Blossoms Around Town
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- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Devotion (Bhakti)
Much is said about devotion in yoga, and there is a great privileging by many of the path of devotion — bhakti. With no clear answers, I contemplate often what it means to practice bhakti, to be devoted in a religious or spiritual sense. Witnessing those on pilgrimage when I was in India (it was “pilgrimage season”), I was flooded with memories and ideas for contemplation about what it means to be devoted and how people express devotion.
Among the thoughts and memories were having observed the operaphiles in their expensive clothes swoon and gasp and applaud at the Vienna Opera House on the opera level where I had paid a dollar for standing room; having been literally swept off of my feet in the press of the crowds heading to the tube at Wembley Stadium after seeing the Rolling Stones in concert; watching the people do the standing wave thing at ball games while hollering for their team as if their whole view of the world was dependent on who wins; having taken, standing room only, the third class train from Florence to Rome during Easter week (a different pilgrimage season), on asking who is that woman on the billboards, discovering that India, too, has a habit of electing movie stars to political office.
Shiva Lingam?
This fountain is at the main entrance (not on the Mall, but around the corner) to the Department of Labor. It is only on every once and a while, and I do not usually use this entrance, so the fountain is not a main part of my relationship to the building.
One day, a couple of years ago, when I was sitting quietly near the fountain to get some soothing energy from the sound of the water and being outside, I thought about how much it resembled a shiva lingam. Was I seeing symbols that were not intended? Was the artist pulling one over on the government by submitting a design that carried symbolism that, in 1974, would not have been acceptable to many in charge? Was the symbolism there and understood when the design was permitted to be implemented? Do the answers to any of those questions matter with the fountain and all its imagery present in all its effusion?
State of the Garden (Before the Blizzard)
I went out back to make preparations for the storm. This included constructing protected space around the basement windows. I’d hesitated for years to give away the sheet plexiglass I’d used in a single artist show in the late 1990s. Every time I did a cleaning, I’d hold on to the plexiglass. Now I know why.
There was a little bit of kale and a few spring onions. They were sweet from having been frozen.
One Person’s Trash
One person’s trash is material for another person’s art.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Found Exhortation
Have you let the President know that you are against allowing any new pipelines and/or engaged in other action?
