Sunday, November 18, 2001

out of focus// When I arrived in LA the price for "regular" unleaded gas at the station closest to Tom and Josh's place was $1.49. It's been dropping steadily and this morning it's $1.13. Gee, dropping bombs sure is good for gas prices. If we manage to kill all the "evil-doers" does that mean we can gas up for free?

I don't usually buy or read the LA Times but I always check out the headlines as I walk past the sidewalk vending boxes. Now that the FBI has suggested that the anthrax letters are probably not issuing from Arab/Muslim/Afghani terrorists but rather the homegrown kind the anthrax stories have been taken off the front page. Replacing them are stories about how much money the new Harry Potter movie is generating in it's first weekend. Even if they weren't running alongside articles about the goings on in Afghanistan I still wouldn't be able to think of anything more irrelevant to the average schmoe than how much money the corporate movie industry is making. This is news? Are we really expected to give a shit?

I'm having trouble focusing when I sit down at the computer and try to compose my thoughts into comprehensible form. For a while there it seemed as if the words would just fall out of my brain into my hands and all I had to do was hold them over the keyboard and let them trickle down from my fingers to the keys. Lately, though, it's feeling more like my thoughts are locked in my head tumbling around in a permanent spin cycle. Sometimes I can't write because I've got nothing to say. Right now I can't write (well or much) because I've got an imbalance between my energy (which is high) and my ability to concentrate. This message will therefore be rambling and lacking a theme.

I have to think that many of my fellow trainees are in a similar frame of mind because the energy in the studio is getting intense and frantic. The general noise level and the amount of movement in the hallways and locker rooms seems to be increasing daily. It feels as if our numbers are steadily increasing, the studio is becoming more crowded, everybody has more to say and their voices are getting louder. The posture clinics, which used to move in an organized and methodical fashion, are bogging down with kazillions of questions being asked of the teachers who are struggling to maintain control and focus. There are also several side activities taking place which constantly compete for attention: a yearbook; the traditional group photo collage/poster; a student-photographer has assembled a huge array of stunning b&w photos that he's been taking throughout the training and offering for sale at cost; rehearsals for a Luau party/performance with several components. Hopefully, the Luau, which concluded Friday night with a drum circle dance jam, will have released some of the restless energy that's been contributing to the chaos.

I'm writing this in a laid back coffee house just minutes from Tom's which I wish I had discovered earlier. It's surprisingly quiet with a nice selection of coffees, smoothies, baked goods and sandwiches. I've been drinking coffee on the weekends, sort of. There are some who sugggest that drinking decaf soy-milk cappucino isn't really drinking coffee. As if I care. I just noticed an odd juxtapostion that exists in these kinds of places with their couches and heaping piles of reading material. Coffee is a stimulant, right? So why do we go to coffee houses to wile away the hours lounging around and lazily leaf through newspapers and magazines? You'd think that right after drinking a Sumatran Black Death Espresso one would want to get on a motorcycle, play hockey, carve a totem pole or at least play violent video games.

There are two decent free "alternative" newspapers here: LA Weekly (laweekly.com) and New Times (newtimesla.com). I try to read them both but I prefer the Weekly. Intelligent, literate, political, substantial, poignant, relevant, these are not words that I would use to describe anything that exists in Atlanta. If you look at the advertisements and the classifieds it's obvious that the demographic target is the same as Atlanta's Creative Loafing so why is it that CL is such dreck?

Back in Atlanta, in the days immediately following Sep. 11, I was watching CNN coverage of the rescue mission during which they used a beautiful and melancholic song in the background. The music made the news coverage feel more visceral than is customary for a news story. I am all about melancholy so I was grateful when they superimposed the title and artist information in the corner of the screen. I forget the song name but it's from Enya's latest CD. I made a mental note to look for it the next time I was considering a music purchase. A couple of days ago, I noticed another Enya song playing in the background during a CNN program. I had one of those "Duh!" moments. I haven't had time to check this out but I'll wager that the company that produces Enya is a Time/Warner/CNN subsidiary. If you don't think about it beyond the obvious rationale that a company would draw from it's own internal resources for material to work with it doesn't seem nefarious. But give it more than 30 seconds and it's easy enough to conclude that the transformation of news from "information" to "product" is complete and that CNN is wisely following MTV and it's corporate strategy. Taking advantage of the tragedy of September 11 to sell CD's is pretty fucking nefarious, I'd say.

Information long ago sold out to become coporate propaganda so it should come as no surprise that the government has hired an advertising executive with no policy experience to manage it's propaganda campaign in the "war against terrorism." Charlotte Beers, whose previous claim to fame was managing the Head and Shoulders ad campaign (among others), is going to be cleaning up the war machine's image instead of dandruff. Gives you faith in government, eh?

It's many hours later and I'm back home.

The LA River is right around the corner. It's the sewer runoff that drains all the way through the city to the Pacific (akin to Clear Creek in Atlanta). The graffiti covered concrete is being reclaimed by the earth. There are polliwogs, crayfish and even wild ducks. It's lush and thick with bamboo and exotic looking plants. I saw a flock of parrots flying overhead. Man conquers nature, nature comes back. It's reassuring.

Not much yoga content in this one. I mentioned that I'm working on a speech I hope to be able to read at the graduation in two weeks. I have no reason to believe that I will be allowed to make a speech but I'm going to finish writing it and then ask if I can have a few minutes to read it. Regardless of whether or not I get permission I'll post it here. It's not much -- just a slightly humorous (yet sincere) thank you to my fellow trainees, the studio staff and all the teachers.

I put some pictures up: http://kaos.org/bikram/bikpics/

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