Standing Bow Pose Revisited / Sweet Baby James Revisited

It wasn't until 2007, when I was 57 years old and in a Yoga Teacher Training setting, that I ever tried the Standing Bow Pose, although I had taken my first yoga class in 1970 when I was 20. I think that my pose from 2007 or 2008 (the second photo) looks better than my pose this morning, but I haven't been doing that pose regularly and plan to add that to my home practice. A few weeks ago, I returned to classes at the B.K.S. Iyengar School of Yoga in Bellingham after many years of a regular home practice. It is good to be working with my old teacher again. She has suggested several poses for me to add to my home practice.

Last week, Richard's sister and brother-in-law sent me the James Taylor Greatest Hits CD which includes "Sweet Baby James," which, like yoga classes, first came into my life in 1970 when Richard was in Vietnam.

Listen

Talking Karmic Debt Blues / Like The Moon And The Stars And The Sun

Listen.

This morning I was listening to Jakob Dylan's CD "Seeing Things" in my car just before 9 a.m. He was singing "Everybody Pays As They Go":

Look up and see the men returning
In their winter coats
Some of them in one piece
Some of them got rolled
Some less than others
Some right through the nose
But everybody pays as they go
Young old rich and poor
Your mother she too owes
Cuz everybody pays as they go.

I thought of John Lennon's song "Instant Karma":

Instant Karma's gonna get you,
Gonna look you right in the face,
Better get yourself together darlin',
Join the human race,
How in the world you gonna see,
Laughin' at fools like me,
Who on earth d'you think you are,
A super star,
Well, right you are.

When I woke up this morning and turned the calender next to my bed to August 1, I found a wonderful woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Above is a detail from "The Hanging-Cloud Bridge at Mount Gyodo, near Ashikaga," which can be seen at Museo Chiossone in Genoa, Italy.

Well we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Well we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Well we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.
Yeah we all shine on,
Like the moon and the stars and the sun.

(Recorded by John Lennon on 27 January 1970 and released on 6 February 1970, it ranks as one of the fastest-released songs in pop music history, recorded (at London's Abbey Road Studios) the same day it was written, and coming out only ten days later. Lennon remarked to the press, he "wrote it for breakfast, recorded it for lunch, and we're putting it out for dinner.")
















Thanks to the Turtleback Dome webcam for the sunlight of the spirit image from Yosemite Valley.

OBOE LISTENING TO A WINDY DAY IN EARLY OCTOBER

Listen.

"She once walked right at my side. I'm sure she walked by you."
(Mimi Farina)

"Kiss the 21st century for me."
(what I heard Janis Joplin say in a dream I had in 1999)