Sporadic neurotic awareness is what I’ve developed over the course of this semester. There was weightlessness (of a freefall) beset by a landing, though I believe the landing level has risen gradually and steadily. I am grateful for this, for every time I hit my head it hurts a little less…
I recognize (and so shall you) my inability to regiment my practices, for I consider myself practicing all the time (and playing all the time). Haphazard exploration with intention—it is a way of life until it isn’t, and such a day may come, and if it does, so it will be!
April 13
My sister is here, and she notices that I’m more at ease, that I’m not so much a different person in a crowd or among friends, I’m just her crazy baby brother who loves to dance and laugh and chit chat over cupcakes and coffee. I still pause mid-sentence, but I’ve always done that; a mind must intake after an extended exhale, and like my sister’s palpitating heartbeat my breaths go from pitter patter to gggonnnngggg.
We’re off to dance tonight, but first we’re going to grab a beer, and while we drink that beer we’re going to confide in each other how hard it is to keep up a meditation practice. I’ll tell her about my blind spots and my lackluster posture and she’ll complain about the noises of London and her recent break-in and her occasional breaches of a not very strict vegetarian diet. Oh, before the beer we will sit in Central Park and feel the rocks beneath our bottoms and set a timer for thirty minutes of soaking it—Central Park, the air, New York—in.
We’re off to dance tonight, but first we’re going to grab a beer, and while we drink that beer we’re going to confide in each other how hard it is to keep up a meditation practice. I’ll tell her about my blind spots and my lackluster posture and she’ll complain about the noises of London and her recent break-in and her occasional breaches of a not very strict vegetarian diet. Oh, before the beer we will sit in Central Park and feel the rocks beneath our bottoms and set a timer for thirty minutes of soaking it—Central Park, the air, New York—in.
April 17
I’m involved with the sun, I’m such a New Englander because when it’s out I’m everywhere and when it’s nowhere I’m compacted and heavy, it’s like my legs and my chest and my arms have all been stuffed up the nose to the back of the throat and into the brain. Meatloaf head: I’m a heavy mind today.
So I sought out an underused a spot on a floor in an NYU building and spread myself thin like fat-free gravy. Body-scan time—toes, feet, legs, chest, shoulders, lips, cheeks, forehead, and scalp—ok and go!
Thank God for New York City where lying on a public floor is no more a spectacle (though much less sanitary) than sipping water from a bubbler.
So I sought out an underused a spot on a floor in an NYU building and spread myself thin like fat-free gravy. Body-scan time—toes, feet, legs, chest, shoulders, lips, cheeks, forehead, and scalp—ok and go!
Thank God for New York City where lying on a public floor is no more a spectacle (though much less sanitary) than sipping water from a bubbler.
April 7
Tongue-stick-out-head-cocked-sideways-duck-footed-teetering epiphany! To be seen, tall, ugly, bent, soft, catching the light around my own emaciated shadow: raw sensations, like a tingling up and over, an opening down and out, like wafting into sprinkler mist on hot humid days...
Recall the reason for closing my eyes on the subway: to feel unwatched, to smile unabashedly. Now consider this walk a subway ride but with eyes wide open, smiling unconditionally (without bearing teeth -- I do believe that teeth, especially ones as big as mine, are actively threatening rather than passively inviting--) and notice the difference: the former, feigning unseenness; the latter, being seen detachedly.
I was on my way to a screening of I Am Love at the MoMA, and I meandered up Sixth Avenue as one among the crowd… For once outside of my own bedroom I didn’t put forth; I just took in. This, in the moment, was a culmination of my body practice: I love you obsessively and I don’t care a bit, see me through and through and don’t you dare look at me, we are completely inseparable and just one and one and an other.
I Am Love was genius, director Luca Guadagnino’s got a beautiful mind, and Tilda Swinton’s a goddess. Moving on, I approached Easter brunch with a newfound vigor to connect.
Recall the reason for closing my eyes on the subway: to feel unwatched, to smile unabashedly. Now consider this walk a subway ride but with eyes wide open, smiling unconditionally (without bearing teeth -- I do believe that teeth, especially ones as big as mine, are actively threatening rather than passively inviting--) and notice the difference: the former, feigning unseenness; the latter, being seen detachedly.
I was on my way to a screening of I Am Love at the MoMA, and I meandered up Sixth Avenue as one among the crowd… For once outside of my own bedroom I didn’t put forth; I just took in. This, in the moment, was a culmination of my body practice: I love you obsessively and I don’t care a bit, see me through and through and don’t you dare look at me, we are completely inseparable and just one and one and an other.
I Am Love was genius, director Luca Guadagnino’s got a beautiful mind, and Tilda Swinton’s a goddess. Moving on, I approached Easter brunch with a newfound vigor to connect.
April 3
Extreme shifts from one environment to the next emphasize the peculiarities of each, like a quiet walk home after a deafening night out, like Pommes Frites' greasy counter top and its surprisingly clean bathroom.
I felt my feet much more when I stopped dancing, relished the kind of too cold breeze, appreciated my own soberness among the hair-in-face regurgitators up-chucking the come-down.
I go out, I guess, to be alone... I appreciate the awareness that immediately follows a complete lack thereof.
I felt my feet much more when I stopped dancing, relished the kind of too cold breeze, appreciated my own soberness among the hair-in-face regurgitators up-chucking the come-down.
I go out, I guess, to be alone... I appreciate the awareness that immediately follows a complete lack thereof.
April 11
What happened the other day was bigger than big, it was a story for the sidewalks (if concrete could talk!) But, per usual, I wrote a bit without saying much at all, namely the facts of a day: that a walk was to be had, that a movie was seen, that Easter Brunch was deliciously indulgent.
I once swore off immediacy as a farse, but my life (my life!) has immediately changed. I must always remember this moment, for immediacy beckons impermanence…
Today for my practice I stripped down in the mirror and smiled smiled smiled ‘til I meant it.
I once swore off immediacy as a farse, but my life (my life!) has immediately changed. I must always remember this moment, for immediacy beckons impermanence…
Today for my practice I stripped down in the mirror and smiled smiled smiled ‘til I meant it.
March 26
I don’t know what to tell you: I’m not very good at writing about the during when I just want to relate the after. Like with meditation, it is in how it affects the rest of my day that meditation can be evaluated and endured, even if the practice of it is more often than not cacophonous and testing.
Suppleness of the body to ready me for tension, relaxation, endurance and reaction--let's keep stretching!
Suppleness of the body to ready me for tension, relaxation, endurance and reaction--let's keep stretching!
March 13
I think I’m getting sick again, so it hurts my head to go upside down. I wonder if it's a good kind of hurt or if the headache once it arrives won't go away. I will lie on my back and try to feel the earth move; maybe it'll help to synchronize the spin of my head to that of the world, on an axis of north to south so that at least something is tethered and constant.
March 22
The brewing of stove-top coffee requires attentive stillness: I cannot do anything but watch and wait, for even leaving the burner on ten seconds too long can bitter an entire brew, and that's coffee wasted, and that's extra time spent. Three minutes of coffee-meditation, it's like walking meditation except the movement is in keeping the eyes open; glazed-over blurry-eyes perceive patterns much more clearly and flames become wildly entertaining. I would never notice before how even the slightest breath can affect the most steadfast blue of a burning gas stove.
March 9
I used to hate running, now I’m fascinated by it; the subtle sensations of a body scan can be as impressive as the throbbing of a heart (,the panting of a breath,) but the two are completely different; even if one is blind to the tingling of circulation (at rest), a full-on sprint will force his disparate parts into dialogue, and he will feel painfully whole again.
Today I listened to my body, and it whispered RUN, so I sprinted at 9:55 PM from Houston and 1st Ave. to Panya Bakery at E. 9th street and 3rd ave to catch their half-off-baked-goods-special. They close at 10. I arrived in a whirlwind of sweat and clothes (my lungs caught the wind, it left my lungs in gales, a salty gust through Panya's sweet-smelling interior) and I felt radiant.
Today I listened to my body, and it whispered RUN, so I sprinted at 9:55 PM from Houston and 1st Ave. to Panya Bakery at E. 9th street and 3rd ave to catch their half-off-baked-goods-special. They close at 10. I arrived in a whirlwind of sweat and clothes (my lungs caught the wind, it left my lungs in gales, a salty gust through Panya's sweet-smelling interior) and I felt radiant.
March 3
I’ve developed a trick, I’ve come upon a personal-body-truth, that when I physically exert myself (ten pushups even) the pangs of hunger subside and my cells wheeze for water. Did I mention I’m always hungry and constantly must remind myself to hydrate?
almost impossible
I'm finding that it's almost impossible for me to add new routines to my already jam-packed schedule -- so today, on my way home after an overzealous dumpling dinner with a long lost friend, I sat with my eyes closed all the way from 8th Ave to Morgan Ave on the L train.
I think I've found the perfect already-in-place routine to "tweak." While I'm quite proficient already on subway rides, I'm always distracted by the other people. The L train, especially, is a place to see and be seen, and if I'm not reading a book then I'm reading peoples' faces, taking pictures of cute children, bobbing my head self-consciously to music.
I practice a meditation technique called Vipassana, which necessitates a quiet room so that you can tune into subtle sensations throughout the body. I'm exchanging quietude for a little bit of bustle and thirty minutes of me-time.
This is what I realized: if I can get over the feeling of being watched, and having to hold myself up right so that, even if everyone thinks I'm sleeping, at least I'm sleeping pretty, then I've made a substantial change in how I conduct myself among strangers. Not opening my eyes for thirty minutes and not reacting to people sitting next to me or brushing my knees is a challenge in of itself... I always want to be the curteous, aware one who scoots over symbolically to show that the seat to the right or left is open. But this isn't a lesson in selfishness, it's a lesson in doing for once what I want to do, and not being so self-conscious that I develop a neuroses of pleasing people without actually pleasing people.
I needed to calm down after dinner... Social excitement made my entire body tense. Even in the short trip home I felt more in tune with my fatigue, with my thirst, with my need for sleep, and my hands burned with circulation.
February 26
The feeling after is nothing like the feeling before; I'm calm, expanded, tingling, whether the practice is five minutes or thirty. When I think about how rarely I experience myself throughout the course of a day (closed eyes without the intention to sleep, awareness of breath, sitting still without fidgeting), I begin to understand how time (when see as productive and non-productive) is far from a constant. My day lengthens with the more I do, but maybe it only feels longer because I fade in and out of consciousness. Sleepwalking, in a way, with dreams polka-dotting the day... Of course it feels like weeks.
February 22
I keep wanting it to get warmer so I can take my practice outside. My room is full of clothing now, since I have about thirty or so pieces waiting to be bought on Ebay, and I feel claustrophobic when I wiggle past a pile of leather and fur. My feet go up, but my head feels stuffy, and breathing becomes hard. If I exude a certain energy, if my body does in fact expand beyond the dermis, then the phantom corpses of all these linens 'n things are rubbing up against my face. I'm not comfortable.
I think I've found the perfect already-in-place routine to "tweak." While I'm quite proficient already on subway rides, I'm always distracted by the other people. The L train, especially, is a place to see and be seen, and if I'm not reading a book then I'm reading peoples' faces, taking pictures of cute children, bobbing my head self-consciously to music.
I practice a meditation technique called Vipassana, which necessitates a quiet room so that you can tune into subtle sensations throughout the body. I'm exchanging quietude for a little bit of bustle and thirty minutes of me-time.
This is what I realized: if I can get over the feeling of being watched, and having to hold myself up right so that, even if everyone thinks I'm sleeping, at least I'm sleeping pretty, then I've made a substantial change in how I conduct myself among strangers. Not opening my eyes for thirty minutes and not reacting to people sitting next to me or brushing my knees is a challenge in of itself... I always want to be the curteous, aware one who scoots over symbolically to show that the seat to the right or left is open. But this isn't a lesson in selfishness, it's a lesson in doing for once what I want to do, and not being so self-conscious that I develop a neuroses of pleasing people without actually pleasing people.
I needed to calm down after dinner... Social excitement made my entire body tense. Even in the short trip home I felt more in tune with my fatigue, with my thirst, with my need for sleep, and my hands burned with circulation.
February 26
The feeling after is nothing like the feeling before; I'm calm, expanded, tingling, whether the practice is five minutes or thirty. When I think about how rarely I experience myself throughout the course of a day (closed eyes without the intention to sleep, awareness of breath, sitting still without fidgeting), I begin to understand how time (when see as productive and non-productive) is far from a constant. My day lengthens with the more I do, but maybe it only feels longer because I fade in and out of consciousness. Sleepwalking, in a way, with dreams polka-dotting the day... Of course it feels like weeks.
February 22
I keep wanting it to get warmer so I can take my practice outside. My room is full of clothing now, since I have about thirty or so pieces waiting to be bought on Ebay, and I feel claustrophobic when I wiggle past a pile of leather and fur. My feet go up, but my head feels stuffy, and breathing becomes hard. If I exude a certain energy, if my body does in fact expand beyond the dermis, then the phantom corpses of all these linens 'n things are rubbing up against my face. I'm not comfortable.
miles away
The clutter in my mind and in my room fuels procrastination, and going upside down becomes the impossible last thing on my mind. I will work on the clutter and I will make a schedule; one that incorporates more of a stretching routine with upside-down-ness as its focal point (or apex, or finale).
Today I spent twenty minutes stretching as my body felt fit. My feet are miles away, my hands are miles away, I'm frustrated. This has got to be one of the slowest processes I've encountered; in academic pursuits there is often a contained effort and a fixed result (oversimplification for the purpose of a superficial argument), but in stretching there's progress one day and regression the next (I can touch my toes now, but that's after 30 minutes of elongation... tomorrow I'll be off to the same stiff start!)
Today I spent twenty minutes stretching as my body felt fit. My feet are miles away, my hands are miles away, I'm frustrated. This has got to be one of the slowest processes I've encountered; in academic pursuits there is often a contained effort and a fixed result (oversimplification for the purpose of a superficial argument), but in stretching there's progress one day and regression the next (I can touch my toes now, but that's after 30 minutes of elongation... tomorrow I'll be off to the same stiff start!)
McQueen
My mind can't comprehend the death of a legend, my hero Alexander Mcqueen, but my body knows... I keep breaking down, and it's a strange sensation that of heaving and crying with a complete absence of thought.
Anyway, my emotional state should make for quite the upside down practice today. The pressure of blood ceases the crying, because it would be too easy to gush under weight. After stretching in an inverted V for a long time, bouncing and breathing, I feel a bit better. The time during is a feeling time, the time after is a thinking time, and I have a lot to think about.
Anyway, my emotional state should make for quite the upside down practice today. The pressure of blood ceases the crying, because it would be too easy to gush under weight. After stretching in an inverted V for a long time, bouncing and breathing, I feel a bit better. The time during is a feeling time, the time after is a thinking time, and I have a lot to think about.
balance!
The best cure for a head-ache? Going upside down. Post-blizzard blues and a single beer last night seems to have left me this morning feeling a bit down and dry... These sensations are almost always accompanied by a feeling of fragmentation, wherein my posture suffers and my shoulders and back often don't feel aligned.
When you're upside down (today I was just in a kind of reverse Chinese squat) you notice all of your muscles while they tense and relax; balance is anything but stillness, and in fact, I'm never more aware of how dynamic my body is until I try and remain in a single (arguably contorted) position.
When you're upside down (today I was just in a kind of reverse Chinese squat) you notice all of your muscles while they tense and relax; balance is anything but stillness, and in fact, I'm never more aware of how dynamic my body is until I try and remain in a single (arguably contorted) position.
daylight
I say I can't wait until it gets a little bit warmer, but the spring is so short lived, and my body finds summer even less bearable than winter. There are good things about the cold, too, like wearing sweatpants to bed and hot coffee on the L train and that bar across the street that only shuts its doors during the three coldest months of the year...
When it gets warmer, I will go upside down in parks, on trees, over benches, down hills.
Last night I felt like I was upside down but it was only in my head -- I'm not familiar with whiskey, and it sought me out as a vessel and overstayed its welcome. I was spinning around until the whiskey brought my head below my heart and made its way out of the same opening it came in.
Today, I can't go upside down, but I would consider a day spent under the sunlight (missing the sunlight) somewhat like a day spent in reverse. And for that I'm open to the experience.
When it gets warmer, I will go upside down in parks, on trees, over benches, down hills.
Last night I felt like I was upside down but it was only in my head -- I'm not familiar with whiskey, and it sought me out as a vessel and overstayed its welcome. I was spinning around until the whiskey brought my head below my heart and made its way out of the same opening it came in.
Today, I can't go upside down, but I would consider a day spent under the sunlight (missing the sunlight) somewhat like a day spent in reverse. And for that I'm open to the experience.
Handstands
There's almost something more shocking about being upside-down for a split second versus remaining in an upside-down position for three minutes. I tried the former today, nose-diving into pseudo handstands, where the challenge to myself was to bring my head under my torso and look straight out on the other side.
I saw a window held down by clouds, and I got all giddy. It's fiendishly fun.
I saw a window held down by clouds, and I got all giddy. It's fiendishly fun.
Monkey bars
I can’t remember precisely at what age I stopped going upside down; it was before I grew six inches in one year, before I transferred out of the school with the monkey bar playground... Let’s say half a life time ago, at which point the world was twice as varied, twice as close, twice as large.
Disorientation is a catalyst to investigation. Let's see what I see when a head's below a heart!
Disorientation is a catalyst to investigation. Let's see what I see when a head's below a heart!
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