I’ve started taking this Yoga class on Thursday nights. I’m searching for something to help me open up my stiff muscles. I’ve always been very tight, but it’s only in the last three years or so that I’ve started to understand what a blessing it must be to be flexible. I will never be flexible. My mom is very flexible. I didn’t get that gene. I got the bald gene. Not that these things are completely a question of genetics. My tightness of body is reflective of a tightness of mind which itself is reflective of the dark years we’re living through. I'm all for the decline of the American Empire, I just wish it didn't have to be so nasty. I’ve tried to cut myself off from the bad stuff out there. I hunker down in my house. But the nastiness is in the air. You can’t fully avoid it. You can't avoid breathing it in. I have a real sense that I should be doing yoga regularly, but something repels me from committing to it with real conviction. A friend of mine told me to stop with the weights altogether and devote all that time to yoga. He's a physical therapist. He said what I really need, especially someone like me, is elongation. The weights do the opposite. They make the muscles contract and harden. I definitely feel hard. Hard and tight. I’m a cynic. I can’t be optimistic and get enthused about the wonder of it all. I’m not able to live in the moment. I like to plan for the future, even though I know there’s no future. I am the tightest motherfucker in this yoga class. This studio is in a section of downtown LA that used to be very scary just ten years ago. It's basically on Skid Row. Eighteen and Life. Skid Row has contracted with the increasing dominance of finance capital, and parts of it have been given new names, like 'the Historic Bank District.' There are lots of expensive lofts in restored buildings from the 20s and 30s in these 'districts.' It's Barton Fink with wine bars and the occasional homeless person that they haven't yet managed to sweep off the street. But they will. I have mixed feelings about it. People who go to yoga classes have mixed feelings about gentrification.
The studio is in an amazing space. It’d be cool to see 20/20 play in this space. I don't believe in anyone anymore. This studio has sky-high ceilings and a vast wooden floor that they keep shiny and spotless. The floor might be pergo. Last night I was trying to decide if the floor is pergo. I was trying to decide this in the middle of a pose I couldn’t do because I'm too damn tight. You don’t have to bring your own mat, which is good because I don't like guys who walk around with yoga mats. When the class starts, I have problems right away, in lotus pose. What I sit in is not really lotus pose because my knees are up near my ears. I feel it in my ibands. It hurts. The muscles feel like they’re gonna snap. We sit in this pose for way too long. I wish the teacher would shut up and get us out of the goddamn lotus pose. I try not to a priori reject the foolish things the teacher says when we're in lotus pose. He plays Indian techno pop music on an iPod, over speakers. It gives the proceedings some hip exotic flava. The studio has a gong. I'd like to go all Carl Palmer on that gong. It's the kind of thing I would have done in eighth grade, knowing I’d get in trouble, but doing it because I loved getting a rise out of people. I liked to subvert the dominant paradigm. Being a cynic was subversive, but it was subversive in a conservative way.
I like the guy who teaches the class. I believe he’s a yogi. He turns off his iPone before the class starts. There have been a few cell phones going off in the middle of class. I’m guessing that’s not ok. I turn my cell phone off about 20 minutes before class starts, just to give myself a cushion to make sure it’s off. There’s some very foxy chicks in this class. I spend much of my time in the class thinking about what they look like naked. I bet a lot of yogis have sex with their students. I would if I were one. The yogi who teaches my class is so free and easy with his body. I like the way he unfurls his long black hair as the class is coming to a close. He gives us a blessing. He takes Visa. He touches the students. It’s not a sexual thing, it's just that he’s into connectedness with other human beings. I’m not used to being touched. I recoil when people touch me, but with the yogi I guess it has to be ok. You’re supposed to empty your mind when you’re doing a yoga sesh. I can’t do that. No surprise there. But last night I learned pigeon pose. I needed two blocks to do it, one underneath my ass cheek and one in front of me. Once I got the blocks in place and assumed the pose, it felt very good. It got at exactly the spot on my body that's fucked. I think I will probably have issues in my right hip and hamstrings for the rest of my life. These things don’t get better as you get older. But this pigeon pose helps. I’ve never known a sensation like the one I feel when I’m in pigeon pose. It’s almost too much for me. It might be the most incredible sensation I’ve ever felt...
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