Friday, December 17, 2010

help

12/17/2010
NYC
1. i wrote a note to myself few mins ago: porn is structurally equivalent to advertising. both are visual art forms designed to focus a part of the attention on something in particular and by inversion to attempt to exclude consideration of other things (such as context/matrix). everything is intended to disappear except the point focus. the room disappears leaving only the people. the people disappear leaving only the organs. the organs disappear leaving only the action. the action disappears leaving only the desire. and the desire of course is not "real" but "artificial."
a (linear?) spectrum of "attractiveness" from porn to purdah. looking toward a conception of the general ("three-dimensional"?) field of attraction. if seen from "outside" the field what would that be like?
yes? no? i need comments here please.
2. this morning i found myself in a strong state of quiet eyes with the moving layers very sharp and enhanced ability to maintain the quiet in horizontal head turn, my hard-thing-to-do. an idea came and i tried doing the eye exercise sequence with one eye closed. the "moving layers" were present with only one eye, either one, and not only with head movement but also with eye movement only. i found my self surprised. obviously then the layers are not produced by the shifting parallax of the 2 visual fields, or not entirely. i wondered if there is parallax between the 2 sides of the visual picture produced by the curvature of the retina.
i further reasoned that if that is so then the idea that "depth perception" is dependent on having 2 eyes and that if binocularity does not exist then one can't judge depth is not true. i tested that by the reach-out-&-touch-things-with-1-eye-open technique & determined that as far as i was concerned there is actually depth perception with 1 eye.
i look at the stats of readers of this blog & find that some 300 people seem to have looked at it. most have come from the website, some from fb, some from unknown path. 16 countries. i now need comments on this sensory work i'm doing. my aikido teacher knew immediately what i was talking about, so this is "real." i feel like i'm boldly going where none have been before, conceptually of course, because this is just "ordinary" sense experience seemingly described thus for the first time. surely this is not correct. help me please. your own experience, your own reading. conceptual parallax. please help.

"confusion" perhaps the impact of unexpected aspect of reality on one's preconceptions, in absence of those preconceptions confusion cannot arise. when one is advised to "leave no room for doubt in the mind" it can be taken either as advocacy of the process of filling one's "mind" with conceptual concrete (mantra, etc.) or to leave "it" empty like sweeping dust out of a room.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

extended letter to my precinct

Precinct: among other things I am precinct chair for the local Dem party. One of the things I do on that chair is yak at the members of a mailing list. This is the letter I just sent them plus an extra yak on this and that political matter that I did not want to directly impose on all of them cause probably 75% of them don't care what I think, or they maybe care but not enough to actually read through it all, they'd rather get to it later I mean never, I put it here so they don't have to run the hazard of feeling guilty for not reading it which would be irrational & unnecessary but you know, happens. Here is the entire opus:

Hi.

This will be an example of the aphorism by Liebling that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. The modern version of a press is the mailing list.

A few observations on process:
1. email is becoming obsolete as a messaging medium, I dare say most of us on this mailing list are not so much using the new methods, facebook even sort of feels a little yesterdayish, i mean, i use it but its different than it seemed to be like 6 months ago and not necessarily in a better direction
2. all the stuff that got accomplished in relation to the last election was great and the volunteers were great and did a lot of stuff, some way more than i thought wise (like 12 hours of on call driving one person, like 2x 3 hour poll greet shifts another) i must mournfully point out that what we don't have in this precinct is a like real organization. if i don't do what i do we all know that like none of that other stuff would happen. this is my big failure here: inability to draw forth long term motivation to be active from yall. if our, say, communal sewage infrastructure was dependent on our active maintenance by our own personal selves, and we waited to see if someone else would take care of it for us, you know?
(Or would you prefer the R vision, which is individual septic systems and if you can't afford one well too bad?)
Nobody does this stuff for us. If we don't do it it doesn't get done. Other people get more to running our lives for us.
We need either a reliable long term #2 here or we need someone to get like jealous of my nonexistent influence in the community or to look at my bumbling ineffectualness and impatiently tell themselves "even I could do better than that" and to try to bump me off my glorious throne of great power at the next official precinct meeting in Feb maybe. Wouldn't be hard to do. Some blue dogs perhaps. Or maybe even the Rs have enough $ and workers that they can send operatives to register D and take over the party structures from within as perhaps they've already done in SC. Or maybe they already have here in NC too, hard to tell sometimes, aint it?
Well, so, who wants me to come over to your house for face-to-face about what to do?

because, um, face it: our (D) refusal to be motivated this time all across country has given Rs the redistricting in 2/3 of the states including here. they will decide the weapons & battlegrounds for the next 10 years.

Tuesday 11/30/10 6PM I will go to Panera North Hills & buy a cup of something. No one comes I will leave at 7. Someone comes we will talk. Subjects of discussion:
1. what's wrong with our approach to politics (e.g. why detailed explanations so rarely trumps repetitive sloganizing), 2. what we personally can do. bcause personally is all there is to work with.

++++++++++

Idle musings, random imos, always subject to scientific falsification

People in general like competence better than incompetence. We will on average accept various kinds of jerkitude if there is competence. We also prefer swagger over anything else in the emotional-social hierarchies we humans like to build you know with their utterly ubiquitous us-them dynamic. But they'll take a real jerk if that jerk succeeds. Swagger. Bush would have been wildly beloved at the end if he had turned out to be competent but he wasn't. Nation liked the swagger, would have taken more but the incompetence trumped the feelgood jingoism. Obama was elected because McCain was being flaky. Nation chose image of relative competence, no, because Os competence was not known at the time, calmness. We would have taken a R by 1% if there had been a sane one available but there didn't seem to be.

O has been technically competent, or almost so, sort of, its complicated, but there is zero swagger. Nation is confused and puzzled. Wants swagger, isn't getting it, and there is this sort of qualified competence, with qualified results, in the face of determined and intelligent political insurgency, that has really kind of turned off a lot of the independents because its been so messy and equivocal. If there was some kind of solid success they could feel good about? But its all partial, potential, less worse than it could have been. And no swagger. Rs come back offering essentially nothing but swagger, lot of people went for it.

And the money that had abandoned the Rs in 08 because of incompetence, at this point completely unchecked, poured on the Rs in 10 because from its point of view the Ds are always the enemy even at times like these when the D fix, such as it is, was made by the money guys the O people hired to fix the problem. Result: partial fix of some aspects, basic form of our situation preserved, why should the money give the Ds any respect when they in some ways own them same as they own the Rs?

What I see when I look at my opponents is a lot of big money looking to legalize unfair advantage of various kinds so as to make more money. The money riles up rile-upable people (like I'm not very rileable these days but I used to be, growing up surrounded by rileable people because basically everyone is, right?) with various things that various of them care about, separate out the interest groups each with its own special rile.

Meanwhile we prog-soc-green-pink-eth-etc that make the Dem coalition (that's why we have such a hard time getting stuff done) like to actually address issues of immediate and fundamental concern and can't believe that anyone would swallow that continuous stream of fairy tale stardust that has become the entire line of the Reps. That and give all the money to big business. We tend in our usage toward the dry and pedantic, who was the last D you can remember who knew how to strut & preen? Ann Richards? Clinton some. Amazingly, we have a president who is not the least bit strutty. Almost an anti-strutter (almost - therefore not good at it). First nerd president. Super cool but you gotta remember that not counting the kids that voted for him that he let go of immediately after the election (like Jan 09) the most likely to vote is 1/3 independent & the only reason they will go for anyone is because they are succeeding. Otherwise, because half of the independents really are careful freethinkers while the other half is consumed with other aspects of life than politics, a significant slice of voters will vote for the swagger because it touches that crowd effect adulation thing. You know, where the crowd is getting its rhythm synchronized and the emotions are starting to build. People get that watching TV, right? American Idol. Whatever.

We don't get that many charismatic people in politics. Most of them are ordinary, perhaps more than a few are jerks. Every interest group hopes that a charismatic leader will emerge. They only do rarely, historically most of them are jerks or fools, usually they do damage, occasionally they do good. O is weak tea (not teaparty) charismatic. Charismatic compared with Kerry, Gore, McCain. Everything's relative aint it?

World events and political parties, all that, my bottom line is if we (i) want to do something pretty much we (i) have to do it our (my) selves. Faced i constantly am with things not getting done, they can go on not getting done or i can go try to do something about something. i find i get gigantic satisfaction from doing what i want to do, so i do it as often as i can. i work with the Dems because i like the lies they tell better than the Rep lies and i don't want to get all artistic in my politics and put energy into the greens or the libs (neither is an Institution yet so they don't get caps lol) for some kind of noble vision. People on the bottom, reconciliation, tolerance, planning, Dem. Money, acrimony, intolerance, neglect of structure, Rep.

too many words. gonna go do something.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

i dont want much

i dont want much

only that it be her idea
and that she actually wants to do that
and not just because i want to
and that she enjoys it

Sunday, November 14, 2010

layers, more about

1.

forgotten reconciliation

what will be required:
the embrace of tolerance by the right
the embrace of rigor by the left

the abandonment of bullying by the bullies
the abandonment of hedonism by the hedonists

2.
more than 30 years
ive been trying to explain
that you can turn under the covers
while youre reaching for the thing
on the nightstand
and not pull them off
your bed partner
i have been unable
to cause her to notice
the difference of doing or not doing
it that way
even when i show her she
doesnt get it

to be fair
she has been unable
also to demonstrate to me
that i can understand and
remember that blue and orange
dont go together
that white wine goes with fish

Sunday, October 24, 2010

sunday song of layers

only the me experiences separation
the other layers go on as usual
to become aware of the other layers
the actual justification of faith

to accept suffering and turn it into joy
in warm up to figure out the legs some more
this time held a sword so the hands can't seek
something to get into

edge of sword is not allowed to touch the ground

in that controversial catcher position,
yes a new layer of tight hams is revealed
stretch burn spreads up outer back of thigh
the me catches it and throws it in the fun box
grinning with pleasure while the muscle starts to scream
bunched muscle bundles tromped into submission
forced to relax, waves of annihilating pleasure
crashing over the broken walls

Sunday, October 10, 2010

song before layers c. spring 2010

boom chik boomboom chik etc.

want want want
more more more
want want want want
more more more

hey (jump off cliff)

banging instru(mental)

key in lock
foot in door
more more more more
more more more

tip of the tongue
foot in the shoe
want you to want it
as much as I do

want you to want it
want you to want it
want you to want it
as much as I do

want want want want
want want want want
want

way that it is
way that it was
maybe a reason
maybe just cause

say what you think
do what you do
want what you want
maybe that's true

want you to want it
want you to want it
want you to want it
as much as I do

want want want want
want want want want
want

foot in the door
foot in the shoe
want you to want it
as much as I do

tossing and turning
maybe that's true
want you to want it
as much as I do

easy to say
harder to do
get to the point
run me right through
hungry children
outside the door
want want want want
more more more
tap on the shoulder
kiss his shoe
want you to want it
as much as i do

want you to want it
want you to want it
equals want you to want it
as much as i do

etc.

Monday, September 27, 2010

leg stretch

9/27/2010
for me it seems, professional sitter in a chair, i need some number of minutes of quad burn and long agons of ham stretch or i find myself irritatingly out of the zone. expanded definition of "comfort" & "fun" required to proceed. that burn thing has to go in the fun category. so related to "pain." it goes on through time, part of the "me" is going "oh, please, don't." means it & doesn't mean it at same "time."

in bendover i want to touch my legs. reason not immediately apparent, perhaps a desire for the comfort of contact in the face of imminent loss of balance. i compromise with my "self" on the 3rd bend and allow the left lower leg to be massaged where the adhesions are around that vein valve that is blowing out. candy for the good animal.

9/28
1. apparent ovalness of visual field because of lids, brows, cheekbones. actual field is circular. extrudable eye stalks would be nice, wouldn't they? even just to the edge of the brows.
2. clearly noticing the twoness of the visual cones, noted an "automatic" switch of attention between one field and the other, that tendency subject of course to modification now that "i" have noticed it.
3. forgot. let it go.
4. session of sword shomens with eyes closed, noticed possibility of straight line from hanmi to jodan, the opposite of "throwing the blade." if i don't do the movements as circle arcs but rather as linear translations the question of blade wobble substantially goes away. take it away from where it was then put it back. more or less. what's the difference between this way and the old way? wrists don't abduct independently but only in response to the lifting of the upper arms, i.e. the biceps run the show, the wrists maintain their positions relative to the forearms, the sword ends up at the correct angle up in jodan as much as it was in the correct position in hanmi. (hanmi is the wrong word for basic bokken position but too lazy/rushed to look it up - someone tell me?)

Friday, September 24, 2010

ben dover

the position of bending over and allowing the fingers to eventually touch the floor.
1. one of the only times in life when the knees are supposed to be locked.
2. for 30 years i did this and my quads would be bunched up over my knee, the kneecaps lifted, i noticed but never imagined relaxing them. then i did, took about 2 weeks to get the quads to relax.
3. just hanging, allowing the low back fascia to stretch and the muscles to relax, the fingers at my age do not touch the floor immediately the first time, takes me about 30 seconds, leave the palms-on-floor for last, if feel like it.
4. one gets different results with mulabandha open or closed (that is the asshole, that is what that is).
5. Because of this aspect probably every human will have some psychology to deal with in regard to this position. It is about as unprotected as one can get in vertical. Of course there's bending over backwards, but that's a different story.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

oh

9/14/2010
oh

quiet eyes is not the kingdom of heaven but it is like the koh in that it demonstrates subjectively the endlessness. the tendency is of course to slip back toward ordinariness because that is what we spend most of our waking time doing: anything else than dealing with reality. right?

so there i was attempting to go there in my setup session and i'm standing there in natural man position chin & pelvis tucked knees bent, belly relaxed and a set of ahas:
1. every time the heart beats the body expands and one gets taller, the layers should move in quiet gaze. i try to do that, see the layers, not happening anywhere else but the imagination, the layers are not seen. go on with the exercize, moving the attention around the visual fields in the standard sword manner.
2. at some point a duh: body really expands on inspiration: gets taller, parallax shifts, layers will move. try it, of course it works. and bonus realization, a tiny little shift to the left - the smaller side of the body.
3. add on bonus duh: so if i stop breathing & just stand there with or without air in the lungs the heart beat jumps out into the awareness of the "me" and the results on the vision in quiet eye mode are clearly visible. reminder of koh 24/7: lub dub.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

layers, mistakes

i am thinking that if i put this out now when i am developing the process you can perhaps see the mistakes as they get made and perhaps you will find some use in that, usually i think the same mistakes get made over and again.

so today i have had "quiet eyes" for about 3 days straight, i can do it all the time in any dimension, occasionally i can't but i can notice and get it back. it is a completely "see the world anew" experience. the metaphor is the trompe l'oeil foreground/background pictures u no: profiles/wineglass, etc. but for me this is 3d and everything.

i know i am doing it because the "layers" emerge as i move. the layers are produced by the shifting parallax of the 2 visual cones. "Normal" eye operation, that which i (because that's all i know) did exclusively since at least i was a toddler, was to jump from one item of interest to another, so always the gaze resting on some object, or as i found out eventually, at some spot or other in space.

now i have separated the attention from the eye movement muscles and those muscles from the head muscles so that the desire no longer has a leash on the attention, etc. and i can just leave the eyes in a neutral position and work on taking it all in.

my question today is: is this taught directly anywhere in any form?

Sunday, August 29, 2010

songs of layers 2

1. low back pain
if you sit down all the time
your butt sticks out
if you lock your knees
your butt sticks out
if you use high heels
your butt sticks out
where is your head
where is your head

why does it hurt?
lean in to the curve
why does it hurt?
get up get up
your butt sticks out

there you are in down low
how do your knees feel
are you wearing high heels
your butt sticks out

there you are
holding the pole
your knees are locked
how does it feel
your butt sticks out
your butt sticks out

tuck it forward
give your self a thrill
sit down on where you are
make yourself at home

don't listen to him
he doesn't know
you're gonna have to show him
more than once

good but honest
try to take it in
good but honest
let him think about it for a while

you want to sit in the line
walk on the line
talk on the line
cross the line
live outside the line
hold onto the line
hand them the line
step on the line

don't let me tell you what to do
your butt sticks out
your butt sticks out
take your time to think it through
your butt sticks out
your butt sticks out

you could run from the pain and to the pleasure
your butt sticks out
your butt sticks out
somewhere in the garbage there's the buried treasure

approach the line
draw the line
preech the line
hand the line
explain the line
hell with that baby let's go get something to eat

sound familiar?
heard it all before?
key in lock foot in door
out in the darkness where the life gets made
more more more more
more more more

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

distended belly

we see these buddha statues and "natural guy" pics from like China with big bellies and we're so look skinny here cause we all eat too much right, so its an issue. so in my warmup its like go for it and its hard cause there's so much pride and vanity. so my shomens have been weak. its been work on footwork and toe-knee-pelvis-shoulder-head alignment and always gaze alignment, make the cut straight, keep the shoulders relaxed and watching the cut stay weak. but ah, today, in the midst of the constant pelvic adjustments, oh, aha, and i let the belly go and the next cut had the power. and the next, etc. so its oh, that's why.

must wait for the questions to properly organize before they can be asked. answer falls out of the "that" out there.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

songs of layers

8/19/2010

indiscreate in the streat

ive got an itch someone else has to scratch
i cant reach it someone else has to scratch
ive got an itch it itches it itches
i cant itch it someone else has to scratch

if she doesn't want to im not going to make her
what would be the point might as well do it myself
if she doesn't want to im not going to make her
she doesn't want to thats not my problem
my problem is my itchy itch thats not her problem
go ask her what her problem is

hey

if she doesn't want to im not going to make her
what the point of that
im not going to make her
she would have to want to
as much as i do

much as i do
do do do

hey

itch itch itch someone else has to scratch
i cant reach it someone else has to scratch
itch itch itch year after year
room of wanting, hall of wanting
mountain of wanting
planet of wanting

im not going to make her im not going to make her
im not going to ask her cause i know that she knows
how do i know? i told her, i told her
im not going to ask her itch itch itch

hot wind blowing from across the sea
mating surface rusted shut
hot salt dust on the window pane
swollen river under high steel bridge
looking around for a different view
foot in door, foot in shoe
im not going to ask her any more
hand in glove, foot in door

roadless way (poiltics)

8/21/2010


Today's question: does your local government have a policy on how it would declare an emergency, what that would mean, how that would be implemented, etc.?

Of course it does. How about please go check out your own personal local government and ask them about that and report back to, like, you know, me. OK?

This question does not, I think, relate to partisan considerations, pure reportage rather. Y'all go get that information, pull out the important stuff, send it to me, I'll post it. Go. Do.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

arm bone connected to the eye bone

while i was doing the eye movement set I turned my eyes through the horizontal to the left and when i got to the end numbness started in my left neck and arm all the way down to my left thumb and pointer finger exactly like when i took that fall wrong 2 weeks ago though of course not as much. i found that i can reproduce it without fail. it obviously indicates some recruitment through the facial and neck muscles that i am not yet aware of.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

central issues and peripheral issues

8/4/2010
Maybe 3 days ago I suddenly grokked the separate visual fields of each eye and imagined/discerned the individual cones. Further realized parallax issues, have managed to "see the layers" in more situations, etc. kind of "progress." This morning I found my "self" consistently unable to "see layers" in the horizontal head turn. The eyes wanted to lead, the desire body wanted to look at things. Some number of tries, each a failure of some magnitude. Somewhere else to go.

Then shomens. Some number of reps, saw the layers in some, did not stomp in some, kept the feet in the correct zones in some, kept my shoulders down in some, breathed right in all of them, reasonable posture, acceptable externals, all of them weak, only one of them seriously close to vertical. Wobbles not too bad. Overall maybe C, C-.

I used the word Grok in conversation with Jonny. He understood it immediately even though he had not read Stranger in a Strange Land.

The motto that keeps coming up in working with this "different way of looking" is "without fear or favor." As if I am always looking beyond the supposed external thing of interest, allowing it to be in its matrix of equally interesting associated things. Without fear or favor the female human of given physical & chemical conformation, the food, the fun, the cop, the thug, the boss, the kid, the speed of events happening, the weapon, the bad situation, the angry dog, the 5 of them, the wrong place at wrong time, the end, the what i want to do, the what i have to do.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

dont have to

passing by the garage door and there is the cat sitting there on the other side of the door, sees my body, our eyes meet, she throws an emotion at me and a plea "i want to come in" i am supposed to respond emotionally, to say to myself "aw, gee," to feel the flip of the gut, to feel shame for standing there in the presence of a fellow creature in need, to hate my "self" for my uncaring and selfish attitude, to long for the comforting feeling of giving that creature what it wants, to open the garage door. i am convinced that i know that i dont have to have an opinion of all that and to do anything in particular about it. she wants something, i want something, big fat so what.

restless feeling has put things in my way

peripheral awarenesses - focused looking: like i am at the base of the cone looking toward the apex. it is always moving, i can never see it clear enough, it is too small, look hard enough (brows lower, head moves forward, shoulders hunch) it disappears. atoms dissolve into spin. the "other way" is to place the desire at the tip of the cone and expand the looking outward toward the base. everything is there. hard to maintain. now go forward, observe the layers slide past each other, maintain the balance, the foot relations, torso like blade passing through sweet zone, no wobble. like that. i ended up passing through about 15 minutes practicing single sliding step with other foot follow up and vertical strike. Shomen uchi. maybe 75 reps, fast & slow. had a few better ones in that set. no i can't walk and chew gum at the same time. not well. working on it.

silent walking - trying to make the floor not squeak as i go. there is a map of noise spots on the floor like puddles to go around. sliding the feet forward in the zone between contact and not contact where the turbulence dies down, foot goes through like sword without bumps, every step a poem that doesn't quite hit. keep trying, many more steps to take. i tell my "self."

always return - always the other side, always going away. all ways. where am i? what am i doing? is that what i want to do?

Sunday, July 25, 2010

dessert

i dont deserve caffeine she said. caffeine and deserve dont go together i said. caffeine and want go together. thats what i think.

i get mixed up with the wants and the shoulds, creates dissonance, i feel bad, then i own my bad feeling, then i rationalize that i "deserve" to feel bad, then i can redeem myself through victimhood. i live in my emotional comfort zone, surrounded by my shell of normal thought processes.

i want to go toward the authentic expression. like running in darkness. swimming in darkness. underwater where is the balance? what is the direction? would i recognize a reference point if one presented itself? would i notice it?

Friday, July 16, 2010

relentless self absorption

i or "i" use the shapes of "my" desire to draw the picture of the thing called "me." i know i like this and i don't like that. the "me." i know the characteristics of desire so i recognize it when it happens to, like, "me." the exact conformation of the "me" is always partially obscure because of structural inability to get "behind" it in whatever dimension that is. wheel does not turn by itself because of its wheelitude. something else has to want it to go. too many words.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

food, clothing, shelter

first comes air
oxygen precedes intention

next comes water
dry up and blow away

skimmers

7/7/10
the wanting of the flesh to be touched
we are in a time in which there are only ritual touches allowed to be conceived. some of the rituals of touch are:
1. sex in various mostly ritual configurations (from making out to bd to procreation only in the dark with a sheet between (& doesn't that seem just as weird from the outside as, say, anal?))
2. violence also in various somewhat standard flavors (like American ghetto style, or Latin narco, or triad, or Nigerian, or American rural meth, or Central African hackery)
3. the "small touches": handshake, touch forearm or elbow, air kiss, quick hug, etc.
4. therapeutics: massage in various flavors. therapeutics has become heavily professionalized and monetized since i was a young buck. guys don't impress girls with their prowess in making their shoulders and neck feel better, and feet, and inner upper thighs, and piriformis, haha, etc. now they buy them a day at the spa where girl can get it from a licentiate. sad sad sad the day, when he took back his hand and went away.

cs lewis actually discussed this development in "That Hideous Strength." Everyone does their business on screens, their pleasure too, the pleasure becomes business, nothing is left, we don't care, we're plugged in. How is that different from the stuff in the plastic bag?

Gotta have a reason to touch someone else. maybe a good reason, maybe a bad one. the basic state is alone. effort required to bridge the gap. things to do. way up in the snow they used to do breathing games to get high, there were no drugs to be had. i've done them. they work. an enhanced and altered state is obtained, emphasis on hilarity.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

knees, quads for chairsitters

tottering up here at the top of legs so we can see farther & where do we look? down bcause we are afraid of falling right?

the hams sit there contracted but not tensed. the quads sit there stretched forever but nothing to do. so the obvious counter-thing to do is to get up. the quads tense which is what they want to do, the hams stretch halfway. getting up is the actual remedial exercise. to know what it feels like do it 25 times in a row, slow or fast. then you will know. We sit for about 500 minutes working, then we go home and sit another couple hundred. We get up about like 2-3 minutes every day. balance between getting up and sitting down is obviously impossible until we change like everything but some is better than none so some gratuitous getting up out of the chair can be considered a good thing to do.

this morning was all kneeling and crouching, turning in down low, knees burning, ankles want to do one thing mind wants to do other. keep back straight in down low. down quad goes into oooh stretch as knee approaches floor. practiced sliding, moving foot whisper contacts through the movement. practised going down stairs backwards, sliding feet to get the map, eyes at infinity looking at where the body wasn't going. looking for the balance. now its here now its gone. that was interesting.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

didact 2

everyone will have a vice. if we don't like the normal runofthemill vices we will make vices out of virtue. if we didn't have vices to distract us we would be here all the time.

rub it in:
the vice of prayer
the vice of contemplation
the vice of charity
the vice of compassion

bcause our god is a joking god, we are the jokes, hahaha.

vice like salt. couple of grains I like the food better, lot of it I get anxiety, blood pressure, too much kill I dead.

Where I go to practice they are always talking about people in the org trying to impose their version of right ways and wrong ways, the normal critique sequences wherever a "canon" has developed, kept going by a bureaucracy of obsessives bcause what normal person would go there and do that. PICK YOUR CULT CAREFULLY and then don't join imo, just tag along. peripheral male on the edge of camp, edge of outer darkness where the life is, in the cracks, seed of mes, in the chlorinated hydrocarbons, the acid clouds, waiting for its chance to be born.

Friday, July 2, 2010

setpoint 1.1

setup 1.1
1. I used to think static all the time, take the position & live in it, hatha approach as it were. I took the position this morning. Deeper bend than yday. So, he didacted, I spend most of my waking time sitting down, then the rest of the time lying down. Even though I am thoroughly exercised, I am not up in the hills with the goats on a desertification project. Most of the day in a chair interacting with a screen. Major weakness of quads, correspondingly powerful and contracted hams. I've been addressing that by taking the stance(s) in an exaggeratedly bent-knee version, keep pelvis properly plumb ("tucked" maybe), chin tucked, relax they keep telling me. (Arm twisted over behind my head, me close to the ground, pain on one side, roll on the other, relax they keep telling me.) I want the quads to burn. I want to stand there and do my mind-eye-head roms while they burn. The burn gets too much, rise up, wiggle a bit, reset the feet etc. as appropriate, go back down. The burn I have trained my"self" to call it fun.
2. The name of the game is non-recruitment. The eye wants to follow the mind. (Terminology fuzzy: am I meaning the "attention" or the "will" or something. My current formulation is that the apparent "thing" that is apparently different from "all that stuff" out there commonly referred to as "me" is a construct of a bunch of "pieces" that don't work that well together.) Head wants to follow the eyes, shoulders want to follow the head. When the head turn is done right in any direction I feel it deep down under the shoulders. The muscle in there screams omg, then it starts to moan. (If you leave it there the poor violated muscle may go into a cramp and scream again. Is it pleasure or is it pain? Some people like to cramp their muscles, its like well you know. I heard the guvernator give a riff on that long ago. Then sometimes it will calm down all on its own, relax, start smiling, start to feel really good, want to do it again right away, or sometimes I have to stroke its hair, give it a hug, wipe away the tears, make it a cup of tea, there there, it'll feel better, you'll see, and it smiles weakly and says "I'll try to learn to like it, I love you so much". But we know we're going to do this again.) This is the meaning of "deep down inside."
3. Layers - I got this from Bates. If you stand outside and look at something far away in a landscape that has "stuff" preferably vertical stuff at various distances, and you rock from side to side without moving your eyes you will see the nearer things appear to "move" relative to the things in back of them. Layers. My goal is to focus on infinity as a standard because I get the widest spread of payable attention out of it. (I want to look "through" the close things, meaning there would be a double image of close stuff.) (Do this every now and then while in front of the screen why doncha.) (Time to get up out of the chair, move the pelvis, standing up relaxing for me, I go to meetings stand in a corner, don't mind me I tell em, I fall asleep at meetings if I'm sitting down.) I want to find the farthest layers to see them move against each other. Not watching, seeing. Mind wants stuff, wants to follow, dog sniffs, finds that which it seeks. If mind does not follow more stuff is noticed I notice. Birds are coming to the feeder as I do these moves about 5 feet away. A hummingbird while I was playing with my sword.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

setpoint 1

like she said in a porno from the good old days (they had lines back then, plots sometimes): if i don't get (in my case) a setpoint every day i just don't feel right.

i find my"self" getting up out of bed where i was in some position for many minutes, i'm going to pass most of my awake in one position more or less because work is pretty much doing the same thing over and over again. i have found that i want a few minutes in the morning to move all the parts. So: not a routine except in some larger sense, but something. this is what i want to do:

1. the mind - put it through some paces
2. the attention - move it around, put it places
3. the eyes - because we humans care more about what we see than any other sense we like lead with our eyes, we think we can "see" farther than any of the other senses, maybe that's true, anyway, fix the eyes the others will start to emerge. i decided that i had been "using" the eyes all wrong for my entire life. change is hard until it gets done, then it was easy.
4. the muscles - starting with the neck, then everything else, each system (leg, neck, etc.) move in every direction, find the weak and sore spots, work em a bit.
5. some freeform movement, maybe something new turns up for consideration. Like just now, going down stairs backwards at speed, no hands, how to. no i didn't figure out like "how," i considerded some aspects of the situation, how the knees might bend, favorable angles of approach, etc. like, um, in a castle tower in the dark, fighting blind with swords. use of senses in different way haha.

to for the day set the attitude, a sensory base line, a physical base line of feeling relatively better, so 2 hours later i can remember and then at break maybe i can do a 2 minute set to refresh the body so the mind can sing.

i present a journal of a training sequence:

the eye exercises
to the yoga eye move exercises i added: keep the eyes still and move just the mind
i went looking for what there really is to see
i saw myself looking at what i thought was interesting
there is stuff all around but i only went for what i thought was interesting
the other stuff wasn’t interesting but how would i know, i didn’t notice, I only
looked at what was interesting to the “me”:
boobs, lizards, noodles

i found that the bottom edge of the circle of attention i was drawing around the edge of my visual field
went flat in line with my lower lid. as if the attention did not want to bother with the arc of reddish black at the bottom,
had to “make” the attention do what “I” wanted it to do.
Hard.

The where to put the focus seems to turn out to be infinity
If I want to get the fullest picture all the way to the edges. The beautiful or dangerous object
Is up close and directly in front of me and I am not looking at it, I am focused on infinity to get the best
Look at everything.
Ha ha rd

There was another habit. Looking “off into space” turned out to mean focused on a spot about 5 feet in front and down if I was standing up and up to the left if I was sitting down. I used to run with that head position and gaze set, major contributor to falls.

So, then to the regular yoga eye movement exercise. Standing it is a balance thing, to take the eyes to a limit and to keep the balance, bent knees, pelvis-spine-neck aligned, center of gravity, weight evenly distributed between feet and between toes and heels. Past the limit black spots appear, not dangerous for short periods I imagine. Also to not recruit (neck muscles for example) at the end points. Also not to move the head. Also where is the focus: close, far. Also is the movement smooth?

I used to do this exercise and my attention would go away from the visual and into the movement, the focus would go to one of my standard gazes while my attention would concentrate on the actual movement of the part. I might as well have been eyes closed. I wasn’t looking at anything. Or the opposite, I was looking at the beautiful female human or the shiny pebble. If I keep my focus on infinity than my eye movement smoothes out and becomes more linear, even the complex diagonal motions. Vision like a sword cut.
Keeping the focus wherever I might want it to be. Seeking a more comprehensive vantage point. Out at infinity things move slower, relatively. More ”time” perhaps for the training to pay off.
On to the head movements. Balance in movement. Avoiding recruiting the shoulders, keep them level. Eyes I’ve been keeping level and forward at infinity. That demonstrates to me that when I rotate my head “all the way” it is only about 45 degrees and if I then continue with my eyes “all the way” until I reach on one side the bridge of my nose I only gain about another couple of degrees or so of field in one direction and lose it in the other (and I can go on to do the “attention” exercise while my head and eyes are in that position with interesting results). So I’ve been practicing keeping my eyes ahead and focused on infinity while doing the head movement exercise and its been interesting and hard.

tbc

Sunday, June 27, 2010

in reference

to what is done when one has lemons and to the future food source of humanity before it comes to the final point of eating "itself" in preference to growing up, settling down, growing roots, and becoming u no productive like our moral and intellectual superiors the plants.

this morning's reminder (for me, you do what you want) was that the moving session was to get the set points for the day: depth and limits of gaze, range of motion of all why not of the joints, spainul alignment salallah elayhi wa salama, like brushing teeth like tieing shoe (tie die, my oh my foot in shoe starts to die) like any other trained activity. 7 minutes today, hands don't touch the floor the first time forward bend. (35 years of fitful trying and failing before i found the tight muscles at the front outer top of the thighs, now they have visual definition, i know what they actually do. They are sore all by themselves, newly conscious babies, what's this? A job. Some of the getting up off the floor muscles.) in the outer darkness where the life is sometimes a 40 minute session, brings on more than the memory of endorphins. But 7 minutes, enough to produce the gate of n-dimensionality and walk through it into possibilities formerly seen as tangential now at the normal focal spot so we have to train ourselves not to see it and that ladies and germs is the reason we feel the way we do. Any morning, any day.