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-Clarice Lispector

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Mary Oliver, White Heron Rises Over Blackwater

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'Reading Moth by Candlelight' by Fritz Schwimbeck (1889 - 1972)

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i know people make these kinds of posts with fictional characters a lot but like. hank green truly is one of The Most Guys Ever. like. he's one of the earliest youtubers who is still on there. he's a 43-year-old tiktok star. he's a science educator. he got cancer and his response was to make a tier list of the press's coverage of his cancer announcement. the president of the united states sent him a message of support and he told the president that he was pissing out the cancer. years earlier he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and his response was to write a polka song about it. he created vidcon. he's the ceo of a company that produces a shitton of educational series (well, not acting ceo at the moment due to the aforementioned cancer). his guitar says "this machine pwns n00bs" on it. he invented 2D glasses. one of his earliest videos to get popular was about animal sex. between him and his brother, he was known as "the science one" (or "the music one") while his brother was "the writer one," and then he wrote two new york times bestselling novels. his most controversial opinion is that butt is legs. he's done so many things that there is a website dedicated to counting the number of days since he started a new thing. he and his brother use their internet following to (among other things) fight maternal/infant mortality in sierra leone. he has a baked bean furby. hes even bisexual

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We celebrate the purported geniuses who discovered the cure--but we don't acknowledge that discovering a cure means nothing unless and until we get the cure to the people who need it--an enterprise we've failed at to a remarkable degree over the last 70 years.

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On Pain.

“We remember our bodies in pain or worry about the threat of pain. we remember them in illness or the idea of illness. We fear the fragility of our homes. Whenever pain has passed, if it has passed, we marvel at its strength. But mostly, we ignore the body in all its constancy. As partners, we are hugely disloyal….” -Yrsa Daley-Ward

Whenever I’m in pain I remember what John Green famously wrote: “That’s the thing about pain, it demands to be felt”

Physical pain has been my faithful companion since a young age. I grew up, as you would when you have high function anxiety, doing all kinds of sports. I played tennis when I was little and then eventually started running. There was a time when I was sort of good, so my parents paid for this really high-end facility so I could train with professionals (in hindsight, I wonder how we even afford that? The things parents do for their kids are unreal). There, I experienced pain for the first time. It wasn’t only that I was pushed beyond my limits but the demands and stress it put on my body were enough for me to complain every day about my knees, my neck, my feet, and even my back (that was only the starter for what was to come). I think that when you do sports from a young age, you sort of normalize pain. I mean, it is painful to run for two hours straight. And yeah, of course, you learn about discipline and endurance, you learn a lot about yourself as well. But being in pain is a very uncomfortable place to be. So imagine thinking that this. is. normal. An ok state to be in.

The last couple of years though, I’ve had quite a different experience with it. Because, before, this pain was something I could live with. I mean, I could pretend that it just wasn’t there and just live my life. But later, it became disabling. I couldn’t go to work because I couldn’t move freely in my own body. I felt literally, and metaphorically, paralyzed. I went home and discovered that I had a herniated disk in my back and a weird neck, which explained a lot but not everything. According to specialists (from different backgrounds), I’m actually in a lot of pain mentally. men. ta. lly, which causes my body to be in constant tension and alertness. Ready to strike. In retrospect, I’ve always had this fierceness about me, like a warrior, always ready to fight. it took me some time to realize that the danger was coming from within. Now I understand why I shed a tear in a class when a teacher said ” No tension, only attention.”

Today, as I understand that my body is constantly reminding me that something is wrong, I am able to find ways in which to attend to the real wound, the cause of all this physical pain. Now, I understand that, when I am not paying attention, when I am not taking care of my inner life, this body of mine tries to kindly let me know by going off.

My neck and back have been the worst of my suffering because, quite like my dear friend Atlas, I’ve been trying to carry the world on my shoulders. Turns out, this imaginary world, does not need to be carried anywhere. it’s fine as it is. it is time for me, and you as well if you are in any kind of pain, to imagine a new way of living. Make up a new world of my own.

I learned something very valuable from being in constant pain. it can be profoundly grounding. Pain reminds us that we are going to die. But that, as Yrsa Daley-Ward reminded us, is the only death that we will not survive.

so what if we live a little before that?

xo

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Cover of Scena Illustrata Magazine by Ezio Anichini (Feb. 1916)

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Somehow he pulls off this look.

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Pádraig ó Tuama

Pádraig ó Tuama Is one of these people who, with “mere words” has completely shaken my life. I first discovered him, naturally, on an OnBeing conversation.  I then watched his tedtalk “Imagining Peace” where he said: 

“The question is whether truth needs to be part of a story is something that I’m interested in because fiction is as good sometimes… did that happen? Does it matter? The Zen Buddha have an understanding that when the wrong question is asked you can say “Mu” because sometimes to ask the wrong question is to inhibit the possibility of goodness that is present in the story and so, did that really happen? Is it true? “Mu” Did it mean a whole world? Yes. Did it open up the possibility of a life and breathing that could breathe life where there has been little breathing? Yes”

I was irrevocably hooked. 

Pádraig ó Tuama is a theologian and writer. He’s also a conflict transformation practitioner. He has written a wonderful memoir, a prayer book, and a book of poetry, among other things. He writes -and talks- about belonging, religion, longing, love, and hope among many other subjects. He hosts the treasure of a podcast: Onpoetry where he comments and shares life stories related to the poem of the day. 

I stumbled into his poem today “The Facts of Life” Which I didn’t know I needed to hear. Maybe you do too: 

The Facts of Life

Written by Pádraig Ó Tuama

That you were born and you will die.

That you will sometimes love enough and sometimes not.

That you will lie if only to yourself.

That you will get tired.

That you will learn most from the situations you did not choose.

That there will be some things that move you more than you can say.

That you will live that you must be loved.

That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of your attention.

That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg of two people who once were strangers and may well still be.

That life isn’t fair. That life is sometimes good and sometimes even better than good.

That life is often not so good.

That life is real and if you can survive it, well, survive it well with love and art and meaning given where meaning’s scarce.

That you will learn to live with regret. That you will learn to live with respect.

That the structures that constrict you may not be permanently constricting.

That you will probably be okay.

That you must accept change before you die but you will die anyway.

So you might as well live and you might as well love. You might as well love. You might as well love.

Pádraig, thank you thank you thank you.

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Walking in wonder

Life is crazy (in a good way - in this house, the only way we use that word is with a positive connotation anyway). Every day since I arrived back home I’ve been going to practice in one of those rental bikes that I subscribed to a while ago. To be honest, I’ve been too lazy to take down my bike, look for a place to chain it, and then take it all up again into my apartment. It just seems like a lot of hassle for a ten-minute ride. So after practice, I had to walk a bit to go rent another bike (Literally : “el flojo trabaja doble”… os does he?) and bumped into a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. She was in a rush cause she had to go to work. But we still had time to catch up on life and for her to recommend me a new vegan coffee shop. just seeing her happy and -newly-red-headed was enough to brighten my morning but then I had that coffee…. It had peanut butter in it. And oh boy! it was obscene how mouth-watering and rich that coffee was. It just felt so right. Me and that coffee we had an intimate moment and I’m just going to leave it at that (some things are intended to be private). JK. This is not what this is about.

So I decided to honor this coffee by sitting down in the canal and having my breakfast there while re-reading one of my favorite books. It was blissful, to say the least.  After it was time to leave (I do have a thesis to -pretend- to write) I couldn’t find a bike for the life of me. So, I went against my predetermined mindset and decided to walk. Don’t get me wrong, I like to walk. I’m no Lizzie Bennet, but if I have to walk I walk. The thing is because at the moment I am: jobless, boyfriendless, moneyless (why, when you are poor everything is about money. Rhetoric question), and friendless (cause they gotta work, don’t be worrying about me) I did the most unthinkable thing you can do in this capitalist society, I took the long road and wasted time (I struggled really hard not to put quotation marks there). And I just had the quietest and most miraculous mornings I’ve had in a while…. and girl, I literally just went for a walk. 

But that’s still not what I came here for. I’m reading (listening on audiobook actually) “Walking in Wonder” (2018) -naturally very metha of me- by my king -you know it- John O’Donohue. So, as you do, when listening to an audiobook I had to stop a few times to write down the chapter with the exact timing to listen to this all over again. Because this shit is the bomb. If I love you and you are asking me for revolutionary reads I’ve already talked your ear off about the late John O’Donohue. His books, conversations, lectures, and talks are a gift to the world. The insight. It’s just… *sighs* you know I can never really talk about what I find sublime. As Susan Suntag said, a book “worth reading is an education of the heart. It enlarges our sense of human possibility, of what human nature is, of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness”

Anyway, I was just here to share some quotes I struggled to write down from an audiobook in the middle of Paris: 

“The real mystery is not that things are the way they are, but that there is something rather than nothing.” : !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “…Each one of us is the custodian of an inner world that we carry around with us.” “…and warm awareness, you are going to have an incredible life. You are going to have sufferings as well, but you will always return to that place of warmth and fire within yourself.” (hardcore to read after practicing Ashtanga) “….One of the sad things today is that so many people are frightened by the wonder of their own presence. They are dying to tie themselves into a system, a role, or to an image, or to a predetermined identity that other people have actually settled on for them. This identity may be totally at variance with the wild energies that are rising inside in their souls. Many of us get very afraid and we eventually compromise. We settle for something that is safe, rather than engaging the danger and the wildness that is in our own hearts.”

I mean!!!!! Right?????

If I were you I would start with (my favorite) “Anam Cara” 

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On Running and Yoga

Maybe because is one of those things that are over-hyped but are actually worth the hype, or maybe it’s because of my natural tendency to obsess over things that I find interesting. But there’s something about yoga that keeps me reading about it most days (lately). Most of the stuff I want to say has been written about for quite some while. But like with Miranda, there’s this feeling I have about a silence being kept there, naturally, I like to read about what’s not being said. And there are lots of different things that are not being said about yoga.  At least, for a practice that includes, as of 2022, approximately 300 million people, not much is being discussed about it, at least in the Occident (other than how good it is to your body and, sometimes, your mind). There was the neoliberal aspect of the “culture” and the “cultish” vibes Amanda Montell kindly reminded us of, but we’ve been over that already. I would like to talk about the dark side of yoga, and I don’t mean about the sex scandals, the atrocious “namaslay” and the horrifying consequences of capitalism and cultural appropriation, or even the crazy cultish shenanigans some teachers (and students) are all about. I want to talk about what happens when you really practice. when you go there to breathe movement into meditation. I want to talk about the darkness that surfaces when we don’t pay attention in life but then is sprayed all over the mat. what happens when we sacrifice our breath for something else. and what doesn’t. 

I was someone who was not a stranger to sports. I grew up playing tennis and when that got too boring (I realize now that I hated competition), I started running. For a while that was fun, I was young and my body was strong. But it was when I started running long-distance that things got a bit complicated for me. After 12-14km I started to really be in my head about it. There were of course the good days when running felt like flying, and like the sky after a storm, the thoughts were clearing out. “Runner’s high” some people call it. And it was fucking bomb. I think that’s why some of us kept running, to find that place again. but listen, running makes absolutely no sense. It doesn’t matter what people tell you, your knees will resent you for the rest of your life, as well as that one nail in your right toe. It was meaningless, but the strength and discipline (with my dad’s help) that required running to nowhere at all for two hours every day was something else. And I don’t mean to brag but for a while, I was really good. So good that even on bad days (where I was sure that that was the race I was going to literally shit myself) I arrived in second place. In Haruki Murakami’s brilliant memoir of 2008 “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” (my bible at the time) he stated that “the end of the race is just a temporary marker without much significance. It’s the same with our lives. just because there’s an end doesn’t mean existence has meaning. an endpoint is simply set up as a temporary marker, or perhaps as an indirect metaphor for the fleeting nature of existence.” Running can be a truly philosophical experience I tell you. Still, the Buddhist saying he popularized “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional” never hit more true than with my last years of running. At some point, past my peak, there was a lot of suffering in it. So when I moved to Paris, 7 years ago, I completely stopped. 

I know this seems totally random and completely unrelated (shut up, everything in life is like that) but after today’s practice I couldn’t stop thinking about the relation between that state I felt when I was running and what I feel when I practice. It was about that darkness. the sense that there was something to be found there, in that shadow and quiet place. But no matter how much you ran and how much struggled to see through the fog, in this -sometimes- moving meditation there was no channel into which to connect to it. 

But with yoga, where there is as much pain as in running, there seemed to be a way through. What I discovered is that running and the practice of yoga can be quite similar.  Actually what these two things have in common are: movement, breathing, and silence. and I just found out that it was the only combination necessary to connect. To connect to yourself and to the other. 

John O’donohue, in my opinion, the greatest non-fiction writer in the entire world (a magical man really), wrote in his book “Anam Cara” that “the body is your only home in the universe. It is your house of belonging here in the world. It is a very sacred temple. To spend time in silence before the mystery of your body brings you towards wisdom and holiness (…) One of the oldest meditations is to imagine the light coming into you, and then on your outward breath to imagine you are exhaling the darkness or inner charcoal residue (…) far sooner than your mind, your body knows how privileged it is to be here. It is also aware of the presence of death. There is a wisdom in your physical, bodily presence that is luminous and profound.”

What I didn’t understand about what I felt when I ran for a long time, but now I do with the practice of yoga, is that the combination of these three factors: silence, movement, and breathing, there is a way in which we can witness death. And death can be just… such a fucking bummer. but it can also be, wait for it, liberating. 

Seane Corn, in a podcast for Onbeing talked a little bit about it, and the way she articulates it makes all the sense in the world to me: 

“I am a really unlikely person to be doing yoga like I said, I was brought up in a fairly blue-color environment I am not an educated woman I am very independent, and buying into all the spiritual fluffiness has never been anything I would have predicted in my life, Why I am so attracted to it is because is anything but fluffy. It taught me, not right away it took me a while, once the emotions came up was that I realized that to really understand what love is and to understand this thing that they call the light you also have to understand the opposite, you have to understand and embrace the power of the shadow, what love is not. The shadow is the darkness, the darkness within us and that’s the beautiful part, because if it’s in me it’s also in you. And if I can understand it in me, I can also witness it and recognize it within you, without judging it. I will only judge your shadow if I’m judging my own… 

In yoga there’s no separation, only connectedness “

Damn right. 

p.s. In harmony with all things random (or are they really?) please complement with this poem, by the marvelous, David Whyte: 

“The House of Belonging”

Written by David Whyte

I awoke

 this morning

 in the gold light

 turning this way

 and that

thinking for

 a moment

 it was one

 day

 like any other.

But

 the veil had gone

 from my

 darkened heart

 and

 I thought

it must have been the quiet

 candlelight

 that filled my room,

it must have been

 the first

 easy rhythm

 with which I breathed

 myself to sleep,

it must have been

 the prayer I said

 speaking to the otherness

 of the night.

And

 I thought

 this is the good day

 you could

 meet your love,

this is the gray day

 someone close

 to you could die.

This is the day

 you realize

 how easily the thread

 is broken

 between this world

 and the next

and I found myself

 sitting up

 in the quiet pathway

 of light,

the tawny

 close grained cedar

 burning round

 me like fire

 and all the angels of this housely

 heaven ascending

 through the first

 roof of light

 the sun has made.

This is the bright home

 in which I live,

 this is where

 I ask

 my friends

 to come,

 this is where I want

 to love all the things

 it has taken me so long

 to learn to love.

This is the temple

 of my adult aloneness

 and I belong

 to that aloneness

 as I belong to my life.

There is no house

 like the house of belonging.

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Wislawa Szymborska

You can call it serendipity, connection, or just plain old confirmation bias. But it feels like when I discovered Brain Pickings, today baptized with the name The Marginalian, by the wonderful @mariapopova my whole (inner) life was changed. thanks to her (what I assume to be) recommendations I read myself out of pain, boredom and existentialism. My sister and I can’t still decide whether it was her or I that sent the link first (it was me, obviously) but that first article gave me a soul boner like no other. Anyway, before this gets any sexier than it has to be, I just wanted to thank her for bringing this poem and this poet into my life. 

Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012), a Polish poet, was born 100 years ago today. She won the Nobel Prize in 1996. She wrote poems and prose that have the potential to leave you both breathless and still, all without using complex metaphors or fancy words. She explored the human condition by using paradox and contradiction (relatable af if you ask me) and was just a badass, ironic bitch. Just look at that photo of her. 

“Possibilities” and “The End and the Beginning” are spectacular at showing what this incredible lady was able to articulate. But “Life while You Wait” my favorite -and my sister’s, who can recite it on the spot- still makes my soul sing with longing: 

Life While-You-Wait. Performance without rehearsal. Body without alterations. Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play. I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living, I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands. I improvise, although I loathe improvisation. I trip at every step over my own ignorance. I can’t conceal my hayseed manners. My instincts are for happy histrionics. Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more. Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back, stars you’ll never get counted, your character like a raincoat you button on the run — the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance, or repeat a single Thursday that has passed! But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen. Is it fair, I ask (my voice a little hoarse, since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no. I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is. The props are surprisingly precise. The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer. The farthest galaxies have been turned on. Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere. And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.

*mic drop*

@amandapalmer Another bad bitch recited both Possibilities and Life-While-You-Wait for The Margininalian More on the blog.

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On Yoga

Struggling with chronic back pain, almost a year ago, I signed up for a yoga class in the canal. 

For the past year, I’ve lived (more like survived) all different kinds of physical afflictions. all the way from my feet to my neck, I was in constant pain. In June last year, I went to 4 different specialists (several times) to figure out what was wrong with me (plot twist: the problem was not what seem to be the problem. It never is). So, after months of taking pills, seeing different doctors, and going weekly to the chiropractor, I finally decided to, as the receptionist put it, “try this yoga thing”. You know I’ve never been much of a joiner, or a group player (joined only once a gym under strict recommendation from my parents when I was young) so “exercising” with a lot of people in a closed room was already set up to be one of a kind experience for me. I was a runner (and you will always be a runner,  even after you stop running; if you are not sure, ask your knees). 

So I joined a class on a random day in the summer of last year. I spare you the physical inconveniences, alien language, chanting, and confusion between left and right. I will tell you though, that it was not unlike running… except for everything. 

First of all, there was something so soothing about the place. The dim lights, and the soft music playing in the background. For me though, it was the walking barefoot that did it. The clear instructions (I guess like that scene from Fleabag and the Father, I just wanted someone to tell me what to do), the promise that everything will be all right if you just breathe. One breath at a time. It was the definition of longing in a place. There was also the fact that despite the clumsiness of your movements there was so much dignity to be felt on top of that (sweaty) mat. 

Even in that first class, I knew that what was happening in that room was definitely something I have only experienced in solitude. 

And you know, ever from that first practice, I’ve tried to tell people what I’ve felt: the connection, with myself and all these random strangers breathing loudly and sweating profoundly, the joy, the frustration, the peace. But, almost like poetry, the whole experience seemed to have a divine quality. There was something that rendered it almost sublime. Impossible to talk about. 

I’m a romantic we both know that. But I’m also a social science bitch. 

Cause, listen, the clothes these girls were wearing (I obviously also got my Lulus on sale because have you felt the fabric on them leggings??? They also fit like a glove, so don’t judge me… even though I am judging them), the price of the classes, the teachers, the whiteness and the maleness in yoga, was something I could definitely talk about. 

So what did I do? I went and did a little research on the topic (instead of researching for my thesis naturally). And what I found was as beautiful and raw as well as synthetic and disappointing. And that’s fucking normal I guess. 

The thing is that

As much as I was practicing (six times a week until this morning. Excuse me for being better than you). I was reading on the subject. I was (am) drunk on the experience. The sense of belonging, of community, the strength I felt (and feel) I was gaining. It felt life-changing, and it is. But it felt… how could I put it… problematic?

And it is. It turns out yoga is kind of a cult. I mean, a lot like a cult. cultish even. which is why you need to read “Cultish” by the genius Amanda Montell (more on that later). 

So reading “The Politics of Yoga” by Farah Godrej, as you do, I worried I was becoming a Neoliberal yogi. The article, which I found a bit rad for my taste was as subtle as a gun (like Margaret):  

“Contemporary postural yoga offers the modern consumer a dizzying variety of choice in terms of the possibilities for practice, while allowing her to construct her own identity in keeping with market logic and consumer culture (…) Like diet and exercise, postural practice becomes one more way in which neoliberal subjects can become governors of their own selves (…) More insidiously, yoga can function as a complete preoccupation, a choice which perpetuates the fallacy that one is doing something meaningful.  In pursuing yoga, many may see themselves as making a lifestyle “choice” which seems to supply a seemingly benevolent ethical content. Practicioners of yoga may imagine that they have discovered a broadly palatable ethics that feels exotic and countercultural.  But in actuality, this choice may function to displace politics, by pacifying the subject in a measure proportional to the extent of her preoccupation with deviating from the apparent default lifestyle choice.  The larger the lifestyle “choice” looks, the more it may preclude her from having the energy to explore more radically democratic solutions.  Yoga can become a visible outlet to soak up resources in a way that will not truly destabilize the dominant system, an elaborate preoccupation that absorbs the time and money which could be directed toward challenging political structures.  It may provide the illusion that one is taking a drastic step away from the dominant system, while simultaneously consuming the resources and effort required to explore truly radical alternatives“

Ehm. 

Harsh. 

But, I mean, she does have a point. 

And this bitch doesn’t even rant about cultural appropriation, colonization, and capitalism. 

Yoga (or the one I used to practice) felt like an escape. An escape from myself, from the outside world, almost like books (and it is, don’t get me wrong) but it could be so easy to get lost in someone else’s world. And very hard to find a way out. As long as cult goes, it is not a shitty one. Still. it’s cultish. 

And it is not yoga. At least not the one I want to practice. 

As Susanna Barkataki, eloquently wrote in her book “Embrace Yoga’s Roots” what yoga offers us “is a pathway to know within ourselves the root cause of so many of these harms: separation. (…) when we mistake yoga for a workout routine, reduce it to physical fitness or even practice some of the deeper practices without an eye to the whole system of liberation it offers, we rob ourselves and each other of the potential of this practice….”

“In yoga there is no separation only connectedness” 

And I believe that shit.  

I recommend that you do not do like me, go read the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita before buying 120 euros leggings (they’re expensive even on sale). There is more value in the books. And they’re cheaper and longer lasting. 

These days I’m practicing Ashtanga. In Ashtanga, I found everything I’ve always identified with: order, discipline, repetition, effort, control and pain. And you know, as a virgo, its the only thing that gets me going. I told you I was better than you. Jk.

Ps. I found this totally random but very interesting article on “Plato and Yoga” by John Bussanich if you were thinking like me: in what do the Platonic dialogues resemble South Asian texts. You can find that in the book : “Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought” or the article directly in Jstor. 

Xoxo 

Lena. 

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Murzilka - June 1924 - via Internet Archive

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A classic.

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Source details and larger version.

My collection of vintage fish imagery is swimming along.

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“To kill our dream is to kill ourselves. It is like mutilating our soul. The dream is what is most truly, impenetrably, ineradicably ours.”

— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet