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Kept Awake By Meditation and Sookie Stackhouse Novel (“Dead” The Next Day)

May 5, 2010

Meditation and Vampire Novels

As some followers of this blog know, I’m a longtime devotee of Astanga yoga (sometimes, unfortunately, known as “power yoga”).  Astanga is a relatively active form of yoga in which the practitioner jumps from pose to pose;  each pose in turn is held for a relatively short set number of breaths.  Because I do “self-practice,” meaning that I do Astanga yoga at home by myself, my practice has somewhat deteriorated over the past few years.  I do it, sure, but the requisite number of breaths has shortened to second hand levels (as in, about one second per pose) and my focus has become increasingly… diffused.

Great returns rarely come from casual investments (i.e. no pain, no gain).  Meaning that my rushed, unfocused yoga, does not yield a significant amount of inner peace.  (Sigh.)

One possible remedy would be to simply give more time and energy to my existing yoga practive.

But that’s not really the ManicD way of handling an issue of this kind.  Instead, what I’ve tried is to add in something else, something which I can also pursue in a slightly desultory way:  meditation.

Ah, meditation.

Meditation is probably harder for the Manic personality than Astanga yoga, as it involves minimal jumping.

But unlike my self-led yoga-practice, I’ve tried to meditate in a mediation session, at a meditation center, with a teacher and pillows, and other, sincere-looking people, and one of those beautiful bells in a bowl.   This structure, given my achievement-oriented personality, actually inspires me to sit still.

Ah.  (Meditation.)

I really do like the sessions.  When I’m in one, I feel more aware, more tolerant, more wise, more balanced.  The problem is that after I come home from one of these sessions, I seem to be driven to some form of extreme behavior. I don’t rent a race car, or go out on the town–I just do things that are, as they say in Buddhist terminology, unskillful.

After last night’s session, for example, I stayed up till about 3:30 a.m. reading the new Sookie Stackhouse mystery from Charlaine Harris—Dead In the Family, the tenth in the series.

With all due respect to Ms. Harris, some of whose work I have truly enjoyed, it’s not a terrifically good book.   The story has gotten very complex, too full of ancillary characters, too dependent on prior knowledge, too rushed, too soap-opery.  If you are not (a) escapist, (b) already addicted to her main characters (Sookie Stackhouse, Bill Compton, and Eric Northman), and possibly (c)  just coming out of a Buddhist meditation session, it is extremely unlikely that you would find it worthy of a virtually all-night read.   (Maybe not even any read.)

But the meditation teacher last night, a very thoughtful and meticulous speaker, had a curiously bloodless quality.  She smiled frequently;she said things that, if not original, were useful; she wore a very tasteful, shawl.  And yet she also left me in a state ripe for self-indulgence, blood–errr—lust, the super-handsome, super- passionate Eric healing Sookie of her post-Fairy-torture trauma.

Ah, vampire novels.

(By way of further excuse, I should note that I’ve only read Sookie Stackhouse novels; I’m not really familiar with the TV series.  Also, to those of you that can’t understand my obsession with these books—umm…..how about ‘it’s a great way, as a writer, to learn how to put action in one’s work.’)

Categories: elephants, meditation, Sookie Stackhouse novels, Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mysteries, Uncategorized, yoga
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Trying to Think About Pie and Not Faisal Shahzad, Though Perhaps Not Hard Enough

May 4, 2010

Smoking Pie

I wanted to write about pie today—the fact that my mother (now nearly 87) sprinkles sugar on top of the slice she will serve herself, while, if I eat a slice of pie at all, I spoon on plain, unsweetened yogurt; while my daughters will take the time to whip up heavy cream.   All evening, I’ve been wondering, in snatches, whether this is the natural progression of life.

But I live in New York City, and even though I really would rather think about pie toppings, I find my mind taken up by the 53 hour saga that began with the smoking car in Times’ Square, and has led to the arrest of Faisal Shazad, the alleged car owner and bombsetter.

I have to start by saying (and I’m mainly addressing this to you, Mom, if you ever happen to read this blog) that the attempted car bomb has had virtually no effect on my particular New York life.

It seems actually not to have affected many New Yorkers very much.  I noticed the absolute ordinariness of my evening rush hour train:  in the bank of seats I leaned over, the three people front and center of me either had eyes shut below furrowed brows, or eyes shut below a hand shielding said eyes (from the delightful train lighting or, perhaps, my stare).  The next guy was playing solitaire on a electronic game player; the next two were smiling and talking with great animation.

New Yorkers’ natural tendency to put their personal fatigue, or personal conversations, over hyper-vigilence has probably been accentuated by the fact that the Times’ Square bomb does not appear to have been a really well-constructed device.  A sense of security has also been created by the fact that the authorities, amazingly, have already taken the guy into custody.  (Even though it seems that they almost lost him as he boarded a plane to Dubai.)

I congratulate the New York City police force, the New York City bomb squad, the Times Square vendors (!), the FBI, the TSA, Homeland Security, all those authorities who coordinated efforts so quickly.

Still, one very frightening question comes to mind–what would have happened if the bomber had stayed inside the car?   Had, in other words, been a suicide bomber?  Committed enough to his mission (due to political or religious zealotry, bitterness, brainwashing, craziness, drugs, duress, whatever,) to physically see it through?   Would a smoking car with a driver have seemed that extraordinary?   Would vendors have been as likely to question it, even if it did seem strange?

Hollywood tends to depict New Yorkers as “in your face”, but, in fact, New Yorkers are pretty good are minding their own business, the art of non-confrontation rather important when you are all squished together.

So what would have happened?  I, for one, would rather think about pie, but there’s smoke in the background.

Categories: New York City, news, Uncategorized
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Comments: 2 Comments

Not Quite National Poetry Month but “Good Enough”

May 3, 2010

Diamond Enough

After yesterday’s post concerning the relatively higher payback for posts about Robert Pattinson, I am returning to poetry.  This is, in part, because the  Academy of American Poets announced that it is extending its April program of daily emailed poems for the entire year.  (I figure if the Academy of American Poets can post a poem a day for longer than a month, I can too.)

So here’s another draft poem  (written on the morning subway).   Any suggestions for improvement that you may send are seriously considered and greatly appreciated.

Good Enough

Why is it that they,
the amorphous they,
can never say
you’re good enough
well enough
for you to feel, in fact,
good (enough);
not perhaps like a
diamond in the rough,
much less a diamond buffed,
just not ‘not good enough’.

What can they say
to allay
that bay of inadequacy,
that convenient, if unsafe, harbor,
built-in, if empty, larder?

It sounds like a game,
but if words can tame pain,
rhyme act as anodyne,
it’s worth a shot,
would mean a lot,
maybe, for a short time, enough.

(PS – note that an earlier version of this post incorrectly named the Academy of American Poets.  Sorry, Poets!  Their emailed poems are a feature called “poem-a-day”. )

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writing exercises
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Pattinson and Poetry

May 2, 2010

Comparative Hair - Billy Collins/Robert Pattinson

After a month of posting draft poems in honor of National Poetry Month, I have to say that there’s a certain payback to blogging about Robert Pattinson (the 23-or-4 year old star of the Twilight Saga movies).

The fact is that not that many people are interested in poetry, particularly the draft poems of an unknown blogger, while many many people are interested in Pattinson (as in gaga over, or contemptuous of). Sure, there are also a lot of people who are disinterested in Pattinson, but often disinterested in a way that borders on the self-righteously dismissive (e.g., a teeny teeny bit interested).

Lately, an important percentage of the fascination does not seem to be with Pattinson himself, as with the very interest he elicits (all those screaming girls.) He was recently named, for instance, one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.

Curiously, the commentator justifying this designation did not cite any particular example Rob sets, or influence he levers, so much as the fact that any information about Pattinson–public sighting or comment–is the immediate subject of a zillion tweets and retweets.

And why are people so interested in Rob? Okay, the looks—Nureyev cheekbones, tortured eyes, hair—this blog has already discussed those at length. More importantly, however, Pattinson is identified with a character (Twilight’s Edward Cullen) who is an escapist ideal—the perfect…oops! nearly perfect…oops! not quite man. Here Pattinson plays into a double fantasy of male perfection and vampirism, with each element vying for the most incredible. (Sorry, guys!)

Poetry is tremendously down to earth in comparison. A good poem tends to bring the reader more fully into the moment, or, at least, some moment, rather than out of it.   Even fantastical poems, such as those by Yeats or Keats or Robert Bly, deal in the real and human and very imperfect.

But people like perfect escapes. Which may be why poets, even those super popular poets, like Billy Collins, tend to earn much less than movie stars. That and the hair.

Categories: Blogging, poetry, Robert Pattinson, Uncategorized
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End of National Poetry Month – Poetry Goes On! (May 1st Monsoon Villanelle)

May 1, 2010

Monsoon Skirt

What to do when April, National Poetry Month, is over, and you no longer have an excuse to post draft poems, but you are not yet ready to reinvent yourself or your blog?

Post another poem about excuses, difficulties with reinvention and May 1st!

Here it is (a Villanelle).  (Thanks for your patience.  Tomorrow, I really do hope to move on.)

Travelers’ Wedding – Bangkok

The monsoon sky grew slowly thick with grey
as sweat like traffic stalled the steaming city.
It didn’t feel much like the first of May,

not even in his shirt saved for the day,
nor in the Indian skirt she’d thought so pretty.
The monsoon sky grew slowly thick with grey

as they hurried to the bureau where they’d say
“I do”, or if required, some learned Thai ditty.
It didn’t feel much like the first of May;

still was, and, as they found, a holiday.
Closed office doors made clean clothes somehow gritty;
the monsoon sky grew slowly thick with grey.

“Tomorrow then,” they sighed, feigning dismay,
and then made jokes that almost passed for witty.
But it didn’t feel much like the first of May,

stained, like his shirt, with portent and delay
as sweat, like lifetimes, stalled throughout the city.
The monsoon sky grew slowly thick with grey;
it didn’t feel much like the first of May.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle, writing exercises
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30th Day of National Poetry Month – Villanelle to Mistakes

April 30, 2010

K's

30th Day of National Poetry Month, and my 30th (or so) draft poem.  I have to confess I’m not sure what I’ll do tomorrow.

This last draft poem is a villanelle.  This one came very readily, actually, as I was busy stewing over the day’s mistakes.

For a detailed explanation of the villanelle form, check here; for a comparison between writing a villanelle and assembling a banana pudding, check here.  For more villanelles, check out the poetry category from the home page.

As always, pauses in my poems are intended to be made only where marked by punctuation (comma, period, etc.) and not at the end of every line.  (I have to say I’m not completely sure of proper punctuation here.)

Finally, thanks so very much for following this blog, reading the drafts and not minding the many–

Mistakes

I make mistakes just writing out my name.
I know the letters, curves, the dotted “i”,
but what was then was then, now’s not the same.

The letter “K”, for instance, no longer tame,
won’t bisect in half with every try.
I make mistakes just writing out my name.

The “u” beginning “us” against the grain,
it wants to sag and limp, become a “y”
what’s then was then, why now is not the same,

why what should be a beam becomes a crane,
not level, but a very uphill climb.
I make mistakes just writing out my name.

How does one make a stand on legs gone lame?
How does one make a song out of a cry?
(When what was then was then, now not the same.)

The green in Spring is yellow, in Fall is flame.
What one can do is endlessly defy
the making of mistakes.  I write my name
as I did then, and then.  What’s now?  What’s same?

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle, writing exercises
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29th Day of National Poetry Month – Poem In Your Pocket Sonnet – WhitmanBack

April 29, 2010

Whitmanback, not Greenback (or, as it appears, Rasputinback)

April 29th–the 29th day of National Poetry Month–is not-so-traditionally “poem in your pocket” day, a day when everyone is supposed to carry a folded-up sheet of poetry on their person.  (In my experience, the main people who celebrate the day are students with good English teachers.)   Here’s a draft sonnet in honor of the day:

For Poem In Your Pocket Day

Amazing to think of a poem in
one’s pocket in place of all currency–
cash or gun—a bartered verse to phone in
to your broker, negotiable fluency;
“Song of Myself” read for a credit check,
“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”
serving for your OB.  For a higher tech
purchase, try a quote from Stephen Hawking–
not quite a poem but close enough—and
for those moments one faces something raw,
when, as they say, the going gets tough, and
life itself seems stuck in maw and craw,
what a gift to unfold one’s own scanned lines
and read in them word of other times.

F0r more on sonnets, look here, and also check out the poetry category from the home page.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writing exercises
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28th Day of National Poetry Month – Train of Thought

April 28, 2010

The 28th day of National Poetry Month, and my 28th draft poem.  This one is very much a draft, but, I hope, interesting.

Train of Thought

I am thinking as I sit upon the train
that the person who invented rubberized eggs
should be shot, or at least, forced to eat them, when
a woman with a rubbed-out face
steps onto my car.  She’s been burned badly,
her face segmented into triangular wedges of scar that
web the skin from one ear to the opposite cheekbone.
Hard to read the history
in the hieroglyphics.
An explosion on a stove?
Acid thrown in warning?  Retribution?
Her skin tan, hair dark, ethnicity scratched out, I go
for the acid, knowing that whether or not she is a woman
purposely victimized, there are such women,
damaged for their difference, their efforts, to hold
things in place, women.
She stands, waits, her face turned
so that I can see only an edge of eye (though her eyes
are almost all edge).
I want to give her my seat, but the gesture feels
intrusive, a kind of stare, so do nothing but wonder
about a world in which eggs are turned
into seamless yellow squares, and woman’s faces into
a stitching of scars, and how our minds can hold such things at once–
the trivial, the tragic, the very very tragic–and this City too,
this train.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writing exercises
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27th Day of April – “Chalk Milkshake”

April 27, 2010

Banana

Here is my 27th draft poem in honor of National Poetry Month.

Chalk Milkshake

I knew that we would be married some day
when he drank down
the chalk milkshake I had made.
It was not really a chalk milkshake.
It was soy.  Powder.
But tasted like sidewalk
sweetened with banana;
a sidewalk freshly poured, or
covered with hopscotch on a sun-dried day,
your pick.
He smiled, after a sip,
a sweet smile shaped like a banana,
and, as I apologized, said,
“no, it’s interesting.”

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writing exercises
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Comments: 4 Comments

26th Day of National Poetry Month – “Horizon of the Closed Heart”

April 26, 2010

Closed Heart (Actually, Locked Heart In this Case.)

26th day of National Poetry Month; a busy, social day, in which it was very very hard to come up with a poem draft.  (As followers of this blog know, I’m “celebrating” National Poetry Month, by writing a draft poem a day.  I hope you too are trying some.)

Horizon of the Closed Heart

The horizon of the closed heart is very short.
It is not like sun on water, that orb of glisten
that swallows the sea, and then is swallowed by it.
It is not like snow on mountains,
amazingly there in May, a dust of lost white.
Not even like a tall building edging the sky,
a compass hand to point this way as downtown,
this way up.
It lurks in the belly, pelvis, thighs; darts
into the forehead; but what it mainly does
is bind the chest, a second set of ribs bruised
by all the bumping into, bouncing back,
those reflections of the self turned in on itself,
the self, the self, the self, and all that it wants,
all that it lacks, spread thinly upon a small, mean space.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writing
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Comments: 5 Comments

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