The Savage Detectives, page five hundred and thirteen

Inaki Echevarne, Bar Giardinetto, Calle Granda del Penedes, Barcelona, July 1994.

For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short. Then the Readers die one by one and the Work continues on alone, although a new Criticism and new Readers gradually fall into step with it along its path. Then Criticism dies again and the Readers die again and the Work passes over a trail of bones on its journey toward solitude. To come near the work, to sail in her wake, is a sign of certain death, but new Criticism and new Readers approach her tirelessly and relentlessly and are devoured by time and speed. Finally the Work journeys irremediably alone in the Great Vastness. And one day the Work dies, as all things must die and come to an end: the Sun and the Earth and the Solar System and the Galaxy and the farthest reaches of man's memory. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragedy.

Afternoon Light Dance

I met amazing people this past weekend.

To name a few:

Ekayani, a beautiful house music artist. She performed at StreetYoga's fundraiser, Yoga on the Dance Floor, named after Ekayani & The Tom Glide Space's album. It was just one stop on a West Coast tour. She and I also observed a class for homeless youth at Outside In, a revolutionary facility that provides a safe space for kids living on the street, in shelters, or in foster care.

Dana Flynn (the lady in the air). She taught the most incredible yoga class I have ever been a part of. Really and truly. 

The theme of the workshop was connecting with the belly and the core power dwelling therein. Dana has an ecstatic, intoxicating energy. I smiled and giggled the whole way through, and connected to the practice in a whole new way. The studio she co-founded with Jasmine Tarkeshi (the supine lady) is called Laughing Lotus, and they are now in two locations: New York and San Francisco. I'm seriously considering a weekend trip to San Fran just to take a couple classes with Dana and Jasmine, and I am psyched to check out their studio back East.

Jasmine & Dana opened their Greenwich Village space when they realized their approach to yoga happened to differ from that of other New York studios. They place tremendous emphasis on embracing your own organic movement as a practitioner, and avoiding any dogmatism about form and method. 

The class on Sunday consisted of long, exhilarating periods of flow with intermittent alignment/technique demonstrations. Dana's instructions were clear, precise, and poetic. Her gentle encouragement (Relax your beautiful face) empowered us to keep moving, even at the most challenging points. And there was this vibratory feeling from mat-to-mat, wall-to-wall, and I felt grateful, and that feeling of gratitude was palpable in every other face as we deliriously rolled up our mats at the end of the two hour session.

my most favorite band has a new album

well i remember when i met you in the park our eyes were shooting stars

this is how i feel, approximately

all hail mcsweeney's

Last night I dreamed of a party. I was uncomfortable. There were people in attendance who I did not wish to see. I was surprised by their appearance and felt betrayed by my own mind, as it really cheated itself out of refuge.

In the dream, at the party, I ate a piece of cake. It was something like chocolate and cream cheese, but it was old and  sour and too rich and maybe a little moldy, and I spit it out of my mouth, scraped it off my tongue, gagging. The thick cream and cake had generated mucous in the back of my throat, so I tried hacking it up.

I woke up out of the dream and found myself still hacking, trying to get a glob of mucous out of my mouth. Not believing that this nearly unbroken link between dream and life was possible, I tried going back to sleep, still making guttural sounds. I couldn't go back to sleep, of course. I spit into a glass jar near the bed, then I drifted off.

My sense of time is shifting. A single moment can feel incredibly open and vivid. In the next moment, time is compressed; I haven't any idea how the past several hours have passed, how last month began and ended, how anything and everything in the past year of my life has actually taken place.

It's all happened and yet it feels like I exist in a time vacuum, and that once I emerge, everything I knew before will have been preserved, petrified, standing still and waiting for me. 
The fact of this (sort of) expectation is mildly disconcerting.

what have we done

Fill your chest with salt breath and climb the bluffs like an animal. There are points on the ascent where you must use your hands. Where the dirt is dry, likely to give way. You may want to use your hands when the dirt is soft and moist, too, because it feels good. You may even want to dig a bed in the hillside to lie in and feel how cool and soft and moist the earth can get. When you reach the top of the bluff you see the ocean on the other side. Clear blue-green. This means the water is so very cold. This means if you were to fall from the tip of the bluff you would feel the terrible shock of frigid water only a second before hitting the rocks, and it would be the most terrible thing to feel before dying. There is a row of magnificent unreachable boulders jutting out of the water, and all of them are covered with birds. They’ve come home, you think, you being a Northern creature. You think: when birds leave for winter, it’s vacation; when birds return for the spring, it’s because they must return to their true home near the cold ocean and the black rocks shaped like chunks of graphite. It’s the same for you. You are standing at the edge of the bluff looking down and hoping you won’t lose your balance. You feel tethered. You understand that the world is round and you cannot walk on water. Fill your chest with what feels like ten million particles of purity and grace. Feel shame for the weight of your mortal body. And look down.

Wife

He was good to me in that he made me feel like my spirit
was tethered to some solid post in the middle of a field,
steeped in black fog,
broken like a feral thing with a cultivated heart, wanting warmth, having only known
the cold.
The mending 
is like surgery
of the spine, sewing up the center
of the body. The brutality 
of desire,
howling down the hallways
of my nervous system.
All the good I’d been saving turned to ashes,
cinders under water turn to mud.


[Poem from Part II: Fracture of Fracture]