four stars

well it was close to a five star day

after a good day goofing at work

yes and working hard too

i swam a few laps

for the first time this season

to get out of the rut of falling asleep after work this week

then waking up groggy to hit the cafe for email

then dinner and maybe some sports talk radio

before bed

wondering after days of such non-interaction

why I was feeling so lonely

-----

well the swim helped

it is good for me to be immersed in water

I then talked to a couple east coast friends

about my upcoming road trip which was fun

and I was also invited to play at a picnic here on the fourth

with some friends I enjoy so that's cool

all of which bodes well

for a richer social time arriving

-----

the real highlight was visiting Abbey

rehabbing now a few weeks after the car accident

she's doing so much better

and can speak now with ease

mostly she indulged me yacking about my life

I have always enjoyed how she gets the subtleties

of what I'm trying to say

when talking about transformational stuff

like the yoga that is very nurturing to me these days

the devotional quality of the practice

giving me a place to express that

insistent energy in me

plus the deep strengthening

and the application of will to bettering oneself

then i played a few songs for her on the violin

and she is so appreciative and well-wishing for my music

it really filled up my heart

-----

then i went to ecstatic dance

for the first time in months

which was a bit much

after a long day

i don't know if I'll go back

it was fun at first to stretch and move

but it got to feeling narcissistic and precious

and somehow overly feminine

the macho songs bugged me most

i think growing up in new york

and being Italian

I just don't like too much chaos

i mean it's fine for women at a dance

to go for full expression of rage with fists in the air

but what the fuck am i supposed to do

if i yell at even half my intensity

people will leave i guarantee you

so it all becomes a pretense for me

plus i just don't like house music

and by the way

don't these people have jobs?

-----

then i got a second email from

the former crush in san diego

after a couple months' hiatus

she has turned an important corner

in learning to take care of herself

and I celebrate that sincerely

I liked hearing from her again

but I just feel something in me rising up

wanting choice in the matter

of conversing or not

-----

and here i am now past my bedtime

having enjoyed an excellent gluten-free pizza

at the new place in nob hill

where i've now caught up on soccer

and decided it's still a solid

four star day

real life

i'm as straight headed as i've been in years

and still the world is crooked

got a call today waking me up from my nap

from a friend

who just got back from visiting her daughter

in Dallas

and was calling to check in

see what i was doing

i said nothing much

trying to catch up on sleep

planning a vacation

she said they could come over

if i was up for a visit

unless i was sleeping

i told her i was sleeping

and would talk to her later

i have no idea who it was

bhava

"Bhava" is the Sanskrit word for "feeling", "emotion", "mood" or "devotional state of mind".^[1] "Bhava" denotes the mood of ecstasy and self-surrender and the channelling of emotional energies that is induced by the maturing of devotion to one's 'Ishta deva' (object of devotion).^[2]

After getting the stitches removed and a serious cleaning this morning, I headed home where I wondered what to do next. Last night while looking for a phone number, I had come across a schedule for Bhava Yoga Studio I tossed into my files a couple years ago. So it popped into my head to check the schedule. It indicated there was (or at least used to be) a class at noon, which was 20 minutes away. What the heck--off I went.

Pulling into their parking lot in Edo, I was encouraged by another car pulling up and a young lady getting out with a yoga mat. Indeed, yoga hour would start in a few minutes!

Words would fall short of describing the class, the first I have attended in at least five years--maybe ten. I was surprised at how manageable the experience was. I left feeling high as a kite, and sore enough to know I just had a really good workout. My attitude and posture and serenity have been soaring since. It feels like I got a really great deep massage--from the inside out. I feel totally different being in my body than I have in weeks, at least.

For those in the Albuquerque area, I highly recommend checking them out. Their "yoga hour" sessions are conveniently scheduled and a mere $5 (cash). Info at: bhavayogastudio.com

Namaste, y'all!

Jai and Joe

So anyway, I told him I was in a band
He said, "Oh yeah, oh yeah - what's your music like?"
I said, "It's um, um, well, it's kinda like
You know, it's got a bit of, um, you know."

Ragga, Bhangra, two-step Tanga
Mini-cab radio, music on the go
Um, surfbeat, backbeat, frontbeat, backseat
There's a bunch of players and they're really letting go
We got, Brit pop, hip hop, rockabilly, Lindy hop
Gaelic heavy metal fans fighting in the road
Ah, Sunday boozers for chewing gum users
They got a crazy D.J. and she's really letting go

Oh, welcome stranger to the humble neighborhoods

--Joe Stummer, Bhindhee Bhagee

I wondered why receiving a distressed outreach call would make me feel better.

Jai is like a brother to me, and I feel sad when he is suffering. He is struggling with health issues on top of a host of stuff, and as years pass without resolution, there is a toll on his motivation. He has a harder time turning away from the world's conspiracy than I do, and I think this affects his serenity also. But I relate to much of his journey. What is left to do, in these overwhelming times? Where to begin?

For me, I begin with a realization. I have declined the jackal thought in my head that it's just a case of "misery loves company." That phrase itself is rather toxic and judgmental, isn't it? What I observed after getting off the phone is that I had more motivation to do things I had put off, to clean the house and get the light switch covers screwed on. When I considered why, it was that I had to get stronger--for Jai.

It's kind of a strange progression of thoughts I suppose. But I have been mostly in my own world for some time, and simultaneously lacking motivation. I didn't realize the two were connected. Maybe others are different, or maybe it's an obvious point I am coming to. I realized I live for others, and am motivated far and above all else by love.

Platonic love, romantic love, spiritual love, it all runs together for me. Jai has been a mentor to me, and I just wish to see him well--shining, in fact. And imagining maybe I can help someone I care about, offer empathy at least, brings up my life energy to try. And then I can help myself too.

For we are in this together. And realizing this changes the landscape of possibilities.

-----

After the call, I finally tried out my new cheap CD player.

I'd been trying to copy Joe Strummer's Global-a-Go-Go for a friend. I decided to listen to it, as I was winding down last night. There's something about that guy that also contributes to me feeling more alive.

It's odd. I mean I completely blew off the ABQ folk festival this weekend. I had no interest in the nice fiddling folk stuff. To be truthful, those kind of music circles tend to bore me nearly to tears. Yet listening to a CD i've heard how-many-times brings my spirit to life. Why?

I think most people are referring to something different when they refer to music. Almost everything others do in that regard is hollow for me. Not that I've done much. But Strummer reminds me of what it's all about. How? He was a punk rocker, with an apparent drinking problem, who by most accounts, was bipolar and troubled for years.

It's his spirit, the emotion he puts into the music. He has something to say, and he does it by synthesizing genres, by using acoustic and electric instruments, by committing to each note he plays and sings. That's my guess anyway. He has an attitude I recognize in my favorite artist, Ani Difranco, Jerry Garcia, Utah Phillips, David Byrne. Most have had a fair amount of trouble in their lives. People call them geniuses, usually after the fact.

But I think the right word is passion.

In any case, it is a strange appreciation-thought that listening to Strummer stimulated. It is not intended to be an idolization. Amidst all the schlock of the world, and all the trouble humanity is in, I felt grateful that Life would have the generosity to manifest the existence of a Joe Strummer, and support the expression of his passion. It reaffirmed the goodness of things for me.

It's weird that people get spiritualized by others, but I guess some people just have a light they shine that gets seen by others.

My friend Alex was right, it is a pretty cool way that he left too. At age 50, his heart just gave out from a congenital defect, as he sat on the couch after getting home from walking his dog. As I approach 50, it reminds me not to worry too much about the whole mortality thing. But to keep turning toward the passionate fire, the light of compassion and emotional commitment, even if I can't see where it leads.

Maybe someone else will.

whinin boy blues

i used to be a superhero

no one could hurt me not even myself

but you were like a phone booth that i somehow stumbled into

now look at me i am just like everybody else

--Ani DiFranco, Superhero

things have changed for me

and i don't know how personally to take it

it could be that chasing a confused 22 year old

for six months has taken its toll

and now i no longer have any confidence

when considering what i might want from a relationship

or where my instincts might lead me

it could be that living in the van for a month

and not eating or brushing my teeth so regularly

showed me how delicate my constitution is

how much it takes to maintain the infrastructure of this body

six months to just begin to catch up to where i was

after just one or two months of neglect

i would love to be one of those guys

who just goes off to plant trees in the forest for a year

and i may yet try

but do i just let the other teeth fall out too

when will i learn to act my age

stay locked into the deadening normalcy

of a decent job that gives me no reflections

that being an artist is in any way okay

that thoughts of paradigm shifting have any value whatsoever

that there is any value in connection to the Earth

or native cultures or pagan roots of any kind

i dunno

zen works great when i'm at work

not thinking makes sense amidst a structure

that makes no sense

but at home with no strucutre

nothing to do nowhere to go and noone to see

not thinking is just idiotic

leaving me not knowing wtf to do with myself

things have changed

i just don't know what my life is for anymore

and i don't think npr is going to tell me

what happened to the revolution

the deep ecology movement

when did i last dance or travel abroad

attend an empathy or men's group

explore tantra or polyamory

or something else new and exciting

money is a weird trade i'm not sure if i can get any further out of

when will someone offer an unexpected idea

or spirit come through with a strange plan

i just can't imagine being interested in meeting anyone new here

i've used weed too much and now i don't know how to be social

without weed enhancing the adventure

and i still miss the ocean and the scene

how do people live in a place where it doesn't rain

for months on end

health and care

First you decide what you've gotta do, then you go out and do it
and maybe the most that we can do is just to see each other through it

--Ani Di Franco, Hour Follows Hour

UNM Hospital is like a city unto itself. I wonder what the population of that place is at any given time, if you include the four stories of full parking for visitors.

I brought my viola to visit my friend, Abbey, who just got out of Intensive Care after 3 weeks. She had been in a terrible car accident, and had broken a lot of bones, including her neck and pelvis, from what I understand. She is recovering, but of course things are very slow.

I hadn't been informed of the accident until a few days ago, and finally today got around to seeing her. She seems okay considering the intensity of her recent journey. I was glad to visit gently, and play a little on the strings, which she found soothing while she dozed.

The hospital environment is one I seem to enjoy for some reason. I find it very humbling, in a good way, reminding me of the temporal nature of these physical vessels we inhabit. I enjoy all the compassion there is all around, from families visiting patients, to professional caregivers, to everyone else seeking to be of support.

I'll come to visit again, hopefully play a little more. I wonder how to get some Indian food in there, I bet she'd like that.

-----

My mouth still aches on and off from the tooth extraction I had this week. So the viols, with their pressure on the jaw, are a little uncomfortable to play right right now. But my energy is great--so much toxicity has dissipated.

I had read a lot about focal infections that can often take place within root canals, and their effects on the body. But I still wasn't sure how much the achy tooth was responsible for my widely varying degrees of unwellness in recent months. It turns out it was a very good call to have it--and the root canal--removed. Pain and pressure in my upper jaw, sinus and eye orbit are all greatly relieved.

The root was visibly infected, even after a course of penicillin. From what I understand, there is little circulation within the root canal area, so antibiotics sometimes do not address infections there. One can clean it out and redo the root canal, but that did not seem a useful course for an already damaged tooth.

In holistic dentistry, focal infections are said to affect the heart foremost, and then the brain and joints next most. I can say that my heart feels much more relaxed, a marked difference since before the surgery. My brain seems clearer and calmer as well, although that may be harder to exactly quantify. It helps to not be drinking alcohol, smoking anything, caffeinating, or eating sugar I'm sure!

My joints are definitely somewhat better also--my hip pain is gone. My heel pain remains but may also be loosening up. All such a curious journey in this body!

-----

At work today, a friend wrenched his back lifting that awkward sack of potatoes early in the morning. So he's out a few days to rest and recuperate.

Later, a customer came into my line with a bandaged hand, and I asked what had happened. She said a bug got into her shoulder and infected her whole arm down to her hand. I asked, so then are you on antibiotics? She said, no it's past that, they want to cut it off.

She started crying a little, and said I'm usually okay with it all. I'm not gonna let them take it.

I was guessing she was in pain, and maybe her life itself could be in jeopardy. I just quietly empathized, while continuing to scan her yogurt and juice. Wow, what a journey you are on, I offered in a gentle, compassionate tone. She said yeah, the physical is just so hard, but the spiritual path becomes very strong.

After a breath, talk turned to the Pride parade just had just been to, and other lighter topics, and I wished her care on her way. I was grateful for the moment of empathy.

Seems to me a large part of why we are here is to see one another through it.

Native wisdom

I am noticing an increase in exposure to Native American cultural input lately, which I am enjoying.

Much of it is coming through public radio, where I have enjoyed listening to Native music programs on both KUNM 89.9 and KANW 89.1 here in Albuquerque the last few days. I've also caught parts of Native America Calling over a couple days, one show featuring a healer using a process called "somatic archeology."

There was another show this morning from a Watersheds as Commons series, which can be found at www.loreoftheland.org. It featured Navajo speakers discussing right relationship to the land and water, and I found it quite moving. At the completion of the show, I was surprised to hear that I knew the narrator, Celestia Loeffler, whose voice sounds polished far beyond her 20-something years, and who co-produced the show with her father, Jack, a musician friend from years past.

The most moving of inputs came from a new friend of mine. who mentioned attending a ceremony at Navajo the past week, a type of ceremony I had not been familiar with. It was a blessing ceremony for a Navajo child she midwifed recently. The ceremony involves a feast put on by the person who has made the child laugh for the first time, in this case the child's uncle. Much of the interaction involves others helping the child laugh again throughout the feast. There is also a ritual involving generosity of food involving the baby holding salt which people receive from him or her for their food.

The child is thus affirmed in the cultural values of generosity and laughter, in a very real sense actualizing the blessing "may your life be abundant in sharing food and laughter". I share this respectfully with absolute wonderment, as the kind of world I wish to belong to and co-create as well. Imagine how much richer our lives could be with this kind of approach to things.

reality check

Frustration has lifted. I am no longer beating myself up. I don't know how to put things poetically, but I've been in a better place the last two days. I think I have cleared out some toxicity. And I have been keeping my attention on the here and now.

I have found the most meaning in letting go not only of obsessing over struggles, but in letting go of the beautiful visions and hopes that have caused more suffering than anything--when I find I cannot afford them, when I realize they are not happening, etc. Life is better without hope. Sartre's No Exit exactly.

There is greater freedom without desire.

I've even begun to become curious of how the real conundrums will resolve. There is satisfaction in dealing with reality. That's the scoop.

depression report

This is what they call depression. There is lethargy, the fatigue, the hopelessness, the inability to make decisions. Whenever my thoughts turn toward a sunshiney moment, I am smashed down with the reminder of all my ineptitude and unworthiness, as i get nothing done to help myself. After that, it's just an ongoing daze.

Maybe a) I didn't get out in time, out of some HAARP-based fukushima-irradiated chemtrail-laden atmosphere and NWO mass-mind-control plot overtaking the northern hemisphere, while money goes hyper-inflationary and all social systems begin to collapse.

Or maybe b) I just suck.

I know I only function when I am assigned some specific thing to do, when I agree to show up to play a gig, when I go to work. Other than that, I imagine doing something...and ten possible strategies come to mind, and then I flop on the bed, overwhelmed. This behavior fits into both a) and b) hypotheses. On the one hand, right in line with their ostensible environmental poisoning, I can't think clearly. I suddenly long for authoritarianism--just make a functional health care system and I will obey!

On the other, I do just suck. Lousy lover, failed at everything I've ever tried work-wise, weak sense of humor, not even very nice really, more self-centered than anything...

-----

I find there are times when I am reduced to catalepsis, a complete inability to move for extended periods. It's about once a week, or maybe every other. Often this is actually a useful state. It is one of the few moments left where my mind is free to roam, beyond the constraints of the next moment's pressure. In catatonia, there is no future at all. I am sure I am going to remain there for a couple weeks, until someone searches me out and takes me away to some hospital. Nothing more to worry about. It is very nice actually.

But something has snapped me out of it each time, sometimes after 30 seconds, sometimes 30 minutes. It's generally a random surge of energy without any thought that shifts things, and I hop up and move on.

There is a glimmer of a moment of lightness there, in the thoughtless movement. Then the dread returns, like a familiar friend, around all the hopelessness of illness, a barren lonely life, aging and death. Plus all there is to deal with every single day. One day I am unexpectedly cycling in the wind to and from a full day of work. The next, exhausted, I work a full shift of labor and paint a kitchen for four hours afterwards. Another day I am moving. Another calls for laundry, trying to converse with the landlady, and chores--again after a full day of work.

Underlying it all, there is very low self-esteem. There is also the penicillin I am on, killing off all the bacteria in my body, both malevolent and beneficial. I am sure the internal dying-off affects my admittedly sensitive psyche. I remember to pray sometimes and, while it never brings the cavalry, there is usually soon after a little bit of lightening that allows me to continue on.

I felt some intuition after praying the other day, that maybe there would be some meaning to just going to Tijuana and getting it done there--screw the dental insurance coverage, just do it.

It made me wonder more about whether I was meant to live in San Diego again, where there is water. A friend then called asking me when I am moving back, as our mutual friend's house has a nice room available for $450. Four blocks from the ocean, paying less than I am paying to live here in the dustbowl. On some dimension, it all came together, and I was sure I was meant to at least go out and check it out on this trip.

I can't afford the trip.

I am several hundred short. I'd be mortgaging the rest of my summer even if I somehow shuffle or borrow the money to do it. It is the money I never seem to have anymore to get the basic things I need to do done. So this morning I left a cryptic message for the dentist in Tijuana I had an appointment with Monday, indicating I probably couldn't make the trip.

-----

The penicillin is damping down the dental infection I have been unable to resolve despite obsessing on it for a month. I want to call some empathy friends to try to unwind some of the psychic pressure that has built up. There is the sense that everything I do or think is wrong. There is a massive should lodged in there that helps nothing. But I never call anyone. That would take self-esteem, I guess.

None of it makes sense, and I am returned to a rather infantile escapism. I want someone to make it all go away. I want to extract the tooth and failed root canal, but it is a nearly mystical epic journey apparently on the other side. Because twice I have choked when two dentists have asked me if I am sure I want to pull it. Apparently there is a slippery slope of partial dentures and moving teeth and all sorts of other unthinkable things in the modern world.

They would indicate aging.

Some part of me freaks too. What if I can't eat...anymore...ever again? Am I insane to pull a tooth?! One that could be cleaned out and patched up...maybe...with another round of canal chemical sterilization--even though it is broken...and has ached on and off for five years...and is suspect in other ailments I've had in that time...

I worked with a guy once who was under such stress in his marriage that he would go out to bars and get into fights, because he felt better when he got punched in the face. That is how I feel these days. Someone just punch me in the face, strap me to the chair and take the freaking tooth.

Please. While I've still got a couple days of penicillin. I'd hate to have to go through another course of this dying off.