The practice of practice and no practice of practice

Last night we all took advantage of today being a day off and as we mumbled at each other across the table at Tina's, the evidence on our tired faces was amusing.

I went to this crazy Indian take away restaurant after watching a disastrous amount of television. (Which, by the way, isn't half bad. There are plenty of American channels if you get cable.) They put rice in a little metallic baggie and sealed it. They did the same for a gooey potato dish. You have to see some of this stuff to appreciate exactly how much the mind freaks out when it sees something new like innovative food packaging.

Again, I'm here at Rishi's listening to music on the Internet with a determination to spread good music:

DEFIANCE, OHIO LYRICS
hear the song here
"Chad's Favorite Song"

do you remember passion? it's buried beneath a concrete world. have you forgotten compassion? are you in the middle of an ugly war between yourself and a giant machine? are you so tired you can't even dream anymore?

fuck this city, and fuck this filthy air. let's build a-frames in the woods and just live there. we'll all eat berries and build fires every night and forget this mistake we call modern life.

i believe in something, but i don't know what it is. it's either the future or the end. it's every reason that i do or don't get out of bed.

we live in the unhappy shadows of skyscrapers freight trains and malls to a soundtrack of nuclear warheads and bombs. addicted to power, addicted to authority, money, and success ... so far gone, without our addictions, do we even know how to live?

the sun is shining thru distance, bitter clouds that make me choke and cough and scream. sitting here along watching acid raindrops fall, this is not the life i want to lead.

Have you ever heard of Daniel Jonston? Good stuff. This is life changing.

Today I am half-determined to be semi-productive, although quite honestly I'm avoiding anything like it at all times. I woke up today when I felt like it and sat on my bed and played the harmonium for a little while. The sun was coming in through the window and I could feel the tan spread on my arm. There is nowhere I have to be, no one I have to see, nothing I really have to do. Just me sitting on my bed, playing my harmonium with the sun beating down on my arm. Life can be so different, and yet exactly the same.

We were sitting around a table talking and laughing and someone asked what I was doing today. I said something like "I'm trying not to think too much about it." We just kind of looked at each other and were like, "yeah."

Yoga Sutra

1.2 yogaścittavṛttinirodhaḥ

“Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind”