MUSIC | Bassnectar : When I Grow Up Remix

ROGER WRITES | Part Two; The Turn Around

The following is the second part to my last posting re: my pledge of three days of love and the two women who provoked all my judgements.  Please read Part 1, as there is a real turn-around below in Part 2.

It was Friday, Winter Solstice, late morning.  I had just stepped off the bus and was heading to teach a yoga class at noon.  I was dressed in my rainy, winter Portland garb: hat, hoodie, coat, and striped scarf. Yoga Boogie was that night, Christmas was in a few days, and the world was engulfed in a maelstrom of chaos, which swirled and vibrated around me.   However, I had my headphones on listening to music preparing for the Yoga Boogie Winter Stolstice Shake Down, and I was texting with several people co-ordinating rides and directions.  I crossed the busy street only half paying attention (read: not really pay attention, at all).  As I neared the other side of the street I looked up and I was startled to see a stopped van waiting for me to cross. I scuttled quickly to the sidewalk recognizing the nearly potential distaster that I had just avoided.  I got dressed for class, and went upstairs to teach my class.

My theme for class that day was "three days of love," and I told the story that I wrote last week about how quickly my mood of love quickly turned to scowling judgements of the women who weren't paying attention in front of me at the coffeeshop.  After class, I was talking to a man who just recently started coming to my class.  He thanked me for class and then said, "Your story was perfect for me today because as I was driving to class there was this idiot talking on his phone and texting and not paying attention as he crossed the street and I had to stop in the middle of the road.  I almost ran him over."  I looked at him for a moment before I asked, "Were you driving a gray van?"

We both paused before we totally cracked up.

MUSIC | Battleme : Hey Hey, My My

PLAYLIST | YoYoYogi

PLAYLIST | YoYoYogi : Bad Ass Yoga

POETRY | Mary Oliver : The Snowshoe Hare

The Snowshoe Hare
-Mary Oliver

The fox
is so quiet—
he moves like a red rain—
even when his
shoulders tense and then
snuggle down for an instant
against the ground
and the perfect
gate of his teeth
slams shut
there is nothing
you can hear
but the cold creek moving
over the dark pebbles
and across the field
and into the rest of the world—
and even when you find
in the morning
the feathery
scuffs of fur
of the vanished
snowshoe hare
tangled
on the pale spires
of the broken flowers
of the lost summer—
fluttering a little
but only
like the lapping threads
of the wind itself—
there is still
nothing that you can hear
but the cold creek moving
over the old pebbles
and across the field and into
another year.

MUSIC | Glass Candy : Warm in the Winter

INSPIRATION | Anis Mogjani : Shake The Dust

MUSIC | Macklemore & Ryan Lewis : Thrift Store

MUSIC | Mac Lethal : Ode to the World

ROGER WRITES | Pledge of Love

An invitation to a world-wide event has come across my radar. It is called: Three Days of Love; A Global Celebration of Love and Kindness. The pledge is simple, I commit to share words and actions of love on December 20, 21 and 22, 2012. I pledged my devotion to the cause. I made the commitment partly because I believe in putting more love out in the world, and partly cause it sounded sweet.

The pledge triggered something in me, though, and as the day went on I became aware of the ways in which I harbor negative thoughts, criticisms and judgements, and how they affect my interactions with the world. I noticed it looking at Facebook, at the grocery store, and just simply walking down the street. I even noticed it in yoga class.

So. I decided to give it a test run. What would it be like if I looked at people and the world at large with love and compassion, and then interacted from that place? No fake, new age bullshit. A real, honest love and compassion. First, I had to pay real attention to my thoughts, which is where our words and actions derive from. I had to decipher what was a negative thought and what was a real, healthy emotion.

This is a true story: As I was mulling all this over I was standing in line to buy a coffee. The two women in front of me were both debating about what kind of short fat tall skinny double edged latte they wanted. The one was on her phone and the other was asking lots of questions. I just wanted a small coffee to go. I was on my way to a yoga class. My impatience grew. A line formed behind me, and very quickly my exploration of love and compassion went out the window and got soaked in the rain. I think I thought of every judgement possible, and I started to create bad scenarios. Then I remembered my practice. I literally laughed out loud a little at myself. I consciously softened my face, which had grown tense, and I unclenched my jaw. I looked at them-- really looked at them, and I saw their humanity.

I'm not sure why, but she suddenly turned and looked at me. I had sweetness and honesty in my eyes. She said to me, "Oh my God. Look at us. We're holding up the line. Go ahead of us." Then she said to her friend, "Tell her you'll call her back."

Wishing everyone one a safe and love-filled holiday season. Remember to take a breathe, get to a yoga class-- you probably need it, and, by jove, DANCE!!

INSPIRATION | Recycled Instrument Orchestra

This is the story of an orchestra that uses instruments made with recycled materials excavated from landfills in Cateura, Paraguay.

INSPIRATION | Terry Jones vs. the Beatles

Let your commitment to love be stronger than their words of hate. Seriously, this is the time to be more authentic, more intentional, and more loving. Hug the person next to you and tell them you love them just the way they are-- and mean it!!

EVENT | Yoga Boogie; Solstice Shake Down

Yoga Boogie; Solstice Shake Down
Friday, December 21st 8pm 
$15 advanced | $20 door 

Although it's the end of the world as we know it, let it all begin at Shakti House for an event like no other -- Yoga Boogie! This two hour blast of meditation-in-motion, pranayama, asana, and trance dance will guide you into the wise and powerful arms of these ancient truths. You are invited to allow world beats, psychedelic rhythms, and electronic grooves to unleash your hunger to move and to make your tribal spirit flourish!

Pre-registration at http://shaktihousepdx.com/

PLAYLIST | Detox

POETRY | Rilke : The Man Watching

The Man Watching
-Rainer Maria Rilke

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

MUSIC | The Drums : Down By The Water

INSPIRATION | Fiona Apple : I Just Can't Leave Her

It's 6pm on Friday, and I'm writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet. I am writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later. Here's the thing. I have a dog Janet, and she's been ill for almost two years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She's almost 14 years old now.I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then, an adult officially - and she was my child.

She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face. She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders. She's almost 14 and I've never seen her start a fight, or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She's a pacifist.

Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact. We've lived in numerous houses, and jumped a few make shift families, but it's always really been the two of us. She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head. She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me all the time we recorded the last album. The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she's used to me being gone for a few weeks every 6 or 7 years.

She has Addison's Disease, which makes it dangerous for her to travel since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and to excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.

Despite all of this, she’s effortlessly joyful and playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago. She's my best friend and my mother and my daughter, my benefactor, and she's the one who taught me what love is.

I can't come to South America. Not now.

When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference. She doesn't even want to go for walks anymore. I know that she's not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That’s why they are so much more present than people. But I know that she is coming close to point where she will stop being a dog, and instead, be part of everything. She’ll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.

I just can't leave her now, please understand.

If I go away again, I’m afraid she'll die and I won't have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out. Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to pick which socks to wear to bed. But this decision is instant. These are the choices we make, which define us.

I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship. I am the woman who stays home and bakes Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable, and comforted, and safe, and important. Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life, that keeps us feeling terrified and alone. I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time. I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments. I need to do my damnedest to be there for that. Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I've ever known. When she dies.

So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and reveling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel. And I am asking for your blessing.

I'll be seeing you. 
Love, Fiona

POETRY | Mary Oliver : Lilies

Lilies
-Mary Oliver

I have been thinking
about living
like the lilies
that blow in the fields.

They rise and fall
in the wedge of the wind,
and have no shelter
from the tongues of cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards
and have no legs.
Still I would like to be
as wonderful

as that idea.
But if I were a lily
I think I would wait all day
for the green face

of the hummingbird
to touch me.
What I mean is,
could I forget myself

even in those feathery fields?
When Van Gogh
preached to the poor
of course he wanted to save someone-

most of all himself.
He wasn't a lily,
and wandering through the bright fields
only gave him more ideas

it would take his life to solve.
I think I will always be lonely
in this world, where the cattle
graze like a black and white river -

where the ravishing lilies
melt, without protest, on their tongues-
where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,
just rises and floats away.

PLAYLIST | YoYoYogi Detox

MUSIC | Macklemore & Ryan Lewis: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

DANCE | Nothing Is Something - #1 The Bench

DANCE | DO try this at home!

POETRY | Jane Hirshfield : Three Times My Life Has Opened

Three Times My Life Has Opened
-Jane Hirshfield 

Three times my life has opened.
Once, into darkness and rain.
Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and
  starts to remember each time it enters the act of love.
Once, to the fire that holds all.
These three were not different.
You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.
But outside my window all day a maple has stepped from
  her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping
  the colored silks.
Neither are we different in what we know.
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip
  of light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on
  the floor, or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.