Fierce Fiery Sun

Yesterday, I lost a dear friend. I have been in a time muddle for a week since we got word that Jim was heading to hospice. He was diagnosed nearly three years ago, and about a month ago was hospitalized, which started him on the decline that would be his last. Still, a group of us, some of his many dear college friends, were in grief shock and able manage our schedules so we could travel to meet at his apartment in the glorious San Francisco's Castro district last weekend, to sit with him and talk with him one last time. It was beautiful. It was heart wrenching. The oceanside light and color of the Bay Area helped keep me from falling through the sidewalk cracks of grief as we left Jim for the last time on Sunday, May 27th, and cllimbed the hilly street to our car. 

The day before yesterday, the day before Jim died, I had tea with a long-time local yoga friend/colleague named Dawn, and we discussed yoga and not much more, which seems to be the norm when I am with other yogis. We talked about our yoga paths as yogis and teachers. At one point, she said, "I remember you opened your yoga studio so that you could have more time to write."  I said, instantly and quippishly, "Yeah. Well, that hasn't happened. Well, it has, a little. Well, nothing like I’d hoped.” I stopped my bumbling there, and sat for a moment processing what I had said.

What does this have to do with my friend Jim? Jim was a poet, a philosopher, a scholar. As college friends, we were--the whole group of us--passionate, bold, carefree. Art meant absolutely everything to us so much so that all major doings—relationships, courses, dreams, jobs—revolved around that fiercely fiery sun known as the creative spirit.

That spirit shines brightly still. I have carried that spirit with me all my life. I barely recall telling Dawn and other people that by opening a yoga studio, I would have time to write. But I trust her, and in fact it’s a likely thing for me to say.

The next day, news of Jim's passing set something spinning in me that I want to address. In the last thirteen years, my artistic soul, and in the last six years career ’life’, has focused on yoga. Whereas for a long time I have regretted it, I see now that this was necessary. Yoga had to be my path so that I could get it together, begin to heal from long-held trauma, and use my renewed body-mind to continue to help myself and others. And as attestant to yoga's great ability, and my benefit, my yoga business has at times been highly creative work for me.

But where is the artist in me precisely? I aim to find out: Enter the blog (title TBD!). As long as I can sustain it, this platform to share my voice (poems, art, yogaland ruminations, et al) is available to anyone who wants to take some in, just as how the mat all these years has been a platform available to anyone who wishes to experience what I can share about the complex world of yoga.

The energy behind this blog is thus fourfold: It is my personal discipline to merge both yoga and writing in my life and thus myself in full in the name of self and community service. It stems from the very fact that I was an artist decades before I was a yogi. It’s a coming full circle, if you will. Second, it is a deep bow of gratitude to the ancient and always morphing human arenas of art and yoga, two facets of humankind essential to its survivorship. Third, it is an offering to whomever wants to engage. No chord of worry or anxiety is struck in my heart or head believing/expecting that words, like yoga, SHOULD do anything but BE. (Without much ego, I tread.) And, last, it is dedicated to my teachers in all walks of life, here and beyond, who have taught me so very much, who have loved me and encouraged me to keep going.

Jim, this first post is dedicated to your big life. Big love, my friend and pen pal...


And Death Shall Have No Dominion
—Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon; 
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot; 
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; 
Though lovers be lost love shall not; 
And death shall have no dominion.

​And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily; 
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; 
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through; 
Split all ends up they shan't crack; 
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores; 
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain; 
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies; 
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.