Ayurvedic adventures

I recently spent seven days living in a yoga ashram (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living Center) outside of Montreal in La Mauricie. During that week, I went on a 2-day liquid fast, had detoxifying Ayurvedic treatments involving heavy oils poured onto the body, and consumed almost nothing but steamed vegetables and various grain-based porridges for five days. The whole thing was overseen by a vaidya (doctor) from India who diagnosed my basic constitution and gave me some tips for staying in balance. In between treatments, we meditated, chanted "om nama shivaya" and learned about guruji's teachings. I am not a convert. He seems like a happy enough teacher with a positive message, but I could not relate to the perspective. That could be attributed to that I haven't learned his sudarshan kriya (tm) which is only transmittable via a living teacher. On the other hand, I signed up for a panchakarma wellness retreat and that is what my mind was prepared for.

The highlights of the retreat were the Ayurvedic treatments. Abhyanga, marma, netra basti, and karna purna. The netra basti involves having a dam of dough built up around the eye, which is then filled with warm, melted ghee. You open your eye in a lake of ghee and practice a series of eye strengthening exercises. The result is that the treatment clears the visual image bank. For me, the experience on the table was profound and lent itself to literal visions. Also, netra basti is like conditioning your eyelashes and eye tissues. Deeply nourishing.

The karna purna involves having warm ghee poured into the ear canal until the ear is filled with butter. I noticed some tinnitus in my left ear which was a little bit distracting, but my relationship to hearing and sound also felt altered after the treatment. Excess vata accumulates in the ear, and the karna purna is a good treatment for soothing the mind.

I am attracted to taking health vacations to get back in balance, particularly after three years of excess stress and living out of harmony. But the new lifestyle habits will be a challenge to integrate. Ayurvedic guidelines are many and strict - no onions or garlic, no food that is older then 4 hours old, no dairy, no/minimal gluten, no excessive salt, no excessive sugar, no excessive processed foods, nothing fermented, eat sitting down, eat in silence, eat between certain hours, eat fruit first, eat sweets/dessert first, etc., oh yes, and no alcohol.

My challenge is to be a little more flexible with myself, knowing that I am a lay person, usually work excessive hours, and don't have a personal chef. Plus, I have a husband with a different prakriti. Going off of the cleanse and then traveling to DC to wrap up a leadership program while trying to maintain my diet caused some serious distress. Back at home now, the fridge is stuffed with fresh vegetables and though I have some protein cravings, I am going hardcore. Which of course is the fastest way to hit the wall...

Ashram haiku

too aware of not squashing
slugs on the porch,
bitten by mosquitoes

put off by social
media signs in the ashram's
toilet - "staying connected"

"follow guruji" on
twitter, daily wisdoms
from mister mister

remembering I keep
the lama who married me
on speed dial

ask me that which
you wish - the doctor stated,
with back turned

first day, panchakarma
one woman can't stop talking
about coffee & toast

green juice for two
straight days not as bad
as one might imagine

opening one eye
in a lake of ghee, deep
in the primordial soup

this aversion
to slugs a kind of elephant-
mouse complex

after heavy rain
brown slugs climbed up
the window, porch, & walls

the visual image bank
wiped clean, my mom radiant
w/ love appears to me

Memorial Day

in the middle
of another fight
I walk out

to another stray
cat collapsed in front
of the house,

the Monday
of remembrance
a number we didn’t think

we’d need to know
by heart, the best remedy
in the absence

of animal control: city
sanitation or to bury the corpse
ourselves, plastic bag

the lifeless body
cast into the waste
this sad event

ending disagreement

Turrell series, part four

This is the fourth poem in an ongoing series of my experiences of visiting James Turrell skyspaces. I was disappointed that the Crystal Bridges Museum blocked visitor access to the outdoor installation during my visit a few weekends ago and hope they make the necessary repairs to the "Way of Color" tout suite...

day break

“closed for repairs &
maintenance” the stone
bunker broken down

metal grate blocking
approach, out-of-order
overhead blue yonder

still visible through
the oculus’ aperture
cut out of stainless

steel going through
the roof upon discovering
the repository’s shuttering of

the "place of contemplation"

5/19/12, “The Way of Color”, Bentonville, AR

On wellness

A gift to myself: http://center.artofliving.ca/ayurvedic-wellness-retreat-0.

I was quoted recently in an article in the Dallas Morning News talking to Beatriz Terrazas about the novelist Ben Fountain.

My former boss at the Dallas Museum of Art is retiring this May. One of my old colleagues asked me to write a poem about her. Gail was my first boss out of SAIC/grad school. She mentored many young museum professionals who are now thriving in their careers. This is a poem based off of a Cy Twombly work, one of Gail's favorite pieces in the collections, and a tribute to her work as a teacher.

the lay of the land

(after Cy Twombly’s Cold Stream)

for Gail Davitt

looping back / to a schoolboy’s / classroom /

hung w/ blackboards / coating / of chalk residue /

unduly dense / to wipe / away /

a memory / the first experience of / learning to read –

a picture / scribbled cursive / coils springing /

into focus / sound taking shape / on the tongue /

before speech developed/ the furious doodles /

of the mind / unfurling before / the eye /

guiding you towards / something almost / being said

New Beginnings

I have been away from Blogger for so long that the entire user interface has changed and I missed it. More updates of new adventures to come soon.

Crystal Bridges and Eureka Springs

K and I went to Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum this weekend on route to my gig at the Books in Bloom Festival in Eureka Springs. The highlight of the collection? Moshe Safdie's architecture which holds together Walton's collection of American art.

The flow of traffic in the building felt too directive and linear in terms of where a visitor starts and ends, and the intel given my security/staff/volunteers (i.e. start at the beginning and the building will lead you to where you want to go - except we wanted to start with 20th century art). Sad that the Turrell ganzfeld had been gated off from visitors - not sure if the bunker is only opened up at sunset and sunrise, but disappointed that the space should be so carefully controlled, unlike some of the other Turrell spaces I've visited. Heard gossip of the Nasher's skyspace in DFW getting shut down due to large constructions in the skyline that now obscure the sky view. Saw Rosie the Riveter by Rockwell, several Jacob Lawrence and Romare Beardens, and a fairly extensive collection of Marsden Hartley painting. Another highlight - on the "Art Trail" - a bronze sow that was so realistic that flies converged upon it.

Sold $80 worth of poetry books in Eureka Springs, including several copies of EQUIVALENCE. And stayed in the most haunted hotel in America - the Crescent Hotel and Spa, an old Victorian mansion that at one time was a medical hospital for cancer patients treated by Norman Baker. I'm really glad that we didn't take the midnight hour ghost tour before going to bed. As is, while taking an afternoon nap upon arriving, I imagined something touching the sole of my foot at the foot of the bed...

EASTER SUNDAY (after John Wieners)

This morning my husband shaves
the lawn, the grass trimmer

choking up before the yard
is fully manicured,

we keep our shoes on
at our neighbor’s flat

Maundy & Paschal greetings –
traditions we leave behind
in Anatole

at the host’s table someone
counts the number of skeptics
out at sunrise

clipping the green while
overheard from
the kitchen

I decided to give
up Lent for Lent

not one,
to be outdone
the native scribbler shows

off her sculpting chops
in yellow marshmallow
tableaux, the memoir of

her characters retold
through sugar-spun rabbits,
a gelatin hostess gift

for the vegetarian mistress
of the household, indelible
while tomorrow

marks the start of
Rwandan Genocide Memorial
Week, remembering

eight days into April
the poet of Boston’s Joy Street

who imagined a new
cross in the wind
a communion

where we are
altered by another’s
charity, taken aback

by the soft push
against the cheek

On Seeing Roger Shimomura’s Crossing the Delaware

in the Napoleonic portrait
of the artist, a rain-lashed
skiff sculls the River,

Shimomura standing
in for patriot with classic
hand-in jacket pose,

reappraises Leutze’s landscape
omitting the general’s
crimson watch ornament

read by legislators
as ruby-tipped genitalia
in 1999, 2,300 textbook

reproductions in Cobb County,
Georgia covered over with
trouser-stained paint

while in the Lone Star State
book buyers rewrite school
curriculum to include Germans

& Italians
in the internment
the lost fob

standing

hidden hooks
in a sneak attack
suckerpunch

palming a roll
of quarters
New Jersey mint

e pluribus unum

I'm on winter break from the College and went to see Cody Diablo's new film, "Young Adult" while in Dallas. (Very few indie films make it to Conway, AR.) Diablo wrote the screenplay for "Juno" for which she won an Oscar.

Diablo's protagonist, Mavis Geary, is just a year older then I am now, at 37. She lives in urban Minneapolis, where she freelances as a ghost writer for YA novels, while subsisting on a diet of Diet Coke and junk food - thus the title "Young Adult." Her series has been canceled and Mavis is in the last stages of writing the final book of the series - none of which bear her name on the front cover. She is sullen, angry, misguided and more then a little mean - unaware of her own emotions and intentions and controlled by her desire to avoid pain and more closely examining her life. She boozes it up with an old high school classmate that she wouldn't give the time of day to back in their teens, in a constant attempt to medicate her feelings and inability to connect. Her inability to understand her own needs, or the needs of any others, is central to the narrative. She leaves a trail of wrecked relationships behind her in Mercury, Minnesota, her hometown, and comes close to uncovering the source of her own deepest regret and wounding, only to turn her back on the past.

The story is set to a most excellent soundtrack of Teenage Fan Club, The Lemon Heads, and of course, seminal Minnesota rockband The Replacements.

Lately, the BF has been thinking of how to give her page an infusion, which leads me to revisiting this online space.

My interest in technology took a detour this summer and fall. I appreciate the new and emerging forms of communication and connection, but when things like your husband telling you he has (skin) cancer with a frowny face via text message happen, the interest in technology as a mode of communication quickly goes out the door. Thankfully, the husband recovered and we are mostly recovered at the Makura No Soshi, though the death switch may have been permanently flipped.

Death occupies my thoughts a fair amount on the heels of the Xmas holiday. We had a conversation with the brother-in-law about planning for end-of-life for my in-laws, though they are currently healthy. As I walked into the kitchen one morning during our stay in Dallas, my mother-in-law blurted out a secret hiding location for a treasured stash of jewelry. I had just woken up and took a minute to connect the dots between pouring a glass of water and projecting into the future of real estate agents and estate settlement.

New poem

Courtway Natatorium

reflowed lake
pumped out of
manmade reservoir,

diluted to the PH
of human tears bodies
displace liquid volume

as ROTC cadets invade
the college swimming pool
outfitted in full regalia,

take stabs at scaling
steps leading to
a 12-foot drop,

at the water’s edge,
weapon extended
above his head

walk the plank
shock the pool
armed privates fall in

backwards with a bump,
soldiers slog down lanes
as rows of tweens

on the municipal team
finish flip turns
below the surface

a PFC treads eggbeaters,
the rubber-capped senior
in the adjacent lane

neck deep in water cure

White Pine Press is having a book sale of Dennis Maloney's personal library to raise proceeds for the press. Acquire signed books and small press treasures, while simultaneously supporting the press here.

becoming black

in Pretoria
the High Court rules
that Chinese

South Africans
are to be reclassed
as blacks, having suffered

under years of apartheid
rule that identified
Asians as mixed-race;

aligned with the most
poor they can now
qualify for affirmative

action under Black
Economic Empowerment
codes, citizens erect their own

businesses, own shares
in other outfits & receive
empowerment transactions

under BEE conventions
the Chinese are one
step nearer to being

made less

invisible; a new
precedent set
their civic identity

a legal loop hole
handed down through
tribunal decree

Crater of Diamonds

Kort tells me a story
of arriving at unending fields
of overturned earth,

after hours of driving
an outing organized
by his grandparents

to pan for diamonds
we choose a day
after rain when the topsoil

has washed away, imagine
stones will sit out
winking on the surface

ours for the taking
“finders keepers”

signs mark the day
the crust was last plowed,
number of diamonds found

this month: seven
excavated yesterday: just one
when we empty

the contents of our dig
onto the ranger’s carrel
she points out quartz

then singles out
the citrine; crystalline
structures altered

by compression &
high temps, I finger chert –
rock flaked off to form the flint

you used to build blazes
in your boyhood accounts
touching the warmth

of metamorphic
matter hollowed out
of the body’s beryllium

we come back to mine

obstruction

the night monks
from Drepung Loseling
perform the closing

Dug-Sher-Seng Sum ceremony
to remove external obstacles,
a lecture takes place

on the other side of campus:
Tristan Taormino, feminist
pornographer draws a record

crowd of students in a talk
on polyamory, swinging
& sex-positive culture

Lama Gala is more
humorous then sexy
when he forgets the word

for “genitals” while describing
the root chakra “down there”
though it’s the throat center

from which tonal chanting
emanates, forming the color
of each seed syllable

through the control and inner
tone of the larynx -

I muse upon my ear-nose-throat
doctor who slid a scope
down her throat to tape

a video of herself speaking
“The Blue Guitar” – round
picture, the cropped tondo

displayed raw flesh
beating open & closed
how there was something

pretty obscene about
the whole act –
wondering

how the tenor
might have changed if
the recitative text

had been the body
of the Heart Sutra

red-shirt rally

six years before –
over Narathiwat,
Thailand, peaceful

protest marked by
folded paper cranes
cast from airplanes

since the coup,
matrons gather
used sanitary pads

from menstruating
women, to install
around a monument of

the nation’s protector

to harness the power
of human blood
arhats show their support

for the ousted prime minister
by donating plasma from
their vital humors

to make a monk
bleed, is one of the most
cardinal sins

displaying transfused
syringes collected
for the dump

a calculated push
to organize one million
units, so much blood could

“save many lives”

spilled before Parliament
spumous red fluid froths
& clots across concrete

Sara Parkel, a talented and wonderful letterpress artist I have been working with since Haiku Not Bombs is exhibiting in a few upcoming shows that features my writing:

Hybrid Land (artist book) & Bamiyan (broadside)
March 17-April 9, 2011
'Impressed'
Cecil R. Hunt Gallery
Webster University
St. Louis, MO

Bamiyan & Hybrid Land
June 1-30, 2011
ULUS Printmaking Triennial
Cvijeta Zuzoric, Art Pavilion
Serbia

MFA exhibition/solo show, Hybrid Land
April 2011
Ferguson Gallery
University of Alabama Campus
Tuscaloosa, AL