find your breath

the sound of the rain, the moist air, the cool breeze. it's delightful.

i have a jam packed week, and today is just getting started. i have a new writing gig which will take me into new jersey and i find this exciting. the assignment is much the same as what i'm doing in new york, but i'm looking forward to what will develop with my new ventures.

my nee leaves tomorrow for a few days and i will be busily packing and helping my bestie move. she says i

calm her down.

i'm glad. i just don't see what there is to worry about. ever. curiously though, she has the same effect on me. when my center is revving up to intolerable levels, i can go sit with her and cry, or laugh, or just be silent. i think that is what companionship does. it absorbs errant energy. transforms it into something useful, or at least, tolerable. this is, perhaps the only gift i have to give my people. that i can be present to them. and love them.

i've started reading a new book on buddhism called the dawn of tantra. i would like to get it on my first pass through, but likely won't. i can be a dullard. but i keep reading because i know there is much there for me. even if i can't make logical sense of it yet. i found myself quoting the book repeatedly last night, and it makes me wonder if this detached reading style of mine isn't something in itself. i don't pretend to know, and this is a style of reading where i don't contemplate the words, i just inhale them. as breath comes in and leaves the lungs, serving its purpose, so does words.

i guess because i'm so deep in words already, i would drown in them if i anchored myself too closely to the words of another. let's be clear. i am awash of words as the world is awash of rain at the moment, or at least the world outside my window. myopia in action folks, the world outside my window is all that exists. but in some ways it is true.

the deep soaking rain, that will refill the rivers and cause levels to rise, that is the way words work with me too. they come, a deluge at times. and i can only stand in the midst of them and soak them up.

yesterday i wrote a poem, and it was delightful.

my bestie beside me, forced to listen, to first hearings usually, commented on how i did this or that. then said,

but that's not a poem.

i've come to understand my style is very much about the relationships of my life. the seeming insignificance of a glance, the power of words, spoken and written. my works are the way i convey my world and what is and isn't a poem by a particular definition does not interest me.

i have generated this critique before. usually at the workshop table, three hours long, ten days in a row. the larger discussion would be, what is a poem. that discussion has never yet been had. i have never been witness to it. far easier, i think, to level critique than to explore the ramifications of said critique. dropping bombs. literary bombs, but bombs nonetheless.

i will go now, try to find myself in my life and prepare for the tasks which will present themselves. i'm excited though tempered by an excess of thought. yoga this morning will hopefully help that.

today's teacher is very physical. she demands a lot of the body. she is intrepid. last week we met eyes. and i smiled. but i don't have the warmth toward her that i do toward the more spiritually inclined instructor of midweek, sophie. though all the instructors are excellent, there is a spiritual component that speaks to me. but i'm deeply in need of being in touch with my body. today's instructor will help with that. she will demand of me what i would not demand of myself. and i will give it. it is why we go to these classes, to be pushed to a higher level. it is why we keep showing up for the challenge, because it reminds us that we can do more than we think we can.

when i most want to quit, i breathe in, and focus. exhale slowly.

the breath is the hardest part of yoga for me. i am unable, as yet, to conjoin the movements with the exhalations and inhalations. perhaps this will come as i get more familiar with poses. as i find my center and move from it, through it, to it.

perhaps if i just start noticing it during the other parts of the day, i will be able to find it during yoga.

listening to one of my favorite audio books, zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, and pirsig says,

being a sloppy thinker six days a week will not produce focused thought on the seventh. but if you try to focus on the seventh, perhaps the following six days will be less sloppy.

so, in a sense, today is my seventh day. i will focus on my breathing.

perhaps then i will find my breath