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The “ease” in Easy


Kevala Jnana of Mahavira

Image via Wikipedia

The business of yoga enveloped me the past couple of days. In many ways, teaching yoga and teaching public school has much in common. Paperwork. Association dues. Insurance, though I have to admit I never once carried a liability policy in my twenty years of teaching and coaching children.

And there is the money side.

Yes, yoga isn’t all asana and heavy breathing. Perhaps the yogis of Patanjali‘s time wandering like minstrels or jongleurs, spreading enlightenment for table scraps and a night’s lodging, but yoga teachers today would have a difficult time getting anyone to take them seriously if they wandered the streets of Edmonton pushing shopping carts and setting up their mats on the sidewalks of Whyte Ave.

It’s interesting (my catchall phrase for when I don’t have all my opinions in a row on something) how the yoga teaching has fallen into place. I’d anticipated filling in here and there and maybe having a class at the studio in town to call my very own. Not what has happened.

I have three classes at the studio and two more to start at the community hall across the street in October. I’ve turned down other offers for work since yesterday afternoon. Stuff I would have taken if not for the fact that I have other stuff already that conflicts.

Another graduate of the training who I keep in touch with remarked on how lucky I am to not have to run work down and I am reminded of something related to the practice of asana/poses – that we are to find “ease” in each posture.

If that is the goal of yoga than it is also the goal of life because I have learned that yoga and life have nearly everything in common.

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1984? Your App is Ready.


Cover of "THX 1138 (The George Lucas Dire...

Cover via Amazon

Science fiction horror scenarios spring from the basic premise that too much technology will eventually enslave us as opposed to liberate or make us better people. The Dune universe was a direct result of a world where computers took over and subjected human beings. George Lucas‘s THX1138 envisioned a world of people in the thrall of television and consumerism that drove people to numb themselves with antidepressants.

And then there was Logan’s Run, where babies were chipped at birth and their every movement monitored until they reached the useless age of 30 and were dispatched for the amusement of others.

Today people willingly tag themselves with GPS enabled phones that they delude themselves into believing are helpful tools. They are aided and abetted in their fantasy by apps.

There’s an app for everything, and they make the loss of freedom and downtime feel okay.

But they are really just the first toehold on a slide that leads to  that proverbial glided cage.

And the scariest thing is the excitement. This guy thinks this nightmare of a world is an awesome leap forward for mankind. Personally, I think life as an uber-trained gerbil might push me into active anarchy.

But here’s what truly should frighten thinking people.

“… imagine what skilled game designers could do with this …”

Imagine that. If you have the stomach for it and don’t mind giving yourself nightmares from all the paranoid conspiracy theories that naturally flow from entertaining such notions.

And then imagine them selling this to your government – not the most ethical bunch of people on the planet – and worse, imagine what the business world will … is already in come instances … do with this.

Being a gerbil is fine, if you are born a gerbil, but human beings who aren’t allowed to think for themselves, and are expected to live on the equivalent of a Sisyphean treadmill, will be a scary bat-shit crazy bunch.

It looks though as if we’ve set the path for our children and theirs and the best we can do is hope that the Mayans were right. Or perhaps wish upon a solar flare to cause an emp to reset the clock and buy us time.

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A Pirate Kind of Accent


Pirate-ship

Image via Wikipedia

I missed International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Again. I always miss this made-up Internet bloggy holiday. De-lurking Day has escaped me too, and that’s one I’d love to commemorate because you all are the most reticent bunch.

But I don’t comprehend this fascination with pirate talk. It’s a terrible dialect and a worse accent.

Where is Drawl like the Wind Day? The American Southlands may be home to the more bat-shit crazy of my fellow countrymen, but they talk pretty. Even the crackers.

Or Intone Like Shakespeare Day?

I could get behind that. Seriously. Kenneth Brannagh? Colin Firth? Jane Austen may write narrative that’s thicker than the latest Franzen pseudo-lit tome, but it soothes the ears coming out of the right mouth.

But no, some fool chose pirates. Unless the pirate in question has an underlying accent of note – a Scot or a Brit or even an Aussie – it’s just choking on rrrr’s and that’s French.

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