discard piles of weekly magazine employment classifieds . dirty dishtowels, need replacing . ditto, the car . boxes stuffed with working papers, political reprints from college and later stint as academic editor . one more career detour, Swami . save file folders for reuse . don’t need any extra expenses now . former jobs, like former loves . what can you do at the moment? rat out pigeons from under the eaves, their smell of warm barn rot . dust and mop . Ajax or Comet the bathroom sink, tub, bowl . remake the bed after slippery sheets expose toes to night chill . clean the parakeet cage, heart yearning for its owner . how I’d love to trade that old English bicycle, with its flat tire and second gear that strips out, get a sleek ten-speed . instead, you need new blue jeans and pour a fresh motor oil in the Subaru . indoors, lay a wood fire but don’t ignite kindling, the coy display to signal a homebuyer . not all of the ash of this failure is mine
Tag: Relationships
If you’d clean up
forget it’s a voluntary parade what the window discloses or opens depends on the wind from the economy to extramarital animation collapsing into finicky provocation some ascribe to deranged exactitude erupting as interlocking torches in the hallway night yet they all blame Washington insisting everything’s a mess let me tell you indeed yessiree
Hola Orlando
talk of spiced sausage all you want or the angelic art of seduction all come clean in the springing but circle the wagons or your ways if you will sometime when riders approach, demanding their due we’ve no cavalry to the rescue what runs on the line honestly, not since the divorce have we sensed any mid-afternoon vehemence comparable to that blazing dirty bird union . let me tell you of the plagues of Moses . invest the rest wisely
My encounters in a yoga ashram altered my perception of life
I stepped out of my journalism career three times in my life before retiring for good. The first was when I decided to move to the ashram where I could immerse myself in yoga philosophy and practice. Responding to Swami’s invitation to settle into her rural setup was something I did slowly and deliberately, with a large degree of trepidation. As I relate in my Yoga Bootcamp novel, the daily life was intense and evolving. Leaving the ashram was a different matter, with others largely resolving the outcome – out you go. For weeks afterward, I felt myself falling helplessly through space. Eventually, I reestablished my feet on the ground and then headed off for a new life in a town I call Prairie Depot.
What happened for me during my residency was life-changing. I regard it as my master’s degree and my introduction to psychotherapy of an amateur sort. Among other things, it led me to the Society of Friends, or Quakers, which turned out to be the faith of my Hodgson ancestors from the 1660s down through my great-grandfather.
In the novel, I chose to confine the structure to a single day, in part because I had so many lingering questions I could not answer. Yes, within that day individuals could look back on their previous history, but the focus was on the NOW. And a lot could happen there in a 24-hour span. Besides, as I later learned through some candid discussions with a former Episcopal nun, monastic life has some commonalities of its own. As she said, some of the most intense interactions came in trying to choose the flavor of ice cream when the rare opportunity arose. I’ll argue you’re the most human under such rarified circumstances.
On top of everything, when I was drafting the book, I was out of contact with the place and its people. Critically, I had refused an order to return to the ashram after I’d married and moved to Washington state and a follow-up stipulation of heavy financial support was out of the question. A half-dozen years later, back on the East Coast, I had an opportunity to stop by but was not admitted into the house. I did learn that Swami had died and I sat by her grave. So much for making amends.
Since then, I’ve reconnected through social media with some of the key players and had a few assumptions, not in the story, deflated. In addition, Devan Malore’s “The Churning” reflects life there a few years after I’d moved on.
The story itself could have gone another way, if I hadn’t wanted to present the ideals that drew us together and kept us going. Especially the humor and playfulness.
More compelling for many readers would have been a more sordid tale of just one more “new religion” outfit run into scandal of a sexual or financial sort, preferably both. There were enough elements for that, as I’ve since learned.
The story first came out as a pioneering ebook in PDF format only and was later updated to Smashwords and its affiliated partners. A more recent, quite thorough recasting (again, blame the influence of Cassia in “What’s Left”) changed Swami from female to male and introduced Jaya as one of the eight resident yogis, thus linking her to the heftier Nearly Canaan novel. Besides, the transformation made Swami more acceptable to the expectations of many readers and allowed the Big Pumpkin and Elvis dimensions. The role was already unconventional enough, and this was more fun.
Am I still doing yoga? If you mean hatha, the physical exercises, let me say rarely and embarrassingly, at that. As exercise, I’ll substitute my daily laps in the swimming pool, and as meditation, my weekly Quaker meeting for worship. And no, I’m no longer vegetarian, other than when I voluntarily follow the Greek Orthodox “fasting” of Advent and Great Lent (again, blame Cassia), though I also eat much less flesh than most Americans. Actually, in these seasons, the Eastern Orthodox Christians are stricter than we yogis were.
I do wish there were a similar haven for youth today, one freed from the burden of student college debt. I’ll let “Yoga Bootcamp” stand where it does.
In and out of fairy tales
does he ever have a name other than “the handsome young prince” or is he merely an anonymous provider of wealth, comfort, and status, a male figure, nonetheless, out of range of any rival, consequential to fallopian tube roulette which is, of course, a fate we all share besides, to say “they lived happily ever after” is the greatest irony in all literature so read the story over again and again to those in the throes of childhood as our own cruel joke or empty promise awaiting our own crown or at least an electric guitar with the drums, bang, bang, bang
With pigeons
such gain, left to carry the rubbish after this unsettling and upheaval, all crashing down, the lonely conflagration increasingly desperate for a phoenix in some dawning how often one begins over, take the bookshelves, reorganize religious literature, find that ten-year-old letter initially appearing unopened sent just before the marriage with its Far West a nebulous daydream now I continue in the opposite direction rebounding perhaps keeping time as pigeons return quietly that’s all Thanks and g’day
Hey, there, Dexter
ream the medicine cabinet, fill penny rolls for the coffee exchange, throw out old prescriptions and that old slide rule, already obsolete, then it’s off to the office supply store for carbon paper and metal bookends, return editions and LPs to the public library before the art stack goes to my ex-wife’s aunt where I’ll hear how her latest opening went screwy . back home, have a beer, phone my lover, take a call from the watch repairman warning if I don’t pick up her metronome they’ll sell it off, so once more out I go, how ’bout you?
Rather than
thinking the cleaner bag full I discovered the rubber drive belt had snapped meaning a trip to the shop and the next day was Sunday as she had left it all the same, dust and sweep, wet mop, and rinse, move tall stacks about, sort items but what if we don’t? refill the trash can, love, after all, would expose this . honestly I won’t quit so simply whatever past is mine . pay dearly, of course, for these revelations. so make room for more labor . brush and chop, returning to the same spot rather than scurry onward
Which way, the music or dance?
at last, reducing the list drawn into this homestead with the ash of that upbeat tone of previous years, a forced smile, wishful thinking, or pure resolve no longer the Yule Letter, high school classmates, even college . ashram . Binghamton or teachers . other writers . Iowa. Western Reserve . Baltimore . former loves . Old Order elders . what do these people mean now in context? So, sincerely
How strange that so much later, these lines still stir up conflict within me
I am surprised how much the seemingly disjointed distillations of the prose-poem experiments I’ve been publishing here still capture my experience of my first years in New Hampshire some 35 or so years ago. All the hope, confusion, redirection that accompanied the upheaval.
And so much that evaporated, for the better, after meeting the woman I adore.
The weekly series continues, all the same. As I say, thanks for the memories, to all those who have been companions and positive influences in my zig-zag journey through life.
What are you thinking and feeling, looking back and looking ahead?
Jnana's Red Barn 