When You're Skating On Thin Ice, You Might As Well Dance

If we're willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path.

"When Things Fall Apart" - Pema Chödrön

Poetry Just Is

There's a new Poet Laureate in our country, she takes over in the fall. Her name is Kay Ryan and I do believe she's my favorite yet. Without further ado, here is a sampling of her work. The words speak for themselves.

Hide and Seek

It’s hard
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It’s
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It’s
like some form
of skin’s developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.


The Well or the Cup

How can
you tell
at the start
what you
can give away
and what
you must hold
to your heart.
What is
the well
and what is
a cup. Some
people get
drunk up.


The Niagara River

As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice—as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced—
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means

Things Shouldn't Be So Hard

A life should leave
Deep tracks:
ruts where she went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
It should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space-
however small-
should be left scarred
by the grand and
Damaging parade
Things shouldn't
Be so hard.

A CAT/A FUTURE

A cat can draw
the blinds
behind her eyes
whenever she
decides. Nothing
alters in the stare
itself but she's
not there. Likewise
a future can occlude:
still sitting there,
doing nothing rude.

Happiness is...

A friend stopped me as I was coming out of yoga class this morning; gazing at my face she said, "boy, you look different. I don't know - you're brighter, you seem more buoyant." We hadn't seen each other in a while and she continued to remark that I was like night and day from only a couple of months ago. I wanted to tell her it was my new boxers - the ones with the puppies on them, only I was in yoga gear so it was obvious I wasn't wearing them. I just smiled, made some self-deprecating comment and went on my way. But I continued to think about what she said. It's so hard sometimes to notice ourselves and how we are changing as we appear to others even as we change internally.

Then it hit me as I was walking to work. I was smiling at people and gosh darn it, they were smiling back. I was happy. It's funny, I hadn't realized it until someone pointed it out but lately I've been very happy. Normally I'm in a pretty good mood but this was different, this was simply relaxed intent with internal sunshine just pouring out. As I paid more attention I could see how it was affecting the people around me, more laughter, more smiles, more ease in dealing with the trivial day to day things.

Where did this happiness come from, and how do I bottle it? There's got to be a market for this.

I've spent some time pondering and here are three key insights :

1. In a relationship, I'm the prize. My potential partner may see it the other way around which is great but if I don't get acknowledgment that I'm something special then I'm wasting my time. There are many out there who will value you to the degree that you're truly worth - go find those people and be with them. You will be happier.

2. Find a spiritual path. It may be nebulous and circuitous but as long as you accept that you are on a journey and the guiding light is your soul beaming out in search of something then all actions are indeed meaningful. This will make you happier.

3. Create, Create, Create. - did I say create? This is the fountainhead through which the universe flows. The act of creation is blessed. That we can bring together disparate parts from a field of our choice and contribute in a measure that reflects what our heart, our being is feeling is a miracle not to be denied. That this may inspire us and others reflects the only true communication between souls. Create art, create relationships, create progeny - into all pour your entire being with joy and fear and then stand back and let the world admire. This will bring you happiness.

My World And Welcome To It

I went to a party last night, a very nice benefit held for a friend heading to South Africa to work in an aids orphanage. I truly admire her courage, and her faith in the world and herself to affect change. Anyway I was socializing and, geek that I am, proselytizing about the newest technologies that were out there for people to play with. Our host, who is a therapist, stopped me and asked if I could help him with designing a website where he could offer up a video of himself for clients to view. That's easy, I said, we could knock that out in a day, but it got me to thinking about a conversation we might have...

"So what if you wanted it to be interactive, you know, have people ask you questions and you answer them."

"That's a little more interesting though I don't know if people would actually enjoy it much less utilize something like that. It's really just the telephone with faces at that point. "

"Well what kind of therapy would work over the internet"

" I don't know, certainly not traditional therapy, a lot of that is about the interaction between the therapist and the client. There are a lot of subtle cues that would be lost over such a limited medium."

"Well what about none traditional therapies. I have a friend who's been working on getting her degree in Dance Therapy from Lesley and other friends in the past who've worked in the field of Art Therapy. These are approaches I've always thought had a lot of potential because they bring in the creative aspects of the mind as a tool towards finding answers to issues that we all have."

"Perhaps, but isn't the internet rather limited? How do you dance on a computer?

"Sure, dancing may be out but there are areas of intense creativity being generated on the internet. Have you ever heard of Second Life?"

"I've heard of it, isn't it a game where people go to meet other people."

"It's actually a virtual world where you recreate yourself through the embodiment of an Avatar".

"An Avatar?"

"Yes, a totally fictional representation of yourself as you wish to appear. You could be a man or a woman or even a child. In fact you don't even need to be human. You could have six legs, a monkey tail and the head of an alligator if that's the way you want to see yourself."

"You mean I can change my avatar to reflect what I'm feeling inside?"

"Indeed, and you can have conversations within the virtual world in this form with your therapist or even amongst your therapy group, who by the way all have their own unique avatars. An added benefit is that you can travel in these worlds, even fly, to make believe places so the therapist could conceivably introduce different actions and more sophisticated venues to reach into and explore the psyche."

"So this is Avatar Therapy."

"Yes and it does exist today in limited fashion. People use it to overcome fears such as flying or spiders. It's really up to the therapeutic community to take this and run with it. "

"There's an old saying, "The sky's the limit" - here, I guess, the only limitation is our own imagination"

Get Your Groove On

Been getting the urge to go dancing lately. I love to dance and if the music's right and the crowd's amenable I'll go all night. Coincidently, I've been reading Lewis Mumford's "Technics and Human Development" and I'm at a part where's he's conjecturing about what human gatherings were like in our early days before we had language capabilities. He believes that it was gestures and actions that helped our ancestors form nascent social organizations. Someone would get inspired and begin a sort of "Look at Me" dance; this was the start of us getting together and telling stories. Before language it was just our bodies moving and jumping around, arms flailing and feet stamping, pantomiming animals and acts of nature. This dance in turn became infectious and the whole group would pick it up, reinforcing emotions and bonding the tribe together.

In a past life I was a dancer - no, not that kind of dancing. Modern dance - Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, et al. I wasn't really all that good at it, they kept me around mostly because I could lift women and not trip over my own feet. I loved training with a dance troupe though. We would spend hours in intricate choreography, flowing and swaying in complex patterns across the floor. It got so you were acutely aware of everyone at any given moment in space, mostly so you wouldn't run into them as you sped past but interestingly it also seemed as if our bodies were merged in some fashion into one transcendent being - not all the time but often enough to keep us in awe. Mind you this was back when I had a dancer's frame, 15 years of inhaling corporate fumes has left me sadly in ill repair, it's only recently through yoga that I've found my own true inner body returning - hence the desire to shake some booty.

There are a couple of applications out there that I've been playing with lately, facebook and twitter and they remind me of dancing in some fashion. These are what are called social apps because they're all about people interacting with each other on the internet. They let us keep in touch through short little text messages that are updated frequently. These short sentences usually reflect a person's mood or tell of an action being taken, what they've just eaten or who their new friends are. I'm fascinated by this. It strikes me that perhaps these are our early days of information dancing. The dawn of digital tribal movements saying "Look at Me". Small pieces of our separate lives are being blended together to be watched on a web page. Where will this go? I'm curious, what happens as we intertwine our lives closer and closer albeit today only through the limited medium of writing but tomorrow? As we become more aware of each other is this a dance that leads us to feel more connected while speeding temporally by? Are we on the road, like my young dance troupe, where some day we bond momentarily as one and as dervishes whirl together in collective meditation fully aware of what each other is feeling and doing?

A Stroke of Insight

Below is a link to a video from a recent TED conference. TED is a meeting of select individuals - it stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and they generally discuss some very powerful ideas with brilliant speakers and then broadcast them on the internet. This particular one caught my attention because of its relevance to yoga and the mind. The speaker comes across with great emotion and commitment and more importantly she echoes what my yoga teachers strive to teach us in some fashion during classes.

Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain researcher here in Boston who suffered a stroke twelve years ago. The stroke disabled much of the left hemisphere of her brain. What's interesting is her description of what happens as this part of the mind gives up control, in her case unwillingly. Most people are familiar with the left/right brain discussion. The general sense is that the left brain is logical and the right more intuitive. She expands on that concept in the ways that I think anyone with an interest in the Self vs self dialog would find fascinating. Part of me has to ask - yogis, is this what we've been trying to do all along?

The actual lecture lasts about twenty minutes but I guarantee you'll be thinking about it far longer than that.

Jill Bolte Taylor talks about her stroke of insight

Love Conquers All

I've just seen a wonderful little movie which I want to recommend to you. It's called Wall-E from Pixar. You've probably heard of it and you may have already seen it, particularly if you have children. It's a beautiful tale, full of love and hope. If you haven't seen it, check it out, better yet see it with someone you really care about and hold hands throughout - it's that kind of movie.

I went to see it because I'm always curious about how robots are portrayed in film. Robotics was one of my early loves and I studied machine learning for quite a few years from the cognitive and philosophical side. Eventually I drifted from the esoteric into what we call wetware, trying to derive models of learning by observing and experimenting with actual biological systems. However I digress...

This movie is a little bit about robots, they are the main characters after all, and more about relationships. Wall-E falls in love with another robot who has trouble loving him back. It not that she can't, it's just that she's got other things on her mind. As in many classic fairy tales, our hero strives and strives to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to prove his love and win her heart. There's no grandstanding on his part, no dragons being slain, no boasts about his abilities or accomplishments; he's just patient with her, staying by her side through many difficult moments. To me this is love; it's saying ok I care about you though I may not completely understand you and I'm here when you're ready, for whatever. Wall-E's big dream was to hold hands with her. I'm down with that - simple touch means so much.

There's not really a whole lot more to true love; it's just someone saying I accept you as you are and I want to be with you and only you and then meaning it throughout their being. And you can't tell if someone loves you from a distance, it has to be up close and messy. Love is about taking chances, which is a wonderful segue into the second type of relationship portrayed in this movie.

The humans in Wall-E's world have lost their ability to face risks. They live in a sheltered environment protected from needing or wanting anything; it's all delivered to them by faithful robotic servants. This retreat from actually living their lives fully to just sitting around and letting circumstance dictate what they should and shouldn't feel has left them satisfied yet clueless and not truly happy. They don't realize what they're missing. That's the second lesson here - it's the struggle, the striving, the overcoming of fear and the joy that comes from dancing in the face of doubt that ultimately defines how much we are alive in this world. If we don't fully live, scary as that may be, then how can we ever really love, and isn't love what we came here for?

Of Heaven and Earth

I spent this past long weekend celebrating the holiday with my extended family. We gather once a year around this date, coming in from all over the country, settling into a string of homes along the northern coast of Maine, a bit off the beaten track. It's one of my favorite places on earth and being there with the people I grew up with, my tribe, makes it all the sweeter.

At night, if you take a moment and walk a few yards away from all the festivities and into an open field, you can lie down on your back and view the most amazing display of stars, something we rarely see from the more populated areas where we all tend to live nowadays.

In truth, we really can't fathom the scope of the universe, the dance of stars contained within and all their magnificent gyrations. Science tells us that we are constantly being bathed with many forms of radiation from these distant bodies, but it's the limitation of our senses that registers them only as twinkling points of light. Still, this seemingly random scattering of luminescence has inspired us, awed us, and led the poets, artists and dreamers of our cultures to create wondrous works of infinite depth. We're only seeing a small piece of the sky's true beauty and yet look at what we can do with it.

When we reach out to each other, when someone comes within our sphere of notice, when they start to mean something to us, we only see a small piece of that person, a minute portion of the radiation of their true spirit. At times we have to remember that it's our own limitations, our own, only too human, set of senses that are not allowing us to truly realize that other person.

And much like scientists, there are those that proclaim, when dealing with people, there is more you need to know, more characteristics to be gleaned, a theory of why this and why that that has to evolve and at length when enough information is gathered you can finally expel an "I understand" and go forth. Only then will you let someone into your life. But the poet, the artist, the dreamer within tells us: what I see is enough to work with; my own senses, limited as they are, provide for me enough that I may create and in doing so join spirits. Just as the heavens inspire us, so too should we be inspired by those we love. Let's just lie back and enjoy the dazzling display of each other.

Control/Alt/Delete anyone?

So I'm learning how to assist during classes at my yoga studio and one of the requirements before becoming an assistant is that you must complete a Red Cross course in first aid and AED. AED stands for Automated External Defibrillator and is an amazing little device. It works at reading and stabilizing the heart which can be beating in an unusual pattern and preventing proper blood flow. There's not much to using one because it literally tells you in a rather calm voice what you should do - step by step taking you through attaching things and clearing away and then administering a shock. In fact the real lesson for this section of the first aid course was "Don't over think the process. Listen to what the machine is telling you to do". Our instructor repeated this incessantly until it became an afternoon mantra for me.

"Don't over think the process. Listen to what the machine is telling you to do. "

In some ways this is how we live our lives day to day. We rarely question the technologies offered us. As long as they work, and are easy to use, then we invite them in. Each new idea or product we accept though carries with it the seeds of change affecting our everyday patterns and introduces a new and different way of viewing and interacting with the reality around us.

This is important because we can't separate who we are from the things that we use everyday. You are much more because you have a car and that changes your identity of who you are and what you can do. I'm someone who can meet somebody at any given time at anyplace within driving distance. You are in contact much more often with friends because you carry a mobile phone and that changes the localized society around you. The more we connect through the phone, through text messaging, through the internet, the more integrated our lives are. These are the meta patterns that I'm curious about. Meta, because they exist in each of us and yet can be extrapolated to show trends and direction amongst a large group of people. The only question I really want to ask is - are these patterns enhancing our lives or somehow limiting us. Are they helping us become more self actualized, in Mazlow's terminology, or are they merely "what the machines are telling us to do".