Full Moon, Pedregal, AMYI Convention, Mexico City September

Full moon Mexico City 13 September 2019

Pedregal is the name of a section of Mexico City. It is not far from the volcano Iztaccíhuatl,

which is considered to be extinct. Lorena Beltran and I joked about the theory of extinction. She pointed out that the volcano Popocatepetl which had been considered to be extinct turned out, in 2014, and into the present. NOT to be.

So in Mexico City, anything can happen. Of course anything can happen anywhere, but in La Ciudad Grande y Majestuosa de México, this seems to be particularly true.

The days before el Día de la Independencia in Mexico (16 septiembre) are called “la Puente,” because they form a bridge to the holiday, roughly equivalent to our fourth of July. The day commemorates the New Republic of Mexico throwing off the stern yoke of Spanish Conquest. Since the time of Cortés, the native peoples of Mexico had been under the iron rule of the European nation of Spain. All the native tribes—the Aztecs, the Mixtecs, the Olmecs, and many others fought with each other and with the conquerors for protection of their native territories.

All over the city we see red, green and white decorations and many Mexican flags flying—flaunting of course the same colors in vivid blocks with an eagle in the middle. The occasion for my visit was the 11^th annual Iyengar Convention, held at the Centro Asturias and presided over by Bobbie Clennell, a senior teacher from New York. The convention was marvelous—Bobbie is an excellent teacher—and the best part of it was that AMYI (the Mexican Iyengar Association) was able to offer the classes free to members of the Association.

I also attended, prior to the convention itself, a meeting of the AMYI Certification Committee, of which I have been an advising member for a couple of years. The miracle of this recent meeting was that all present were able to voice their concerns and all present were able to listen to each other respectfully. All agreed to the principles proposed by the Committee President, Rosanna Rubio, who led the meeting with grace and poise.

So, all told, it was a short but eventful visit, and highlighted by a cena, on the full moon night, to a restaurant near the ancestral home in Pedregal of the internationally famous Mexican architect, Luis Barragan. He was known for his use of color and for his modern structures that showed off color and light in a new and unusual way. You can see his influence all over the country in the brightly colored walls. His innovations and genius remain alive as “emotional architecture.”

I’m reviewing this writing during Climate Week in New York City. What strikes me is the emotional response I had, undoubtedly with many others on the planet, to seeing a photograph of the United Nations building lit up with the stern, elegant words of Greta Thunberg. She reminds us that today is the day to change our ways, or the consequences will be inexcusable. Agreed.

New Moon/Eagle Woman Toms River, September 2019

New Moon Toms River 2019 September

Virgo, working clean, fasting now

Eating leftovers hard on a belly

Waiting for cocktail hour, mets winning

Losing disappointing amazing

Deer running rampant hordes young

& old, hummers here till mid month

Maybe longer climate change

Shootings everywhere, nowhere

Safe bump stocks banned shootings

Not diminished no solution no 

Where to hide man enough to

Be moms now rush the senate its

Their fault Moscow mitch and nra

Funded politicians too scared to lose

Campaign funding the root of the 

Problem, old story, sold story

Eternal greed envy and fear

We’re cooked, just

Cooked, all in a global

Concentration camp

Waiting to die

Full Moon, Rising Soon, Sunset Georgian Bay August 2019

8/16/19, at Georgian/Glacier Bay

So this morning she invents rituals for her mongrel tribe

After the father dies, you shall enter a cave for three days and live without food or water

When you emerge, you must call for him in a loud voice and when he does not answer, you must bury your head in your hands and grieve in your way for the rest of the day

When the mother dies, you shall enter the woods and wander on purpose to be lost

When you feel completely lost you must despair and call for her

When she does not answer, you shall lie on the earth and kick with your legs and punch the air with your arms and wail and rage as loud as your voice allows.

 When you finally fall asleep you dream that she is holding you in her arms and you are sucking her tit. Waking you realize that she is with you giving you strength to find your way home

When the sibling dies you shall swim in deep cold water over your head until you are exhausted and when you feel that you surely shall drown you must cry out loud for other siblings to come to your aid

When they do not come—they do not or will not hear you, you must rescue yourself

When the lover dies the lover shall wander the earth—cities and towns and wild wastes—crying out for the beloved in any and all languages that she knows. He shall curse the lover, she shall praise the lover. She shall enter the empress’s castle as a spy and spy on all lovers there. He shall enter the bodies of the lovers at the moment of orgasm and take on the ecstasy of each then slip away to hibernate/estivate/germinate anew 

When the spouse dies the spouse shall disappear from all viewers and times and places into a space of no thing no person no animal no sun no rain no wind no ice no heat no storms no earthquakes no tsunamis or hurricanes. The spouse shall disappear therefore into a void to die while alive to let go of their life to let go of their memory to let go of their heart/mind/soul to let go of life itself to practice dying. After practicing, the spouse can return or stay dead/undead as the signs reveal.

When the child dies the sibling/parent/aunt/uncle/cousin/grandfather/mother must build altars for them, say shiva for them, crying out: “Luckypup, lucky puss, you have dodged the bullet of more life, of sorrow, of disaster/defeat/disappointment, of the shit river. Cursedpup, cursedpuss, you have left us forever with your shining face and limber limbs unfinished your mindbody pure of the stain of lust of procreation of longing, lucky/unlucky pup we miss you as we miss nothing else as we miss the nothing that you left behind as we miss you reading the runes of our lives

you still outlive us

Speaking about language with the Canadian boys

They know that it is arbitrary, their Vietnamese grandmother, like your Polish grandmother, never spoke her native language to you.  No, scratch that, your Polish grandmother tried when you were eight and living on Perry street and she was visiting from Jersey. She spoke of masculine and feminine pronouns and you gave up. You gave up because you did not understand what she meant by masculine and feminine pronouns.

New Moon, August, Tom's River, NJ

Speechless Yet Writing, New Moon August 2019

So, the moon is new again, in Leo, of course, since that’s where the sun is now. Leo’s a sign, of course, of much optimism and constancy. The moon, of course, is the main planetary symbol of Inconstancy. So we’ve got ourselves a bit of a built-in dualism, you might say.

Speechlessness finds me this morning. Maybe it will spill over into my fingers and prevent me from typing. The tipping point I reached last fall has developed into a complete “bouleversement.” It is as if a big unexpected rogue wave came and tossed me completely over as I was swimming in what appeared to be a calmer sea. Plan of action—I can’t even imagine at this point. Overwhelmed, silenced (almost), in shock. Which is where it seems that domestic terrorists and gun rights activists want me to be.

So I am complying for this morning. A combination of reading “Silk Roads” and “The Warmth of Other Suns” (actually listening to the last one and reading the former out loud) is giving us quite a fascinating perspective on ancient and recent history. People have been unspeakably cruel to each other for centuries. Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Pagans warred, pillaged, raped and plundered for centuries. White southerners and northerners and black migrants have all been unspeakably cruel to African americans for centuries.  This cruelty is not something we can just wipe off the board. Hatred and the capacity to act on hatred is not something any of us can say we are immune from. Yet one can’t help but wonder if more difficulty in procuring assault weapons and access to better education would both help?  Truly, I am today beside myself with paralysis and despair.

Yet the hummingbirds still come to Helen’s sugar water and the deer of all ages (FOUR fawns with white speckles) come to the back yard, indeed all over the neighborhood in south Jersey.

The beautiful ocean still beckons and the bakery and library on the way home entice us as usual. Life goes on. And on, and on, until it doesn’t.

Tom’s River, Ocean County, New Jersey, 2 August 2019