I Have Questions

Does anyone perform the Ursonate slowly (Schwitters' version sounds slow, obviously, compared to Christian Bök's)--or the Presto like a Largo and the Largo like a Presto?

Does anyone ever perform the Ursonate with non-German pronunciation. Today on my run I was humming a particularly catchy section of the Presto and amusing myself by thinking of all the non-German ways I could pronounce it.

Why is my left eye all twitchy?

Is it possible for a normal human being like me to one day be able to do full hanumanasana (aka the splits)?

Will "people" like my book?

I suck at data entry

Today I enjoyed eating the oatmeal in the cafeteria--its shockingly good. The only good thing in the entire cafeteria. I did not enjoy grading. I'm much better at grading assignments that I actually created. Grading assignments that I would never, ever in my left or right mind create is frustrating and irritating.

A friend who is studying Sociology said that online teaching is the new ghetto for women in academia. She said this not because she was being judgmental, but because she'd attended some kind of a lecture or read an article about it. Anyway, it sounds about right to me. Online teaching is almost like data entry. Don't Hardt and Negri say something about data entry workers being the new proletariat, or something like that, in Empire? Teaching as data entry! Data entry sabotage!

I suck at data entry. I don't ever post the right percentage of comments. Sometimes I post too early or too late. I probably blab on and on in my feedback. However, I do manage to connect with some of my students, and some of my students manage to improve their writing skills. And the pay at the schools where I've settled is pretty good. It's comparable to what I made adjuncting in normal on-ground classes in DC. However, it's certainly not nearly as much as what I make adjuncting an on-ground class in California. Schools pay adjuncts at lot more out here.

Today I also enjoyed practicing yoga with my eyes closed. I've done sun salutations with my eyes closed, but never a full practice. I did a very nice headstand for six breaths and then fell over. I'm almost never physically afraid of anything in yoga, though I am probably afraid of looking like an idiot. I don't mind if I hurt my butt (or whatever) when I fall, I just want to look amazing doing it. I have no idea how I looked. But c'etait bon to not know.


Also, today in class I taught my students the word "swollen," because one of them is having trouble with allergies, and hence has a swollen eye. The French word for swollen is gonflé. I had a weird memory of a french advertisement for a kind of cake: "Vahiné c'est gonflé!" The last time I had thought of this was when I was living in Guangzhou and going to the French school. I believe that one of the boys decided to call the other girl in my class Vahiné, which was, of course, an insult. At the time, I was just glad that they weren't calling me Vahiné, and happy that I actually got the context of the insult.

Failed Attempt at Being Chill

I went to a restorative yoga class this evening to "relax." It was a great class, but I don't relax well unless I'm physically exhausted. Next time I'll do the vinyasa class beforehand. I was rather cynical, I even hated the asanas I typically like: twists were irritating, and I remained congested for the entire class. When I rolled into fetal pose after savasana, I thought, "fuck this pose. I hate it. It's uncomfortable. I don't want to be metaphorically born again into the world."

It's my overall mood today. I'm happy, but any time I've attempted to be introspective has resulted in some rather fierce, uncomplicated hostility. Tra la la la la!

Sucking it up

I have planned my blue outfit for tomorrow. I've already voted. I don't feel calm about anything, but for now there is nothing to do but wait for results and hope that there are results by tomorrow evening. Please vote for Obama if you haven't already. A Democratic presidency might help decrease the number of wars our country wages and restore some small ounce of fiscal responsibility. I'm not holding my breath for universal heath care though, or actual money spent on education. I wish, though.

I am trying to finish my statement of interest for the MFA program.

It's getting dark, and Lester has fallen asleep on my knee.

I've been thinking about my least favorite asanas. I have two: Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (upward facing dog) and Dhanurasana (Bow Pose)--both are upward facing backbends instead. I'm not a big fan of sticking my chest out. Urdhva Mukha Svanasana in particular makes me feel like I'm a bust carved into the prow of a ship. Or a hood ornament. I never feel like it's actually opening my chest or shoulders. Instead, I feel like my shoulders are up around my ears and my wrists are going to pop off. Dhanurasana makes me feel heavy. Instead of opening up the front of my body, I feel like my knees are going to pop off.

I find it interesting (to use the blandest, least specific word possible), that my two least favorite asanas are poses that are meant to open the heart chakra, build courage and stamina, and create energy that encourages us to reach out toward others.

~

I am back from yoga. We practiced my third least favorite asana: Virasana (Hero Pose)--yet another asana that opens the front of the body. I have eaten a nice pear. I have made a list of all the good things about being in an MFA program and having an MFA. I have congratulated myself on...I forgot was I was going to write, so that means I have forgotten about what I congratulated myself on.

I subscribe to Yoga Journal, Self, Lucky, Cooking Light, Food & Wine, and Cooks Illustrated.

I also subscribe to a bunch of poetry and literary magazines, but those are too many to list.

I recently an article in Self called "Keeping Up with the Yogis." Yes, I read and subscribe to Self. Anyway, the article was about snarkiness and snobbery in yoga communities. The article made me think about the anger or sadness many of us feel when we have an especially aggravating experience with other poets an artists. The world of art is supposed to, somehow, be better than the rest of the world. It isn't of course. I mean it is, but not because the people are nicer or more reasonable or funnier or even more intelligent.

It's the same with yoga communities. Yogis can be competitive and unkind, even though they're not supposed to be. I remember when I worked at the desk of the yoga studio, there was a man who would always tell me what time he'd gotten up to meditate. I didn't care, wasn't impressed (was he flirting with me? I don't know). I found it annoying when he said things like, "You know, it takes a lot of spiritual discipline to get up at 3:00." No doubt, but shut up about it, please.

There's also a kind of competition to see who can be the most calm and happy. My external hard drive crashed right after mercury went into retrograde (in the studio where I practice, we do talk about things like mercury in retrograde). A few days after my hard drive crashed, I went to my usual Wednesday night class. The teacher was talking about how to remain calm when everything around is not. I was able to proudly announce that my hard drive had crashed! Yes, my hard drive had crashed, but how calm I appeared while saying it! I could have said it while doing an open-floor handstand! How wonderful that the Universe was testing me in this way and giving me the chance to grow! Even if I believe that--and I'm not saying I don't or do--I despise the snarky language of yoga pop religion. You know, this kind of stuff:


I've been really fortunate, I think, with my teachers and studios. My first yoga teacher was Jeanne Gaudette, a neuro-muscular therapist and yoga teacher who had a small studio in Blue Hill, Maine (I think she now is a teacher at the Downeast School of Massage). I have no idea what kind of yoga Jeanne taught but I remember basic standing sequences that are still familiar to me, and a lot of restorative poses. I also remember that she did bodywork for both me and my mother at a very discounted rate. She was kind, funny, and unpretentious.

After college, I started practicing with Margaret Townsend. Again, I think I was amazingly lucky. Margaret is a dancer who teaches Ashtanga yoga, but her background is in Integral, Iyengar, Anusara, and Ashtanga--so I got the benefit of learning about how to connect breath and movement, learned the logic behind sequencing, and also learned a lot about alignment and anatomy. She's a kind but demanding teacher with a sense of humor. And unpretentious. I would never have started practicing yoga seriously if I hadn't been lucky enough to randomly go to one of her classes.

I did go to one studio in Washington, DC that was really weird. The owner of the studio wouldn't tell me the names of the teachers, and had no information about their certifications. He also grabbed my butt during an adjustment--the first and only time that anything like that has ever happened to me in a yoga class. I never went back. Good lord, what a creep!

The studio here in Carlsbad where I practice is, frankly, pretty great. Like all communities, it has it's moments (see above). People are, in general, friendly and unpretentious. They admit when they feel tired. The teachers are all diverse and well-qualified. Their bios are posted on the website. They answer questions, they don't make adjustments unless you want them, they're attentive and responsive. I hate having a hamstring injury (it's better, but still not completely), but I've really been grateful towards my studio these past few months. I'm benefiting from my teachers' knowledge of anatomy, kinesiology, and yoga. My hamstring is getting better, and I'm learning how to make sure that doesn't happen again. A doctor would have just told me to stop practicing.

And now I'm all energetic and optimistic. Sorry...

I was supposed to be meditating and focusing on my breath, but when I did that, all that happened was I saw the word "breath" in various fonts

I'm grumpy.

Today during savasana I tried to list all the ways that my life has been/is/was materially affected by the Bush Administration. I can think of numerous ways that other people's lives have been drastically changed. But truly, I can't think of very many ways my life has been affected.

• My job outlook is poor, but it's always been poor. I do well enough somehow anyway.
  
• Now that it's even more difficult for students to get visas to study in the US, more students go to Canada, and so enrollment is lower at the places I teach. However, it hasn't really been lower than usual. I have fewer students from Africa, and more wealthy students from Europe, especially Milan.
  
• Real estate is messed up, but I never owned real estate, and even with prices "low" now, they're still way too expensive.
• The price of gas is still high. I don't really drive much, and have structured my entire work life around not driving whenever possible. Mark and I share a car, which he drives 15 miles to and from work three or four days a week.
  
• I suppose we've taken less road trips than we might have otherwise taken.
• The rising cost of living in DC coupled with increasingly unstable and unpleasant work possibilities would have caused Mark and I to leave DC, even if he hadn't gotten the job at CSUSM. Mark's job at CSUSM and the general growth of this area has a lot to do with suburban development based on 1) the military and 2) real estate. These two things are at least partly responsible for our move to San Diego county.
• 9/11 and post 9/11 Bush policies really enlivened the careers of anyone working in international security, as I was when 9/11 happened. Several people I worked with wrote white papers and press releases and were promoted. A few went to work for the DOD or defense contractors, one went to work for the Millenium Challenge Corporation (which, despite its name, is in fact a government agency). I promptly left my job and got an MA at Georgetown. I didn't do an MFA because Georgetown gave me better funding and Carolyn Forche was more or less gone from George Mason. Aggravatingly, it would have been a better professional choice for me to do an MFA. But who cared about MFAs then?
• The dollar is down. Going to Europe is harder.
• Health Insurance is worse. However, in California, it is still possible to get free birth control, even in a county where Planned Parenthood is always surrounded by anti-abortion protesters.
  

I'm thinking about this list for several reasons. I feel all overwrought about the elections, as I always do. I care about U.S. politics and think it matters who wins, but this feeling isn't personal--it's very abstract and vague, which is part of why it's so aggravating.

I get annoyed with friends who talk about not voting because they can't bear to compromise their moral values, or voting Green (as I used to do when I was a DC resident, since voting in DC is nearly like not voting at all). I rehearse my argument that a Democratic president means Democratic bureaucrats and Democratic interns doing the fact-checking for all the documents and all the research that informs policies, and that this slight difference in perspective is important, regardless of whether or not the actual President is effective.

I think not voting in any election year would be idiotic, and also a sign of just how materially irrelevant a change in administrations actually is for many of us. Maybe if the cost of gas were $9 then voting would seem less about abstract values and feelings and more about basic things like eating and living.

Not that that would be especially good, either.

I don't worry about love or sports, so the only things left at times are politics and students (i.e. work).

Sick of worrying about the elections. Sick of worrying about work, or, rather: bored. Que mas? I'm taking my bike to the shop tomorrow for its 6-month tune up. Y al mismo tiempo I need to think about cleaning my study, as usual. Sorry. No especially exciting thoughts. A student gave me a nice bar of German chocolate, and Mark bought some Oktoberfest beers. Also, I made a green curry--more Indian than Thai (cilantro, mint, jalepenos, baharat seasoning, coconut milk). Editing and getting final responses from people on a forum I'm moderating for Area Sneaks on visual poetry. Working on the cover for Terminal Humming.

Left hamstring is slowly recovering. I still can't do a forward bend like I used to, but I don't need compression when I practice asana now, so that's something.

I put my yoga pants

on backwards

I've never, ever had a successful diet that didn't include alcohol, bread, and cheese.

I did three rounds of hanumanasana in my yoga practice today, and also worked on jumping up into handstand from two legs. Hanumanasana remains a challenge, but I think my hamstrings are opening up a bit. They'd better be after all those hanumanasanas! Handstand, though, was more satisfying. I managed to jump up (with two bent legs--instead of kicking up) and balance before I hit the wall. That must mean that my core muscles are getting stronger, since I have the strength to not only jump up, but also break and balance. I'm still working on jumping into it with straight legs, though.

Yesterday we went to the beach and today we also went to the beach. I have one more week left before I start teaching ESL in the mornings again. I intend to go to the beach a lot this week.

I've been looking at Mario Batali's new book on Italian Grilling. I like his recipes--they work, even if you don't have a fancy kitchen, etc. Yum. I'll still be cooking/grilling my favorite Middle Eastern and South Asian recipes this summer, but I've decided that it also won't hurt me to begin studying updated European traditions, either.

I said that today's birthday wish would be something about health and vanity. I've been reading Anna Karenina. Levin's just started his obsession with death, and now Anna has picked up on it as well. I'm not obsessed with death. I am at times obsessed with the nexus between health, beauty, and physical comforts. I spend quite a bit of time maintaining my health (through exercise, yoga, and food) and my beauty, but I'm not interested in maintaining either of those things at the expense of enjoyment.

So, today's birthday wish is that I'll practice yoga well into my 70s and beyond, that I'll never develop some weird sensitivity or allergy to cheese, wine, or scotch, and that I'll maintain my ability to stay up well past midnight.

Hopefully I won't come back with any broken bones.

I've been grading all morning, and am now headed to an acro yoga workshop. Apparantly "the mystery of inversions is no match for the wisdom of acrobatic training techniques!" I already have no problem being upside down, but I'm hoping to learn more about assists. The workshop description also suggest that we're going to learn how to build pyramids. Mmm. I'll let you know how it all goes. Maybe I can learn a few moves to use as P4 in Rodrigo's "Pig Angels of the Apocolypse" that we'll be performing next week during Press at Evergreen. Piggy pyramids!

Mom, I couldn't reach you by phone,

but I dedicated all my handstands and back bends to you today.

No no no. No!

The third section of Alma is called "Guardian of the Earth." Still, this moment from the poem "Crudites of Enlightenment":

"thousand-armed. the one female version, a not-quite-deity, is always a principle of mercy. the mother fuckin' mother. are we merciful?" (140)

and this

"i live in negative space with all the dead women, whose potential erased while they lived i seek to restore, via the vengeance of language and the spreading of a message of pure negativity. the unveiling of light in our owl-like faces at midnight. i am enlightened and we are, i can say anything i want to. i am saved and we are, because i say so not to you. do you know that if my poetry lasts--that is if there is a future that is similar in any way to this present--my condemnation of our leaders will have considerable weight, and i am loading it down, the words that count will be mine. and our present leaders will be despised and laughed at. because this is the way literature works. though they are all too unread to know this" (141).

Before yoga class yesterday I was laying on the floor of the studio, trying to stretch my quadriceps, the other five women in the room began to have a conversation about children, and then pregnancy, and then giving birth, and then the cost of education but also how "children are a gift that lasts forever."

I like children as much as I like other humans. So that means I like some of them and don't like some of them. I respect their right to exist, like I respect everyone's right to exist, but I'm not going to be friends with everyone.

I think the pregnancy/children conversation at the yoga center is the default conversation the women have when they don't have anything to say to each other. Just like people who happen to move in shared contexts but don't actually have much in common talk about movies or how much they hate George Bush.

We usually say "I was born on June 11" not "my mother bore me on June 11." Blake says "My mother bore me..." in "Little Black Boy" and Jeremiah says "Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed."

If you are the mother, you could say "I bore the child on June 11," or "I gave birth to the child on June 11." "I had the child on June 11" is common, but vague.

Another default conversation yoga conversation, or even greeting, is the "be positive and relax" conversation, often with the subtle but rather snobby suggestion that one person is actually more happy and relaxed than the other person.

One of my high school friends, who was very nice and positive, failed many of his classes during is first year at a University. I remember him saying, cheerfully "Oh well, I know I can do better next time," and I remember thinking, "dude, no you can't. You need to deal with the fact that you failed most of the beginning-level classes in your major."

Also, all during yoga, I kept on thinking about a dead cat I'd seen on the road that morning. In pincha mayurasana: dead cat, in urdhva dhanurasana: dead cat, in ardha chandrasana: dead cat, in ardha chandra chapasana: dead cat. Finally I said hello to the cat (not out loud, of course), and imagined breathing in all the elements of the cat that were now on the road by the lagoon, and in the air around it.

I can't really do the splits.

I went from urdhvadhanurasana to handstand and then back to standing, and also from standing, to handstand and down to urdhvadhanurasana. It was cool.

I also did hanumanasana, because today is hanuman's birthday. I really hate this asana. It's basically the splits.

For kicks, here’s the Hanuman Chalisa from the animated film The Adventures of Hanuman.

More more mysteries.

I am still grading. Still and always. Until May, when I will only be partially employed for a few weeks.

In between teaching and grading and grading again, I did something that looked kind of like this:


Except not quite. I can hold my toes, but I can't put my forehead on my foot. And my hips aren't nearly as square or as rooted. Rajakapotasana is a wacky pose, and it seems completely astounding to find my toe, there. It doesn't ever seem like it could possibly be my toe. But I am glad it is my toe and not someone else's, which would be even weirder.

Many people, including Mark, are at the &Now Festival, just up the road from us.

I think I sprained my thumb.

Or not sprained, but torqued it. Is there a specific word for almost sprained. Like, a bit swollen but not black and blue? I'm not sure how I injured it. I think in yoga class, just now. Maybe in pincha mayurasana somehow, though that makes no sense to me...

I bought artichokes today. And also asparagus. At last the asparagus is in season. Nice enough to eat raw.

I've been told that I should focus more on exhaling--by both the last doctor I had who treated my asthma as well as one of my yoga teachers--and that this will make inhaling easier and more productive.

According to an article I read in the Yoga Journal, "Dr. Gay Hendricks, author of Conscious Breathing (Bantam, 1995), and Dr. Konstantin Buteyko, a pioneer in the use of breath retraining for asthmatics, consider the malady to be more a disturbed breathing pattern than a disease."

That's pretty interesting--asthmatics tend to breathe at a rate two to three times faster than most people do, i.e. our breathing pattern is not normal. We take in a lot of oxygen, but then we breathe out too much carbon dioxide. Again from the same article "If CO2 levels get too low, the hemoglobin that carries oxygen through the blood becomes too "sticky" and doesn't release sufficient oxygen to the cells."

After a while, the body gets starved for oxygen, and so it resorts to rather drastic measures to slow breathing down and build up the CO2 levels again. Basically, it resorts to creating an asthma attack--muscles around the airways tighten, the body produces mucus and histamine, and breathing becomes difficult.

So, that's why trying to change my breathing pattern might help. I tried focusing on my exhales during yoga class this morning and it was incredibly difficult. When I'm forcing myself to exhale completely, all I want to do is stop halfway through and inhale again. However, I did notice that after about three or four minutes of breathing this way, exhaling completely became easier.

I just have to remember that when I'm not on the mat.

Real Jobs

One of my current students found my myspace page last weekend, and friended me. Most of my students on myspace eventually do find me, so it wasn't unusual. However, after class today he asked, "so, your real job is as a writer?" I told him it was, and he didn't respond with the disbelief or obvious discomfort that other people sometimes have. This little exchange stands out because he concluded that my real job is as a writer, where as teaching is something I do "on the side." That isn't quite true, but it's the exact opposite of the conclusion that people usually come to, so I thought it was interesting.

List of my current jobs:

• Teaching English as a foreign language
• Teaching developmental English
• Tutoring people about writing
• Designing t-shirts
• Doing research for a marketing company
• Creating marketing materials & public relations materials for a local yoga studio
• Managing the web site of that same studio

List of my current writing, art, and editorial projects

• Diligently shopping my first book manuscript around to all the places people said I should, even though I'm pretty sure I already know how it will eventually be published.
• Editing my second manuscript. Getting ready to, yes, diligently send it around.
• Kind of putting together a third. I don't think the third is really a manuscript--the pieces are too disparate to make a coherent book.
• Writing my fourth manuscript.
• Still working on "Memory Lessons," a series of visual pieces.
• Thinking already about my contribution to the 2008 Dusie project, now that the 2007 one is complete and live.
• Little bits of an essay thinking about the concept of "The Gurlesque." I need to plan ahead so that I have something to say by the time the anthology edited by Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg comes out from Saturnalia in 2009. I've been a slllooowwww critical writer recently.
• Little bits of a review on Lara Glenum's The Hounds of No, even though it's been reviewed. Maybe the review and the essay will be the same thing. Maybe I'll send them/it to Absent.
  

List of current yoga projects:

• Dropping back into urdhvadhanuasana from standing. Standing up from urdhvadhanuasana.
• Jumping up into handstand from two feet but with straight legs.
• More flexible hips, hamstrings, psoas, and quadriceps. So, that means a lot of hanumanasana and krounchasana.
• Learning and memorizing all the asanas named after birds. Krounchasana is the "heron pose--a very appropriate homage and counter balance to my bike rides around the lagoons.
  
  

It's still February, after all

Read a student essay today that suggested being a hippie was, for the student, about making better style choices and having more interesting conversations. That particular student is a good conversationalist, and does a great sense of style.

Another student said that you could rent a one-bedroom apartment in Milan for about $400 a month. I don't really believe it, but still.

Today a student asked me the difference between "reality" and "real estate." In San Diego county, there isn't a whole lot of difference.

Also, I want this; this would also be nice.

Going to yoga this evening to pry my shoulders out of my ears.

Are we enjoying our task

For the most part, we are.

And I typed up and revised the first part of a new manuscript I'm working on this afternoon. That felt good.

And I felt nearly normal during yoga class this evening. Even during inversions.

I kept thinking (in a smarmy, mean, unyogic way) of Charles Bernstein's poem, "Thank You for Saying Thank You."

I don't enjoy working with partners in a yoga class. I know, I know there are some things you need a partner for, and it's good to learn to trust and support other people. I guess. However, when I am upside down, I'd rather be left to my own devices. If I'm going to fall, I'd rather fall sideways and land on my feet instead of A) falling over backwards into a deranged back bend to avoid kicking my partner or B) just falling on my partner. I rarely feel supported by a yoga partner. Instead, I feel like I have to support them, which is most vexing when one is supposed to be the recipient of support. This is why I'm not a big fan of support.

Or maybe it's just that I'm not good at moving in and out of "teaching" mode quickly. When I'm at yoga, I need to focus very precisely on what I am physically doing. I don't want to help someone else understand that, for example, they should hold my hips or my feet when spotting me in an inversion, not my knees (ouch!). Giving directions while upside down and everyone in the room is also talking is impossible--you have to yell just so that your poor partner can hear what you are saying.

When I'm not in a kind, teacherly mode, I'm not a very good partner because I'm timid. I don't really want to touch someone else, and I don't want to be responsible when they get injured, or when their rotator cuff tears. Many people will simply not tell you if you are doing something that makes them uncomfortable, so I probably sound overly paranoid when I say "how does this feel? Are you feeling any pain in your lower back?" etc every five seconds.

Of course, receiving a really good assist is fabulous. A good assist can help you open up your muscles, or gain a deeper, more embodied sense of alignment. Giving an assist correctly can also do the same thing. But first you have to get through the interpersonal weirdness of assisting someone (or being assisted) in the first place.