Upside Down and the Outside goes In

Inverted on Sleg's inversion bar for a few minutes this morning.  I recalled something the massage therapist was telling me about muscle cells and how, scattered through every muscle are spindle cells whose function is to seize up if the muscle is over-stretched, to keep it from tearing.  To get into the deeper stretching - at which level it really feels like releasing the years of never-stretched tightness, you have to slowly settle to bypass the spindle cell reflex tightening.  I'm sure i'm off on the details but this is the picture I have in my mind and am navigating into the deeper channels using it as my map.

So me inverted, Mindfolded and finding the focus of tightness to be in my hips and groin and as I breathed into these places, i could slowly feel my skeleton separating, opening and closing with my breath.  Even as I sit on the floor typing this i can feel the pelvic bones tentatively settling into a slightly more open position.  Now the next thought is how to continue to engage these muscles which have been held tight in compensatory positions for years without over-doing it and injuring myself...how does one strengthen the psoas?

Stereolaboratory

It is official.  Stereolab still has it.  And they were giving it away last night.  I was even impressed with the opening act Atlas Sound which was a soundscape created by one geeky guy.  

Stereolab did only have the one female lead singer but they played some of the songs they both sang on, which was awesome because they are some of my favorites. During these it sounded as if they were playing a recording of her singing in the background - that or one of the guys was impersonating her voice quite well. 

Prana

There's something about waking up drunk at 11am, feeling a bout of panic and to alleviate it scribbling out a rent check and mailing it to a town two states away.  I am going to go do a headstand to Moby's 'Ambient.'

So that headstand turned into an hour and a half of yoga.  Had to switch from Moby to Art of Noise (Moments in Love is a secret place that only few know about).  The yoga was a payoff for all the years i've been working with my body to keep it bodying...it was the single greatest session of yoga i've ever done.  My psoas muscles released opening my hips and relaxing my pelvis.  I can't put into words how this makes me feel, its like receiving a new body, the sensation of the inner pelvis stretched apart what might not even be measurable in milllimeters and the consequences of my legs turning inwarder is so strengthening/releiving/releasing/refreshing that I walked around the house like David Bowie for half an hour rolling my femur balls in the hip sockets and feeling my pelvis work in symmetrical halves instead of as a fixed unit.  The sensation of my frontal groin bone being moveable is both eerie, for its sudden differentness, and like coming home.  

I laid in corpse pose for ten minutes, listening to Moments in Love again, breathing into my now-opener skeleton and the muscles all twisted around it.  Having received a most spectacular massage two days ago all my muslces were primed for this session of stretching.  The connection made obvious between the deepness into the core of my body and the awesome massage (i'll gladly recommend her if you ask me) has me pining for regular yoga instructed practice and more massages!  Also I can't help but notice this occurred on a day after a night of a good deal of alcohol, lets be honest, and how it acted like a dye put in the body sending toxic flashes where it was most concentrated, in those deep tight recesses, and that instigated me to want to move my consciousness deeper and deeper into my sensation, like scratching an itch.  

Having come out on the other side i'm in a post-elation downer, but am gonna keep moving towards the Stereolaboratory being constructed in the Variety Playhouse tonight.  This could make it into the Book of the Greatest of Days.

Stereolab

This is why I love Stereolab and why we are gonna Ride the Sharks into the ATL tomorrow night!!!

Dialogue in the Dark

So the Rogue Therapist collective got together to attend Dialogue in the Dark.  After purchasing tickets at the booth where Sleg said "they will pull this student I.D. card from my cold, dead hand" as we both got discounts, we began debating on whether we should Mindfold into the building or not.  It ended up with Ishkur and my's elf Mindfolding into the exhibit with Sleg playing Seer.  We actually got some cheering and applause for our entrance, which led me to believe the lights were on in the building so far.  

Surprisingly the people who came to usher us to the lockers and take our tickets were not very adept at working with sightless people as Sleg described later, 'it was pretty funny because she had a look on her face as if you were stupid for not taking the ticket from her when you couldn't see her holding the ticket stub at you.'  

So there is an interesting validation of the Mindfold training, our acuity of sightless interaction lends perspective when not Mindfolding/seeing things.

I don't want to spoil the actual exhibit by describing it here so let me just say that it is a pretty well-crafted set of experiences that you are guided through in an hour.  

At the end of it we three talked about how easy it was for us to move through.  The canes we were handed were more in the way then helpful, but that was probably from the close quarters and being in a group of people.  They take you in in groups of seven so if you can gather a crew of like minds attend in that fashion.  

Overall a great intro into being deprived of sight.  And something we will undoubtedly pull from in future Mindfold introductions.

One thing I particularly noticed was that most everyone seemed to be upright when moving (judging from where people were when I bumped into them) while the Mindfolding we've played with has led us to move lower, crouched or even on all fours for more safety and efficiency when exploring unfamiliar surroundings.     

Tonight's the night

If I am not here tomorrow, it is because David Byrne lifted me into the heaven constructed by Brian Eno.  

Intermission

El Capitan is onto Greece here's an excerpt of what he's up to 

My days are filled.. keeping me busy. I needed this. I'm trying to make this a monastic-like experience for me. Instead of wearing brown robes, worshipping, and vows of silence.. I am working hard for a job that's pure and I'm trying to better myself. I wake up at 6:45am, do 20 minutes of yoga that is hopefully helping my back (I've got problems with it). I then walk the gauntlet of house dogs (about 13 of wildly varying kinds) to the main house. I make some coffee, make a lunch for later on, and grab an apple. Then I jump in the junker of a car called a niva. I love it. I drive all the unmarked Grecian streets to the kiwi farm/dog shelter. The shelter is all outdoor fencing. I check on all the dogs. Food and water. Then I muck (pick up shit). I've got several new cuts and scrapes by the time I get out of there. I head up to the kiwi farm and do a specific chore that day. Weeding, trimming, securing of the trees, or maintenance on the watering system. Stuff like that. Then I pick all the new cherry tomatoes that we'll use in the salad at night. Eat lunch. Then I go do some construction. Like heightening the fence for one of the dog areas so that new ones can't jump over. Somedays I'll drive around the island putting up flyers for the shelter. Then I'll go home and immediately go down to the beach. Clearest blue water. dive in and try to swim to another smaller island not far out. So far, I can get about half way.. but I've been lengthening it everyday. Then I climb the side of a narrow cliff to get to a hotel that has a piano I can practice on. After that, I go home and take care of any chores I need to do.. take a nap maybe, then get woken up for dinner with everyone. We sit outside in a courtyard and have a nice hearty meal. Then its late and I have to get up early so I go to sleep. That's about it so far.

I have been stateside re-visiting friends, and extracating the idea from my brain that I finally see settling down as the next great adventure.  That and I am a bit tired.  Yeah, not working for 9 months and I am tired...

But here is what i've been up to:

The view from Grapefruit rock, north of Asheville NC

Balancing Log

We had half a bottle of rum left and needed some coconuts so we headed to the beach where fellows use cargo bikes to bring loads of them to where main street ends into the beach. They use machetes to slice them right to the quick and then a straw easily slips thru the meat and into the liquidy goodness (an interesting cultural aside is that the word for this last layer of meat the straw is poked thru is the same word for virgin). We have to sip out mouthfulls of juice just to not spill the overfull nuts. Then we have to drink more to make room for the rum.
This is the most refreshing cocktail I have ever concocted and to be carrying it down the beach with our Mindfolds cocked on our foreheads is only dampened by the sheer weight of the coconuts. The green outer shells are hard as rocks and its very easy to imagine their weight only being slowed by a skull in freefall from a tree. El Capitan is explaining to the that they actually peel these monstrosities to get down to the brown frayed inner hulls that are more spherical and sold to grocery stores i've frequented.
We stroll and sit and sip and refill until the mixture hits the perfect taste which just so happens to be when we empty the rum into the nuts. And so are we, emptied into nuts.
The drunkness was coming on in waves that didn't wash back out to sea. After we reached the elephant who had been petrified and overturned by the tide, we hit our stride. El Capitan dashed his shell on a rock and wove a dance of gratitude to the coconut goddess with an offering up of the meat tossed into the insatiable sea. I just tried to chuck my whole 'nut into the waves, but only succeeded in throwing out my arm and watching the 'nut roll lopsided into the tide.










The offerings commensurated, we next found our selves at the Balancing Log...It was composed of a pair of driftwoods where a 20' whitewashed tree kept a decently flat line from dune slope to an overturned trunk that caught it between its now uppermost tendrils. The balancing log extended another 5 feet beyond the stump which brought into play twisting as well as the leverage beyond the fulcrum of lifting the heavier, longer end from the sand; And, we found, if performed well, lowering you gently to the sand.
We each walked it unfolded and did particularly well for carrying cocorum in our innards. I went first Mindfolded. Slipping the device over my eyes while I was already balancing over the widest section, stably set on the ground - so the feet knew what they were doing already - it was the rest of the body that became folded in confusion at the blackness emanating from the middle of my rum'o'nut and vision. Banking on my feets' solid notions of gravity I took off walking my tai chi steps of silent slowness with the left side leading as it is apt to do. I left my mind in shock of the darkness i flung it into and moved from my feet up, using the Centre and my arms to keep the momentum proceeding across the log towards the sea's loud waving. This worked to align me with the solid centre of the log beneath the solid centre of my feet until I came to a slight bend in the log which my eyes, i have no doubt, would have easily processed and I might have not have even consciously noticed it; but as it were, visionless, this little bend came upon me with all the suddenness of the floor falling out from under me. And I re-routed all my energies from balance to evacuation of the current predicament into the shifting, but soft, sands about a foot below.































We continued this, taking turns on the log with the non-balancing (or should I say simple-balancer for we are all balancing just about all the non-laying-down time, take a look for yourself) acting as Seer for the appearance of passerbys so as not to frighten them by our extrasensoric prowess and futuristic appearances (though we are all living in the future, its just that some of us don't like to admit it); and to take better photos.
As time moved the day around us and our antics pumped the cocorum thru bodies, my abilities faded and I never did make it as far as my first run. El Capitan, on the other hand, only progressed until he actually made it to the fulcrum stump Mindfolded!







This beget a new era of things to fear for not only did the stump's tendrils curl over the Balancing Log to create a foot obstacle, but the slow turning and leveraged raising of the log beyond the fulcrum moved it from a mostly 2-dimensional balancing act to a 3-dimensional ground-quaking out from under you carnival surprising of the folded mind. Beyond the immediate dangers of the log's movement was the imminent danger of dismounting or being spun off into the tendrils of roots when losing your balance at the fulcrum.
We never did make it to the end of the log Mindfolded as the leveraged twist & turn always broke the tentative balance we had worked to engender up to that point.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
A note on the fantastic drink of Rum mixed with fresh coconut juice: Coconuts, David told us, work to detoxify the kidneys unusually well. As a consequence, mixing the alcohol with it actually provides a vehicle for more alcohol than usual to be absorbed by the kidneys. This can lead to problems. Do not try this at home; but call me if you are interested in trying it at the beach.

Southern man don't need me around anyhow

Woke today to southern rock blaring from somewhere. My left earplug had come out sometime during the night. I'm finding the brand (name unrecalled) has a plug life of approximately 2 weeks. But it is extremely good at blocking out sound until then; after that they start to wiggle out and the powers are entirely compromised by the slightest leaking. The music changes into some Elton John that I fortunately don't know the words to, but I close my eyes tighter nonetheless for fear of which Elton might be in the room with me; the musics that are now full of my awareness and Elton's got me hooked. The trick is now to figure out where exactly Elton's rocking it from and i've ruled out the room i'm in's ipod because my slightly unplugged left ear is feeling the shape of the sound as more linearly conical, coming thru a smaller space before widening into the room, not as emanating from within this room in a more spherical shape.
David's truck pulls away after a short bit, ruling out the car stereo. The music's in English so it must be from the house and i'm tromping down the handhewn spiral wood staircase and the volume is increasing and we're back to the southern rock guitar screeching and i finally locate a stereo system where it is on shuffle track #115 - mp3...so this pain could have lasted a good long while. I press stop. I go back to sleep.