arse poetica

Throwing my Sun Salutation all up in ya face!

Hoo, I needed that.

Dirt Under My Nails » I’m so gonna downward-dog your ass!.

When it comes to yoga, honey, I’m one Ashtanga crazy beyatch throwing my Sun Salutation all up in ya face.

Don’t you come in here posin’ because up in this Y, we yoga tough. This ain’t your mamma’s yoga, this is extreme yoga.

Monkey pose … bam! Flying Crow pose … bam! That’s right. I’m not even spilling my latte. You scared now? You should be.

Uh oh … Upward Facing Dog … bam! That’s right. I’m doing the dog. Uh oh … did you hurt yourself? Why don’t you take a break and see how the big girls play.

Why don’t you sit there and watch me reach a state of perfect peace? Check it out … Bam! Peace! Right there. Just reached it. I reach inner peace faster than any of these chumps circular breathing in here. I got so much inner peace it’s shooting out my nose. But I’m not done yet … oh no. Lotus pose … bam! Headstand pose … bam!

Check it out ... Bam! Peace! Right there. Bwaha! I want to be a peace badass, too. Must do more yoga.

What, No "I Hate Murka" Button?

My pal went as a conservative going as a "goddamn librul" for Halloween this year. Nice.

Those hipster pants practically scream Homosexual Agenda!

P.S. My favorite button: It's a toss up between "Freedom Sucks!!!" and "I Live for Orgies!!!" Must we decide?

Getting Through the Night

A. L. Kennedy, one of my favorite authors, has found something that gets her through the night: stand up comedy. 

Stand-up gets me through the night.

In everyday life, I feel very little (which is for the best), but 20 minutes in a club, an hour in a theatre with everybody happy - that means I'll get a decent sleep and I'll believe that words and individual actions have meaning. That's 20 minutes or an hour away from me. Even a duff gig makes me feel alive.

Now that I perform comedy regularly, I've realised the blindingly obvious fact that, actually, it is like writing.

Whatever your taste in comedy may be - and comedy is viciously subjective - it relies on rhythm and melody just as much as poetry might. (Even a pie in the face has to arrive at exactly the right moment.) One evening you'll sound like notes on the back of an envelope; weeks later, months later, you might suddenly hear the sound of your own voice, real voice.

All of the steps the writer takes - finding her voice, choosing her material, uncovering her nature and working with it, learning the craft - I've found myself visiting them again, and again. Which is never a bad thing. No matter what else happens, at least I can keep learning and working and telling stories.

Nice. Inspired by her description, I'd be compelled to do similar were it not for that whole public performance aspect of it all. And the being funny part. If it weren't for those two things, I'd go for it.

[via]

[Photo: a lovely picture by my pal JM of a leek from his garden gone to flower.]

You Ought to Be with Me

This poster is so awesome I could cry tears of joy.

One day I just want to have it in me to strut like that. Even for a minute.

Check out the poster of James Brown, too. That is so fantastic that I want to rob a bank to buy all new furniture just to give that poster its aesthetic due.

[via]

Ingmar Bergman, Famed Film Director, Dies at 89

Unmatched. His films are legend and, as they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I always loved French and Saunders' send up of Bergman.

Ingmar Bergman, Famed Film Director, Dies at 89.

Ingmar Bergman, the “poet with the camera” who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89.

Critics called Mr. Bergman one of the directors — the others being Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa — who dominated the world of serious film making in the second half of the 20th century.

I'll Take Two(-Thousand)!!

Holy Hannah, where have you been all my life, magic oxytocin spray??

A nasal spray to shed your shyness!

University of Zurich researchers have created a spray that can relieve people of shyness, and help them socialise with others.

The spray is very easy to use, and an individual can boost self-confidence just by squirting it up the nose.

The researchers say that the spray harnesses the powers of a feel-good hormone called oxytocin, a neurotransmitter in the brain that is involved in social recognition and bonding.

The mammalian hormone is produced naturally by the body when a person is in love, and it also induces labour in pregnant women. The spray contains a synthetic version of it, created in the laboratory.

I'm blowing my mind over here thinking of the impact this could have had on my life. Being shy isn't all bad, but it can be significantly limiting in meaningful ways. I've outgrown some of my shyness (not all), but NONE of my introversion. Oh sweet mystery of life, just to be in a quiet house w/ no phone and no commitments, alone w/ my thoughts (db and dogs okay)!

For all you extroverts out there w/ introverts in your life, I heartily recommend this fine article: Caring for Your Introvert: The Habits and Needs of a Little-Understood Group.

Seriously though, I can't get a hold of this stuff fast enough. I wonder how and who I'd be not being me. That said, does the world need more extroverts? Don't we introverts provide balance, some necessary evolutionary purpose -- like being quiet and careful observers of the world's unending wackiness and snarky commenters and sympathetic shoulders to cry on and introspective mooner-abouters? Yeah! The world does need that. I ain't changing for anybody, buddy!

[photo credit: ae @ work, wondering why work has to be so, you know, public.]

Lest I Ever Forget Why I Love James Baldwin

The Progressive has reprinted Baldwin's letter to his nephew in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. A (sadly) timeless excerpt:

A Letter to My Nephew | The Progressive.

I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it and I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be--indeed, one must strive to become--tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of war; remember, I said most of mankind, but it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

Incredible.

Read the whole thing. Not a wasted syllable and gives form to the term "righteous."

[via Maud Newton]

[photo credit]

Cats Domesticate Humans

My pal's cat, Harper, living right. Have you ever been so comfortable in your life?

Study Traces Cat’s Ancestry to Middle East.

Five subspecies of wildcat are distributed across the Old World. They are known as the European wildcat, the Near Eastern wildcat, the Southern African wildcat, the Central Asian wildcat and the Chinese desert cat. Their patterns of DNA fall into five clusters. The DNA of all house cats and fancy cats falls within the Near Eastern wildcat cluster, making clear that this subspecies is their ancestor, Dr. Driscoll and his colleagues said in a report published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science.

The wildcat DNA closest to that of house cats came from 15 individuals collected in the deserts of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the researchers say. The house cats in the study fell into five lineages, based on analysis of their mitochondrial DNA, a type that is passed down through the female line. Since the oldest archaeological site with a cat burial is about 9,500 years old, the geneticists suggest that the founders of the five lineages lived around this time and were the first cats to be domesticated.

Wheat, rye and barley had been domesticated in the Near East by 10,000 years ago, so it seems likely that the granaries of early Neolithic villages harbored mice and rats, and that the settlers welcomed the cats’ help in controlling them.

Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, which could account for the haughty independence of their descendants. “The cats were adapting themselves to a new environment, so the push for domestication came from the cat side, not the human side,” Dr. Driscoll said.

Cats are “indicators of human cultural adolescence,” he remarked, since they entered human experience as people were making the difficult transition from hunting and gathering, their way of life for millions of years, to settled communities.

Not the least bit surprised. Cats are obviously more highly evolved beings.

Amis on Blair: Mildly but Deplorably Flirtatious

I've been spending what feels like hours trying to find just the right excerpt from Amis's masterful profile of Tony Blair in the Guardian Books page. It's all too good -- just read it! (There's video, too.)

Martin Amis on Tony Blair's farewell tour.

My only regret, of course, is that Amis doesn't knock Blair upside the head. Besides that, it's wonderful, and I wonder if Martin Amis wouldn't mind taking time out of his busy, busy days of being one of the droll bad boys of English letters to give us wonderfully observed pieces like this. Damn satisfying in literary terms. Been thinking about it for days.

Rock on with Your Bad Self

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you."    -- Martha Graham