Yoga Book Reports: The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga by Bernie Clark

I've done and loved a lot of yin yoga (thanks Andrea!), but before reading The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga by Bernie Clark, I never really understood why yin is so important or how it benefits the body.  Perhaps my biggest misconception was the yin yoga was meant to be restorative.  Clark popped that balloon by page 2.  Yin is meant to stress ligaments, facia, and other tissue that yang practices (think the typical vinyasa class, ashtanga series, etc.) usually can't get at.

"Stress" is a big word to Clark.  He writes that all tissue, not just muscle, needs some amount of stress to grow strong.  The trick is that the stress one puts on ligaments, face and other yin-targeted tissue has to be even more careful than that placed on muscles in even the most deliberate practice.  One simply can't "go for it" to get deeper into a pose that targets a knee ligament and expect anything but disaster.  Type As need to lose their expectations.

As I have made the space in my life to reintegrate yin yoga into my practice, I've reflected on the relationship between restorative and yin.  One can certainly do a yin class as restorative yoga, or one can pursue the gentle stress that Clark describes as the heart of yin.  However, given the sensitivity of the tissue yin stresses, the relationship can't be either/or.  One has to take a relaxed, inquisitive, careful approach, and Clark himself subscribes to the "if it feels good, you're doing it right" motto.

Either way, highly recommended read.

In Defense of Duck Dynasty Dude (Sort Of)

Unless you think all speech against homosexuality is hate speech, there is nothing hateful about what dude said.  Read for yourself.  Robertson doesn't couple the standard insane comparisons to bestiality with language calling for a jihad against homosexuals.  He's just a dude stating what he "knows" to be true.

I completely understand why people who agree with Robertson would be very, very upset that he is being punished.  American pop culture has just made it crystal clear that they only want to see rural whites at their most buffoonish.  Yes to an offensive caricature of rural life.  Yes to dudes out in the wilderness taking all kinds of stupid risks.  Yes to words with two syllables or less.

Sharing an opinion that challenges the dominant narrative?  Shut the fuck up, redneck.  We don't pay you to think or to have opinions.  We pay you to be a stereotype that makes the dominant class say, wow, my life could be worse, I could be those guys.

Now get back to cooning.

Moving With Intention

Ran Prieur linked to a comment the other day on the myriad of ways we distract ourselves from the present.  For the comment author, productivity was his distraction.

"I have a strong dislike against "wasting time." I don't like myself when I spend time on nonsense. And so I fill all of my day with "constructive things." My walk to work is filled with podcasts, the time waiting for the food to bake filled with news articles. While eating I entertain myself with shows or Ted talks or whatnot."

My distraction of choice is not so high-minded.  I like to mess around on the Internet.  I can't even be bothered to read a quarter of the articles I skim.  I tweet and post to message boards without taking any time to consider what I am reacting to or formulating my own arguments.  I flit from thing to thing without fully engaging in any of it.  I am fully present for none of it, and the comment made me think that this pattern of behavior compromises my happiness.

My new intention is to move with purpose through both the "real" and virtual world.  I am not at a place where I could fully unplug, nor do I want to.  What I can do is to try to make sure I am fully present for everything I do in front of a computer.  If I am writing a blog post, I need to concentrate on that blog post, and not rush over to Twitter or Okayplayer or wherever.  No.  Be with the blog post.  Be fully with the blog post.

And, yeah, for those moments where I can't even remember why the computer is open, I'm going to try to close it.

Letting Go

To let one's self go to the currents of the world is the path to liberation.  To stop trying to force the world to be what one wants it to be and to surf on what actually is can free us all.

And for a recovering overachiever at Step One, it is completely terrifying.

Yoga Is Yoga Is Not Something Else

Maybe you've seen them: the fawning profile of your favorite yogalebrity that grinds to a halt when the author asks said yogalebrity how her personal practice is surviving the rigors of traveling and teaching and such.  The yogalebrity gets very, very wistful and admits the days where she puts in two hours of asana practice per day are over, but she assures us we need not worry for her.  You see, she's found a NEW way to do yoga.  Now, her teaching is her yoga.  Her community service is her yoga.  Her photo shoot to convince you to buy an eco-friendly mat and send your current mat to the landfill is her yoga.

It's all nonsense, of course.

Yoga is yoga is ONLY yoga.  The only problem with that obvious statement is that it, too, is all nonsense.  Yoga is made up of eight limbs, so to do say one "does yoga" is completely devoid of meaning.  One might say that she practiced pranayama or asana or observed the yamas and the niyamas, but those phrases are aggregations as well.  To say one "did" any of them is completely empty.  The only thing you can practice is an individual thing, not a category.  You can't even do downward dog.  You can do THIS downward dog.  The one you do in the moment.  The one in the now.  Your next downward dog will be something completely different that is united with the previous downward dog mostly by linguistic convention, not reality.

Yoga bleaching is real, and the worst form of yoga bleaching might be when one tries to substitute something else for an element of yoga.  The practice of individual asanas confer a set of benefits that, by definition, can come only from the practice of asana.  Meditation, and nothing else, confers the benefits of meditation.  A thing is a thing, and nothing else is that thing.

Feel for the yogalebrity.  She knows she is not practicing asana as she once did, and she misses it.  Her attachments have gotten her all twisted up, and the tragedy is that she need not be.  She has made her choice, and her choice is just fine.  Other things are worth doing!  Other things, like teaching and traveling and making enough money to not live in a van down by the river, offer their own rewards.  If a mature adult weighs the rewards associated with an activity that necessitates she lessen her asana practice and finds that they outweight the costs, we should celebrate such enlightened decision making.  Many paths to the top of the mountain and all, but lying to one's self about what one is and is not doing is a sure way to steer directly into oncoming traffic.

The Fifth Element

"Spirit?  Oh well, it's dazzlingly obvious then.  The spirit's role's always unpredictable, you know that.  It exists to galvanize and revitalize the elements around it.  Here's a boy whose hatred of authority is such that he even rebels against us.  I think he's here to test you to your limits, Gideon, that's what I think.  He's here to shake you to the core."  Grant Morrison, The Invisibles

Building a Better Echo Chamber

So a historian wrote a book on Jesus.  Fox News invited him on.  Said historian pwned said Newscorp.

I try not to write about politics anymore, but I'd like to think the Aslan/Green exchange is about something bigger than partisan politics and represents a victory for anyone who thinks of themselves as one of the good guys.

Contemporary society has become so postmodern that it is skeptical of the very idea of expertise.  When we hear an expert speaking on something, we think they're just one more salesman pushing one more product.  Salesmen have facts and figures too, yet they always seem to omit those facts that don't support their desired end.  Understandably, we've all gotten pretty cynical when someone claims to be presenting just the facts, ma'am.

What makes this three minute video so fascinating and important is that Aslan strongly asserts that we need to get over all that shit.  This is the most vigorous, concise statement I've yet seen of what I'll call The Nate Silver Lesson.  Remember when conservatives thought Nate Silver was not a witch but merely a partisan hack?  How did that work out for them?

Experts exist.  Plenty of very smart people spend their entire lives pouring through hundreds of thousands of pages of Ancient Greek, developing ridiculously complex statistical models, and doing a million other really cool things.  The best part: they do so not to get over, but because they want to do the best possible job capturing reality, in all its complexity and messiness.  They constantly ask themselves whether their biases could be compromising their ability to accurately depict reality, and they take steps to compensate for those biases.  A worldwide community vets their work, and the vast majority of its members share the same commitment to presenting the world as accurately as possible.  The resulting product that they put out is measurably more accurate than the ranting of some person who's on TV because s/he is entertaining or looks like what we think an expert should look like.

If the notion of expert seems less than robust these days, it may be due less to the failings of the experts themselves and more to the inability of society to distinguish real experts from people who can act the part and still say what the audience wants to hear, rather than the truth.

The Practice Deepens

Should wheel pose feel so good on my shoulders?  A quick search of the Interwebs list a lot of potential benefits but no mention of the rear delts, but lately, that's the muscle group I feel open the most.  The time I most notice it are on those days when I feel limber and am able to really roll my shoulder blades back, open the heart, and walk my legs in.  As my arms gets straight up and down and the chest tracks in the same line, the opening in the shoulders feels the greatest.  Pure bliss.

Some of the relief I feel must be related to me becoming more proficient at this particular asana.  Mostly, though, the pose is addressing what my body needs.  Since moving to Cleveland, I've developed a wonderful habit where I store my stress in these very same rear delts.  I have no doubt in my mind that the increased relief I feel in wheel is directly tied to my greater need for relief in that specific area.

Which is pretty neat.  Actually, it's awe inspiring and humbling.  The tradition is wise enough, and its  system of physical exercise flexible enough, to adapt seamlessly to the level of bodymind of any practitioner, so that everyone can get the relief they need.

Gratitude.  Overwhelming gratitude.

Taste the Rainbow

Geoff Johns' run on Green Lantern is done.  My first thought is, FINALLY.  Even those of us who loved his run and have defended Johns against the slings and arrows must concede that GL has been truly awful ever since Blackest Night, with the exception of the first few issues of The Nu 52.

In his final issue, Johns all but acknowledges that fact.  Green Lantern 20 is a real-time act of revisionist history, with Johns celebrating the defining features of his run by literally bringing almost all of them back for an encore.  The first thing we see is a future keeper of the Book of Oa using five pages to recap Rebirth, The Sinestro Corps War, the War of Light, and Blackest Night as more or less the complete story of Hal Jordan's time as a Green Lantern.  There is no mention of War of the Green Lanterns or The Rise of the Third Army, which is appropriate, since those things never existed and I never wasted real currency on them.

The rest of the issue proceeds around a flimsy, insignificant plot device--there's an all-powerful threat! he's really bad!--to get the band back together.  The Green Lanterns attack.  The Red Lanterns spit fire.  Kyle Rayner shows up with the rest of the Care Bear Crew, because God forbid Kyle Rayner ever get to do anything that isn't incredibly stupid and pointless.  Our old friend Parallax shows up.  Hal Jordan brings back the Black Lanterns and Nekron (no, really), saves the day, and gets rebirthed again.  It's best you don't ask about that last thing.

But let's go back to those first five pages.  Those who accuse Geoff Johns of being obsessed with the past are laughing their asses off and/or breaking things right now, but, like, I'm not sure that summary is entirely incorrect.  My impression is that with the exception of a couple amazing Alan Moore one offs and Emerald Twilight, there weren't any classic Green Lantern stories prior to Johns's run.  Whatever its faults, Johns's run did expand the GL universe and expand the possibilities open to future writers.

Especially with Sinestro.  When I read old GL comics, Sinestro is a fairly generic creepy, slimy villain type with no identity.  If Johns' run has one unequivocal triumph, it's that he gave Sinestro depth.  Johns took a simple concept--if green rings require overcoming fear, yellow rings require its mastery--and used it to inform every aspect of Sinestro's character and history.  In Johns's world, Sinestro's evil came from a desire to use fear to provide the universe order and stability (Sinestro as neocon?).  Johns let this motivation make Sinestro seem alternately nobly misguided and insane.  He took the old notion of Sinestro as tragic hero undone by his need to preserve order to heights never before imagined.  Johns got Sinestro and used him to drive his entire run.  When future writers approach Green Lantern, they'll have a villain worthy of a Justice Leaguer to play with.

Finally, Green Lantern 20 reminds us that most of Johns's run was big, dumb fun, but it was fun.  Parts of Johns's multicolored Lantern saga (Sinestro Corps War) were better written than others (Blackest Night), but the stakes were always high and the action was always beautifully drawn.  All comics writers rely on their artists, but one wonders how we'd look at Johns's GL run if he had had to work with average artists instead of geniuses like Ethan Van Sciver, Ivan Reis, and Doug Mahnke. To Johns's credit, he put those guys in situations where they could draw huge space action scenes in primary colors, and they knocked it out of the park.  If a reader could buy into the story just enough to care, Green Lantern delivered the best action on the shelves.

I'll always owe Geoff Johns a debt, because his Green Lantern was the first book that got me going to the comics shop weekly.  Since then, I've encountered scores of better books and better sagas, but Johns's GL was the gateway drug.  Judging by the sales numbers, other people felt the same way I did.  No one should mistake Johns's run with art, but he delivered the cheap, pulpy, grade B thrills comics used to be known for by the truckload.

The Yoga of Public Speaking

Imagine providing information to over 100 proud professionals that, at first glance, could be taken as a sign that they were not doing their job.  Last week, I presented some data to some employees that seemed to indicate, at first blush, that they had not entered data correctly into one of our systems.

Before I get fired, let me be very clear: this group of employees care about their jobs and do them well. That pride may have sparked the initial reception I received, which was that I should get the fuck out of here.  I was told in no uncertain terms that my numbers were inaccurate and that they resented any attempt to use those numbers to evaluate them or their programs.

Remember, all of this is happening as I stand in front of 100 people.  My natural reaction in such situations is fight or flight.  You call me out on something, and I want to either get out of dodge or immediately crush you.  That defensiveness has gotten me into trouble in the past, specifically in professional settings.

Fortunately, that's not what I did .  I admitted that this system was still in its infancy, which meant we were still working out its kinks.  I acknowledged the very real possibility that some people had entered the data and that the system was, for whatever reason, just not showing it.  I agreed that any attempt to use this data for evaluation immediately was wildly premature and promised I would do my best to stop any attempt to do so.  I made a point to show where the data showed instances of success, and specifically successes where an employee had overcome the technical difficulties and learning curve to get information into the system during the past month.  What I was most interested in, I said, was getting this data right, so that, in the future, the employees could use this tool to approach their supervisor to begin a conversation about how to solve problems.  We ended up using the time to diagnose problems with the system, so that our team can fix them.  At the end, I got a nice round of applause, and everything was all good.

Yes, this situation makes me think about yoga. One of the things yoga can teach us is that we're not going to be perfect or right at every moment.  Sometimes, everything just comes apart.  Sometimes, you don't have all the answers.  Sometimes, you will fall on your ass.

Over the past year I've gotten much, much better about acknowledging where my body is in the moment I am practicing, as opposed to where I think it should be.  I've accepted the situations where I can't get into poses that normally pose no challenges.  Today I couldn't stick an eagle pose to save my life, and I smiled through my wobbling.

Eagle Claw don't need no reason

"Your life becomes your practice, and your practice becomes your life."  Quite right.  As I've been able to accept a yoga practice that is imperfect, I've learned how to accept imperfections elsewhere in my life.  Now, when I report out a finding, I'm keenly aware that I need feedback to determine how valid it is, or whether I need to go back to the drawing board work with other people to make it better.  Now, criticism isn't an attack on my person.  Now, criticism is a chance to make a good thing better.

Almost everyone can accept that.  I'd like to think that the professionals to whom I presented saw someone who wasn't defensive and who wanted their help to achieve a common goal.  I find that people can forgive almost any screw up so long as I own it.

Just One Fix

There may come a day when I'm mad that only one person shows up for my yoga class, but that day is not here yet.

After no one showed up for my first 4 (!) classes, I realized I needed to let go of my ego as quickly as possible, lest I spend every Monday night curled up in the fetal position and sobbing in my closet.  But over the past two months, I've had pretty consistent turnout, until tonight.  At 6:58, I thought I might get the night off, until I got my first and only student for the night.  Keep in mind that I was tired and feeling somewhat bloated from my very yogic lunch of pancakes and a milkshake.

It might have been the most fun I've had teaching a class yet.  Small classes are the shit, and to be one on one with a student, particularly someone just getting into yoga, is to really get to chance to, well, teach.  I could watch her every move.  I could see where the potential injuries lurked and move her away from them.  I could see which words connected with her and which didn't.  I could even do about half the practice with her, because, like, a dude just staring at you and barking instructions sounds creepy.

Speaking of injuries, please, for the love of your ligaments, don't let the knee get in front of the ankle.

The best part is that I could both push her and offer support, because I could be there for every move. With just the slightest assist, my student got into textbook Dekasana and Urdhva Dhanurasana.  I'm not even sure she realized how cool it was that she was so new to yoga and still rocking those poses so hard, but I did, and I told her, and it felt great.

Someday, I may teach at the big studios.  Someday, I may experience the uncompromising joy of headset yoga.  In this moment, I'm immensely grateful for the students I get and the lessons they teach me.

I Am A Yoga Teacher

What does a yoga teacher do, and why do I want to be one?

I’m embarrassed to say that I gave the question very little thought prior to signing up for teacher training.  The answer I gave to the public was that I had practiced yoga for so many years that I was curious about teaching and deepening my own practice.  In one of my more honest moments, you probably could have gotten me to admit that I harbor dreams of owning a studio or otherwise making my way as a full-time teacher at some point.

Neither my public nor my private answer do much more than beg the question.  Yeah, I practice yoga a lot, but why?  I want to do and teach yoga all the time, but why?

A couple weeks ago, the Cleveland Yoga Teacher Trainees Class of 2013 were seriously lagging in energy.  Fearless Leader responded exactly as one would expect: by teaching a spur of the moment two hour inversion workshop.  Fearless Leader thinks nothing cures a case of tired faster than more, bigger, harder.  That Saturday, she was right.  All that blood and adrenaline rushing to our heads got us buzzing and moving and feeling alive once again.

We assisted one another, and I was paired with my friend Nicole.  We rocked our way through various pincha assists, before we moved on to handstand.  Nicole used my assist to kick up.  I walked her leg over her hips and told her to look at her belly, and VOILA!  For about five seconds, Nicole was in the best looking handstand you could imagine.  Her feet and her hands were in one line.  Her feet were flexed.  I knew she was in the pose because I could feel the point where her alignment allowed her to try less.  She got lighter.  When she came down, she popped right off the ground and, with the purest expression of joy I have seen in the longest time, immediately gave my sweaty ass the biggest hug.

And I learned why I wanted to be a yoga teacher.

After all the teaching I’ve done in my various roles, I am surprised at how much the bullshit teacher/student hierarchical narrative influences the way I view things, including yoga.  Now that I’ve finished teacher training, I can confirm that yoga teachers are not on a different plane than the rest of us.  A yoga teacher is just someone whose life has been touched by something pure and wonderful and perfect and who dreams that s/he might learn enough to share that feeling.

As I sit here on the first weekend of the rest of my life, I'm a little heartbroken that teacher training is over.  My PASC peeps will know what I mean when I say that I never thought I'd be in a color group again, but that's what this was.  A group with nothing in common but a fierce devotion to one perfect thing came together, and their shared love of that one perfect thing bonded them forever, if only in their minds.  With the program over, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel the loss.

That said, more than anything else, I'm ready to try to share what little I know in the hopes that someone else finds this practice and this practice elevates them as it has elevated me.  Really, all a yoga teacher needs to do is get out of the way and let the practitioner and practice bond, stepping in only when the practitioner waivers to nudge them back on the path.  That's it.  As long as I remember that I am not the star but a passenger in the backseat who can read the directions and point out the right place to turn, I have a chance of being a halfway decent yoga teacher.

Thanks, Nicole.  Thanks, TTs.

Blocks

I want to move up, in the direction of my dreams and freedom and enlightenment and all of the good stuff.  But the day-to-day makes getting to a higher place so hard.  I can't think or write with a cold.  I can't think or write when I'm so tired.  I can't think or write with a 8 to 5 and teacher training and keeping up with the people I love and the five million other things that demand attention every day.

Part of the solution is to simplify, to do less.  I know this.  I need to clear off my plate that which does not serve me, and I am trying so hard to do so.  I think I'm at the point where I'm ready to start shedding layers, and I have full confidence that if I do so more opportunities that better serve me will appear.  I just need the courage to get started.  I need to jump, even if I can't see the landing spot, and trust that the universe will reciprocate my gesture of good faith, catch me, and lift me up.

Boy, it's hard to think on cold medicine.  Blergh.

If You Were There, You Are There Now

I brought a case of the blues back with me from vacation.  Amy Schneider's class tonight helped a great deal.  I wasn't at my best, but I made the conscious effort to not let the blues stop me but to integrate the blues into my practice.  I worked with the blues, rather than against it.  I decided to be softer and more fluid.  It felt great.

Still, in savasana, the blues planted doubts in my head.  The blues said that I'd never reach the states of awareness that I wanted to reach, or even make it back to the states of mind where I felt I was making real progress in the past.

But, see, the blues fucked up when they mentioned the past, because I know enough about theoretical physics to be dangerous.  Theoretical physics sees time as a dimension like space, which opens the door for time travel and other, more interesting ideas.  Grant Morrison introduced me to one of my favorites, which is, if we were all fifth dimensional entities that could look down on the four dimensions humans perceive, we could theoretically point to different areas in time, and we'd see that all moments in time are actually part of the same thing and could really be said to be happening at once.

So, if that's the case, every moment in my life is happening right now.  The time years ago in Florida where the universe manifested itself to me as interlocking golden light that makes up everything is happening right now.  The time in savasana where I realized that God is real is happening right now.  There's no beginning or ending to anything, which means that if I have ever had a transcendent, spiritual moment in which I glimpsed higher existence, I can have it right now, if I just open myself to it.

And since we're all one thing anyway, if I've had such moments, you can too.

Needless to say, savasana got really, really trippy after that.  And really, really good.

Lessons in Humility: Yoga Teacher (In) Training

Before we left Florida this morning, Carolyn and I did yoga together.  I was sad and emotional about leaving, so I didn’t want to lead a class.  We just did whatever asanas we wanted for about 20 minutes.  Towards the end of our practice, she helped me stay up in pincha, and it felt wonderful.  Squeezing her arm between my legs allowed me to stay up longer away from the wall than I ever had before.  

Then she said she’d like to do headstand, a pose she’s worked on a bunch recently and has improved greatly.  To repay her assist, I offered to assist her.  I did a great job stabilizing her hips, but while I was admiring my handiwork and her headstand, I zoned out.  I wasn’t present.

2 seconds later, girlfriend falls on her back.  Eep.  

Pictured: NOT CAROLYN

Girlfriend is unhurt and cheerful about the whole thing, but boyfriend is a little embarrassed at the very basic lesson he apparently needed to learn.  Today’s lesson: if I am grumpy and not committed to teach, I will not teach, not even for one pose.  If I do commit to teach, then I must teach 100 percent, even if it’s “only” for one pose.  My students will count on me to be present for however long both of us have committed.  

Last weekend, I had coffee with the owner of the World’s Greatest Yoga Studio, and she advised that a yogi who teaches from a place of love, moderation, and humility will always remain in balance.  Lately I find that humility is very, very easy, because I continue to make mistakes when I teach, and those mistakes do not hesitate to manifest themselves in ways that touch other people.  All I can hope is that I learn my lessons.

FGCU, or the Power of Outliers

Any red-blooded American male knows that there's a formula for how a low-seeded team in the NCAA tournament pulls off an upset.  Takao maintains that all upstart double-digit seeds need a quick point guard, a lights-out shooter, and a bamma-ass power forward who tries hard.  It doesn't hurt when the favored team doesn't take the game seriously.  The lower seeded team hits 'em quick and builds a double digit halftime lead, usually because they hit a ridiculous percentage of their three-point shots, then holds on as the more talented favorite makes a run that may or may not make up for their early laziness.

If it doesn't, you have two days worth of heartwarming stories and images of the latest Cinderella, but two days is all they get.  Cinderellas can win one game in the NCAA tournament, but they rarely win two.  Most of these stories end with Cinderella absorbing a 20 point loss in their second game and everyone forgetting about them.

Needless to say, Florida Gulf Coast University is not following the formula.

This can't be stressed enough: Dunk City is far, far, FAR more athletic than the average low-seed Cinderella, and they didn't hit more than 8 three pointers in either of their first two tournament games.  Neither of their first two opponents took them lightly.  FGCU was basically tied with both Georgetown and San Diego State at the half.  The typical underdog script does NOT include blitzing the higher seed team after halftime with the type of free-wheeling athleticism seen above.

Because I'm a nerd, I think about the difference between the typical Cinderella and FGCU as a difference between types of outliers.  The script I described above is probably the easiest way for an outlier to manifest itself, and outliers are bound to manifest themselves.  Odds say that the worst Division III team in America could beat Louisville or Indiana if they played enough times, even if those odds are probably, literally, at least one million to one.  The odds of a real, live Division 1 program that won its conference getting hot enough from the 3pt line for a day and catching a good team napping are considerably higher.  However, no one pretends that the normal Cinderella is actually better than the teams they beat.  They get hot for one night, and they get a great win, but there's no doubt who would win if they played a best of seven series.  What makes FGCU an outlier among outliers is, I think they're actually better than the two teams they've beat.  Once FGCU stopped holding Georgetown on a pedestal, they blew them away.

Stats has come to dominate sports generally and the NCAA tournament selection process specifically, and we have really good stats that measure the quality of teams that can predict with startling accuracy how 99 percent of the games between two teams will go.  I'm starting to think that FGCU is the 1 percent of teams that advanced stats really can't capture.  This team isn't winning flukey, like most underdogs do.  Over the past week, they have been better than two really good teams, because they've been more athletic and more skilled.  Maybe the stats penalized them too much for playing in a crap conference.  Maybe FGCU just got a lot better over, say, the last month, and the advanced stats are not rewarding that improvement.

It's one of those craziest, most unpredictable things I've seen in sports, and anyone who tells you they know how this will end is lying.  All bets are off with this team.  If they can blowout Georgetown and San Diego State, they can absolutely beat Florida and the Michigan/Kansas winner.  Numbers tell you that they shouldn't have a chance against any of those three teams, but it's pretty clear that numbers fail to capture the magic of FGCU.

Perfect

I feel like I have to be perfect, or everything I care about will be taken away from me.  It's only gotten worse since the REBUT, when it really was.

One of the unfortunate consequences of this feeling is that I put so much pressure on myself when I go after the things that I care about.  It's counterproductive, but it's what I do.  This pressure has probably gotten worse since the REBUT.  Then again, it's possible that, since the REBUT, I'm now going after things that I really, truly want for the first time ever.

And it's scary.  But I'm doing it.

Something I need to start doing again is writing here.  Lately I've saved all my best thoughts for teacher training, but the whole point is, one doesn't have to have a perfect thought to write.  I like writing, and someday I'd like to get paid to write about the kinds of things I write about here, now, for free.

So I'd better get back to getting the reps in.

For My Teachers

I teach my first public yoga class in 10 hours and 15 minutes.

I guess I'm nervous, but mostly I'm just excited.  I've heard people talk about, when they start doing something they knew they were always meant to do, they have a great sense of arriving.  That's exactly how I feel.  I feel like I should have been doing this all along.  I know I will mess up tonight and many, many times in the future, to the extent that "messing up" is even possible in yoga (and I don't think it is).  I know I've been a teacher and a student for a long time.  Still, tonight is a milestone.

In recognition of that milestone, I would like to express my tremendous, ongoing gratitude to the teachers that have helped me get to this point.  I could speak generally to the teachers that have informed my life, which of course animates my practice, but then I'd be here all day, and what began as a mild procrastination before I calculated _________________________ (INSERT CONFIDENTIAL WORK BUSINESS HERE) would turn into a serious productivity drain.  No one wants that.  

So in the interest of brevity, let me a send a namaste to the five people that have had the greatest influence on my practice of asana.

Lori Burgwyn and Deb Lazer, you taught me that a studio could be a community.  You provided the space for my practice and my heart to grow, and you always went above and beyond to support my progress.  That you do so for all of your students is a humbling lesson I will try to keep in mind with my own students.  Namaste.

Mike Lyons and Andrea Martinez, you taught me that grace under pressure was not only possible but the place to be.  In the middle of all the noise and the chaos of the universe, there is a place of deep quiet and total peace, and I don't think I would understand that nearly as thoroughly without your teachings.  Namaste.

Nancy Shelly, you are my favorite yoga teacher ever.  You got me to go to my first yoga class, then reminded me of yoga when I was hunched over a desk finishing my dissertation and complaining about my back.  Everything that has happened since stems from that moment, so any good I've accomplished in the practice of yoga or will accomplish in its teaching is your good too.  I love you so much. Namaste.

Now, who's up for some yoga?

Classic Hip Hop is Like Porn

I know it when I, uh, see it, and Inspectah Deck and 7L & Esoteric have made a strong play for classic status with their new album Czarface.

Actually, the Hip-Hop Classic Committee would probably deny me a vote.  I just haven't kept up with enough stuff over the past few years.  I needed a Google search to tell me that 7L & Esoteric were not some kids but veterans almost 20 years deep in the game.  Given that I lack the necessary credentials to be seated, I hope this amicus brief pleases the court.

Anyway, Czarface rocks the bells.  The emcees reminds me of Black Thought, not in style, but in the sense that you are in the hands of a consummate professional.  Not sure that either Deck or Esoteric deliver a whole lot of memorable verses or even lines, but the skill and craft are evident in every syllable.  Given than beats mean more to me that rhymes, a high level of competency is enough to satisfy.

And those beats?  Son.  SON.  Somebody got high honors on their thesis at the University of Shaolin.  If Ghost had his way and a good ear, he'd have dropped whatever money he needed to buy them all, dropped the Octagonycologist verses, and released the whole thing as Supreme Clientele II.  When I reviewed that Kendrick Lamar joint, I denied it personal classic status because the verses were just a wee bit too digital for my tastes.  Well, that's not a problem with Csarface in the least.  The hiss in the drums is there.  The boom bap is alive.  The martial arts samples and looped weird noises that sounds like martial arts soundtracks are there.  The ill scratches are there.

Son, I fucks wit the beats.  I fucks wit them completely and wit great vigor.

Yeah, so if you ever threw up a W, you need this shit.

Meditation Overload

I am in the midst of an identity crisis that cuts to the core of who and what I want to be.

Do I want an end to suffering?

Do I want to awaken?

Or do I want to transcend the limits of human perception and trip the light fantastic?

The first wonderful experience I had in meditation came about two years ago, thanks to Grant Morrison and his wonderful little book called The Invisibles.  Morrison sold me on the idea that there was a hidden world just outside of the reach of the every day that humans had and could access, if they'd just dive far enough into the weird and wild, where all the good stuff resides.  The fan website Barbelith led me to Condensed Chaos, which is as good an introduction into the principals of magic as I can imagine.

One of the first things an aspiring magician needs to learn is how to achieve the gnostic state.  Basically, you close your eyes or look into a mirror or a bowl of water and just...let you mind go, wander, play.  Don't forbid yourself from seeing anything, and you might see everything.  When I stopped worrying about whether what I was seeing was real, I could see a lot more cool stuff, a lot more meaningful stuff.  I saw myself as Gandalf retreating to my castle of ice.  I met my spirit animal, the grey wolf.  I journeyed deep into the heart of death and found complete peace there.  I learned so much about myself, and I felt I was moving forward.

Books got me on the gnostic path, so it's fitting that a book should have knocked me from it.  Magic had shown me glimpses of the whole world, but I didn't want a piece of the world.  I wanted the whole thing, and Buddhism Plain & Simple seemed to offer that.  All one had to do was let go of everything superfluous and just...wake up.  Awaken to ultimate reality.  Right now, because there is only now.  The key wasn't to let your mind wander but to stay present in the moment.  If one could understand right now completely, without hope or fear of anything else, one might actually wake up, and then one really could see everything.  As I learned just a little bit about Tibetan Buddhism, I saw a lot of stuff floating around like bodhisattavas that matched some of what I saw in gnosis, which only furthered my belief that Buddhism was big enough to encompass magic and a lot of other stuff.  I felt I was moving forward.

With the beginning of yoga teacher training, I've encountered a third organizing principle for meditation.  Yogic meditation seems to want to calm the fluctuations of the mind, not for the sake of awakening, but just because.  Because it will make you better, fuller, more content.  I confess I've thought the least about this type of meditation and that it appeals to me the least.

Frankly, all that the yogic ideas behind meditation have done is bring to a head a situation that had been developing for quite some time, which is that I've officially hit meditation overload.  Too many chefs have spoiled the broth.  I'm confused.  I don't know whether to seek calm or enlightenment or visions from another dimension of reality.  Too many ideas are competing for the time I spend in lotus.  I don't feel like I'm moving forward.

In the long run, I'm not too concerned about where I am.  I'm not going to stop meditating, and I recognize that even the best journeys have times spent at pit stops, lost, or stuck in a ditch.  I believe Steve Hagen when he says that all we need to do is show up and meditate each day, and the practice will teach us everything we need to know.  Ultimately, I think all of these paths have one final destination, anyway.  The Buddha and the great magicians and yogis of history are all chilling at the top of the same mountain together, calmly sipping mushroom tea and tripping off the world in all its glory.

I get all that.

But that doesn't mean I'm not frustrated now.

Discipline

It bugs me to no end that I haven't been able to keep up any semblance of a regular writing schedule for the past month.  If I had to make a list of activities I enjoy, writing would be right behind yoga near the top of the list.  Writing is solace, a chance for me to play in the world of ideas and to talk out some of the things I think I'm learning and to connect with those who feel the same.

That connection may be my favorite part.  I try to be pretty vague about the details of my life but honest and direct with my thoughts and feelings.  At the risk of sounding like a sensitive poet type, I do try to pour my unfiltered self into what I write for this blog, which is why I'm always amazed, humbled, and grateful beyond measure that even one person finds these posts worthwhile.  It may be trite, but a lot of my lonely goes away every time someone hits the like button.

There are perfectly valid and acceptable reasons why I haven't written, but neither you nor I care about those.  Writing is therapy, and writing is my desired vocation, but writing will suffer without regular practice.  As my friend Bob might say, I need to make the time.

The GOP's Sista Soulja Moment?

For those of you who, uhm, aren't old, Sista Soulja was an ancillary member of the Greatest Hip-Hop Group of All Time who, in 1992, made some very mean comments about how black people should take a week off from killing each other to kill white people instead.  That kind of statement wasn't that out of left field in the glorious world of post Golden Age hip hop, and Sista Soulja probably would have faded into Bolivian if not for the actions of a young Arkansas governor.

At a very public event for Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, Bill Clinton criticized Soulja's comments and Jackson for allowing her to continue to work with the Rainbow Coalition.  The incident continues to be referenced whenever a national political figure tries to put his or her party's base in their place.  When you have a Sista Soulja moment, you try to reassure the bulk of the American people that, although you share the same party with the crazies, you know they're crazy, and you know how to keep them under control.*

Well, doesn't that sound like exactly the kind of thing the GOP could use right now?  That's all I could think of reading how some nonentity GOP congressman is watching the State of the Union with noted insane person Ted Nugent.  If I'm Ricky Rubio** or Paul Ryan and I have my eyes on the 2016 prize, opportunities like these are exactly what I am looking for.  Maybe it's too early to start regulating the Tea Party wack jobs, but, like, TED NUGENT, people.  Low hanging fruit with no negative repercussions for giving him a little chin music.         

Said Nonentity

* Please note that I am just describing the candidate's mindset and not trying to attribute craziness to anyone, let alone Jesse Jackson, who I admire.

**Yes, that's what we're calling him.

The 10 Year Plan

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I just started yoga teacher training, which has eaten up what little free time I used to have.  Anyway, I wrote this little ditty below for TT, so I figured I'd post it.  It's a little more heavy on the "me" talk than I'd like, but it is what I wrote today.

10 years from now, I intend to be awake. This goal makes a terrible topic for an essay about the future, because I can do everything I need to do achieve enlightenment today. I can meditate. I can practice yoga. I can live mindfully. I can be aware of my surroundings at this moment in time. The trick is to actually do these things, so the rest of this essay will describe the conditions that I believe will best provide the conditions to wake up.

10 years from now, I hope to have achieved financial independence. I define financial independence as some combination of accumulated resources that will allow me to live comfortably for the rest of my life and a job with tremendous flexibility in the hours it requires and the location where it can be performed. Ideally, I’d like to be a full-time professional writer, while teaching enough yoga to satisfy my passion for teaching but not so much as to distract from my own practice. I would like whatever work I do to be ethical and help as many people as possible achieve inner peace and their own definition of a good, full life. I also hope to have been and continue to be a good boyfriend/husband, son, brother, and friend. I don’t believe I have to change much to accomplish this goal.

But let’s explore this “writer” thing a bit more, shall we? Five years from now, I hope to receive regular income from writing. Even if I cannot be full-writer, given the writing I have already done, I believe it is realistic that I can get paid to write. I need to figure out how to do this, soon. The path that I have observed most writers who I admire and become professional is to maintain an active blog that they update frequently. I have such a blog that I relaunched in December and updated faithfully until teacher training started. The two immediate obstacles that I have to overcome is the lack of updates since teacher training has begun and my propensity to diversify my topics. On the former, teacher training, my regular practice, cooking, and talking with my girlfriend eats up most of my free time, but I do spend a fair amount of time each day playing video games, so time is not an excuse. On the latter, a blog focused on a single topic may be the best way to move towards financial relevance, but I think I want to resist that urge, at least for a little while longer. People are multifaceted. Their writing should be allowed to be as well. The topics on which I currently write—my yoga and meditation practices and my desire to try to live an ethical life and move towards enlightenment and waking—seem to be pretty in line with my goals of trying to earn a living ethically.

One year from now, I hope to have had writings published at major internet yoga and sports portals. Places like Elephant Journal and Mind Body Green publish work whose quality and content I am confident I can replicate. I have a reservoir of approximately 150 blog entries, many of which I could revise to make suitable for publication. The best way thing to do might be to look back and see which of my pieces have garnered a positive reaction and to make them fit the submission guidelines at EJ.

Last Night, A Pose Saved My Life

A week or two ago, friend of the Blogcast Inspector Clawseau said she wanted an entry on how yoga changed my life.  I'm not sure if I've been pushing it off, but I hadn't done it yet.

The universe has a reason for everything.

Tonight, I got home and laid down on my couch.  It was too late to make either of the classes at Cleveland Yoga.  As it turns out, I was too discouraged and exhausted to even make it off the couch for the class that takes place in my building.  I passed out for about 45 minutes and woke up as miserable as ever.  Yoga was just about the last thing I wanted to do.

But my teacher training starts tomorrow.  Maybe the fear of embarrassing myself in front of my classmates got me moving.  Maybe it was the memory of Tuesday's class, which was one of my best practices ever.  For whatever reason, I managed to get off the couch, roll out my mat, and do 20 minutes of the most miserable Sun Salutations imaginable.  I couldn't leave the past behind.  Every movement felt broken, tedious, so, so, so very wrong.

20 minutes into the practice, however, I got a gift that almost brought me to tears.  I sat and meditated, and I realized that, with the exception of my weary head, I felt fantastic.  My body felt alive, energized, healthy, and altogether perfect.  My body was so perfect that it even had areas that were still tight, which meant, OMG, I could do MOAR YOGA.  

I proceeded to practice for another hour in complete bliss and gratitude.  By the end, even my brain felt pretty good.

What have I gotten out of yoga?  It grows and changes every day.  Today, I got out of my own mess of a head.  When all seemed lost, I got on my mat, and everything got better.

Let's Talk About Girls

Have you ever read the 33 1/3 album review of Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love album? I can't recommend it enough. 33 1/3 is waging a one-series war to keep pop music criticism alive. The series gives a music critic an album and book length to review it. By all accounts, the series is a fantastic success, but the review of Miss Dion's magnus opus is probably the most cited and most read.

The setup: 33 1/3 gave a hipster dude one year and the most horrible of tasks: to learn to appreciate Dion's music. What makes the book so awesome is that the dude actually gets there. By the end of the book, he states that he really, truly enjoys Dion's music, and this reader completely believes him.

How did he get there? First, he acknowledged that, technically, Celine Dion is amazing. Each and every person reading this blog has rolled their eyes at Dion's "oversinging," but we should all be able to admit that her voice is amazing, that there's nothing she can't do with it. So why do so many people have such a visceral negative reaction to Dion's music, when she's such an obvious, undeniable talent?

The author's contention is that the hate stems from the class consciousness of the listener. He shows how Dion's music has its roots in genres traditionally favored by the working class, genres that upper and middle class listeners have learned to reject as a way to separate themselves from "the rabble." The pop culture industry took that class consciousness and made it mass consciousness. In other words, they made it uncool. I don't want to like something that sounds like something the female students at Tech School might listen to.

In short, what we think of a piece of art depends highly on the trappings that surround it. Dress something (like country music) up in the clothes of Red America, and people like me are going to hate all of it, even despite the undeniable talent of someone like Alan Jackson. Dress something up in upper middle class clothes, language, mannerisms, and experience, and people like me will fall for it.

I can't stop thinking about that review when I hear people talk about Girls. If you like Girls, bully for you. I liked Entourage, because it was a fairy tale very typical to someone of my age at that point in time. However, I never claimed that Entourage was particularly good or meaningful. Girls is getting such accolades, and we have the class trappings of the show and its target audience to thank for it.

Girls is not original, profound, or even particularly well done. It trades in exactly the same shock aesthetic as the worst reality TV: promiscuous sex, bad behavior, and balling with no concern for real life trivialities like a job. It's JUST rich 20 something white girls pretending to be broke but otherwise acting like Real Housewives. You can argue that allowing young women a venue to express their sexuality on their terms is a good thing, but it's not like that hasn't been done before. Sure, there's some angst, but that's because, in the upper class 20 something worldview, there's SUPPOSED to be angst. It's not a very fulfilling fairy tale for the rich and elite if they don't rage against something. If you're just happy all the time, you must be stupid. You probably like Celine Dion or something.

But unlike the Real Housewives, these girls wear respectable clothes. They went to the right schools. Their vocabulary could ace the SAT Verbal. And, of course, Lena Dunham comes from NYC art royalty, so how could she possibly make something mundane? These cues, and these cues alone, have been enough to convince Very Important People (thanks, Paul) that Girls is an important snapshot of our cultural gestalt.

I don't begrudge the twenty something who are into the show, because, shit, every generation should get to retell the same old story in a way that resonates with them. If young women want their own Entourage, they should get it and enjoy it. What bothers me is older folks who should know better.

PS: I'm willing to grant a little ground on one of the most criticized aspects of the show, which is Lena Dunham's willingness to be naked on screen. Potentially positive message about body types and beauty there.

When Yoga Hurts

This practice keeps teaching me things.

Somehow, some way, I decided my practice needed less focus on technique and more on how my body actually felt.  In Journey Into Power, which I'm reading as part of my teacher training, Baron Baptiste instructs us to do as much, but I'm happy to say that the idea came to me from my practice.  At some point in the last few months, my practice told me that a laser focus on how it felt was my next step.

I'm less than happy with the results.

I hurt.  

It's not hurt from my practice; rather, it's hurt my practice is revealing.  I have lot of hurt stored up in my body.  Specifically, deep in my hips and in my shoulder joints and in the muscles of my upper back.  I'd known about the back muscle stuff for a while.  I have the hardest time relaxing my shoulders, which may have been the impetus for my new emphasis.  I was tired of teachers pushing my shoulders down in Warrior 2.

The soreness in my joints surprises me.  Some of it may come from the fact that I'm not quite back in the practice rhythm I was in prior to Christmas.  I had been hitting the heated classes at Cleveland Yoga 3-4 times a week, and they are the most rigorous classes I have attended on a regular basis.  The "rigor=openness" equation isn't perfect, but in my case, I think I was more open, particularly in the hips.  Due to travel, I haven't gotten back into that rhythm post holidays yet, and my body is telling me I need to.  

But I don't think that's everything.  Baptiste talks about how our bodies carry around everything that ever happened to us, an idea he grabbed from the ancients.  Every hurt, every slight, every stress, and every REBUT has a home in our body, until we learn to let go of it.  I think of myself as a person with a good sense of my inner landscape who does a good job of avoiding repression.

And yet...

During Saturday's savasana I had a pretty deep conversation with the muscles in my upper back.  I told them they didn't need to hold all of my stress, that the rest of my body and my heart and mind and soul could help handle the load.  My shoulders weren't so sure.  They started talking about all the stuff that I could be worried about: my job, my relationship, my future.  They said that they'd been taking care of all that heavy stuff for so long, that I had no idea what I was getting into when I said I would take some of the load.  I left class pretty sad but grateful, because I felt like I understood some little part of me I hadn't before.

Hmm.

The Greatest Song Ever of the Week

The Greatest Song Ever of the Week is Cunninlynguists' “Southernunderground.”  To listen to this song is to confront hip hop in its totality.  Put bluntly (pun intended), this song is a monster, in all senses of the words.

Cunninlynguists is not an act I plan on sharing with my girlfriend anytime soon, let alone my mother.  Hip hop has all different kinds of misogyny it can throw at you, but “Southernunderground” features the type that might be most least favorite: the hate that technically proficient emcees often use to assure the listener that they aren’t bougie.  In the span of two minutes, each of the three emcees manages to write off women as sexual punch lines.

The frustrating thing is that Cunninlynguists clearly don’t need to rely on tired, hateful clichés, because they are obvious master of their forms.  These dudes typify the early 2000s come up of the underground, where rappers could conjure up internal rhyme schemes so complicated it hurts to try to plot them, all without sacrificing any delivery or charisma.  Listening to “Southernunderground,” it’s no longer worth arguing that anything besides hip hop is the highest, most advanced form of oral expression that we’ve ever seen.

Non fans need not apply.  Much of it is completely indefensible.  But it is wildly creative, completely addictive, and never compromises anything.  It’s hip hop.

Guns in Schools

Last week, the Washington Post ran an article which describes how the school system in Butler, Pennsylvania is hiring former state troopers to serve as armed security guards.  The article is fantastic and presents about the best possible case for arming school employees.  The officers who are serving in Butler Schools deserve nothing but our respect, and the Butler School System deserves all credit for demanding that only the most responsible, best trained personnel serve in these positions.  That alone allays my greatest fear, which is civilians with guns taking shots at people besides the bad guys.  In an emergency situation, I have a hard time imagining anyone but a trained professional hitting the person they need to stop.  With trained officers, there's a much lower (but, to be sure, a non zero) chance that they choke.

It still won't prevent the unthinkable.

The sad, bad, awful truth is that so many of these tragedies end with the gunman turning the gun on themselves.  A lone ex-cop with a pistol isn't going to deter someone who has already decided to die.  We have multiple examples of serial killers whose planning is as thorough as it is horrifying.  Think about the bombs the Colorado movie theater shooter set up in his apartment or the planning the Columbine kids did.  These dudes can be smart.  They can and will scout their targets.  And the first bullet they fire is going to head directly for the armed security guard.  The guard is a sitting duck.  

And I repeat: no one has told me how we are going to pay for an armed guard in every school.  There are roughly 15,000 schools in the United States.  Say we can find enough retired officers to staff every school and that, out of generosity, the officers all agree to take a $30,000 salary.  That's 450 millions dollars.  45 plus seven zeros, before we factor in the cost of training and benefits.

It's simply not a viable solution.

Dream Weaver

I have broken the Seventh Seal of the New Age Apocalypse.  I have started to keep a dream journal.  If you don't, I cannot recommend it enough.

I never gave dreams much thought, even when I encountered therapists who encouraged me to treat them more seriously.  The psychological approach to dreams seems so clinical and cold to me, and, although I never consciously had this thought, I think I always wanted my dreams to remain free, wild, and mysterious.  The idea of putting dreams on the couch seemed to rob them of all their potency.

Thanks to Arthur Magazine, I know I'm not the only one that feels that way.  The cover story of their big comeback issue is an interview with comic book artist Rick Veitch, who has spent the better part of 20 years writing and illustrating his dreams for over 20 years.  That's his work on the cover.

Something about the combination of dreams and comic books spoke to me.  Comics are one of the last places where the free, wild, and mysterious can still bubble up into the larger culture, unless you think a Norse god teaming up with the Tin Man and an unfrozen WWII soldier is standard everyday happenings.  I love comics but have never been able to participate in the creative process.  I can't draw, and I haven't written any fiction since high school.

Rick Veitch tells me I don't need to do either.  All I need to do is dream, and I can play with the same magic he does.

So, yeah, I started a dream journal this weekend, and I am already amazed at what I am uncovering.  Thus far, because the cosmos has a sense of humor, the primary benefits I have seen have been psychological.  I am amazed at what writing and rehashing my dreams has told me about how I carry guilt around.  Some of the details have been painful to write down, but doing so has let me walk around this week with a little less weight on my shoulders.  Being aware of some previously subconscious coping mechanisms has let me understand myself a little better, and I'm able to be just that much gentler with myself.

Thus far, I haven't dreamt up the next great superhero franchise, but, hey, the Dream Every Day Project is less than a week old.  Give it time.

Fox News Doesn't Like Yoga

Every time Fox News says anything, I am reminded of a conversation I had with one of my favorite colleagues at Wake Forest.  She would give some small extra credit to any student who went to an on-campus political event and wrote a page about it.  Our conversation revolved around a student who had attended, and written a piece about, a talk by David Horowitz, a semi-famous right wing bomb thrower who has written some pretty abhorrent screeds about Muslims, African Americans, and other groups.

Our disagreement centered around whether the student should get the extra credit.  My colleague did not give the student extra credit and explained to him that Horowitz was closer to hate speech than legitimate political dialogue.  She reasoned that our job was to broaden students minds and make them more tolerant of difference, and that Horowitz's message was fundamentally opposed to that goal.  Clearly, she would not give extra credit for someone who attended a Klan rally, and she saw this as closer to that than to legitimate political dialogue.

I agreed with her that Horowitz often trafficked in racism and other unacceptable isms but that the solution was to engage his ideas, not to shut them out.  In my opinion, the modern conservative bluster industry has made far too much hay through claiming to be shut out of certain institutions like academia.  Better to welcome Horowitz's ideas into civilized debate, because they can't survive it.  A good teacher should be able to engage Horowitz's arguments and show, without malice and bias, that they are ridiculous and reprehensible and point students towards more thoughtful arguments that square with a person's conservative leanings (or liberal, or libertarian, or whatever).

My bias is to include.  It's not a fool-proof policy.  Certainly, hatemongers throughout history have preyed on people's inclination to give them space to express views that led to devastating consequences.  But I have faith that people will see the light and gravitate towards good arguments.  Moreover, I think when you don't let trolls get under your skin, their arguments will implode due to sheer ludicrousness, and everyone can have a little chuckle at the implosion.

And that is why I can't get too excited by anything Fox News says, especially not when they blame yoga for making Americans into wusses.

What Racism Looks Like in 2013

You ask what factors predict a person's likelihood of becoming a serial killer.

You run this photo.

And yet the words "white" or "Caucasian" appear nowhere in your article, and the first mention of gender is buried in the second half of the article.

I mean...

Slang Rap Democracy

You don't know what cysage is, although you've certainly cysed a bunch of shit.  Maybe you're thinking about cysing this post.  It might not be a good post, but you like me, so you're going to share it on your wall.  Boom.  Cysage

Nor do you know what a cuban b is, which is really unfortunate, because you've ABSOLUTELY cuban b'd a boatload of stuff.  If I know you, I've probably done some shit to piss you off.  If we're still cool, you've cuban b'd my nonsense.

Both those terms come from Southeast DC.  I only know about them thank to the FiyaStarter Crew, hosts of the funniest podcast on the Internet.  Every Thursday morning, you can wake up and download three hours of unfettered opinion, presented by gentlemen not at all interested in how you think they should sound.  They're doing what groups of guys do every day: busting each others balls in language only they can understand

What's crazy is, these DC motherfuckers have absolutely changed the way I think.  I was reading something the other day that didn't make any sense, and I said, aloud, "man, what a cyse."  I called it a cyse because that's what it was.  It wasn't just bullshit, although it was that.  It wasn't just a pain in my ass, although it was that too.  It was someone writing something that they talked themselves into believing, and all my fellow FS heads are nodding right now, because if that ain't a cyse nothing is.

In other words, a podcast has changed my reality.  That was the squarest example I have yet seen of the Digital Age's direct influence on the deepest workings of my poor little brain.

I guess it surprises me every time I think of someone cysing or cuban b'ing some stuff, because some part of me clings to an antiquated view of the relationship between our physical and digital selves.  Often those of us who spend so much time on the Internet think of our real lives as separate from our online lives.  In my experience, that distinction is artificial.  There's not a whole lot of difference between Bryan Shelly, the entity who moves through the physical world, and the various bshelly logins I use in various corners of the digital world.  Really, the only difference is that bshelly is a little more prone to yelling.

What I find most interesting is, as what has happened with me and cysage, how my digital life influences my "real" life. For a long time I have realized the effects of, say, the choice the web sites one frequents impacts one's view of current events or even their evaluations of public figures.  But this was something different.  This was something akin to learning a word that has no counterpoint in my native language, like, oh, schaudenfreude.  Prior to learning the German word, I guess I could have imagined the concept, but the word itself distilled the concept to its essence and allowed it to be more fully integrated into my life.

Potential for good here?  As KBadd would say, "SURE!"  I find it kind of heartening that three regular dudes from DC can bring me into their world enough to change mine.  Maybe the loftiest dreams of the Internet as a place where people, rather than massive corporate entities, control the majority of the content are long dead, but my experience with Fiyastarter shows that normal people can reach out across time and space to shape other people's concepts of reality.

Everything and Nothing That You Were

Yesterday, as part of its year in review, the New York Times ran a memoriam for Beastie Boy Adam Yauch that didn't sit well with me. Specifically, it maintained that MCA was never down with the Licensed To Ill-era frivolity:

"“Fight for Your Right” created expectations; the Beasties met those expectations by touring with cage dancers and a giant inflatable penis and hosing one another down with Budweiser onstage. But they weren’t those guys, not really....Even in “Licensed to Ill”-era interviews, you can see the Beasties already growing weary of playing the roles they’d assigned themselves."

This, frankly, is a load of shit. Yauch himself, in a quote the author includes, noted that he was more than willing to play along with the shenanigans: “I went and got drunk and made some stupid music.”

I have a problem with any attempt to scrub a person's record after they die. To do it after a Buddhist dies seems especially disrespectful and clueless.

Look, MCA was an asshole. He was a guy who gleefully made a lot of money putting women in cages on a stage.

And then he changed.

When we pretend, "oh, he was always this saintly person, they didn't REALLY mean all the bad shit they did," all we do is miss the fundamental lesson: Adam Yauch was an asshole. In my life, I have certainly been an asshole. If you haven’t been an asshole, you’ve been something else that you’re not proud of.

You know who else was things he wasn’t proud of? The Buddha. I prefer not to get into the Buddha’s previous lives stuff, but even if you accept that he was the end result of a lot of lives dedicated towards awakening, at the beginning of that chain of lives, the Buddha was not special. He was not a saint. He was as far from perfect as the rest of us. At some point in his chain of lives, the Buddha was an average guy.

And then he changed.

He got better. He found calm, and he knew that if he, vile sinner though he might be, could find enlightenment, anyone can.

When we make people we admire into saints, we rob them of their humanity, and we lose the most critical message of their lives, which is that anyone can be a hero. Anyone can wake up. It doesn’t take someone special. It doesn’t take a saint. It takes you, and you can do it right now. No matter what you or I have done, an end of our suffering is available to us. It is our birthright, it is our destiny, and we can have it right now, in this moment.

Happy New Years.