More notes:

A work gains coherence through its own definition almost independent of me yet unquestionably me also me.

Initially puzzling, a dozen or so pages in: “Binghamton, after Stroudsburg, before Day-town again.”

Was this in Dad’s car to pick up my goods? I have no idea what model he owned at that point. Or had I bought the green VW Bug?

A year and a half here, and after June, I will know no one save the Wormans (who want to leave, too).

With Celeste, again, the tenderness of breaking up: why not me and why Smarty in 3½ years?

“You’re not critical enough.” (Huh?) “You’re too intolerant.” (What’s the difference?)

“Critical is when you know somebody can do better but isn’t trying. Intolerance is when you don’t like the person for something he’s doing.”

Later, she said she doesn’t like the side of her I bring out as much as the person she is with Smarty, that she could never tear all my clothes off and rape me. (Which was explained the next morning.)

Where he asks her to help dissect – to skin a human cadaver chest – I’d be selfish.

She yells, to my surprise, “Cat! Shut the fuck up!”

Visiting Tom S. and Bill, some tender talk. Bill tells me that when he left the Gurdjieff group, he suffered for five months but now he’s Bill, only more so. When Polly and Ajax and he were reading our yoga newsletter, they were confounded, amazed. Tom uttered, “This is Hodson!”

With D-Man and Helene and a strange rapport over Friday night dinner, I thought of the night on Brown Road. Turns out that apart from him and me, everyone was a water sign. The quiet mysterious smiling and watery eyes.

Celeste says my eyes have changed. “They used to be flowerchild eyes, soft and gentle. But now they’re hard, mature.”

Something is missing, we’re backing away and less affectionate.

She hates to swim, except in the ocean, and dislikes movies. How could we ever make it together?

Sleeping with her, I dreamed I was holding Nikki. Awoke, and her back looked like Nikki’s. Here I was, with a newly departing partner.

Later, in a letter: “I can picture you playing with your children someday. I think you’d like the chance of being one again, and you’d share your toys.”

That’s what she wrote telling me she would not be my wife nor mother of my children.

And now, paleo-writing?

Work on finding that “Montana Lady.” (So I already had a desire to relocate to the Northwest.)

Driving home, with sadness and satisfaction. The strange paradoxes of this life.

Each fantasy prevents seeing the other as a person, as someone to respond realistically to.

Mad River University. (For Wright State?)

A two-part collection: OBJECTS and OBJECTIVES. Both fragments.

D for Demons or Dreams.

Loading an antique steamer trunk full of books, like lowering a corpse in a coffin and closing the lid.

When we were building the stone fence at the ashram, we accidentally buried the irises beneath the wall. Had to tear rock away and replant the bulbs. The next spring, the only ones to bloom were yellow.

Iris? Greek for rainbow.

~*~

Met Zilch for a drink, spent four hours together. When he gave Richardson my ashram address, Richie-boy was impressed that I had the balls to up and do it … pull up roots … Zilch was impressed by the stonework, gardening, and bread baking: “Shit, you do it all.”

And then I turned 25. “A half or a third of my life expended or lost now and what have I got to show for it? A pile of sorrows, a chest of empty expectations, no place to call home, no wife or mistress to rest my head. This freedom! … It’s time to stop getting it all together and do it! Before the hour is gone.”

Other entries on rediscovering my corner of Ohio. Yet when home, she’s “no longer virginal.” No idea who, though.

~*~

From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.

The journaling picked up with a new notebook with the inner cover inscribed, “His Holiness Sri Swami Jnana-Devananda in the middle of Erewhon 22 January 1973.”

So my ashram residency ended a month earlier than I’ve vaguely recalled.

The notebook begins in Yellow Springs, with a reference to ashram: “We’ve been watching you strangle yourself.”

Yellow Springs, “a certain atmosphere … eclectic earth of 1850s’ utopian dreams reflected in brick and glass.” Still the home of Antioch College, the village and its access to woodland reserves were one corner of freedom for me and had been since I first learned to drive.

Other notes:

At Dayton Art Institute, “a little out-of-the-way Rothko and the immortal worm-devoured Korean Buddha.”

In Midwest
everybody pushed to be other
than what they are

leveling everybody to this flatness

two beers and a pizza at Marion’s

Midwestern accents flat, nasal, drawn out …

Round of discarding old love letters and friends of predictable concern or affection

The plastic masks of mannequin people with cheerleader smiles

Homes with Chevy super-sport bucket seats / fuck it seats / watching the world go by their windshield TV screens.

Should I turn Hitchhikers into the loveliest love-offering short story ever? Letting her know my pain? (Meaning Nikki? It was her hometown, too, never mind her whereabouts at the moment.)

Every time the window is clear: Behold!

Whatever rings true
touches God

the river, clapping

Clifton Gorge

relatively quiet

overhead a few airplanes rumble

the Cincinnati-Pittsburgh stage coach road ran this far north

In rockface rope, fingerholds and stretches up a crack in two months, 30 feet gain of cigarette and concentration to live at the limits of existence better than a lifetime of dead. Maybe this was his temple.

And then, his friend standing watch adds, “Mitch is more daring than I am very cautious after a friend died, bad accident, not his fault, bad rock. Mitch is in fine shape despite those cigarettes. He ignores a lot of safety precautions but he moves quickly and with sureness, and that inspires me.”

“Remember how Larry freaked out rappelling!”

~*~

The worst part of loving you
nobody is your equal
and being alone
in a different country
I am lonelier than ever

Something more than a supple body requires me.

To love
searches the depths of sorrow
hers, mine, humanity’s
or is that yours, mine?

Damnit Celeste – You’re the only one who sees they’re not the artist’s eyes or lover’s eyes but the lonely terror-struck mocking eyes of craziness …

A city noisy
so it’s hard to meditate
yet a sun’s rising

Eyes, always the eyes … in history along with skeletons …

PASSIVE EMISSION afraid to love, afraid of sex, of being vulnerable, let down, betrayed, losing (again) as in a game.

Growing soft in what it wants so much defeats itself.

Oriental suggestiveness = lightness!

~*~

From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.

Reentering “the world” after more than a year in relative seclusion felt like being thrown into space and then falling, falling, falling into an endless  pit within the earth.

After the first burst of euphoria, when I stayed with Celeste and her mother in Brooklyn, followed by the long Greyhound ride back to Ohio, there was nothing to hold on to.

I was no longer in a nest of kindred spirits, and meditating alone is more strenuous than when sitting among others.

There had been moments in the ashram when I had wondered if there was a potential career path as a professional swami. Ponder that. Perhaps combined with poet.

Back home, I saw how far I had come from my upbringing in a straightlaced mainstream Protestant milieu.

There was no going back.

In the meantime, I had to see if I could reconnect to working in the news biz again or whether I could venture into fresh fields. Whatever developed needed to happen soon.

~*~

The time with Celeste was intense, passionate, somehow heightened by knowing we were heading in differing directions. I recall our time in the Brooklyn Museum, especially in its fabulous Asian art galleries. There were also the bagels from a grimy store under elevated MTA rails and I had to agree that those were the best, anywhere, despite appearances. And the next morning, when we rode the subway into Manhattan for parting, I saw something ahead on the tracks that became the prompt for my first novel, Subway Hitchhikers, now revised into Subway Visions. She then caught a bus to Virginia and the new principal guy in her life. (How she was able to be so open with me continues to amaze.) I spent the rest of the day wandering around Gotham, the Cloisters art museum, especially, and then took an overnight bus of my own west. It was a wild ride.

Looking back, I was molting or perhaps hypersensitive to everything. Even listening to my beloved classical music had to come in steps of reacclimatizing.

~*~

Trying to write anything in my hometown was difficult, though I did start with drafting the subway fantasy.

In my journals review, I’ve been surprised how few entries actually existed. We didn’t have much privacy or personal time, for one thing, which may be the reason that so much of what I did record was during trips out from the center.

I did find that some notebook pages had been ripped away, not by me, indicating snooping. Now I’m wondering if entire journals had been deep-sixed by interlopers.

Still, somewhere, I had enough to draft my novel Yoga Bootcamp and its predecessor, Ashram.

Frankly, I never found the Poconos as magical, beautiful, or spiritually high-vibed as Swami did.

Much of the perspective that has turned up since, in personal encounters, Facebook exchanges, or long phone calls, has made me feel right in limiting the scope of the novel to a single day. As one fellow disciple told me, I was there at the golden moment before many complications arose.

I do feel vindicated in my observation that Swami’s declaring herself a swami and then ordaining us was a mistake. I didn’t know how sharp her break from her beloved guru was.

In posting these, I also sense a rightness in my decision to change most of the names away from our Sanskrit yogi names.

I have had some rich conversations with people who have resided in other monastic communities, including an Episcopal convent.

Quite simply, the experience changed my life’s course.  

As a household, we decided to enroll in a Red Cross first aid course taught by a Seventh-day Adventist couple. I think it took place in the local volunteer firehouse, though a bond developed when they learned that we were, like them, vegetarians.

They even had all of us over to their house for dinner, which introduced us to the Loma Linda line of meat-free alternatives, something that came in handy when we had others join us for Thanksgiving dinner.

Here’s something we heard from them.

“Why, I have a little riddle about a sheik,” said a smiling Mister Banks in his happy old man shrill whine. “You all like riddles, doncha? Well, see if you can answer this one.”

As he then related, a wealthy sheik had two sons who had become very possessed by racing. They spent all their hours with their horses and with gambling and made life very miserable for their father, what with their racing and carrying on at all hours of the night and day.

When the old man died, he left a will decreeing that his sons should race from Mecca to Medina and that the one whose horse came in last should win the entire sheikdom.

The sons set off and raced the first day, coming to the stop of their first night with their horses all lathered up and both the horses and their riders exhausted. Perplexed as to how to conduct the race and win, they consulted an ancient holy man in the grove of the oasis. “What should we do? If we both try to come in last, we shall never finish the race and the sheikdom will belong to nobody.” The ancient seer told them to come to him the next morning, that after a night to meditate on their dilemma he would have an answer for each, to whisper in their ear.

When they came the next morning, he whispered something to each one, and they quickly mounted and resumed the race with more fervor and enjoyment than ever.

What did he tell them?

Well, see if you can guess the answer. I’ll even give you a clue: it was only two words. While you’re trying to figure that one out, I’ll tell you another.

He made some pun on kismet, which means fate, and “kiss the corn on my kismet,” or feet. All faces turned down in sour disgust at the attempted humor.

Mister Banks was unfazed.

Well, I have another sheik story. It seems this man was traveling with a sheik and his nomadic tribe across the desert. Because the man knew he could be robbed and murdered for the money, he gave it to the sheik for safekeeping. Shortly before the end of the journey, he asked for his money but the sheik ignored him.

A little later, he repeated his request.

Finally, the sheik told him he was sorry but he didn’t have the money. It had been stolen.

The man was flabbergasted and downcast: it was his money to return to Europe.

Ah! But the sheik told him not to worry, that he would find it in time.

The sheik assembled his tribe and explained that five hundred dollars had been stolen from him, but if it were by his pillow in the morning, he would not ask who the thief was nor would he be punished.

But morning came and the money was not there.

The sheik again assembled his tribe and announced, Alas! The money is not back. The thief must be found and punished as an example to all. My camel is very wise, he said, and my camel can tell a liar. Every person in this tribe, he solemnly declared, must come to my camel and, holding its tail, must swear that he did not steal the money. We will meet at nightfall and I will know who the thief is.

When evening came, the sheik lined up his tribe. Walking along the line, he suddenly stopped, drew up his sword, and screamed: Ah, you infidel! Repent or I’ll sever your head! On your knees and repent, or you’ll never speak another word!

“Yes, yes, Master, I stole the money. Forgive me, please,” cried the unfortunate man.

Now, quickly! Run and bring back the money, every penny of it,” ordered the sheik, and the man returned with the five hundred dollars.

The European, grateful for the return of his money, was astonished. “Tell me, O sheik, how did you know it was this man? Surely your camel did not tell you.”

O, no, it was quite simple. My camel is dumb, but my people do not know that. So I placed peppermint oil upon its tail, and everyone whose hands touched the tail smelled of peppermint. But the thief was afraid to touch the tail, so when I came up to him in the line, I knew. It was simple, my friend.”

Now, what was the answer to the riddle? I almost gave it away a while ago. Well, I guess I’ll tell you, just before you leave.

Whereupon, I said, “Mister Banks, we very much enjoyed our dinner,” and beginning to move as if it were time to depart, he grabbed my arm and started laughing.

Gee, I didn’t realize I said that until I had said it. Since we don’t want you to leave, I guess we’ll just have to tell you the answer.

“Change horses.”

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

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 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.

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.

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!

 

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.