12/5/15

Like a Rolling Stone (No Direction of Its Own)






A Meditation: We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon 

- Joni Mitchell 



Inspired by energies that resound and pound gently with heart, I have found some calm after being stunned and sickened by gunmen in Paris, San Bernardino, and elsewhere

What started this particular mind thread was: 
Life is change; that's how it differs from the rocks.
—Jefferson Airplane
This quote, sent by a friend, did not sit right. Really? Rocks don't change? Of course they do! They ARE alive. They just change at a different rate. And aren't stars just big hot rocks? (or burning masses of oxygen and helium.) If we are all made of particles of hot rocks or more poetically, star dust—then we are all—star, saint, holy person, sinner, terrorist, cockroach—the same. 
(NASA scientist in video: when the stars die what remains? NO THING—form and emptiness. Us, dead stars? Not poetic, just scientific.)
However, what do star rocks or rock stars have to do with yoga or me? Who better to answer the Airplane than Bob Dylan? A FB friend asked for titles of great literature to describe their yoga practice. (She chose War and Peace.) The final redemptive verses of Dylan's classic were in my head:

You used to be so amused

At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used

Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse

When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose

You're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal


How does it feel, ah how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone

There is exhilaration in having nothing, without anything to lose, being invisible and without secrets. Yielding to what is—on and off the yoga mat has been a gift: I'm on my own, no way to get home, a complete unknown; can't hide flaws, and at my age nothin' to lose—a rolling stone! 
Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan     
(Dylan's lyrics are brilliant, so poetic and so unapologetically angry, genuine!) 

The rolling meditation leads to my brother and a friend whose pen name is Katriel. After hearing about my brother in hospice, he dedicated his poem "Stone kicking" to him. 

Stone kicking
the stone he was kicking along the road
fell 
through a grille into a drain
bending  for another pebble
he found a truth
and put this in his pocket

I carry this in my coat
sometimes my jacket
it tells me who I am, hints who I was
anchors my present

like stone it is not cold
it hums and vibrates there
alive, it will outlive me
says to take love
the only thing that lasts

the stone sits like a cat
on my papers
indifferently 
but holds them in place
without judging

This poem is dedicated to Gary – in kinship
 Katriel, Constitution Road, 18 March 2012



The thread now rolls toward Laurie Anderson's movie "Heart of a Dog" (itself a meditation on life, love, death:  "Heart of a Dog" Preview ) where Anderson tells her Buddhist teacher that she is not sure that she loved her dying mother...

And finally back to stone, stars, and terrorists. Until recently, I had not even a sub-atomic particle of understanding of anyone responsible for the extreme and brutal acts around the world. Why could or would anyone do such a thing? Often feeling helpless and heartbroken by world suffering and tragedy, I asked, 
What can I do?  
WE are stardust!  
We all dream of butterflies.

I will let Joni Mitchell explain, as a conclusion to this round-about:
I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me...
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm gonna try and get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it's the time of man
I don't know who l am
But ya know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion-year-old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden



And this too is yoga...and art...and rock n roll...and grass...and birds...and clouds....and stars...and bugs...and ...

love to you who see 
the meandering metta 
by and by all ways

note: I cannot get this google blog template to do anything I want. The fonts are all messed up, the wrong size, etc. I apologize and plead innocent to this visual mess.