Tag: Relationships

Something within me was about to erupt

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

PERFUME SAGE – a phrase from Yogananda.

Sivananda’s books reflect self-torture. Sex is evil, noise is awful, greed is terrible. Don’t enjoy!

In the valley, the ridges are blocked by trees or buildings. Or even little rill hills rather than distant views and vistas.

Water is suspended and sparkles before crashing and going on as if nothing had happened.

Serpents of water spiral around rocks and slither hissing away.

Where do we go from here?

Question: “What would Nikki think if you got married?”

“That’s her problem. She’s been in New York and could have taken a bus out, it’s two hours, but she’s afraid to. I’ve got my own life to live.”

Myth rather than Belief.

Hindu gods and goddesses rather than Boddhisatvas ….

Maslow’s “optimal people” as models for others.

Good hokku are full of overtones.

In Japanese, no articles, almost no pronouns, few distinctions like singular or plural, prepositions after nouns, kireji (“cut words”) untranslatable but often indicate an unfinished sentence or an elusive force / no relative pronouns: modifiers must precede the noun / normal Japanese sentences end in verbs.

Find beauty in things not inherently beautiful.

When am I going to leave? My heart is no longer here. I need a place for my books and records, a place to not feel threatened. I’m almost 25 and still no where.

Who am I? poet, journalist, playwright, copywriter, copy editor, essayist, critic, novelist and short story writer, artist, calligrapher, designer, typographer, teacher, monk and swami, philosopher and theologian, political scientist and urban economist, man of letters, music and music critic, historian, Quaker, cook, laundryman, cleaner, woodsman, naturalist, chemist and biologist, astronomer at times, dreamer and idler, architectural addict, hiker and swimmer, chess player of sorts, dabbler, claimer of new responsibilities though slovenly accountant and bored by business (except as econ), gourmet and ignorer of food (unless I’m fasting), organizer and promoter / nervous and roving, homebody without a home, hungry for love or attention and too demanding for a mate, confused and angry, a fukkin’ prince or sunshine stompin’ through life.

Is the devil a demon?

In Manhattan, in television interviewer David Susskind’s office. Joan Kennedy, the power sitting back and watching: subtle and sharp, how do we react to Swami and to each other. Sam Zurich the star questioner, hot and cold and in the spotlight, dressed casually but expressively, easy and irreverent, interested and bored, cut us off with more questions … Joan has a dream office, to my eyes. The show passed on airing us.

Swami tearing into me again, yet reads my palm: “You’re gonna be great.”

Yet, from Bharati, “Why don’t you ask her for a week or two to work on that novel? It couldn’t hurt. When I was working on a piece last September, it got many things out in front of me and I grew a lot.”

“Jnana, nobody is holding you here. We’ll give you anything, just name it, to keep you here, if it will make you happy.

[What I see now is that I had no idea of what I wanted to write. Perhaps if I wanted to really do the inside-yoga volume?]

My last meditation with Swami: all her energy lifting me, a swell, bodiless: nothing mattered: pure energy, pure orgasm: fear and doubt and delight and ego …

Owe camp $30, I presume for bus fare and food … and escaped almost unnoticed, like the anonymous wind.

Leaving the ashram is like breaking off with a lover: emotional and fear of freedom.

Characters: pig-pen, the mouth, mastah sigh, mr. meticulous, boots and whip, sentimental slob …

“Works of art are generally formed through integration of two incompatible elements, one of these being an attempt to communicate and the other, an artistic structure that contradicts the communication … The harmonious compound formed by these two elements has qualities found neither in nature nor in human affairs, and hence it can communicate no information about real facts. But it can draw on our unorganized memories and embody them in its own structure, evoking thereby deep emotions in us.” – Michael Polanyi, “What is a painting?” in The American Sholar, Autumn 1970 …

“Among hunting tribes there exists a custom according to which, before the men set out for the hunt, the women must dance and create an atmosphere of sexual excitement; the hunters, however, may not have intercourse with the women at this time but must satisfy their sexual excitement by killing animals. Frazer reports that the Nutka Sound Indians were compelled to refrain from sexual intercourse during the week of the great whale hunt. … The identification of women with prey is partly connected with the beginnings of the sex struggle.” – Ernst Fischer, The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach

“Zen monks deliberately seek to outwit their thinking facilities by immersing themselves in practical acts – gardening, tea drinking, fencing, archery, and the prosaic details of everyday life – in the belief that in such pursuits the instant of real experience will at some point manifest itself.

“This practical, if non-rational, doctrine has permeated great areas of Chinese and Japanese life and art, and is especially well exemplified in the type of painting known in Japan as sumiye, in which the artist working with ink, sets an instantaneous impression on paper and is prohibited by the nature of the medium from going over or altering the strokes his brush has applied. … Life … delineates itself on the canvas called time, and time never repeats: once gone, forever gone; and so is an act: once done, it is never undone. Life is a sumiye painting, which must be executed once and for all time and without hesitation, without intellection, and no corrections are permissible or possible. Life is not like an oil painting, which can be rubbed out and done over time and again until the artist is satisfied. With a sumiye painting, any brush stroke painted over a second time results in a smudge; the life has left it. All corrections show when the ink dries. So is life. We can never retract what we have once committed to deeds; nay, what has once passed through our consciousness can never be rubbed out. Zen, therefore, ought to be caught while the thing is going on, neither before nor after.” – Winthrop Sargeant, “Profile of D.T. Suzuki,” The New Yorker, August 31, 1957

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

The novel is quite different from the operas

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

You know the common declaration that the book was better than the movie. Almost nobody acknowledges the reality that a movie can cover no more than 20 pages of a novel, or so I’ve heard – basing it on a short story would be much more fitting. (Who’s counting, anyway? A lot of a movie script involves fleshing out details. Say for five pages here, five pages there, five more for the finale. You get the idea.) There’s also the problem that cinema presents surfaces, while fiction can delve into individuals’ perceptions, reflections, and emotions in ways that even a first-person narrator cannot equally convey. Falling back on a voiceover, from a critical point of view, usually reflects a shortcoming in the movie itself. Perhaps you’ll come up with exceptions, and I’m open to argument. The point is, a filmscript has to discard a lot to fit into an acceptable running time for commercial release.

All that got stirred up after hearing a broadcast of Puccini’s 1884 opera Manon Lescaut, a retelling of Massenet’s once popular 1874 opera Manon, which still gets performed, unlike Auber’s largely forgotten 1856 version.

Usually, the discussion involves comparisons between Puccini and Massenet’s works, which I’ll touch on later, but this time I picked up on a clue from Sir Denis Forman’s “irreverent guide to the plots, the singers, the composers, the recordings” A Night at the Opera, a go-to book I’ll highly recommend. Manon is not one of Puccini’s blockbuster hits, something Sir Denis dismisses as “rather a dim little affair. It is made up of scenes from the Abbe Prevost’s long novel and whole chunks of the narrative take place between acts. This is dramatically inept because we lose any sense of continuity in Manon’s downward spiral and the agony does not pile on as it should.” OK, so my lack of enthusiasm for this work isn’t my fault, even though there are dramatic high points throughout, as Sir Denis cites.

He really grabbed my attention when he proclaimed, “The libretto is not good. Puccini’s Manon has a worse script than Auber’s, a much worse one than Massenet’s, and all three fail to mobilize the original Prevost’s story, which is full of good stuff and could make a rattling good television series today.”

That was good enough to send me down the rabbit hole. The novel in question is Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, the seventh and last volume of the Memoirs and Adventures of a Quality Man Who Retired from the World. First published in 1731, the novel was deemed scandalous in 1733 and 1735, seized and condemned to be burned, ultimately leading Prevost to revise and republish it in 1753, with an important episode added.

The operas – and I presume the stage and movie adaptations, too – all focus on the beautiful young woman in question, Manon Lescaut – but quickly diminish the storyteller, the young Chevalier des Grieux. The action begins when she’s being conveyed by coach on her way from school to a convent, accompanied by her brother, Lescaut. When they stop at an inn for the night, the normally shy des Grieux sees her, is stunned by her beauty, somehow strikes up a conversation, and immediately falls in love. Her brother, meanwhile, is engaged with Geronte di Ravoire, a very rich government official who instantly plots to abduct her, perhaps with her brother’s approval or assistance. In private, des Grieux boldly proposes that they run off to Paris together, she accepts, and they escape successfully. Just in time, of course.

End of Act I, more or less.

Puccini’s Act II begins with her being Geronte’s mistress, however bored and also yearning for des Grieux and some sexual stimulation. Massenet instead opens with her cohabitating in poor student squalor with des Grieux when his best friend, who plays a prominent role in the novel but is utterly absent in Puccini, arrives, ostensibly trying to intervene before des Grieux is surprised by the appearance of his brother, who abducts the kid and returns him to his father’s estate. The friend, in cahoots with the brother and stern father, has forewarned Manon, who then chooses to side with Guillot’s luxury (yes, the sugar daddy is given a different name, to the same effect). The novel paints a darker scene. Des Grieux has gloated of handing control of his purse over to his lover and is proud of all she’s been able to purchase; he’s shocked, of course, when he finally hears her explanation of “donations” from Geronte; she coyishly claims the exchanges do nothing to diminish her affection for the poor boy, who still believes she’s innocent in all ways. In the novel, she’s revealed as a coconspirator in facilitating the abduction, which then permits her to disentangle herself to commit to dissolute wealth and ease. Unlike the operas, the novel then plunges into des Grieux’ pits of despair and anger, including incarcerations, along with her string of rich patrons she fleeces and promptly flees, each time pulling des Grieux back into the picture to assist her escape. To thicken the plot, des Grieux has turned to seminary and priesthood, only to fall once more for Manon’s pleading and charms. In the book, she’s more manipulative, and the novel’s more about him than her.

Ultimately, in the operas, Geronte/Guillot has the police arrive as she’s trying to pack up jewelry she received in payment for her services. You might say she accidentally spills the beans. She’s imprisoned and convicted on theft and prostitution charges and sentenced to exile in frontier New Orleans. The operas cast her as a tragic victim of injustice in a cruel world. The novel, however, has her more of a repeat offender who never lives up to her end of the bargain with a succession of libertine benefactors. In contrast, des Grieux can be seen as darkly comical in his obsession even in the face of her repeated duplicities. Come here, come here, go away, go away. (The story painfully reminds me of a similar upheaval in my own past. I can’t say that he or I were truly victims of anything but our own fantasies or fancies.) The first stage adaptation cast the story as a dark comedy, but that effort fell flat.

From the novel one can venture that she’s not the innocent virgin des Grieux is when they run off together. Perhaps that’s the reason she was bound for the convent, a response to her earlier sexual behavior or escapades. She certainly appears experienced in their initial passionate coitus on the road to Paris, the deflowering of des Grieux. It’s enough for him to consider themselves married. Throughout both the book and the operas, it’s easy to view Manon’s brother as something of a pimp or procurer. He’s not exactly her protector at the inn or anytime thereafter. As Wikipedia says, despite its “poor critical reception, the novel quickly seduced the public.” Frankly, it does border on pornography.

The author, more formally Antoine Francoise Prevost, parallels much of his own life in Memoires and Adventures, which includes Manon.

And then? Let’s turn to Sophia Coppola’s third movie, Marie Antoinette, with all of the lavishness of French ruling class excess at the end of that century. Trace through the history of Marie’s husband’s grandfather, Louis XIV, and you’ll learn of the custom of mistresses – it seems every rich male had them, along with multiple estates – and clergy were often active in the arrangements.

In the end, I feel much more sympathy for the ill-fated queen than I do for the conniving courtesan. Puccini, though, compensates des Grieux with a big aria that expresses the rapture of desire, “Donna non vidi mai.”

~*~

The novel in digital formats is available for free in English translation at gutenberg.org and Internet Archive [https://archive.org/details/manonlescaut00pruoft or audiobook https://archive.org/details/manon_lescaut_1606_librivox%5D. It may also be purchased in Kindle and print editions at Amazon.

What a spiral

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The next volume starts 23:XII:72 and ends with my leaving ashram.

The inside cover is inscribed :

His Holiness Swami Jnana-Devananda
Prince among the flowers of delusion

Coming Boddhisatva among the yogis
Sleeping giant within the future
Fool among the ignorant
Blessed Immortal Atman into Capricorn

O suffering December, the month I would eliminate! Its forced merry and sleighs no one can remember, unlike the Apache snowmobile. The Santaclauswitzes Each December has a heaviness, a feeling of unfulfilled destiny. I’m not even yet married.

Into Capricorn, the days grow longer as the darkness recedes.

Like Ginsberg’s description of Kerouac: Leave behind American lit and find yourself. Ditto that English novelist who writes because there are no books he likes, so he invents his own.

Levi, reminding me I am destine for the Perfect Woman / “Only a perfect woman could put up with him,” Fern retorts / “Have you met the perfect one yet?” / “I’m not married, am I?”

Cedar sensing her Karma, because of a dream, is a group marriage – one male and one other female. Expectations also produce a Karma.

“Why waste your time writing poems I can’t understand? You’re better off chopping firewood.”

“So that’s what you do: ask the same question and keep answering” – Creeley’s technique

28:XII:72: Usage of the word god or its concept in India implies a lower level of perfection that in the West or at least a wider range of “human” or “sinful” activity is permitted the Hindu deities than is Jesus or Jehovah. With all of his active fornication and imaginative lying, no wonder Krsna appears pagan in the Western mind.

Clubbed to death in the Holy City?

Who was the real Dharma heir for Jesus?

Without the sacrifice of Judas, would there have been a Resurrection, a Living Proof of the conviction of Jesus in the will of his Father or the validity of his Karma?

Thomas was strong enough to resist the wrath of the group in upholding his belief. If Peter was the rock of the Catholic church, Thomas was the root of Protestant reformation. Thomas the loner and empiricist, with faithful questioning. Jesus loved Thomas no less than Peter.

SO HAPPY CELESTE IS COMING!

(Later: announced she couldn’t make it. Her father had died and she was continuing with Marty in the med student in Virginia.)

Calligraphy slows down one’s expression. Very deliberate, each stroke a meditation. Resistance of pen and paper.

“Speak in the stillness, Lord, for my heart is silent.” – Father John’s prayer at the beginning of meditation, though often he realizes how unquiet his heart is.

And another priest said, “It is sinfulness that keeps you from God.”

Allen Ginsberg almost came this weekend.

Charles Olsen’s theory of breath control, how each poet has a different capacity and way of phrasing his lines and that a poet’s work should reflect these aspects of his personality.

But I must add there are also page poems, to be looked at, the rhythm of eye movement dancing with the lines.

Hopping along the boulders atop Big Pocono – O, to be a mountain goat! Or an eagle!

[Next day] Len and Zeezy stopped by but I kept spacing out, couldn’t relate, felt very cold and distant. (The household was fasting. Levi sez astrologically I’ll be spacing out even more.)

Baltimore trip / Jan 10-11, 73

XIT
41

With stayed with Father John Sheehan, probably in Roland Park …

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

Despite the seclusion, I did venture out

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

From an unnumbered red cover stenographer book, mostly October 1972, which includes trips to New York City and Binghamton.

But first: Playing my violin with new bow gifted to me.

Said Swami: “Jnana, I just discovered something about you – you’re a delightfully violent lover!”

From seclusion into the depths of Gotham.

In NYC:

Stimulation overload. Disorientation. Discomfort.

Crazy lady, not yet 30, looks 45. Newsdealer says, “She’s been here 10 times in the last hour. I’m afraid she’ll damage something. Security’s afraid of itself, won’t do no thing.”

Her friend “balled Debbie and Donna in one night, they’re sisters; said he raped one because she was toying with him. He then split for Texas for three weeks.”

~*~

Return to Binghamton on Virgo/Libra cusp 1972, traveling as Swami Jnana, a very difficult trip: everyone asks so many questions, trying to rip apart the riddle, to find out why and what I am now. “You know I can’t go back there anymore,” Joni Mitchell on the stereo.

So difficult for them to call me “Swami,” it’s always the the name no longer relate to …

My trip up? For Len’s b’day?

Hitchhiking a good omen: my first ride a Cadillac [like so many others in my hitchhiking experiences]; from Geneva, Ohio, he commutes weekly from NYC to home, and back, the weekend: once got it down to seven hours …

The second a straight sophomore [meaning non-hippie] from East Stroudsburg State College; a Datsun with many cassette tapes; Iron Butterfly and Grand Funk in the shoebox; strong wind blows us like a boat on rough water; his hair once long (for the summer) this former high school football star telling me about long hair as he heads home to see girlfriend

Take side trip with him, all over Scranton, waving and honking at his friends; I’m dropped off at Clark’s Summit. Scott’s his name.

Third ride a cigar-smoking car dealer from Wilkes-Barre – he lost all business records etc. in the flood; on his way to Upper Cayuga Lake, where he has a large cruiser. A soft, gentle man, honest. I told him I had returned to school [as the ashram could be considered, rather than a commune]. Such a beautiful crisp September day, blue with wispy clouds tearing at me like the drive Vivienne and I took stoned or the September views from the window Len and I had on Hawley street. “There’s something out there you’re not getting,” it says. The driver, meanwhile, told me of a retired couple who had finally cleared themselves of debt had lost everything in the flood – they received government relief of $5,000 – nothing. I told him it was impossible to imagine the flooding, the pain. He nodded, said it is so. People were now fleeing the city, leaving mortgages behind. You have to have a receipt for everything or the government won’t pay, which means your own labor is worthless.

He then told me about the graves exploding as the water undercut the cemetery at Forty Fort; bodies washed away. I later read that some 1,800 bodies were still unaccounted for and heads and arms were being found in people’s backyards etc. Curiosity seekers descend on the towns on Sunday.

Zizi commented that I had met so many fucked-up people and how fortunate I was in getting away … including escaping the sad-trap Press …

Celeste said that when I speak now, it’s from experience, on and of a human plane, not from things I learned in books and of books. She also spoke of being called immoral by some of her housemates. (Immoral? See it as doing anything without love)

Len’s party so dull he and I took the 10-speed bicycles and flew through the streets, downtown running red lights and singing opera at the top of our lungs like birds flying to freedom. Me, seldom so wild and happy in so long.

Out there, a system of threats.

The Bronx funeral trip:

Three knifed to death Saturday night in Upper Bronx; no reason given, no theft; nothing in the news. The mother of one victim turns this into a party; has an autopsy despite Hebraic law; does nobody learn? A gang initiation, murdering a white? Or merely cheap thrills? Going for a walk in a better neighborhood and then being followed unknowingly.

Police call at 4 am – “Come now to lineup – see if we have the man” – and they’re so irritated if the victim’s companions are not immediately out of bed for the station. Sympathy?

Yesterday I was at Len and Ise’s, next day it was Brooklyn.  Such a strange place, the city. Heading to the Bronx, we drove through Harlem, stirring thoughts of Ise. We had left the ashram at night, as soon as I got back to the farm from Binghamton.

People? More wolves than men?

I began reading Moby-Dick on 17 October – great, original, and thoroughly American … such an intoxication, a swell of language …

First mentions of my planned Tibetan novel … “a novel should retain a dream-like entrancement/reality – distortion”

The Dolly Lama, as the kids called him.

“He needs me” is a kind of possession.

Hunter doesn’t accept advice or new ideas, except later. Rigid, has his own way to do a thing (as does Swami) … their (unexpressed) joy of wrestling.

A pipe organ recital program from Tuesday, March 28, St. John Chapel noon series at Columbia University: Reger, Seth Bingham, Jean Langlais premiere performance, Vierne, Dupre.

~*~

The Delaware Water Gap and smaller Wind Gap were major features in our horizon to the east. Here’s a typical view from the neighborhood. Image by Chuck Walsh via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

Maybe it all adds up

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

At a wedding party, Harmony got an offer: “I have an extra $300 lying around if you want to spend the night” – the bride’s father.

Mirrors aren’t windows …

How flattering to get a letter from a guest who found me too beautiful. Was told by Swami, “You must not look so pure and perfect before female guests: you must do something to look muddy and imperfect.” Be hard or mean? To be real?

In a small town, when children peddle products to your door, you buy even if you don’t want to.

“He’s tense as an E string on a fiddle,” said Uncle Emerson, who never played fiddle but knew the folk expression.

At one of my great-grandma’s funeral, a man in overalls, paintbrush in hand, showed up: “I can’t say I rightly remembered the woman, but I thought I’d pay my respects.” Small-town duty.

At Grandma’s funeral, so many woodwork relatives I didn’t know: “We should get together more often.”

Sez a sailor: there’s much time to read on a cruise / most seafaring men cannot swim / 86-foot waves in the Norwegian Sea / wear beard, smoke pipe, speak Anglo / Polaris Jack the dolphin who for 20 years piloted ships through treacherous Australian reefs [Wikipedia has Pelorus Jack, New Zealand, 1888-1912, 24 years]

Self-hate = masochism.

Yesterday, I led an old-style Lakshmy hatha class: was afraid I’d kill them but they thanked me, even those who couldn’t keep up.

Pre-Oct 14: while mimeographing, watched an oak tree change from fainting yellow into majestic gold, from morning to midafternoon: the seasons flee before our eyes.

In a Zen temple, a godo [the guy with the stick] / here, Swami Cedar.

Mer de
Merde

[Incinerated]

~*~

 From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

Bang, bang, bang, and I’m a swami

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

ON MY RETURN FROM OHIO, Swami was talking to Mary Russell (a double Sagittarius), who asked, “When’s Jnana going to become a swami?”

“Oh, he’s got it all. He had to go through a long purification, though.”

Two hours later, as I was preparing brunch (guess that was in my tenure as head cook), Swami returned from a drive to the rock festival (we had set up tents the night before and fed the (200,000) freaks rice, soybeans), and asked, “Jnana, how’d you like to be a swami?’

To which I replied, “If it’s required.”

And, apparently, I didn’t even bat an eyelash.

That night, I worked nine hours heavily (no break) at Jerry’s Diner, washing dishes until 1:30 am … very pooped!

And now the responsibility. YOU MUST BE MORE HUMBLE THAN EVER BEFORE!

My yoga name written in Sanskrit.

 

FROM MARY’S READING of my astrological chart:

  • Greatness/genius
  • Strong editing
  • Quicksilver mind. Mercury one of my ruling planets (“mercurial” = intellectual, flexible, adaptive)
  • Very orthodox though I appear strange to many people; I enjoy coming off “freaky”
  • Strong intuitive inductions, leaps
  • Very attractive to women; will marry “the most perfect woman in the world,” perhaps an Aries.
  • “Honor” women: leads to strange expectations
  • Worry too much (worry denies God), a born worrier. “Let it go!”
  • In five years, money; but things MOVE before that. [Fostoria, Bloomington, and then Yakima as the five-year mark; not really money, but some security/comfort.]
  • Follow the royal road of the heart, not the mind
  • Ambition: be humble!
  • When you were 13, you were the fastest thing on wheels
  • Summer of ’70 brought the “dark hole of the night” when past karma came due

 

MEDITATION TECHNIQUES:

  • Concentrate on chakras, hold 3 long breaths on each point (21 minutes)
  • Do pranayama before or, as Buddhists do, during. Or count breaths.
  • Concentrate on flame.
  • Begin at top of head and pull light to heart and radiate
  • Recite mantra or chant silently
  • Concentrate on others
  • Mantra or biblical phrase or line from a hymn

And then sit tight.

 

As for Swami quotes?

To staff: “There’s only one person in the ashram who can pull himself around quickly when he’s down.”

Who’s that?

“Jnana-Devananda.”

You mean Levi-Devananda, don’t you?

“No, Jnana-Devananda.”

Reading my hand: “He’s so good-natured it almost hurts.”

And here I’d been feeling in a funk.

To me: “You’re giving out vibes now, but you must learn to receive them. I tried getting through to you last night, and you were like a brick wall.” (I was concentrating on my chakras, trying to get high. Don’t know how to accept them, tune in. Frustration!)

Yet on August 4, Swami imposed a two-week silence me – said she’s been watching me for two weeks, waiting for me to pull myself together. Been racing, withdrawing. Tired of guests seeking easy answers or asking questions, “Where’s the vacuum cleaner hose?” Too many words racing through my head: difficult to meditate.

 

OTHER BITS:

Eyes heavy: resentment.

Swami so obvious with Levi in front of guests.

Harmony loves clutter and noise.

Cedar so severe, rigid; sadomasochistic at times; fanatic’s eyes, yet at times wisdom from her lips

Levi is better dressed than the other swamis, always at her side. She is always asking what he thinks or if he will comment: in group wedding photo, he is betrayed: he looks only at Swami. Am surprised nobody picks up on it. Bhaktivananda did detect Swami’s worldly passions. He merely fingered the wrong one.

I would like to extend the silence, two months perhaps?

Sit in forest, on rock, quiet a long time. Start to move, see big black snake, neck and head upraised, alert / my own silent fear, sidestep quickly.

That movie: El Topo, the mole (underground man). Still haven’t seen it.

The newsletter: no wisdom. What Swami likes today, she’ll revile tomorrow; what’s too long, too heavy today is too short, too sugary tomorrow.

A spice rack as the arsenal of argument.

“Help me plant weeds,” Cedar tells the gardener.

When I’m speeding: don’t listen, don’t let people finish,

Why are people so self-destructive?

Because they want to be noticed, sez Swami.

The selfish man can never find happiness. Selfishness and happiness are mutually exclusive.

A caterpillar moves on middle legs, contracts the rear, and pushes / the front half of a caterpillar floats, doesn’t touch much, let’s the back half do the work / the strobic rhythm of fireflies / blips like the scratches on a worn cinema projection /

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

Stirring up other troubles

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The next spiralbound notebook covers summer ’72, ashram, and well into autumn.

As I inscribed in the inside cover:
More tracings in the water 
into Sannasyn, 8:VII:72 11:45 am

Much of the following was from a trip home for the funeral of my grandmother.

Regarding my mother: she slapped me when I stood up to her / “We are poor,” she kept saying / “Don’t touch girls” /

SHAME / too thin and ill-dressed in hand-me-down clothes or my three-a-year new too-short trousers

She was inwardly jealous of each girlfriend, waited up for her 22-year-old son, furious when I came home at 3 am …

Resented me, says I nearly drove her insane: two years all alone with me while Dad was working / an interference with her own depending on her own dad: her insecurities as a conceived out of wedlock and therefore overly protected child

Mom makes herself so unhappy: nobody is better / does more / has less / she thinks too much of herself, “How poor!”

I cannot return home: there’s no room to grow

In high school, R.R. so sexy / at 22, a skinny mother, so sexless.

Even the green beans become heavy and dull in their passions .

The one-eyed pacifier (TV).

(My diatribes) Trying to comprehend the outside world.

The Christian suffers constantly because he can never be as good as Jesus.

The silent grace of Hap and Pauline Moon, a meditation so strong in one minute a rush, you don’t know what hit you.

Everybody on 3rd street walks as if under a burden: dead and unhappy, unlike New Yorkers who exhibit style and confidence. Such a shock to discover I prefer New York.

Virginia at the Journal-Herald was into yoga with Mishra and Vitaldas 20 years ago, takes another drag on her cigarette and is cool.

Surprised by this entry of meeting with Jim Millikin, at this point assistant managing editor at JH.

“I didn’t recognize your face (the long hair etc.) but I recognized your eyes.” 400 applications on file & he said, “Look me up when you leave the ashram. If I can’t help you, I may know somebody who can. There are so few sensitive, creative people in the business.”

“Yeah, that’s why I came in to see you!”

“When a man if 50 is willing to uproot, he’s usually a wino or something.” (Many [more] desk jobs than reportorial [open].)

Down (very) on Gannett, where we both had worked. And his own “lame” desk as well as the “flak” reported rather than “story.”

Kathy Hoerstein (leo/virgo cusp): “Oh, I just read some of your letters!”

Grandpa: “And he had nine children and 42 grandchildren, just a regular army of (offensive term now deleted).”

Clifton Gorge: such a piddly canyon “But it’s all we got”

Rundown house in Yellow Springs, windows open, no screens / artifacts carefree & lazy / memories of Olaf and D-Man in our ghetto summer stoned in the mountains.

This constant drive to do more / never satisfied to rest, to be / ambition is a hunger that devours the host / an inner fire.

Midwestern women trained to be sweet, smiling, o my! Tight curls and cut, print dresses. Do the right thing and worry about neighbors.

On this trip] find girls looking at me with desire – a free, long-haired fantasy of unfathomable sensitivity

So difficult to be alone and not lonely

The attraction of HIGH art etc / genius /

Mother of myself

The attraction and repulsion of pornography

The women in my life get more beautiful.

Keep demons
in place
under rocks

~*~

The farmlands around us retained a Pennsylvania Dutch character, though not necessarily of a Plain identity. The Delaware Water Gap and higher Wind Gap were dominant features in the horizon to our east. Photo by Chuck Walsh via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

 

Surviving another hard winter and more

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The next volume, beginning Winter ’72, begins with our first week-long intensive seminar. Some really bizarre group action, both from the guests and the staff.

The volume also includes my trip to Ohio for Grandma’s funeral; she died June 21. 1972.

~*~

Afterward, reading my seminar notes aloud to Swami, Cedar flipped out. “You just kind of pass through my life, but from your reading, I realize I’ve had you completely wrong.”

Now I know why I write: it’s the way I can be me, release my inner voice.

In mid-February, Swami announced she was closing the place, sending us into a tizzy. On the 17th, I recorded: Swami sez I have so much hate. [My unspoken reaction, I’m guessing.] It is necessary energy arising from saturation, frustration; I am different, and anyone who tries to make me like them is desexing me, perverting my love.

On the 22nd, I noted a Binghamton trip, believe it was my first of manicotti (when I wanted pizza) and spending the night with Celeste. Among other things, she said she cannot kiss someone she cannot look in the eyes and know she’s communicating with. (She is so much more than her body, which is where I too often stop communicating.)

In bed, to me: “and we will never marry,” in a positive voice. “Sometimes I think you’re too self-critical.”

I TRY TO POSSESS BECAUSE I AM INSECURE

24 February went to Philadelphia with Swami to sell her diamond wedding ring. “Everybody is so slow (unlike NYC), but dead eyes, no smiles except a fleeting twinge …

In meditation: WE ARE ALL LITTLE FISHES IN A VAST OCEAN OF AIR.

“Truth can be reached only through a comprehension of opposites.”

Swami Sivananda was a fruitcake.

(2 days later: all of us here but Swami are fruitcakes)

Beware of the vegetables.

Ria (and others) said they like my hatha classes “because you give long rests”; tonight I gave a hold-the-position (once) class, and she (and they) said “you were like a drill master.”

25:III:72, after one of our spring break seminars, Swami laid it on me heavy; Levi said he felt apologetic in asking me to do anything – a reading fast, for one thing …

Sometime later, Swami: “Jnana, he’s solid. He doesn’t always look it, when he’s walking around here, looking like he’s not doing anything, but he’s like Levi. Don’t worry about it. Also, he can’t say what he’s thinking. What’s in his head is very beautiful, but it just comes out different. His tongue gets him in trouble. As I said, he’s solid and as much a part of the ashram as the stone. He won’t collapse until the stone does.”

Harmony talked about her being pimped experiences.

Cedar: Can’t you accept the idea that someone might be superior to you?”

“Very difficult.”

Swami: loud, crass, crude: nouveau riche. Wants to be a big shot. And we are her playthings.

A dream of climbing up a glacier (or frozen stream/gorge like Buttermilk Falls / years before Rainier! – one of our party slips and lands far below, not dead: Rainbow, nude, as usual. Johnny Cash comes up behind her, singing …

This photo by Doug Kerr via Wikimedia Commons shows Interstate 80 rammed through the Delaware Water Gap, where the Delaware River cleaves the long ridge along the edge of the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The gap was the route between us and New York City, the route for many of our visitors .

 

As it was seen by artist Granville Perkins and engraver Robert Hinshelwood, via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

To continue:

Since we lowered our rates, the people who used to come and stay free (because “we have no money”) now pay; so now we probably come out about the same as before, except now everybody contributes.

36 people for brunch after everyone had left from a crowded weekend

On my trip to Grandma’s funeral, I slipped off to Quaker Meeting in Yellow Springs: such a high!

The members look weak and shaky, nervous and overly intellectual, almost ineffectual: but also strong in their vibrations!

“The other day, a 7-year-old Quaker came in the house and asked her mother, ‘Do we Quakers believe in God?’ After hemming and hawing a few minutes and saying essentially yes, the mother asked what brought this question on. ‘Oh, my pal at the playground says they don’t believe in God, they believe in revolution”

(Ten minutes or later:) Mention of a vigil at Wright-Pat the previous day and how a mocking bird singing from within the base reminded her of a verse about how out of the mud and mire a song always rises.

Next message: how many woes arise out of either/or thinking. There are so many more alternatives.

And finally: “Our Father! I am grateful for the world the way it is! For all of its riches, and for all of the problems we can apply ourselves to. Let us use our goods and riches for others, to make the best use of them, to share and multiply them. Bless our fellowship and interaction!”

Girl afterward: “I had given up on religion. I had tried everything, including Bahai, then last week I went to Meeting. I feel like I just smoked marijuana.” (Yep!) She thought I was in yoga; the straight back, closed eyes.

Nikki assumed art to be religion … were it so, artists would not be so fucked up, so neurotic and selfish! (Malcolm Frager’s wife told him his work as a pianist is no greater than anyone else’s work, including the janitor; that deflated him, until he saw its wisdom.)

Fay? “Kissin’ F, the Witch Goddess, the Lid … she stood me up the night before I left for IU …

Norman O. Brown: negation begins with the denial of being born, separated from the womb …

Mistake of many: the Good Life depends on things.

Susan Sontag: “Of course, a writer’s journal must not be judged by the standards of a diary. The notebooks of a writer have a very special function; in them he builds up, piece by piece, the identity of a writer to himself. … The journal is where a writer is heroic to himself. In it he exists solely as a perceiving, suffering, struggling being. … Solitariness is the indispensable metaphor of the modern writer’s consciousness.”

Paradox of self-hate: you can’t decide to get rid of it, that leads you to hate yourself for hating yourself. You must accept the self-hate. By loving it and yourself, you no longer hate yourself.

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

 

 

And there we were

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The next volume was undated, except one entry in late November.

The inside front cover was inscribed “Swami Jnana-Devananda into winter: ashram,” something added later.

Mostly quotes: Zen, Ginsberg, Hutterites, etc.

Includes Swami’s return from her first India trip.

~*~

Only Christ is arisen? Ignores the greater evidence of reincarnate lamas.

Swami, to disciple undergoing many tests (i.e., struggles): “Enjoy them!”

Traveling out, to support followers in “the world” and to distribute pamphlets about our programs:

WASHINGTON DC, a Tuesday in November

White House a surprise … zipping thru Georgetown and out, suddenly, turn corner, this ivory phantom! Expected much official buildings first, but just the monstrous ancient cake of Executive Office to prepare one for the icon itself

DC’s “42nd Street” just three blocks from the Executive Mansion

… what happens to the minds of the power elite who see all of these monuments at their command – the vast sweep of parks, White House tucked into one corner, Washington and Lincoln memorials in the middle, the Capitol on the other? A new Rome!

(encounter with York, Pa, and its oldness in rolling farmland)

Levi-Dev: When you try to find shortcuts to your meditation practice, you will miss some of the most delicious & precious steps in your spiritual growth.

In Japanese, prajana means wisdom!

~*~

Goddess Lakshmi , in an image from Hhite at Wikimedia Commons.

Swami Lakshmy: I tell you India is a civilized country. America is uncivilized India is civilized because you can walk the streets at night without fear. You cannot walk the streets of an American city at night without fear. America is an uncivilized country because we do not respect human life, because we are a fearful people.

The falcon rips the wayward rabbit but cannot stop the cloud.

How do you write down the sound of your laugh, the taste of your smile?

Appenzell Lutheran, Reeders Methodist. Our neighbors.

Deer Park
Where Buddha sat
dogs now bark

The Swami/Levi relationship / mother/son oedipal stuff, statistically more aberrant than the homosexuality she calls sick? I judge, too!

Fern: Sometimes I wish I had known you before you came to the camp. You must have been pretty fascinating.

Swami: You write like the Wall Street Journal: very well but not colorful.

Beatrice: “It’s amazing how everyone has changed in a year. I wouldn’t have believed such a change is truly possible if I hadn’t seen it in the people at the ashram. Everyone is so much more remote, distant.”

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.