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.

More Lion, Less Sheep

(this originally appeared on my old blog in August 2014)

Today has been a lot of standing up for myself, standing up for what I'm about.

As a child, no one did this for me, and I was insulted, put down, physically, emotionally, sexually abused, beaten up by bullies, picked on at school, on the way home, in the home on a consistent basis. Even when people knew the "worst" was happening, I was left to my own care and safety, and it took a lot of abuse and victimization to get to the point where I started to sprout some thorns, some scales, some claws, some fangs, where the wounds took their shape. By the time I was twenty-one I promised myself that no one would ever mistreat me nor abuse me nor put me in danger again, and I don't suffer being treated less than I want to be treated, I don't suffer being bullied, intimidated, threatened, insulted, challenged, all that well, and I don't sit there and watch it happen to others.


People wonder how I became the contentious Lucifer in their morning bowl of cereal, but it was never intentional, this is what I became as life threw the dice at me and I bit the knuckles hard, as a result, life has sort of cast me (perhaps for my experiences of how I was treated and having no advocates) in the position to stand up to people, to stand for people, and to confront people who normally prey on others who do not, or cannot, stand up for themselves. There is a blessing in the curse of being a victim, and that is, if well-cultivated, your victimhood can transform into a hero/ine form, a great avenger and protector of those who cannot, or have not yet learned, how to speak up for themselves. The first rule for overcoming victimhood is to transform it into the state that represents your inner hero/ine. For me, it's Nietzsche, it's Giordano Bruno, it's Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it's Ragnar Lothbrok, it's Charles "the hammer" Martel, it's Oberyn Martell, it's Joan of Arc, it's Edgar Allen Poe, it's Thoreau, it's Frederick Douglas, it's Moon Knight, it's every person or character who overcame themselves, overcame others, and made their mark in the world as a hero/ine despite the people who attempted to belittle them, halt them at every stop.


I might seem like a total confrontational jerk sometimes, and I am, and I am all Nietzsche, all Bruno, all Viking, I am a mystic on the pyre, I am a wild stag running through the forest and at the hunter, I am all un-yielding and wild and mad and lion-like (more dangerous in defeat), and no one gets the better of me anymore, not without a fight, not without knowing that they were in a fight, and I treat the enemies of my friends as my enemies, and I treat those who think they can push me, push the helpless, push the voiceless, push the weaker around, with nothing less than cold, defiant, wrathful indifference (at best).


The world needs more lions and less sheep.


This to, I roar.

First Weigh-In

I started off my day with a weigh-in, my first one in over four months, and the results were worse than I thought. Eating without restraint, not exercising, not really caring how much I was eating, I have gained an additional 15 pounds since the Summer, coming in at 323.8 pounds.

In perspective, this was my weight when I started my second semester at Divinity School in 2003, a weight that was 30 pounds higher than any weight I had previously seen, and a weight I didn't get below again until 2009 when I had been on Weight Watchers for seven months. This also means that since returning from India in January of 2011, I have gained 90 pounds total (though, actually, I gained 10 my first year, maintained my second year, and the other 80 are from the last two years alone).

Yesterday I managed to stop eating by 7:00pm, a monumental task of strength at this stage, and didn't eat until this morning, when I had 2 pieces of my homemade Vegan banana nut bread, an iced coffee as well. I felt like, when I woke up this morning, that I was RAGING a bit, really struggling with addiction issues, and I felt pretty unpleasant and out of control. Lunch ended up being a Coconut Juice, 1.5 fresh spring rolls with tofu, and a Vegetarian Pho soup. The dinner I have planned are leftovers from yesterday. I'm planning on clocking in at around 2500-2600 calories today, lower than the 3000 I have been attempting to get down to over the last week or so, and hoping that doesn't trigger withdrawal that is too far out of control.

I have been thinking more and more about how to approach this new lifestyle. There are definitely many components to making the changes that need to be need, and the first start is having an increased dialogue with my partner, making sure that I keep my needs to make changes front and center, and demand that those changes be honored and taken seriously. While I am in control of my actions and decisions, I do know that I often make decisions to make others happy, and I am also making decisions because of issues that are not making me happy.

Weight gain and food addiction is, front and center, a cry for help, a cry for help in the midst of feelings of helplessness and despair, and it takes a lot of strength to be able to vocalize and demand that what you are feeling and dealing with be taken seriously; hopefully, it won't ever have to come down to making a choice between my life and my relationship--I think that sort of thing happens in relationships where the love is gone, and where the two people are looking for ways to exit beforehand. As for me, I'm looking for a way to express some of the issues in the passage I went through leaving Asheville and getting through Portland, the changes in lifestyle, the changes in belief, and some other things that I don't feel like I have put to the side or processed as of yet that I really need to.

On the application front, I need to start whittling my eating down from this 4000-5000 a day streak that I am doing to a zero gain number: my zero gain number, the amount I can eat without gaining or losing weight, is currently 2894 calories a day. Conversely, if I want to lose 1 pound a week, then my calories need to come down to 2584 per day, 2264 per day for two pounds. Neither of those numbers include any exercise being a part of the equation. My current effort is to get myself to that 2584 mark, and then at the start of the New Year, make 2200 my line, adjusting that line once I am below 300 pounds again.

For a counting system, I am currently using the LiveStrong Gold calorie counter, which seems like a great compromise between the various counting systems. It's more accurate and easier to use than Fit Day, it's mostly free ($50 for a year vs $49 a month for WW meetings, $19 a month for WW online tools), but it lacks the community that Fit Day has, or the ease of combing calories with low fat, which is what the Weight Watchers Points Plus system does for you.

Exercise.....first off, it is hard to move around at this weight. I waddle like a duck when I try to walk, I move slowly, my belly and thighs are in the way of EVERYTHING, and all of my clothes fit like shit. After being thin for so long, after losing 143 pounds between 2009-2010, keeping it off for nearly two years, I am still not used to moving around in this body and it feels like I am carrying eight potato sacks with me everywhere I go.

My Yoga path, which once liberated me so, has become more of a burden than anything else. Once I got to Maine, bad Yoga schools, bad relationships with Yoga teachers, cold Yoga studios, getting a little beaten up in the Boston Yoga market, watching Yoga destroy and damage friends of mine, getting an inside look at how damaging the commercialization of Yoga has been to this practice (and since I'm sensitive to that sort of stuff already, it really does rub me the wrong way), realizing that I didn't have the life I once had for doing Yoga and not wanting to risk my relationship with a Yoga life, all have been considerations in what the hell happened to my practice. I keep thinking that I'm going to go back to martial arts someday, really interested in a vigorous Daoist practice, maybe even a sword-based Daoist or Japanese system, and I've also considered a Russian-style heated kettle bell workout, but there is definitely this hole inside of me that keeps thinking I regain the innocence, lose the critical mind, and get back to a supportive Yoga practice that gives me a Yoga life, but allows me to maintain a life, and with my wife, as well.  I don't think that I can just count calories and really make a complete body and lifestyle transformation, so figuring out some way to get my body heated, get it moving, and adopting it into my life as a change in lifestyle, is something I still need to figure out. I've been considering sneaking into a heated Yoga class once this semester ends, just get there, sweat, suffer, push through, and then see how I can coordinate a regular practice that supports my health, my body, my lifestyle, and my relationship. If I can't find a way to make this change, then getting into something heated and strength-building has to be undertaken before winter really gets going.

So, it's 2:06 pm, another three hours until dinner, and food cravings are driving me CRAZY. I have a lot of homework in front of me, lots of grading and emails to get to, and really, I just want to eat, sleep, crash out. I feel like I am coming down from heroin right now.

There is a whole, spiritual, component to this as well, but I don't feel like I have the strength and clarity to talk about it right now, probably in another post soon. This is already more than enough to work on and contemplate and struggle through for the entire week.

God, I would kill for some cookies right now and I have a whole container of them on the table right now.

The Yoga Practice that Collapsed into Ashes

(This post was from my previous Blog. Since I'm going to be writing a lot about Yoga in the future, I wanted to keep for posterity, this post from the last time I took a Yoga class, back in September. It marks the point of collapse, but also, the point to rise from.)

 I wrote this note on my Facebook wall today:

One of my biggest problems with getting back into yoga is my attachment to the teacher- student relationship. I'm constantly in fear the teacher will leave, I can't trust them, I will leave, i will sabotage my relationship, my schedule will change, the school will be unsupportive, the school's owner will be psycho and send me hate mail, they will hate yoga but still profit from it and me, my practice will fall apart as soon as it gets good, and my disappointment will take refuge in my eating disorder: all these things I have seen over the last 4 years, and whenever I feel like I have had enough excuses and want to jump back in, this huge wall appears and I just end up running away from it.

You wait for the teacher to appear, but the student is too battered to believe they are ready yet, again.

Not sure what to do tonight, holding my clothes and mat. New school, old school, new teacher, old teachers, third and fourth restarts and chances, yoga therapy, Jungian therapy, back to martial arts, take up zumba, take up racket ball, cycling, not sure.

One decision could change everything. Or reenforce everything.

I need more grace than I thought, or perhaps, a teacher- student relationship that is sustaining.

Not creating these cycles and situations, envisioning something sustaining and empowering, also a good thing.

***

I find that, after years of identifying myself as a Yogi, it's time to admit that this is indeed not the case anymore.

When I posted that above note, I was looking for some support some wisdom, a reach out from Yoga friends and teachers that I know, also, create some dialogue in the Boston/New England Yoga Community about how isolating this system is for some people. 

One of my friends who is an amazing Yogi in Maine wrote me back, gave me his usual awesome advice, but the silence from all the Yogis I know here in Boston was absent. There's a tradition in Boston that, if there is any criticism of something or someone, you write someone a private email, and then you stick your public head in the sand. The silence was actually a bit deafening this time around. It helped to reenforce some of the issues of my FB status, that I feel like I have lost that very important connection, that teacher-student relationship, and that missing element is probably the only thing that could really get me back in.

I have indeed seen a lot in Yoga over the last four years.

* I have seen great teachers leave the school, move away, right as I started to get attached to them. This one, I understand, but it's always hard to get close to a teacher and wonder: "when are they going to leave me?"

* I have been left alone in a studio by a teacher because she didn't want to be alone with a male during a Mysore practice.

* I have been hit on by more than a few teachers (not complaining mind you, but I have seen it)

* I saw a famous Yogi put my $1200 into a money counting machine in India, while outside of the school, an old woman poked at a garbage heap for something to eat.

* I have received horrific and angry emails from Yoga teachers after a YELP review (Back Bay Yoga,  Maine Bikram)

* I have watched Yoga teaching mills grind out teachers with less than 2 months of actual Yoga experience

* I have seen a chain of Yoga schools run by kind, but non-yoga-loving owners, and felt the effects of being a part of school where it was clear, the Yoga was not only unimportant, there was real resentment about being stuck in the industry

* I have poured my heart out to a teacher and then found out he was still in constant contact with my abusive ex-wife, of course, he never told me about this connection, despite how much I was pouring my heart out to him

* I have seen teachers value the practice of Yoga over the health of their students

* I have seen Yoga teachers either not intervene when a student was using Yoga to mask an eating disorder, as well as glamorize their own eating disorders as well

* I have watched drop-in classes climb from $5, to $7, to $10, $12, $15, $22, and even recently $27 dollars, and monthly unlimited memberships rise from $60 a month to $160 (on average) and as high as $220, while the infrastructure and the quality of teaching does not improve as rapidly and drastically as the prices do

* I have seen students injured in freezing cold studios (and been injured in them) and watched students faint in 104 degree rooms

* I see students take a sweaty practice and then walk right out, soaked wet, into 12 degree temperatures in february

* I see schools eliminating changing rooms

* I see Hip Hop being used to sell Yoga classes, played in Yoga classes (as one person said to me, "I went to the school to be free from misogyny, and then I'm doing Yoga and hearing someone rap, "I wanna put my dick your ass, bitch, take a dick in your ass")

* I have been given shit by a Yoga teacher for me being Vegan

* I have seen the context of Yoga change over the last 500 years, and yet, I see Yogis interpreting texts, the same way they approach their Bibles and Torahs: as if they speak from the now, to the now, and the context hasn't at all changed

* I see classes taught for the skinny students and observe teachers with no understanding of how obese or elderly bodies work, chase away students, damage them

* I have seen Yoga schools serve as a cover for a dangerous Cult, and seen cult-like mentality dominant how teachers and students interact with each other

* I have seen Yoga teachers NOT teaching, instead, they are leading, and yet, they think they are teaching, just because they are in the front of a class. It's actually very rare that I have been in a Yoga class and been TAUGHT

* I see people offering seminars on the heart chakra, and then their Facebook shows a life that is both DEVOID of a healthy heart chakra, let alone, they complain constantly they can't find someone to fuck them.....how do hot Yoga chicks have trouble finding people to have sex with?!

* I see Yoga being watered down with Tai Chi, Pilates, Zumba, Barre, Strength Training, Sambo, anything but diving deeper into the core history and traditions of Yoga itself

* I see one of the most famous Yoga "masters" in the world, killing animals, wearing animal pelts, taking her students hunting, and then talking about the sacredness of life, and then teaching Yoga on top of that (a tradition based on Ahimsa, non-violence)

* I have seen Christian Yoga, Jewish Yoga, Pagan Yoga, Hip Hop Yoga, Muslim Yoga, Non-Hindu Yoga, Buddhist Yoga, anything BUT YOGA pass for Yoga

* I see Yogis romanticizing celibacy as if it was at all a healthy practice that honored the fundamental design of our biology and ecology and psychology (yeah, the "brahmacharya" thing is absolute BULLSHIT, and it's as unhealthy for a Yogi as smoking or drinking or juggling live chainsaws with a blindfold on)

* I see Yoga schools catering to celebrities, worse still, catering to those who cater to celebrities

* I have seen great teachers ONLY teach at schools that cater to wealthy clients, and then offer retreats and seminars that only the wealthy can afford--creating social divisions between who learns Yoga, who doesn't, and why.

* I see Yoga schools turning into daycare centers

* I see Yoga schools locking their doors and making students wait in cold staircases, outside in the cold, because the school won't hire enough staff to keep the school open and inviting to their students

The hardest part for me, outside of these things I've seen, and more, is that I do come from a tradition where the teacher-student relationship is sacred. I come from Martial Arts, traditional Martial Arts, and when I first approached Yoga, I was all about the sacred connection between the student and their guru (plus, remember, I'm a teacher, and I consider my industry a blight on the sacred tradition between student and professor). But my relationships with teachers have either been:

1. They are amazing, but they leave (either my school, or the area)

2. They are okay, but only okay, and the Yoga quickly becomes a job to them, and they end up being dreadful

3. They are bat-shit crazy and I learn that early enough to get FAR away from them

I miss Yoga, I really do, but I also feel damaged by Yoga, the way Yoga is taught in the USA at least, the Yoga I've encountered in Maine and Boston (for the most part, few exceptions). I think about how lucky I was to experience Ashtanga when it was at Back Bay Yoga (before the owner became a manipulative psycho) and had this great community around it, great space to practice in, I was lucky enough to study for 6 great months in Asheville at Asheville Yoga, I was lucky enough to have a brief Ashtanga community (that rapidly fell apart from teacher/owners who didn't want to be) in Maine that was very supportive, and I have been fortunate enough to study with a few teachers here who are amazing, before they changed schools, moved away, or stayed at schools I could no longer afford, but overall, I think I have studied under 5 good teachers, 2 great ones, and at least 50 teachers who either didn't care if I ever came back, if I qualified as a human being, if my practice mattered at all, or who were just entirely bat-shit crazy with no way to come back.

The loss of the student-teacher relationship has been tough on me. I freely admit that I have abandonment issues, stuff from my childhood that I always think I have routed out, but when a teacher I like leaves, it comes running back up to the front again. I'm that same helpless 4-year-old begging his mother to not sign away her parental rights to her sister, and leave for good, all over again. It's so pathetic, but it's there, it's victim-identity, it's bullshit, it's grow the fuck up, but it's there.

One of the reasons I am so afraid to go back to Yoga, or that I keep starting and stopping and starting and stopping again, sitting outside of Yoga studios crying, looking at schedules for hours at a time, is I am staring at the fear of being let down again, of not having that great connection again, of being disgruntled, dismayed, disheartened, disengaged, and wondering: "why?"

I also admit that the more weight I gain back, the harder it is to go back each time. I started Yoga at 272 pounds, then worked my way down to 233, and here I am again over 300 pounds, and each time I attempt to restart, I restart in worse and worse shape, and I am grasping at a body that no longer exists, in a teacher-student relationship that also doesn't exist.

I know that, on some level, I must be creating this, conjuring this, that this is all a projection of a reality I must really want or else it would be very different, but I also think to myself: "Why would anyone go from a GREAT practice and life that they are in Love with, to no practice, and a life they are heart-broken over?"

Maybe, Yoga represents a passage for me, and I'm not letting that passage go, the way it should be let go of. Maybe it's time to do something else for a while: running, power walking, cycling, weight-training, and get my body back in shape so that someday I can indeed go back to Yoga, I can get into Martial Arts maybe (maybe it's time to go back to Martial Arts), or maybe get into some new form of body expression. Maybe some therapy would be good, find a way to process this journey the last few years without Blog and Facebook drama.

I just know that, the way I hear some people say that Academia destroyed their love of Academia, Yoga has damaged my ability to love Yoga, and I feel like the child constantly going back to the parent waiting to be loved, and then stunned when the parent just follows their own path, and says: "No." I'm projecting even more.

Perhaps the teacher, the opportunity will appear, sooner than I think, and before I think I am ready.

In the meantime, I just have to focus on my eating, getting in activity, and working on the things in my life that I can indeed change.

A fallen Yoga practice should not mean, a broken life, anymore. Hibernate, wait for Spring to appear within the practice, once again.

 

The Starting Point, Again

Well, as odd as it may seem from my pictures on Instagram today, this is actually the LEAST we've eaten on Thanksgiving in the last four years: there are, for the first time, left overs for a complete dinner tomorrow night. We made lunch and breakfast one meal, had only two servings of it, and had only 1 piece of pie. 

Ending calories are 2910, with 30% of calories from fat, which is actually a pretty good day with all things considered (last year I ate close to 6800 calories). 

I've started to do some tracking as of late of how much I'm eating, try to get my calories under 3000 each day (one step at a time--I have been averaging around 4400) which has been a bit of a challenge, because I'm gaining weight like CRAZY as of late, and my body is starting to show those old signs of wear and misuse in so many ways. I'm not very successful at staying below 3000 each day (I should really be below 2100), mind you, mostly because I find myself binge eating as soon as I'm done teaching, or in-between teaching, and because I have NO exercise other than the 30 minutes I get each day walking between campuses, but I have begun, at least thinking about the process and figuring out how to get my feet secure again with a healthier lifestyle. 

I had it in my mind, back in early October, that I would start anew with the New Year, especially since I had Halloween, Thanksgiving, visiting my grandparents (Dec 8-10), pre-Christmas vacation (December 21-23--my present to Laura), and Christmas itself (Dec 24 and 25th) which will be real blocks in developing any momentum. Still, I figure that in-between those days and times I can develop a little momentum, gain some changes and insights into how bad things are, and that in the next 28 days, there are 21 that I can be really accountable for, maybe even use my break to figure out some way to burn some calories as well. 

I think my first stop is to see what changes I can make (for example, over the last two weeks I have replaced white pasta with whole wheat pasta, and that has definitely made a big difference in how I feel after I eat) now, try to figure out or remember what once worked so well for me, begin to make the lifestyle changes that I need to make, and then be prepared to hit the ground running with no excuses (except my birthday on January 13th) for the new year and beyond.

Of course, being the "all or nothing" sort that I am, for me to make this work it has to get the bulk of my attention for the next year, which means some serious changes to my lifestyle, social style, and pushing past the addiction stages as they come up. Making sure I am happy with whatever calorie counting system that I choose, maybe even getting in a few food addiction counseling sessions, and developing a workout routine once the addiction gets under control, will be of major focus.

Sucks that I have to start all over again, yet again, but it is what I have made it to be, and I think, perhaps, this has just been the universe's way of reminding me how healthy and happy I am when I am focused on making my life about health and exercise over and above all else.

Oh yeah: Hey look! I have a new Blog again!