Playing catch with Priya, also known as random updates with some Proto-Indo-European tossed in just ‘cause

We must remember that music is more than sound and clamor; it is rest, the silence between notes. I suppose it’s a bit of a fallow time for me, creatively. I continue to plug away at my daily poems – and share them here, albeit not in order – and practice the sitar. I sing […]

Poem: The pink stairs

Sat on the stair valentine pink to think: Would I run again? Would I ever eat cheese? They’re not linked, only in relinquishment and I wept for my limp and I wept for a pizza — I don’t even like pizza, it’s the principle of the thing — tear-streaked on stairs the color of dime-store […]

Fear not: What lames you and what makes you whole

In the end, it was a dream – plain, mundane, achingly domestic — that guided me to wholeness. I am cooking a large pot of curried rice on the stove for a party. Absent-mindedly, I turn on the vent hood timer, and then realize my error and try to turn it off. As I hit a button, […]

Put down the peach and let’s suffer. It’s good for the soul, promise.

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. – The Princess Bride There’s a particular sort of joy that comes with gathering your feet and just walking across the floor, the grass, the road – and having nothing bite. As in: No sensation of sharp teeth in my knee ligaments, no need […]

Rode hard and put up wet: My life in injury

Before class began, I made a wheel of myself over and over, throwing myself to the ground, feet spinning over my head. As I leaned over my injured left leg for the breakfall, I felt a pop behind my knee and audibly gasped. And that’s how I ended up with what’s probably a Grade 2 […]

Poem: I suppose I should take a rest day once in a while

Stumble a footsole: There’s an arbitrary limit to be met, stated in the passive as if I weren’t the one stating the rule. It has to be twenty at least, so I slog six miles on yowling feet. I sublimate the suffering with blackbirds and smiles, the joy of anticipated dopamine or whatever recreates this […]

Poem: Slog

I laugh, slog and slide, let go of speed and the need to butterfly on the trail for sometimes we don’t float light. Sometimes we leave lead tracks frozen in the ice our slow passage marked until the spring. Buds whisper a lover’s promise but I close my eyes to the butterfly of that warm […]

Beyond survival, part two: Of the treadmill mask-erade and breakfalls

Somewhat of a follow-up to my previous exploration of mind-body integration, without the meowing nuns. (Unless you really want meowing nuns, in which case, you can invite them yourself. Please make sure they have all their shots.) The early morning weather forecast in the Great Snowy North could best be described as “chunky,” but my heart was […]

Beyond survival: On suffering, identity and a pack of meowing nuns

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with reading about the mind-body connection. It’s been an intermittent interest for a number of personal reasons that I’ll get to later, but the most recent prompt was a spontaneous message from the Gods I received via an unsolicited incident of imbas forosnai. Which, I suppose, you should expect, since this is a […]

Poinē: Pain as teacher

As with all living beings, humans retract from pain. Like plants, we lean away from negative stimuli and toward the sunlit lure of pleasure. Or perhaps we race toward the burrow, to lick our wounds or limp our way in the familiar darkness. We flee pain and run toward delight, arms wide. To be prosaic […]