Nora Naranjo-Morse – Nov 11, Iyengar II & I
The way this poet writes about and thinks about clay is so similar to the way I think about Yoga. Any passion really…
THERE IS NOTHING LIKE AN IDEA
…
Letting dreams come true
from songs
born from within,
sounds
inviting irresistible challenges.
There is nothing like an idea
that comes to life
through clay.
There is nothing better than a life
whose dreams
and ideas are
just too
impossible
to resist.
Esther G. Belin – Nov 9, Iyengar II & I
Another desert rat finds her way home.
In the Cycle of the Whirl - Voice Inside
…
In the summer of 1993, I worked in Torreon teaching creative writing classes to young people through the Torreon Counseling Services. I was excited to have a job on the rez and the challenge of re-experiencing the place of mystery and good fun. Living there as a grown woman was worlds away from what I remembered as a child.
The population of our little corner of the rez was thriving. HUD housing communities had been built and more were in progress, creating some employment. However, most residents are not permanently employed. A small Thriftway trading store was still the closest source for groceries, gas, and video rentals. As a kid, the land was immense and magical. No matter how much skin and blood I left on mesas and in arroyos, I continued to explore its crevices. That has not changed. The majesty of the land comforts the chaos that seeps down…
Esther G. Belin – Nov 7, Fun with Chairs
Daylight Savings ended today, helpful on the climb toward the Solstice. Rather than fretting about the dark, maybe we rest?
The Bundling…
I am settling into the season of rest
no more hauling wood
it is hard to be inside a dwelling for such long periods of time
it is easy to be inside a dwelling for such long periods of time
no more hauling water
I am settling into the season
Simon Ortiz – Nov 5, Iyengar III
In Sutra I.36, Patanjali offers “contemplating a luminous, sorrowless, effulgent light” as a means to creating inner stability; a quiet mind. Ortiz describes the same idea in this beautiful piece.
LiGHtT
Out to mail a letter at the corner mailbox,
morning moment, the sunlight caught
me striding loosely uphill. I cannot mistake
this morning for what it is: sunshine, air
quick and rich in spirit, alert in my eye.
It is here; I'm crystallized for a moment,
light gleaming at a hill bottom. But it's only
Broderick and Haight, a California city.
It's the power of the solar cosmos holding
me upon the rent tortured covering of self,
making me a patchwork; this is my redemption
after all this morning; this is what will fly me
with the posted mail more than words, more
than language, a swift incision that opens me.
Light, light, the sun's force sears me cleanly
with the joy of the hilly park above me. I
cannot deny light's eager touch, opening petals
of my flowering heart, the sparkling cells
sharing the simple and deeply joyous laughter
of my voice which opens like a child's. Ho!
Light of this morning, I am alive, alive with you.
Simon Ortiz – Nov 4, Iyengar II & I
Iyengar Yoga has a saying “The Power of the Pause.” Meaning one should be able to stop, take a breath, evaluate your situation then respond rather than react. Or stop, pause, get organized, go forward, or not. To be able to pause can be an incredibly powerful tool! Simon Ortiz capture this idea so beautifully.
PAUSE: YOURS: OURS
"just pausing,” she writes from Wyoming.
We're on opposite sides of the Continental Divide.
Yet I could be on her side. And she could be on this side.
Pause before the next step. "Or leap.”
We're not butterflies though we may wish to be.
Though we may imagine to be.
Though we may become aflight at times.
A pause is never absolute or too wide or fearful or minor.
The pause is there as it should be.
Significant, special, a moment to savor.
A space to let yourself be held within.
A space and moment that is.
Zuni – Nov 2, Iyengar II & I
For Native American Heritage Month. “When you think of a word what comes to mind? Maybe several layers come?”Your answers will give clues to your particular worldview.
Zuni Derivations
BECOME LIGHT, BECOME WHITE
terrestrial light
daylight
life
cause to be light
see
make visible
valuable light
white corn
white shell necklace
STAND
cause to stand
stop
cause oneself not to stand
run
stand together on the ground
be a village
— Selected & arranged by Dennis Tedlock
Edgar Allan Poe – Oct 31, Fun with Chairs
How lucky am I, to get to read The Raven on Halloween, and teach Bakasana on Chairs.
THE RAVEN
…
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I
shrieked, upstarting—
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plu
tonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul
hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my
door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form
from off my door!
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is
sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber
door
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is
dreaming
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his
shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadows that lies floating on
the floor
Shall be lifted —nevermore!
Edgar Allan Poe – Oct 29, Iyengar III
Of course, of course…
ALONE
FROM childhood's hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I loved—I loved alone—
Then—in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn.
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by
From the thunder and the storm
And the cloud that took the form
When the rest of Heaven was blue
Of a demon in my view.
Edgar Allan Poe – Oct 28, Iyengar II & I
It’s Halloweeeeeeeeen! Poe of course! So fun to read.
THE BELLS
…
IV.
Hear the tolling of the bells—
Iron bells!
….
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone—
They are neither man nor woman—
They are neither brute nor human—
They are Ghouls:—
And their king is who tolls:—
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells:—
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells—
To the sobbing of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells
Of "the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
David Hinton – Oct 26, Iyengar Level I
Finally, Catron County’s wide open emptiness cured me of my desire to live in Kauai. Once a desert rat, always a desert rat.
It's everywhere
here in this
wide-open
desert: the ten-billion
year sun-
pulse in which
we live. Even a simple
morning walk
measures out the deep
structures of
things, lungs
breathing our
scant heart-
beat of sky.
David Hinton – Oct 26, Iyengar Level II
After visiting Walter de Maria’s “The Lightning Field”, my friend Jane Lackey said the word '“awesome” was correctly used.
Night's generous
dark offers
light a place
to enter. Dawn
smolders mountain
peaks into view, ignites
desert-grass
golds. Sun
pushes darkness
deeper and deeper
away here, until
the eye's dark opening
is all that
remains of
darkness. Wandering
through another
day, looking,
looking, I
keep the borderless
generosity of night
alive.
Campbell McGrath – Oct 25, Iyengar All Levels
After visiting Walter de Maria’s magnificent masterwork The Lightning Field. The isolation made contemplation of the stars and the question “Who’s there?” natural. McGrath’s questioning is a lot more elegant.
Voyager I & II (1977)
Now we begin to speak for you.
To greet, entreat, declaim and argue.
The voices we carry are yours, of course,
your melodies and genetic sequences sourced
and etched into our golden cores.
Like spores
from a broken milkweed plant
we float past planet
after planet, their parabolic array likewise
among the elemental designs
we display. Imagine the moment
of contact, in whichever quadrant
of whichever time-lost galaxy,
when they happen upon us and we
rehearse the tale
of how we first set sail
upon these silent interstellar seas,
replay the encoded dreams and histories
which impel a species
to step into the darkness, to leave
the only home it has ever known
in the hope that it is not alone.
Let there be others, in the great night,
we whisper. Let there be light.
Aditi Machado – Oct 22, Iyengar Level III
Learning to find the sea within…
First 'the sea indents the universe,’ then my body is
a beach from which I look into foam, an inquiry proceeds
a simile along its likeness.
Leslie Marmon Silko – Oct 21, Iyengar Level II & I
In Hawaii, everyone is Ohana, Family. People, plants, animals, rocks, reefs, the wind, the rain…all are Ohana. The world would be a better place if we humans, weren’t so certain that we are the center of the universe…
THE TIME WE CLIMBED SNAKE MOUNTAIN
Seeing good places
for my hands
I grab the warm parts of the cliff
and I feel the mountain as I climb.
Somewhere around here
yellow spotted snake is sleeping on his rock
in the sun.
So
please, I tell them
watch out,
don't step on the spotted yellow snake
he lives here.
The mountain is his.
Norman MacCaig – Oct 19, Iyengar Level
I also love frogs. The only frogs I saw in Kauai, sadly, were flattened on the road. And there were quite a few…Sharing this piece because rosster crowing at 1:00pm (which they do), didn’t feel quite right, ha! I love the bravery and the image of ballet dancer’s legs.
Frogs
Frogs sit more solid
than anything sits. In mid-leap they are
parachutists falling
in a free fall. They die on roads
with arms across their chests and
heads high.
I love frogs that sit
like Buddha, that fall without
parachutes, that die
like Italian tenors.
Above all, I love them because,
pursued in water, they never
panic so much that they fail
to make stylish triangles
with their ballet dancer's
legs.
Norman MacCaig – Oct 19, Iyengar Level II
One of my favorite “unexpecteds” from my trip to Kauai were the wild chickens everywhere. Evidently each group of people who found the islands brought chickens with them. The chickens interbred and thrived in domestic settings, until Hurricane Iniki in 1994. The hurricane destroyed everyone’s chicken coops, the chickens ran wild and were never recaptured. I love chickens, and even love roosters crowing at 5:00am (makes me feel less alone when I am up practicing). Not everyone feels the same way, I get it. Anyway, MacCaig is pretty far from Kauai, but roosters are roosters!
Cock before dawn
Those dabbing hens I ferociously love
sag on their perches, half deflated.
I'll have none of it. I'm regimental. A plumbline
goes from my head to my toes. I burnish
the dark with my breast.
Lucifer's my blood brother. When I spread my wings
I'm crystal battlements and thunderbolts. I tread the earth
by pretending not to.
The West and the East are measured from me ...
It’s time I crowed. The sun will be waiting.
Norman MacCaig – Oct 18, Iyengar All Levels
For a beautiful Autumn morning in New Mexico!
Perfect morning
No idle corner in the air,
No formless seeking in a cloud
Marred the completeness everywhere
As though defects were disallowed
…
W.S. Merwin – Oct 15, Iyengar III
Merwin lived on Maui for decades, planting a magnificent garden. It was his birthday while I was on Kauai. From his last collection…Yes, I’m still obsessed with water.
STILL WATER
Clouds over the mountaintops were its ancestors
fine rain gathered in rills among the hidden crags
each vein finding its way to its own kin
joining them and gathering speed and finding its voices
taking along flakes of starlight moonlight
daylight down through the wild distances
through dreams of flying and forgetting
and dreams of belonging but departing
now it lies there at last by its green pasture
and cradles the stillness of the empty sky
this is the present it was flowing toward
this is the face that it can never see
Gary Snyder – Oct 14, Iyengar II & I
All over Kauai, there were signs, sometimes hand-lettered reminding people that we are all Ohana (family). For them Ohana includes plants, birds, fish animals, rooks, reefs, etc. That open expression of basic values was interesting and refreshing. Because of my recent experience I was drawn to this piece Inupiaq is one of the languages of the Inuit people and a name they use for themselves. If you created a values tree, what would it look like?
Inupiaq values
HUMOR
SHARING
HUMILITY
HARD WORK
SPIRITUALITY
COOPERATION
FAMILY ROLES
AVOID CONFLICT
HUNTER SUCCESS
DOMESTIC SKILLS
LOVE FOR CHILDREN
RESPECT FOR NATURE
RESPECT FOR OTHERS
RESPECT FOR ELDERS
RESPONSIBILITY FOR TRIBE
KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE
KNOWLEDGE OF FAMILY TREE
On the walls of a classroom in a tiny school in Kobuk Alaska just a bit
south of the tree-line.