intellectual properties

plea to a muse (Yoga for Writers workshop report)

The thing I always wonder, on all those websites and in all those books and in all those workshops and speeches, the ones tell you to stop right now, to make your life the life you want and how to make your dreams come true one step at a time, that it’s hard but you can do it, is this:

What if you don’t know what your dream is?

–ohheygreat

DING DING DING DING DING

follow your bliss.  do what you love, love what you do. etc etc etc.

sure, if you’ve been dancing ballet since you were 4 or always dreamed of writing a novel or reeeeally love woodworking,  i can see how this kind of advice is useful for people who have passions. real passions.  things they dedicate themselves to. things they lose sleep over, get up at dawn for, give up everything else for, cash out their 401ks to fund.

i am now 35 years old and after attempts at various endeavors in business and the arts, i still have no idea what my “bliss” is, which makes it difficult to follow.

last sunday morning, i attended a 3-hour Yoga for Writers (Y4W) workshop with one of my longtime favorite irreverent SF columnists, Mark Morford (so much so that i’ve had a blog category devoted to him since 2004. god i’m such a fangirl.) Mark is also a yoga instructor, and after many years of regarding them separately in his life, he recently learned that combining them is double the pleasure, double the fun. so when i saw the workshop announcement i thought hey! i’ve been doing lots of yoga and writing for over a decade too! so i should go -  this is for me! maybe this will unlock some of my confusion around what AM i doing with my life??

prior to, my mind had totally been occupied with all the Occupy stuff all week. endless reading about economics and tax models and discussions about consensus and active democracy and rights and all kinds of dense things.  so i hadn’t really thought much beforehand about the workshop or what i was going to work on, writing wise. so i was a little mentally exhausted and a little unprepared.

in the opening minutes of the workshop, Mark talked about reasons why we might all be there, as writers, and how the physical and mental practice of yoga can be used as a tool to unblock our creative energy and really let go of our egos in order to write freely, fluidly.  and i immediately recoiled, because, as far as i can tell, i don’t have that problem. i’ve never really had ‘writers block’.  in fact,  i have the opposite problem: SO MUCH TO SAY SO LITTLE TIME.  i wasn’t quite sure how to reframe what he was talking about to fit that problem, and so i was like “oh, shit.  this workshop is not for me.”

and then he talked about how so many writers live too much in their heads and neglect their bodies, these pale weaklings who never leave their basements and spend days in their sweatpants. um, also not me.  see: the 2+ hours of exercise i get most days, and all the dancing i do.  i am WELL AWARE of how much body movement affects my mind: my best blog posts are written while biking/dancing/yoga-ing.

so what was i doing there?? i started to fret.

the thing is, i am trying to figure out WHY i write. and whether i should be trying to channel it into something more productive than blog posts and facebook screeds. the idea of “monetizing” my blog has always caused me to wince, and writing under deadlines for someone else’s umbrella also seems painful. to date, my writing has been purely CATHARTIC. and i have always been happy with that.  it gets things out of my head. and occasionally, someone else tells me that they appreciate it too, that something i wrote really resonated, or they were glad i wrote about something they were too scared to say.  and that has always been enough.

but right now i am going through what some might consider a “transition” phase in my life, and one of the ideas embedded in that is i am considering *gasp* graduate school.  and one of the programs i have been looking at is Writing focused.  so, this means i really do need to consider the question:  do i want to be a Writer, and how?

and so it was that i found myself in a writing workshop, not so much trying to be a better writer as trying to figure out What The Hell I Was Doing There.

one of the pieces that Mark handed out was this, from Teachings of Rumi:

There is one thing in this world that you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there’s nothing to worry about; but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.

It’s as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you perform a hundred other services, but not the one he sent you to do. So human beings come to this world to do particular work. That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you don’t do it, it’s as though a priceless Indian sword were used to slice rotten meat. It’s a golden bowl being used to cook turnips, when one filing from the bowl could buy a hundred suitable pots. It’s a knife of the finest tempering nailed into a wall to hang things on.

You say, “But look, I’m using the dagger. It’s not lying idle.” Do you hear how ludicrous that sounds? For a penny, an iron nail could be bought to serve the purpose. You say, “But I spend my energies on lofty enterprises. I study jurisprudence and philosophy and logic and astronomy and medicine and all the rest.” But consider why you do those things. They are all branches of yourself.

Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. If you don’t, you will be exactly like the man who takes a precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his dipper gourd. You’ll be wasting valuable keenness and foolishly ignoring your dignity and your purpose.

and my God if that didn’t make me immediately anxious and depressed. IT’S TRUE. I AM DOING A THOUSAND THINGS BUT NOT THE ONE THING.  FUCK. WHAT IS IT???

in the end, i still don’t really know. when i walked out, i felt like the balance was definitely tipped more in favor of Yoga than Writing in terms of things i am really into doing right now. would the workshop have been different for me if it were framed as Writing for Yogis instead of Yoga for Writers?  maybe.

anyway, i have no conclusions, but in the spirit of the workshop, letting go of your ego and not caring what anyone thinks about what you write and letting it just come out, here are the (mostly unedited) things i wrote in the workshop for the 3 writing sessions we did in between bouts of yoga. i’m not too personally impressed with them, but here you go:

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in which we go to a random bar in SF and meet nice new people

last night i modeled for In Lush at the Beats for Boobs breast cancer fundraiser fashion show at Mezzanine SF. it was a great show and the crowd was super fun. it was so nice to walk down a runway to people CHEERING for you instead of a bunch of posers with their arms crossed.

post-fashion-show it was a nice warm san francisco friday night and i didn’t want to go to a house party and i didn’t want to go home so we went to get some food. while we were driving around looking for parking we passed some bars we’ve never been to. so after dinner i said why don’t we go to some of those bars we’ve never been to. we ended up at www.harlotsf.com, which is in a really out of way place next to a construction site on Minna alley (from the website i learned that all those downtown alleys are named after “the Barbary Coast era’s famous ladies of the evening, the Harlots”, including one Ms. Minna).

we walked up and the music was loud and housey and we made a face but the door man holding the velvet rope said “hey why don’t you just go in and see if you like it”. so we did. the bar, as the website will tell you in great detail, is quite beautiful. an ornate fancy space.  while the music was familiar-enough house-pop remixes of Katy Perry and whatnot, it was not our scene, and for the first drink it was kind of like being in a foreign country. we wallflowered and did the thing where we look around and make exaggerated movements and dance funny. the vibe was super Euro. and just as i was like ok haha that was funny let’s go, the woman who i had just modeled for in the fashion show appeared out of the crowd, and we laughed at thinking we were so far removed from that scene. we decided to get another drink away from the dance floor, which was getting crowded, and ended up in the only place you could hear yourself talk, which was in the cage outside for smokers.

there, we met a man who introduced himself by saying “if i never get hit on by another russian hooker it’ll be too soon” (confirming the Euro vibe with the eastern europeans) and then an incredibly nice woman who was with some friends she wasn’t really vibing with, but it turned out she really liked us. the guy stated that we “looked like we come here all the time”, which was of course HILAR cuz we generally avoid these kinds of glossy pick-up scenes (miniskirts and high heels and bottle service gone wild) and opt for the grittier underbellies (but maybe no less pick-up), but given that i had just come from a fashion show and had on a face full of make-up and false eyelashes and huge ratted hair and a dress and fancy shoes and were, in fact there, i can see how someone might think we were regulars on the scene. we did all we could to diffuse that impression ASAP and ended up having a rather long and lengthy conversation with these 2 very cool people about scenes and parties and people and what we like and don’t like and where we’re from (3 out of 4 from michigan!) and what the hell are we doing here?  the girl got my number and it’s highly probable that i’ll see her again. i really liked her. the guy….he was cool but in  retrospect we think he might have been a gigolo and i wasn’t gonna give him my number.

so sometimes it is fun to go out the way and end up somewhere else and meet random new people. i’ll likely never hit that bar again during regular hours, though all of you seeking venues for things like mixers or fundraisers or art or fashion shows should note that the space is indeed fabulous and available.

@ Teatro ZinZanni

this was a great show.  i was a little hesitant to purchase tickets, as it is not cheap and some of the yelp reviews weren’t great. a number of people said that both the food and performances were sub-par for what you can find elsewhere in SF, which is maybe true, but the package of the 2 things together is what is important here. this show has been in SF for a long time and is leaving after the end of the year, and so despite slightly prohibitive cost and negative reviews, i got discounted tix through goldstar. plus, there were virtually no other types of theatre performances to be seen on a Mon – Wednesday in SF while Mom was visiting. i looked.

i was positively surprised at the quality of the food and service, and the performances were polished as well. yes, you might find more dangerous, avante-garde or risque cirque-type troupes in SF, but how many of them come with 5 course meals and full bar? plus, this is going for old school travelling circus vibe, not avante-garde or “cirque”, and they did that very well. so if you haven’t seen the show and have a special occasion or guest to entertain, i do recommend it. fun!

scorecard: october 2011 so far

saturday, october 1, was my 35th birthday.  friday night, a few of us went out in Oakland to a 21+ nighttime event at Children’s Fairyland, the original storybook themepark (pre-Disneyland), which is usually only open in the daytime and only to children and their families.  it was pretty cool – lots of 20/30somethings who had been there as small children, reminiscing, and a chance to hang out in there without hundreds of screaming kids around. and free beer!  later on we went to Room 389, a bar nearby, and a few more people joined in and it was fun.

saturday,  my birthday, it took a while for me to wake up and face the world. i won’t get into it, but i wasn’t feeling awesome. or motivated. or celebratory.  eventually we left the house and just kind of wandered around berkeley.  jay bought me some flowers, we had a nice lunch, it was good.  saturday night we went and hung out at justin’s and just chilled. it was probably the most uneventful birthday i’ve had in a long time (no crazy thrillseeking or big party), but i also knew my mom was coming to visit the next day and that we’d be doing stuff all week.

so yeah! my mom came to visit me for my birthday.  we picked her up from SFO sunday night and dropped her off a couple of hours ago.  despite the fact that it decided to be cold and rainy her whole visit, we had fun!

neighborhoods visited:

• haight ashbury
• fillmore
• north beach
• fisherman’s wharf
• bernal heights
• sf waterfront
• downtown berkeley
• west berkeley
• telegraph ave
• elmwood
• downtown oakland

lots of shopping in those neighborhoods. things i acquired:

• 3 used/vintage dresses, 2 cheap, 1 not
• 1 *awesome* used Armani mohair and leather hooded cape (@Goodwill!)
• 1 used faux fur and leather trimmed lux coat. so soft.
• 1 new dress, 50% off
• 1 leather belt, clearance
• 1 new long sleeved shredded tee
• 1 new costume jewelry necklace. so ridiculously disco. so awesome.
• 2 new bras, 1 of which i will return. man i hate bras.

activities besides shopping:

• california academy of sciences
• we went to the gym!
• Teatro ZinZanni
• i got my hair cut into a long mohawk. the sides and nape are completely gone. mom does not like it. i do.

we also ate a lot.  ethiopian, mexican, californian, indian. mmmm.

mom likes to wander around shopping as much as i do, although she buys more books and fewer clothes.  she looooves bookstores and devours books. the woman read 2 books while here. in 4 days.

i’d never been in the academy of sciences in the daytime, and i loved the rainforest! Teatro ZinZanni was also very fun, and both the food and performances were better than expected (yelp reviewers are harsh!).

all in all a good time, although i wished she would have been here over the weekend so we could’ve seen some more theatre or something. it as kind of hard to find things to do on Mon-Weds.

and now the vacation is over – back to life. back to the internet.

except – wait.  tomorrow night we’re going to see the Smashing Pumpkins at the Fox.  WOOO!

burning man 2011: addenda

.::. previous .::.

• the WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE guy. we had a burn barrel in camp, which people would gather around especially in the pre-dawn hours when it was cold. and one dawn there were 10-11 people hanging out, and the sun came up, and everyone was jovial and chatting. our village had a lot of people in it and so i didn’t always know everyone hanging around. and so it was sort of weird when suddenly, a burly dude who’d been there for quite some time, talking, just chillin’, suddenly, in the morning light, freaked out a little bit and in a lull in the conversation, looked around and very startled said “WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? HOW DID I GET HERE? HOW DOES EVERYBODY KNOW MY NAME? WAIT….WHO are YOU?” over and over again. we started asking him questions and it became apparent that this tripper dude had taken something unknown earlier in the night and the last thing he remembered he was at his camp, which he knew where it was, but now at dawn he finds himself sitting around in our camp, with no idea who any of us are, or how he got there. he then became agitated because he did not have his backpack, which he maintained that he NEVER took off, barely even to sleep, so where is it? he got up and stumbled away and we wondered for a brief second if he might be a narc? but determined that, nah. after a while he came back and sat down, and sort of glazed over and looked at the fire. and then, a few minutes later, this happened again. WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? WHO DID I GET HERE? WHERE IS MY BACKPACK? and then he relayed that the reason his backpack was so important, besides all the basic burning man things inside, was that there was a book inside, given to him by the “woman he will love for the rest of his life”, who had written an inscription to him, and he really, really needed that book. he was distraught about this. i felt sad for him. he got up and wandered off searching again, not taking our suggestion that probably, most likely, his backpack was back at his own camp. i hope he found it.
• it’s a standard burning man lost tripper story, but it stuck with us and now, kind of like quoting the “WHAT DOES IT MEAN??” double rainbow guy, we will just randomly say “WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? HOW DID I GET HERE” whenever it is even mildly funny.

• the movie theatre at the orange fence, which is a fully functioning movie theatre that seats….20? 30? and only shows movies in the middle of the night was showing this old Veronica Lake film “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941), for which we got in only to see the last ~1 minute. but turns out, the last one minute of that movie is TOTALLY APPROPRIATE for burning man. plus they give you free candy!
•  —–>CANDY POCKET.

burning man 2011: all or nothing (you get what you need)

i’ve come again
like a new year
to crash the gate
of this old prison

i’ve come again
to break the teeth and claws
of this man-eating
monster we call life

i’ve come again
to puncture the
glory of the cosmos
who mercilessly
destroys humans

i am the falcon
hunting down the birds
of black omen
before their flights

i gave my word
at the outset to
give my life
with no qualms
i pray to the Lord
to break my back
before i break my word

…

you have set up
a colorful table
calling it life and
asked me to your feast
but punish me if
i enjoy myself

what tyranny is this

-Rumi, from Fountain of Fire

.::.

Black Rock City, 2011.

unlike previous years, i did not write anything in my journal while on the playa this year. not a single word.  never even removed it from my backpack.  it wasn’t that i made a conscious decision not to – i just didn’t.  last year i spent a lot of time reading and writing while there. this year i did almost none.  i was so busy doing….what?

so i don’t know where to start with this right now, as when i try to recreate history without a record  i always end up so confused.  what is appropriate to say and what isn’t, out of respect for boundaries, respect for relationships, respect for art, respect for humanity? what did i really feel then, versus what i feel about it now? after this 7th year, am i just repeating myself?

perhaps.

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last thoughts before burning man 2011

Forget safety.

Live where you fear to live.

Destroy your reputation.

Be notorious.

— Rumi

this many years and i still can’t narrow it down.

once i get there it all seems so immediately and abundantly clear, but beforehand it is like a phantom in the mist. how can that be?  like a far away lover you haven’t touched in months – you only remember the smell, the touch, the feel, the other information filed deep, resurfacing only exactly when needed.

.::.

i bring things like books and cocktail dresses.  someday i should set up The Most Elegant Library Ever on the playa, with deep couches and chandeliers and velvet ropes and lace curtains and walnut bookshelves filled with hardcovers of everything from Sartre to Seuss, where you can sit and drink champagne while reading silently, or have quiet discussions about literary subjects.

.::.

however, all moments of periodic dusted and sunbleached elegance aside, in the thick of it, i like to get feral and not give a fuck.

i like to go to burning man and get lost in its dream, subconscious wandering interspersed with bouts of extreme physical hyperawareness and athletic mania.  i like to be dirty and unwashed and sunkissed and running on empty and compulsive and punch-drunk and completely alive.

most of this is a personal experience, but at the same time i fall deeply in love with humanity and the people who commune with me and i want to feel all of them.

.::.

the rest of the world seems so fragmented, anxious, fluxuated, and holding its breath right now – my own life, and globally – that burning man seems like the safest place to be – the place where we can breathe, the place where we can all be perfect* for a little while, and not worry about failing.

*adj. exactly fitting the need in a certain situation or for a certain purpose

.::.

whether here or there:  love.

denial

Finally, after the 30th day, she cried.

.(one sentence).

FREAKY COINCIDENCE DAY

this is actually really creeping me out.

yesterday, i sent a project proposal FedEx a day early, joking that i wanted to send it early “in case of any strange Acts of God or something.”

then, an hour ago, i was riding my bike and was stopped at an intersection for a truck to go by.  when the truck went by, the ground shook a lot,  and i mused, “oh, life. just want you think you are standing on solid ground, the earth shakes.”

and then i got to work, and found out an earthquake had hit the east coast, causing THE BUILDING WHERE THE AGENCY I SENT THE PROPOSAL TO IS HEADQUARTERED TO BE EVACUATED.

i shit you not.

update August 24: and now we’ve had to feel-able earthquakes here on the hayward fault in the last 12 hours, and the Tori song “Little Earthquakes” has been in my head nonstop.

bike commuter: 2 year report

it’s now been 2 years since i had a car to go to work or run errands during the day. i ride about 200 miles a month, mostly all over the oakland and berkeley flats but into SF now and then too, although i like biking there less.  i feel like an idiot for all those years i drove a car instead of biking.  why sit in traffic when you can fly through the breeze? many days my bike rides are the only thing worth doing, and both my body and mind have benefited immensely.  i am SO LUCKY that nothing has happened to me (yet) – so many friends hit by cars, so many almost-accidents i see on the streets every day.  but i am a conscientious biker, i ride safe.

winter and darkness and rain will be here again soon enough, it’s true, but i was fine last season.  + another reason i will never move (back) to where it snows.