The Year in Daryl

2014, the Year in Daryl

This was such a great year, so many lessons learned, obstacles overcome, so many great things happened this year and I am bringing such powerful and empowering energy with me into the new year.

The year started off fun. I had a Star Wars-themed Birthday Party this year, which was so fun, I felt like a little kid again, and it's exactly what a birthday party should be all about.

Next up, I made a really tough decision, left my part-time jobs at BHCC and WIT to take a full time job at Regis College. This ended up being a wrong decision to make, but I bring a lot of lessons from the experience with me. I was embattled in my position from the first day, the whole experience ended up being very medieval, abusive, and it was great to finally have a full-time academic position but HEARTBREAKING to not be able to do it because of the intrigue and in-fighting and incompetence of the people around me. This difficult job was further complicated by three health emergencies:

1. I broke my left shoulder and damaged a disc in my neck getting out of the transport van at Regis College my second week there. I never filed a report, didn't want to lose a new job, but I lost feeling in three fingers, part of my hand, and it took over three months of PT to get my shoulder fixed, feeling back in my hand and fingers, with no pain killers (I don't believe in them).

2. I also got bit by a spider my second month there, some kind I ended up being allergic to, and that led to a staff infection, which wiped out my immune system, and I ended up really sick.

3. From that sickness I ended up with pneumonia, was mis-diagnosed for two weeks, was given the wrong medication for one week, and then missed 10 days of work (finally, time to heal!) while I fought to recover my health. 

This ended up being the sickest period of my life in the last 5 years, and it was a struggle to overcome.

On a positive note, I went to Providence, RI for the first time, fell in love with it, and it has become a new mini-get away location for me.

However, if not for being unhappy at the job, being sick and injured all the time, dealing with really terrible and incompetent people, I wouldn't have put the time into discerning my future, my vocation, the course of my life a bit more, and I wouldn't have realized that I wanted to work with international and first generation students, and that I want to be a full time professor more than anything else. The tough experiences empowered me to work hard to overcome my situation and get into my current positions and directions.

In May I went away to a writer's conference at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I did my MFA degree, and it was the first time I was back in four years and it will be the last time I will go back (unless they pay me). The experience brought up all the tough memories of how poorly I was treated there as a student, how it damaged my love of writing and literature, and really took my decision to leave philosophy to become a writer, and give me twice the heartbreak in return. On the positive side, I realized that I don't want to go back there for writing ever again, that I need to heal and reclaim my power back from that experience, and I used that week to focus on and create the vocational opportunities that I have now.

In June so many good things happened for me:

First off: I got to go to the Yale Writer's Conference, which was the BEST writer's conference I have ever been to, I made good friends, had a great mentor, and felt that there was some good healing as a writer going on there. Bonus points that Yale is so freaking cool! I wish I could go back there again this year!

Second, I got married to the most beautiful woman, the most complex and difficult, the most inwardly creative person I have ever met, and it was four years of struggling to come together, seeing it actually happen, and it was definitely a great day, a real highlight of my life. I am honored to be married to a muse! I am so honored and humbled by all the great friends and family who also made this such a special day.

July saw more struggles with the Regis job, I made my decision to leave around the 4th of July, began interviewing for jobs immediately, and soon enough, two great jobs (that I have now) surfaced. I am totally blessed for the people who gave me such great recommendations for those jobs, and to have the opportunity to have those jobs today.

August arrived and two wonderful things happened as well:

First, I got to go back to Paris, and also, for the first time, Rouen. France is such an amazingly beautiful, romantic, creative, cultural country, I would LOVE to live there someday, and the wonders of France just keep calling me back on a regular basis. It was the best honeymoon, the best vacation, and the best place to visit.

Second, I began training for my new jobs at NEU and MCPHS, quit my job at Regis (and was chased off campus as I left--robbed of $2000 by my boss and HR). There was not much time off at all this summer, I was a little burnt going into the semester, but these jobs working with International Students, teaching Philosophy, and back to teaching Composition and Rhetoric, were so empowering for me, I learned so much from these students, and I LOVE these teaching jobs. I was meant to be a teacher and a mentor and I really feel that in my bones.

This Fall was all about work, I taught five days a week, I was constantly teaching, emailing, grading, evaluating my life, and I feel like I did some good teaching, grew as a person, and strengthened my relationship as the year came to an end. Once again, grateful for my students, my wife, my cats, my jobs, my health, as the year moved along.

Speaking of strengthening my relationship, this was also the year of realizing how I need to be careful who is and who is not in my life. We had some douchebag try and sabotage our relationship, I had a false friend (and tattoo artist) show their true colors, I lost a lot of friends this year (on Facebook) when I started to talk openly about politics, religion, philosophical questions, and that really showed me how important it was to follow Nietzsche's advice to not divide myself by others, but to increase myself with my own wild wisdom. This was a year of me protecting me from others and having a real zero tolerance policy of taking shit from people that I shouldn't have to, and looking out for my own best interests.

Other awesome stuff that happened this year:

* I sponsored lots of new music and art projects on Kickstarter.

* I got interested in new bands and new styles of music

* I got a new, awesome tattoo artist (from Japan!)

* I got my beautiful mandolin, "Chapel," this year

* I broke free from my atheist phase, and fell ever deeper in love with Ganesh

* I took three vacations to Maine this year, two to Providence,one to Montpelier, one to New Haven, one to Paris, one to Rouen.

* I ate lots of GREAT Vegan food this year.

* I discovered Wittgenstein for myself, and am in LOVE with his philosophy and example

* So much great TV, Comics, Movies, I am not ashamed of being into them once again at all

* I am ending the year with a renewal to return to BHCC to teach, a place I really missed teaching at, and a place I would like to make a greater impact at

* I went to a few Yoga classes this year, scattered over four Yoga schools, and a new Hot Yoga school opened up 15 minutes from my home

* I had the fortune of good friends in my life that I could count on

* I got into a Philosophy PhD program (in England) although I will have to delay entry until the Fall of 2015 due to current finances

* I affirmed for myself and discovered ever-deeper the things I believe in, the things that I stand for, and the things I want to do with my life

* Both of my cats are alive, playful, and healthy!

* During Xmas this year, I felt like, for the first time in at least 15 years, I had a "family" to base my life around and with

There were things that I wish I had done differently this year, and that I plan to work on and overcome in the next year:

1. I started the year at 316 pounds, was down to 289 at one point, but finish the year at 333 pounds. Whatever it is that I have created that has changed the course of my relationship to food and weight and eating, I need to turn that around this year. I am up 90 pounds now in three years. I really do miss being thin and healthy.

2. I wish I had put more time into mandolin, really leave this year as a "musician" and that I stop putting my musical self off for another year

3. I wanted to learn French, I didn't. I wanted to get back into German, I didn't. I would like to learn Farsi, but I haven't. 

4. I broke my Veganism several times this year (shellfish, dairy in baked goods, imported cheese), when I was really sick, as I was worried my body wasn't healing, and as I have developed some health issues in the late Fall, all based on poor nutrition, I am really struggling to recommit to Veganism for another year of it means my health will continue to suffer. The only time I lost weight this year was when I was NOT a Vegan, and while I will never eat chicken, pork, beef, turkey, (I never ate duck or goat or lamb or veal, so no worry there) eggs, drink milk or cream again, I am concerned for my health that unless I can clean up my eating and make a Vegan diet healthy for me, that I will have to go back to being a pescetarian. This is the hardest decision I have sitting before me.

5. I wish I had done more Yoga. Since starting Yoga in 2009, this year I did the least amount of Yoga (21 classes total!) than in any other year. Granted I have been sick, injured, broke, conflicted about the Yoga world, over-worked, but there is no way I can't make room for at least 3 (4) days a week of Yoga practice. 

6. I leave the year with no completed Novel, notebooks filled with writer's notes and character sketches, wasted retreats and conferences, and I keep waiting for the moment that I feel healed from VCFA, I have the time to write, and I can focus on being a writer. This recovery process feels way too far and way too long.

My intentions for the coming year:

1. Lose and keep off 101 pounds.

2. 150 Yoga classes (that's just 3 classes a week)

3. Four short stories (12-20 pages)

4. One Novel manuscript; and the signing of publication for that manuscript

5. One International vacation (most likely London this year), at the least

6. No Alcohol this year (except on Vacation)

7. A year where I am impervious to injury, severe colds, viruses, and sickness, and my body heals

8. One big tattoo on my right ribs, and the filling in of my sleeves on both arms (getting my Phoenix fixed?)

9. An ABUNDANCE of wealth, so much so that I can help out friends and family and struggling musicians

10. A full time academic TEACHING job

11. Increased Mandolin Mastery (at least three, 30-minute practices a week), joining an Americana band to perform with.

12. Begin my Philosophy PhD OR get my TOEFL Certification and learn fluent German

Thank you all for sharing my life with me.

I look forward to being a better person, a kinder person, a more patient husband, a wiser teacher, a stronger friend, a more passionate writer, a deeper thinker, and a healthy Yogi.

Best of luck, health, and happiness to you all in the coming New Year!

Reflecting on "Decoding Deepak"

If I didn't hate Deepak Chopra before watching, "Decoding Deepak," I have all the ammunition for a lifetime now. The documentary, made by his own son, which offers itself as a glimpse into the inconsistencies of his father's lifestyle vs his teachings, ends up as nothing more than apologetics, aimed at removing some of the spoiled rich guilt from the son, and making every excuse possible of why Deepak says one thing, does another thing, and the great secret to his spiritual teachings is nothing less than network with the wealthy and famous, dumb down ancient wisdom until it lacks all transformative power, offer yourself as a champion of the spiritual seeker while collecting their tolls and fairs along the way, and smiling about your wealth and empire, your vast Indian legacy, while doing jack shit about the conditions in India, the conditions in any location he exploits for his own gain, but does nothing to remedy. 

Just when you think you can dislike someone more, they show you just how deep that vacuous tunnel goes. He's just one more link in the chain of what has happened to Yoga over the last 50 years, to make it a sickened shadow of corporate and pop culture America, cashed in for sexual celebrates, chic studio celibates, trendy manufacturers, the at-the-moment thin and young and shallow. It makes me wonder all-the-more, "where is real Yoga hiding today?" 

Perhaps the Deepaks and Mastin Kips and Jois family and Back Bay Yogas of the world serve one important purpose: obscure Yoga's true body and spirit, so the sincere seeker will still have to seek hard, pay for it's true initiation. Sometimes, the degradation serves a higher purpose: behind the tourist-driven ruins, lays the garden of eternal wonders.

Vegan Seitan Stew

Vegan Recipe of the Week from the House of Mor-Gor

Using this cold and rainy day to make my Seitan Stew.
Want to make it for yourself? Here's how you do it:

1. Get your slow cooker! (I prefer to make stews in a slow cooker, the flavors come together better, but you can do it in a big soup pan if you want, just brown the onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms first, add the other ingredients, the liquid last, cook on medium until it comes to a boil, then med-low for another hour, simmer beyond that).

2. Saute 1 large yellow onion (diced) and 5 chopped (1/2 inch) stalks of celery, in 1 tbsp of olive oil, on the stove until the onion becomes slightly browned.

3. Take 1 small can of organic tomatoes paste, put it in a bowl with 3 cups of boiled water, 1/4 soy sauce--I use Braggs, 2 tbsp wine vinegar, 1 tbsp cumin powder, 2 tbsp smoked paprika, 1 tbsp thyme.

4. In your slow cooker, layer the food in the following order:

2 tbsp olive oil
1.25 pounds of potatoes (cut into 2 inch wedges)
8 ounces of Turnips (I cut them into "french fries")
6 carrots (cut into 3/4 inch pieces)
Add the sauted onions and celery
10 ounces of sliced white mushrooms
2 Cups of petite or regular size peas (I use organic frozen)
16 ounces of Seitan (make your own or use Upton's Naturals)
Add the tomatoes paste mixture

5. Fill the slow cooker with cold water so that the water level comes 1/2 inch from the top

6. Cover and seal

7. Cooking time: High for 5 hours and Low for two if you want it to eat it on the same day you make it. If not, it can go on med-low (not warm!) before you leave for work or before you go to sleep, and be ready to eat when you come home from work, or to put in the fridge and re-heat, on the stove, when you come home. On low it takes at about 10 hours to cook. This stew gets better the longer it sits so I will often make it the night before, put it in the fridge in the morning, then put it into a soup pan when I come home to cook it quickly for dinner.

8. Serve with bow-tie pasta (we use whole wheat), vegan egg noodles, french bread, French/Italian crackers, a scoop of vegan sour cream if you want to make this more "Eastern European."

Looking Down the Long Dark Highway

I just saw the last episode of Sonic Highways. If you haven't seen it, on HBO, I cannot recommend a show about the history of American music more. I wish it were longer, I wish they went to more cities, but 8 cities, 8 episodes, and you really get this connection of Americana-Folk-Blues-Jazz-Bluegrass-Soul-Rock-Punk-Hip Hop (the last one, of course, you know I hate) and just how much so many of these streams are connected, how much respect so many of the Punk musicians have for Americana and Bluegrass (which is where I've been the last 5 years of my life) music. 

Most powerful, the importance of believing in your dreams, following your creative dreams through, is so moving and essential, such a guiding message, and finding that dream in the cultures and contours of the USA, the good parts of it, where artists and writers and musicians and creatives all network together, create their own scenes, their own sounds and sights, it's such a powerful message for me, especially because of all the musical and artistic dreams I have had during my life that I let die, for other people, for other obligations, and never really believed in myself and my own vision enough to see into reality. I think that so much of this show came through in all of my drunken realizations and confessions and insights the other night, and have suddenly dumped the responsibility back on my lap again, challenging me to do something with these visions and dreams and ideas and make something out of them, something that is lasting and transformative and ME. And of course, here I am, wondering "yoga, novel writing, travel writing, poetry, cross genre, philosophy, music--mandolin, rest, blues guitar?---, art, vegan cooking, ceremonial magick" all these doors I've stormed open and then freeze in front of like a scared deer, like I can't go in without watching the others crumble. I think some people are fortunate enough to know what they are passionate about and then they do it, but for me, I have several things and I mourn the others dying whenever I give myself whole-heartedly to just one or two. And yet I know that, it's not what you fling at the castle walls that really matters, it's that you fling at all, well, and with all your heart and might.

I'm really protective of my time these next few weeks. It feels like I am so close to seeing inside of myself for the first time in a long while, and getting on path, making that leap, that charge, that does give me the focus and force to pick a path or two and really commit to it. When my energies are channeled into one direction, they are quite unstoppable. Leaving behind the fear and the anger and finding ways around the seeming obstacles ( i am NOT a people person) may not be as much of a challenge as simply trusting the path itself to provide the true way.

A long time ago, when Daoist Martial Arts were my life, my master told me, "If you trust in the Way, the Way provides everything you need for the journey." I have found this to count for just about everything I've ever fully given myself and my heart to, taken on to master.

So, yes, this show kicked my ass over the last eight weeks, and I feel so exposed and open to change, to following the flow of my changes and callings and see them through to a happy and stable and empowering life.

Today's darkness and isolation are welcome. Life is a long, dark highway, and the sound of your soul, is what you have to most learn to listen to and discern, follow.

 

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your
thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your
consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new,
great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive,
and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed
yourself to be.” --Patanjali

Vegan Quiche

Pre-heat oven to 375

Cut into small pieces:
4 cloves garlic
1/2 Italian zucchini
1/2 red pepper
1 small vidalia onion

Salute in 1 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat, sprinkle with salt and pepper, cook until onion becomes translucent. When it's done, add 1/2 cup of water, 1 tbsp olive oil, set aside

In a blender, add:
1 package of silken tofu
1/4 nutritional yeast
2 ounces of soaked raw cashews (you can also use pine nuts if you choose)
1/2 cup Chickpea flour (or any gluten-free flour will do)
1 tbsp Turmeric powder
1 tbsp corn starch
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp thyme
The vegetable mixture from the pan

Option: I didn't do this today, but you can add 6 soaked and diced sun-dried tomatoes, 1 tbsp chopped fresh basil, 1/2 cup of Daiya or other Vegan Italian cheese.

Blend all ingredients in the blender on medium until smooth.

Spray the saute pan (provided it is oven safe) from before with olive oil. If you aren't counting calories then you can add in 2 tbsp of olive oil instead. You could also put parchment paper into a 9x9 pan, spray it, and pour the mixture in there, you can use quiche pans, you can also spray muffin cups and make these as muffins.

Add mixture!

Option: I didn't do this today, but you could add 1/2 cup of homemade bread crumbs to the top, thin tomato slices, chopped basil leaves, drizzle with olive oil. 

Bake in center rack at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. 

Note: Don't worry about the sides browning, they will brown early and then stop browning as the center catches up to the rest of the pan.

Let sit for 30 minutes

Serve with:

Dark, flavored coffee (with coconut milk creamer!)
Tomato slices
Toast with butter
Rosemary Home Fries
Vegan Sausage
All the above!

Neither Guest Nor Ghost

Today begins the last week of teaching for the semester. I have been fortunate enough to have had the time to stay home these last few days and let the withdrawal process pass. Every study I have ever seen on food addiction shows that the brain relates to food addiction just as severe as it does to Heroin addiction, so this has not been an easy last few days. I feel unready to go out into the world at this stage, especially into the midst of something that triggers my eating (academia) so severely, something I have woven into my eating problems, but I have no choice, it's going to be an easy week overall (student presentations, summaries, meetings, grading, final grades), and then I get a few days off, head to New Haven (CT) to visit the grandparents (which will more than likely cost me three days off of plan and diet), and then come home, get back into a groove, then we have a mini-vacation before Xmas (my present to my wife), and then Xmas itself, which will end up being a joyous time with family, but definitely off plan, eating and drinking, before I get to really focus and get deep into reclaiming my health and body back from all this fat and addiction and poor health.

Having time to reset the clock is really important. I feel like you need a lot of down time at first when overcoming an addiction, time to think about who you are and how you got here and what you are willing to do to change your situation. For me, I keep coming up with Yoga, that I used to be a very serious and intense Yogi, that I once wanted nothing and did nothing that interfered with my desire to be a Yogi long into the rest of my life. A lot of things changed that, my lifestyle and relationship status changed, and then I had to be social again, and then my time needed to be, I chose for it to be, divided up more fairly for others, and that is fine, it was fine, but unless you are on the path with another Yogi, it becomes hard to justify spending all of your time at class, reading about Yoga philosophy, going to events, going on retreats, saving to get to India, when you end up starving a non-Yoga relationship in the process. But I think I would feel this way if I did Daoist Martial Arts or Aikido or Kendo, anything else that would be a lifestyle to embrace, and not some part time thing I do everyday to keep my trendy sexy thing going. The big problem with all of this diet and health and body reclamation is I'm not a part-time, half-assed person, and I can't do this on a part time, half-assed basis, and now I find myself asking myself if I'm serious enough to risk losing a relationship I really enjoy so that I can be in control of my eating, exercise, and health. That's a tough question a lot of people have to ask themselves you find themselves in a lifestyle that is happy, in a relationship that is loving, but is going to kill them in a few years if they don't make major changes to how they are living. This current life is really loving and really supportive, but as someone who struggles with diet and health issues, who can struggle to be a shut-in eater and run his body to the ground, this is a life that supports that sort of action as well, I must admit that I am terrified that the start of a serious push to reclaim my diet and health, reclaim a Yoga practice, reclaim some personhood, is the beginning of the end of my relationship, and I have to ask myself if I would rather have 5-6 years of this relationship, and then die of heart and liver disease, or risk losing the relationship, and live into my 90's. The answer may seem obvious, but then again, what is a life without love? I wouldn't trade places with some of my perpetually single, unsexed, un-dateable, scared of intimacy, come home alone and eat Kitchari life for one minute, don't even get me started on the bullshit idea of a bramachara lifestyle. I see the damage it does to my friends, the mental damage, the loss of fire and life from their eyes because no one has gone down on them in 10 years, and that shit scares me just as much as death; they might as well not be alive at that stage they look so ghoulish and lost.

But back to me, this journey here, this path, I also know that I have unlimited control on how it works, the roles people play, and if I set up a life where my partner comes along, then that's the role I've asked her to play, if she leaves, I asked her to play that role as well. The role I want myself to play in my own life, that's the important thing here, that's what's at stake here, this is what I need to be focused on as I survive this Holiday month, as I pass through all the trials and obstacles to my momentum and inertia over the next month, and figure out how to make a new start, but a start that doesn't burn down the entire house I dwell in now, just gets rid of the ghost (guest) house I've made in the back, to hide in. Be neither a guest nor a ghost in your own life.

Merwin Poem

A poem I really relate to: the relationship between language, consciousness, and a divine placement, relationship within nature.

In the Winter of My Thirty-Eighth Year

BY W.S. Merwin

It sounds unconvincing to say When I was young

Though I have long wondered what it would be like

To be me now

No older at all it seems from here

As far from myself as ever

Walking in fog and rain and seeing nothing

I imagine all the clocks have died in the night

Now no one is looking I could choose my age

It would be younger I suppose so I am older

It is there at hand I could take it

Except for the things I think I would do differently

They keep coming between they are what I am

They have taught me little I did not know when I was young

There is nothing wrong with my age now probably

It is how I have come to it

Like a thing I kept putting off as I did my youth

There is nothing the matter with speech

Just because it lent itself

To my uses

Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars

It is my emptiness among them

While they drift farther away in the invisible morning

W. S. Merwin, "In the Winter of my Thirty-Eighth Year" 

Copyright © 1993 by W.S. Merwin, reprinted with permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

 

The Rise of Day Care Yoga: The Fall of YOGA Continues

(This originally appeared in my old Blog, February 2014)

Last year at this time I was SO EXCITED for a local Yoga school (Coolidge Corner Yoga) to open up. It was in a prime location, one that I had looked at for a while and said, "if I owned a Yoga school, that's where I would put it." It was going to feature warm classes, Forest style (which I'm not a fan of-- So Anusara and Bhikram Yoga are evil because their founders proposition sex to their students and teachers, but Ana Forrest can take pride in killing animals, creating an industry that matches animal murder with Yoga, and that's completely okay? Ahimsa, Anyone?), Vinyassa, but it was the location, the beautiful rooms, the changing areas, the teachers they had initially signed on, that made me so excited.

And then the school opened, I got my special "30 Days for 30 Dollars" (which EVERY school should have) and stepped onto the floor for my first week. First class, warm, not warm enough, but still warm--stop opening the windows in the Winter and Spring!--, teacher kind of disinterested, no personal attention (being an obese tattooed male I am used to being the triple-threat of teachers not wanting to work with me), but an okay class. At the end of the class, the door to the back of the room opened up, a little tiny, adorable blonde-haired face peaked in, and then went back behind the door. Okay, cute, that stuff happens. The class ended, the door swung open, and the room was flooded with children running to hug their helicopter moms, barely able to control their 75-minutes of agony away from them.

Here's the picture: I'm a 44-year-old male, drenched in sweat, my black guinea-T barely concealing my chest, my Occult tattoos vibrant and abundant, my shorts clinging to me and my large junk. I'm exhausted, I'm dehydrated, I'm tired, and there are little tiny people running all over the room, across my mat, and I have gone from calm Yoga mode, to hearing baby talk, kid talk, and being a scenic inconvenience for questioning and terrified eyes.

Two more classes happened at this Coolidge Corner school before the third class, the end of my stay there. I left class one day, more kids running into the room, I walked into the changing booth, two children attempted to walk into my booth while I was completely naked--sorry for the eventual therapy they will need--and then I found myself waiting, standing forever, while children jammed up the hallways, jammed up the two bathrooms ("Hey, I gotta pee!") and I shivered in my clean clothes, waited 15-minutes to put on my shoes, while eager moms crammed grapes into their children's mouths, opened baggies of animal crackers, opened and read child-approved books to their broodlings, and in general, children sat and laid down on the floor, crouched in little balls, huddled around their parents, cried, yelled, screamed, laughed, ran, whined, and babbled on and on while I just wanted to get to my shoes and jacket and leave.

This experience is not unique to this one school (which, by the way, advertises that it's a "child friendly school" even offering day care while mothers are in class--a trend that's rapidly taking over Boston schools), more and more schools in Boston are allowing children to wait for their parents, run into the rooms, offer day care for the 60, 75, God Forbid 90-minutes, that child and mother are pried away from the death grip of attachment parenting and then restored, as if combat families far away surprisingly returned and reunited at a local sports event. Yoga schools in Boston are now more than ever offering child Yoga classes, teen Yoga classes, Mommy and Me Yoga classes, and time slots that could, and should, be filled with serious Yogis, with passing the line of transmission from teacher to student (another future blog will indeed focus on the lack of teaching in Yoga these days, for the skill of leading), or at the least valuable time slots that could be used for adults to have the privacy away from family, responsibilities, and the over-crowding and infringement of other people's families and responsibilities into their own, independent lives. 

Another school that recently opened (Down Under Yoga, Brookline) in Boston, offered no changing rooms, but two bathrooms, two showers, an entranceway to stand and shiver in (where, every time the front door opened, a gust of cold Winter air raced across you) after your hot class. Then, when a local child-friendly and birthing center went out of business, that Yoga school took on mothering classes, birthing classes, and soon enough, children and teen classes, and now I am standing in a small ten-foot space, my clothes stuck to me, waiting 10-minutes to get into one of the two bathrooms because someone is washing little princesses' cookie-covered face,  children racing into me, past me, through me, and I'm freezing to death and catching bronchitis because someone designed a Yoga school without realizing that open doors lead to cold air and all the bathrooms (the only place to change) are taken up by parents and children running on helicopter-parent time.

Yoga schools in Boston are turning into Yoga Day Care Centers. While the Yoga school was once a place to pass on the traditions of India, a place for physical and spiritual growth, they have adapted to the USA so much, that they now resemble all that's wrong with this culture.

Don't want to sweat?

We'll turn the temperature down, we'll make sure that when you leave, you won't even have to change your clothes!

Don't want to have a different religion in front of you?

Don't worry, we'll conceal the Hindu origins of Yoga and give you white-washed Buddhism (with trendy Buddha head statues), Jewish Yoga classes, Christian Yoga classes, we won't talk about Hindu philosophy, Yoga will be as un-Hindu, as un-India as possible, no decoration that will remind you of India at all. Oh, and don't worry, we'll de-sexualize the practice as much as possible so that none of your "triggers" (emotional, psychological, or physical) are set off.

Can't bare the idea of being away from your little princess or your little soldier for 75-minutes, and they need therapy to deal with the separation itself, well don't worry, they can sit in the next room, they take classes alongside you, they can take a class before you while you run next door and get a latte, and then you can take your class while we watch them, they can run into your wanting arms the very second class is over. Because you need to squeeze in a rushed Yoga session, while still helicoptering around your precious, unblemished, overly-controlled minion copy of everything you wanted to be but won't do for yourself because of your victim mentality, the practice of those who are seriously giving themselves to Yoga, is hindered, most precisely, because what we love about Yoga, REAL YOGA, is choking to death on the leash you've strapped to your child.

Yoga schools are rapidly no longer interested in being schools, shalas, being places to grow and push and find yourself, they are another attachment, another commodity, another pitched business deal, another security, another convenience that you won't have to be inconvenienced by.

If the Cold Yoga invasion of Boston (most schools here are 66-72 degrees, something also prominent now in nearby cities like Portsmouth, Portland, and Providence) was the first wave of the death of Yoga in this city, the teacher mill industry (thank you Back Bay Yoga!) the second wave, the absurdity Yoga craze (Hip Hop Yoga! Madonna Yoga! Lady Gaga Yoga! Thank you Back Bay Yoga for pissing all over the face of Yoga in Boston!) the third wave, the Child Care movement is the next, and possibly most dangerous wave.

It speaks really terribly about our society that we are more and more attached to our children, more and more they are attached to us, and there is no healthy solitude time (for parent or child), and with the increase in attachment comes, ironically,  an increase in hours worked, nannies, day cares, scheduled sporting events, dance lessons, play dates; in this society, the attachment is increasing but the time away is increasing as well, and the result of that is, in the places where adults once found solace their children are now coming with them, invading these spaces with them, but still insisting on living a life well-expanded with isolation, and false-remedied through attachment. The places where we once went to be adults are now places where we must bare the burden of other's children: coffee shops, book shops, fine restaurants, yoga schools, concerts--FUCK! kids don't even go to college anymore without the direct hip attachment of their parents constantly calling, constantly texting, and constantly having their children come home on the weekends. I have students who live on campus but go home Wednesday-Sunday because, "I'm close to my family."

Look folks, you like your children more than I do. Let's be honest here. Your child is precious and wonderful and beautiful and talented and amazing and the center of the Universe to YOU, your direct family, and only them. I wish them happiness and success, I wish they become brilliant and liberated members of our society (and we need liberated people more than ever), I wish them a long life, I just don't wish them running around my bookshops while I'm thumbing through Bukowski, I don't wish them pulling on my shirt when I'm sitting in a coffee shop trying to enjoy an espresso and read Dante,  I don't wish to say, "Hello!" and wave a gentle hand at them while I'm ripping through my third bottle of wine in my favorite Italian restaurant, I don't want to navigate them on the concert floor or have my view of the stage blocked by them (I work too hard to buy tickets to a show), and I don't want them opening my changing room curtain and looking at my cock, I don't want to stumble around them when my muscles are sore, my vision and body strained with sweat,  wait for you to delicately hand feed them goldfish crackers, one-by-fucking-one, while I just want to put on my shoes and jacket. I don't hate children, but I come close to hating you, and the Yoga studio owners who allow you into the schools, for making my spiritual and physical solace a Disneyland Day Care, and by the way, I don't owe you, nor your children, the niceness, pleasantness, and consideration of pseudo-caring interaction, any more than you owe me a hand job when I have worked so hard to complete a 90-minute yoga class in a 300-pound body, although, I will gladly be nice to your child if you are willing to be nice to me.

Enough Already. Okay? Let's keep Yoga for the seekers and the adults, and find ways to spend time with your children that don't infringe on everyone else around them.

On Completing a "30 Days of Gratitude" Challenge

Gratitude! Day 30!

All righty, so, as of today, on Facebook, I completed a 30 Days of Gratitude challenge, this Thankful challenge, something I extended into my teaching in-person as well, and something that has been a bit of a struggle to complete each day. Once you get past the first 15 things, you are really digging for something that you enjoy, but maybe aren't as grateful for as like, your cats, shelter, or a hot shower.

If I had to make a list of the things I am TRULY grateful and thankful for, the list would look like this:

1. Being alive

2. My wife

3. My cats

4. My students

5. My work

6. My apartment

7. My food

8. My music (both the music that I listen to and the instruments I play)

9. My health (though I wish it were much better)

10. My friends

11. My education (and especially my teachers and professors)

12. My sharp logical and rhetorical brain, which thinks in terms of right ideas and right thinking, and is neither owned by ideology nor tradition, nor this side or that side, nor idle-talk, but always seeks for truth and authenticity 

13. My penis being in fine working order, form, function 

14. That I fuck like a sacred whore: possessed, shameless, in service, Holy.

15. Magickal and Esoteric and Mystical traditions 

16. The things I have that I often take for granted (my computer, books, toys, statues, a blender, my cookware, a bed, Xmas tree, toilet, hot shower, DVDs, a TV, etc.)

17. The awareness and wonder to participate in the awesomeness of nature and the natural, celestial world

18. The relative freedom to travel

19. That I am not a copy of either of my parents and resist being like them

20. That I am not a victim, more particular, I don't identify with the mentality of a victim (which was not an easy process to overcome)

21. The ability to Change

It is that last one that I think of has being essential to a truly grateful lived experience. I see so many people in the world who are trapped by their thoughts, trapped by their choices, trapped by their lack of clear thinking, their ideology, their seeming inability to grow and transform their lives into what they want it to be, people who jump off the roof of the first risk free life they can find and then never return, people controlled by the wills and whims of teachers, priests, gurus, people too afraid to change or grow, and I too get this way at times (hello, loss of Yoga practice, weight gain!), and then I remember once again that a miserable life is a safe life, a miserable life is a life feeling trapped or helpless, a miserable life is a life left wanting for a different life, and that I am free, at any time I choose, to change those circumstances, to gain more freedom, more control, hit the reset button, pull the controlled chaos lever, bare forth the ramifications of my actions with the resolve of a hero and not the fear of a victim, and can choose to CHANGE and to BECOME. 

Most important in my life has been the many different pursuits I have undertaken, the religions and spiritualities studied and abandoned, the thinkers, the traditions of Occult and Esoteric wisdom, the mystics and magicians, the lovers, the musical traditions, literary traditions, martial arts styles, yoga styles, the many places I have lived, the things I was passionate about one day and then not so much the next day, the tangents of culinary interest and focus, the musical instruments, the philosophers, the different costumes and clothes I have worn, people I was and then wasn't and then was again, the things I have believed in, then not, my ability to resist the crowd even when I'm trying to be a part of one, all this ability to change and to become, it's powerful, it is REAL POWER, and it's a magickal wand I can wield at any time or point, choose to invoke its spell to cause change in conformance with my Will, and recreate myself once more, like the path I have just invoked as of recent.

You are the prisons and the let downs and the confinements and the barriers and the false morals and the compromises that you set for yourself, but conversely, you are your own freedom fighter and liberator and hero/ine and victor and God/dess yourself: no one makes you submit or under-come but yourself, and if you can undermine yourself, you can certainly leap over yourself. YOU CAN CHANGE FOR THE BETTER!

I am grateful that I live a life where I will always be filled with the wonder of a God/dess, a life that changes and grows and becomes something more than what it was: a life, like a Phoenix, that collapses into ashes, rises, burst into flames, is greater than any God/dess could become, and then crashes and collapses once more. 

For the life of a Phoenix, I am truly thankful and grateful.

Now, watch me soar with wings of fire!

First Sunday. Part 1

Serious withdrawal issues overnight, this morning. 

Got up to have an Immunity Booster thingy, make some coffee, and heat up the left overs from yesterday as my breakfast.

My usual Sunday routine was to go out for Vegan pancakes, sausage, BBQ scramble, potatoes, toast, sometimes donuts or pie found (everything Vegan of course) their way into that mix, so looking at 300 calories of leftover potatoes and a banana, not so sure what to do with my body, with what my body does today, is already a struggle.

The lack of calories feels like my immune system is compromised. I just want to go out, eat, wander around Boston, eat more, come home, eat again, and crash out.

I forgot how to live without food as the thing holding me up for support. The toughest part is that, once this demon gets exposed for the bogart it is, I will then have to face the wounds that started all of this garbage, and that's something I may need more support for than doing it all alone.

Everything about this SUCKS! Nine days until I am in New Haven with my grandparents for three days and will have to reset this process all over again when I return, then again after Christmas.

I feel like I need a hot Yoga classroom, or a ticket to India, more than ever before....or maybe just a noose will do.

Almost Within Range

Today's ending calories were 2284, the first time I have eaten under 2300 calories in four months. In the math of diet and weight loss, I was only 35 calories over from a day of eating that would give me 2-pound weight loss if I ate like this each day. It is still a good day for eating, for me, a real mark of how hard it feels to get down this far.

It has been a wild ride today with food. I stopped eating yesterday at around 6:30pm and didn't get to eat breakfast until around 8:00am this morning, so going 13.5 hours without eating was a bit of a tough experience. By the time I finally got to eat my stomach was growling, I had a dizzy spell where I almost fainted, and I was definitely raging a bit.

Breakfast was Tofu scramble, Coffee with Trader Joe's coconut creamer, and baked home fries.
I only ate one serving (but had two coffees), and then put the rest away for tomorrow's breakfast; this in and of itself was a major victory.

In order to keep my mind off of eating, I drank lots of water throughout the day, and threw myself into my school work (I am a college professor), grading non-stop and corresponded with students until about 2:00pm when my wife came home with SaPa, a Vietnamese fusion place near our home. I had the vermicelli with tofu bowl, no appetizers, and this was also a victory because the last time I ate SaPa I had a tofu Banh Mi, 2 orders of fresh rolls, 3 fried vegetarian spring rolls. Changing from Banh Mi itself is also a major struggle because I LOVE Banh Mi, but if I don't have the room for it, I need to eat something lower in calories and quicker to digest.

We ate dinner tonight at 5:45pm. I wan't quite hungry yet but I knew I had to eat sooner than later so that I would have time to digest before sleep. Dinner was whole wheat pasta and jarred sauce (Paesana brand), and we added cooked fresh mushrooms to it. I ate 12 ounces of cooked pasta, 3 servings of sauce, stopped myself from eating another 4 ounces and extra sauce (it was literally right in my plate), and then for dessert I had iced black coffee, a thin slice of Vegan pumpkin pie, and 2 tbsp of So Delicious Whipped Cream. My fat percentage for the day was 35%, with most of my day's fat coming from the sauce (yet, another reason to make my own sauces and not be lazy: fewer calories, less fat).

Tomorrow will be Day #3 on this path, and while we usually go out for breakfast every Sunday, tomorrow I am planning on staying in and eating my left overs from today, yet another accomplishment (I had recently worked myself up to eating 2 breakfast dishes every Sunday). I have already planned out my day's eating tomorrow, but I'm also going to leave the apartment tomorrow for some Holiday shopping, so there will be some temptation while out (I have to find a calorie and fat-friendly lunch), and also the stress of realizing that I have to go back to school and teach, end of semester, and the eating and food triggers that brings with it (not going for sweetened coffees and bagels with vegan cream cheese in-between classes, or going out for lunch, or binging as soon as I get home, are all going to be challenges).

Today's stress has been around going to Connecticut December 8-10, followed by coming home and going to two faculty dinners over the next two days. I feel like I am making great progress right now, and it's hard, really HARD, but I know staying with my grandparents, visiting friends, will mean being over calories and fat each day there, and then I will come home and be a little stressed and I will have to go to these social events and not gorge like everyone else does, and then, if I can keep my shit together through all of that, a week later I am taking my wife away for 3 days as a Christmas present (and celebration of our 1 year engagement date), so more eating not fully in my hands, followed by Christmas two days later, so both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are both scratched due to celebrating, holiday stress, company, etc. The good thing is that after Christmas, with the exception of my birthday on January 13th, the wife's birthday on February 16th, I feel like I have a great streak of days to remain in-control for the following 8-9 months.

Still, I am stressed about going to Connecticut and getting out of control again, but I can't not go see my 90-year-old grandparents, or turn down their cooking (it was hard enough to get them to stop cooking meat, eggs, dairy, flat fish for me). I think that a food addict, any addict, fears being out of control more than anything else, and right now, I feel like, to stay sober, I have to cancel all travel and festive plans, stay home, monitor my eating, and find some exercise until I can get through 28 days of being in control and developing a new, supportive lifestyle, break these old patterns with some serious momentum.

Okay folks, so, good news today, lots of fighting going on, hoping that I can keep in the fight for the long term and get through these holidays.

Random note: as you get your eating under control, you pee like crazy, your body getting rid of all the water it is holding onto. I've peed about 20 times today, 5 times during the last two nights. It's so fucking annoying!

The Solitary Path Inside My Head

(This post originally appeared in my old Blog, June 2014)

Becoming one with the knowledge of being a loner is a long, hard process, but it is also part of the true pilgrimage.

Here I am, again, meal plan paid for, always a meal plan paid for when I go to retreats and conferences and seminars, and all I want to do is find some place to be left alone, have my own thoughts, my own company, and not make the idle social niceties that seem required in the illusion of social discourse.

7:00am Blue State coffee, New Haven, CT, iced soy mocha, bagel with peanut butter, banana, some melodramatic music in the background, people passing through on their way to work or school, my classmates most likely at the beautiful (and the food is very vegan friendly and deliciousness)) Pierson cafeteria, and I would rather be here, an hour before breakfast on campus, in a corner, watching people, thinking, searching myself and my thoughts and my universe for some great divine source, far away from strangers and their world that I don't ever quite feel like I fit into.

My closest friendship I have made here has been with my Ganesh statue, and I've since begun to refer to Ganesh as being an actual being, an actual person that I'm spending time with. People ask me, "what did you do last night?, and I reply, "Ganesh and I spent the night watching videos on vegan eating in Europe, before falling asleep to the sound of Krishna Das." I suspect people think I'm having a gay affair while I am here.

It has always been easier to be friends with the gods and goddesses, magicians of the past, than it has been with actual people. I am a hard friend to make. On the positive side, once you are in, it is a loyal and caring ride that takes a fair amount of wounding to break free from. 

I met with an old friend last night, someone I hadnt seen since 1995, who I didn't make recontact with until 2013 via Facebook, but seeing him last night, it was as if the years had never passed, and the fielty, troth, and friendship I felt for him back then remained unchanged. When he left, I didn't go to any campus events, it was Ganesh and I once again, partners and friends late into the night, he smiling down at me from the shelf, me occasionally reaching up to rub his warm, white resin belly. 

The fact that I have a wife these days, who I really love and enjoy spending time with, speaks loudly of my connection to her. Contra her, I was best with randomness, random hook ups and meetings, keeping multiple women on multiple leashes, enjoying the hunt,catch, and release, and even in long relationships I was always going away, extended stays away, any excuse to get away, and back to the hunt, the sudden hook up, and then return to pay my dues at home, or what passed for a home. 

I dread victim identity, and I hate blaming responses and behaviors on being a victim, a long term victim of some pretty terrible things, because we get to choose how we respond and react to things, how we undo the damage to our bodies, hearts, and souls, right? But outside of the figurative soul and the heart, we are a series of millions of connections running through the brain, more so in the heart in (non-figurative),and the wiring for these connections began in youth, they got their exclamtion points in trauma, those spots in the connections that the sparks of the moment marked, "Here! Record this moment, we need it for survival." I think that, from a very biological and psychological point of view, I am hard-wired for the life of the solitary passenger, the traveler, the stranger passing through, though it is the romantic heart that wants those deep roots and connections with others. I don't blame my solitary nature on being a victim, I embrace my solitary nature for giving me a way to escape being a victim. My selfhood returned to me, and it continues to return to me, in the solitary nature of my soul. Being a solitary means that I get to choose to no longer be a victim of other peoples demands on my heart, soul, mind, body, and that is a liberation that the social rarely ever understand.

People become my friends, my long-term partners, wife, by jumping through a series of trials and tests. It's shitty, and I realize it, but there is a lot of flame leaping to get inside of my life and remain there. I don't create drama, I don't test people with stupid games, but I meet someone and they are probation, and their ability to resist the fires of my life dictate how long they will stay with me. There should Really  be a medal, or a crown, for being considered one of my true friends, let alone my wife (this time at least). Maybe, what's required is a blanket, because I disassociate and turn cold so quickly, and as quickly as a person enters, is as quickly as they can be evicted from it, and rarely, do I care or second guess that decision. I think my friends are armed with thick blankets, ones which warm the cold, ones which repel flames, ones that guard well against claw marks, ones that allow me to stay hidden and peak out again when I feel safe.

Maybe this is why I relate so much to history's magicians and mystics and martyrs and heretics, or the solitary philosophers. I know what it is like to be choosy of your company, of your people, to be guarding of your pearls (it's one thing to cast them before swine, another thing to buy the whole fucking hog farm), and to have a deep relationship with one's invisible friends and thoughts, the spirit alongside the magician, vice versa, and not have time for the sort of relationships of quick words, commonalities, and the behavior that presents itself as friendships (or bros, frats, sororities, party people, niggas, etc.,) that is only a way of not relating to another person. 

Maybe that's part of the equation. I have a busy social life inside my head, I don't have much room left to extend. I have Nietzsche and Heidegger and Rilke and Bruno and Van Gogh and and MacGregor Mathers, I have Mechthild and Rumi and Hildegaard and Julian, I have angels and devils, I have Odin and Lucifer and Ganesh, occasionally, Krishna and Radha show up on flute, bring honey-covered sweets, we have texts, ancient books, secret texts, hidden knowledge, revealed knowledge, we have transmigration of the soul, we have Kabbalah, we have Yoga, we have music, I have Joy Division and Bell Hollow and Interpol and Nick Cave to learn from, I have generations of mandolin and so players in the holler to learn from, I have Faulkner and Welty and OConnor to be mentored by, I have mountains to speak to and climb and learn lore from, we have rooms and temples and churches and mosques and museums to explore, and since I no longer "hunt" for warm thighs, our life is more filled than ever with wisdom and wonder and words and the ecstasy of hunting the self, always hunting the self, inward. I have a few close friends, I have a soulmate, I don't have room for new people to come in and out, to have surface niceties with, and if you're not here for the fire you don't get to stay for the illumination.

8:36am, Blue State coffee, and I have been mumbling to myself, writing, listening to complaint-alt-rock on the music mix here, gazing students and workers and the few other solitary creatures passing through here for the last 90 minutes. Ganesh awaits for me in my dorm, half-naked,a nod smiling, his white feet reach down toward the pillar where I will rest my head tonight. Tomorrow, my wife arrives, and this solitary wandering comes to an end, as I share this city and my life and my heart with the only person who has ever earned the right to stand besides me in the flames, who will one day stand beside me in the gardens that will grow from the ashes I have left behind me. For now though, I get another day of being a lone wanderer, myself given to myself, together alone, and this to, is the pilgrimage's path.