going to Taos, for the desert and the Indians. Remember this is a young black man, who wondered what the Indians thought about these crazy white people. It inspired the poem below. After it was published, many thought it was written about Mabel Dodge Lujan’s house. Hughes said he didn’t know of her when he wrote the poem. This is just the opening stanza. Taos must have sounded like the other side of the world.