Googlerts bring me nice things.

Like I said yesterday, I get about a bizillion Googlerts every day. A lot of them are crap, some of them are interesting, and a very few gems sparkle and inspire me to act. Yesterday’s was like that, of course, and one from last summer:

Luminous Clarity…: A Zen Teacher Who Curses, Plays Punk Rock …
By L. Espenmiller
It was a section about work and right livihood in a way I’ve never heard any yoga teacher, Buddhist teacher, or new age or goddess teacher or astrologer talk about jobs. Here was a guy - a zen teacher who is my age - talking about how … And this Brad Warner guy plays in a punk rock band from Akron, Ohio. And he loves Godzilla movies. And he curses up a storm. Uses the word fuck and bullshit… a lot. Two of my favorite curse words. He uses some other descriptives that …
Luminous Clarity… - http://luminousclarity.blogspot.com/2009/06/zen-teacher-who-curses-plays-punk-rock.html

So this reminded me of Noah Levine, and I just had to write and tell the blogger about him. But I got to reading her posts, and was overwhelmed with calm. With clarity. And inspired to sit and meditate, which I’d done last about 8 months prior at a meditation retreat led by Mr. Levine.

That kind of laziness is something I beat myself up for all the time. Wishing to find time to sit zazen, to just stretch, to actually actively practice yoga, to read for leisure… and then not doing it. Another year passes, didn’t do it.

But I reached out to Ms. Espenmiller about her blog and how lovely it is. And the reaching out led to Ms. Espenmiller giving yours truly a shout-out from HER blog, which is nice and validating all the way around. And, for someone whose whole premise is to give people permission to be themselves, human with all our shortcomings in a community of idealized zealotry, but who’s often mistaken for a narcissistic exclusionary asshole, the Luminous Clarity author’s words were wonderfully welcome.

And then this narcissistic asshole neglected to post a blog about Luminous Clarity. And the cycle continues. And oh yeah, I’m human.

So let this be a new world order. Let us reach out and give each other permission to Be. Ourselves. Here Now. Whatever. Won’t it be nicer? And for me: I vow to share the love, and not just keep it for myself, because there’s plenty to go around.

That’s what my momma taught me, anyway.

Kickstarter?! I hardly know ‘er!

So I get these Google Alerts (aka “Googlerts”; source: yours truly), see, based on important-to-me keywords like “punk rock yoga” and “irreverent yoga” and “namaste motherfucker” and such. Today I received The Best Googlert Ever:

Send A Semi-Well-Known Humor Writer To Yoga School! — Kickstarter
And if you want to know more about me, here’s my home page: www.nealpollack.com. See you on the mat. Namaste, motherfuckers! Project location: Boulder, CO …

Wha?! Neal Pollack?!?!! Said MY thing?!?!! Sweet! So of course I look into it.

Neal Pollack, Greatest Living American Writer, author of “cult satirical classic” The Neal Pollack Anthology Of American Literature is writing a new book that’s right up my alley on about a bizillion levels. It’s gonna be called STRETCH: The Unlikely Making Of A Yoga Dude, and is a comedy about his adventures in American yoga culture (coming from Harper Perennial, August 2010).

Here’s the catch: He’s gotta complete a yoga teacher training course first. That’s 2,000 hours of being taught to teach yoga. And he’s been accepted to a prestigious program in Colorado… but he lives in L.A. So he’s trying to raise $4,200 to send him there AND keep his family going in the meanwhile. All by March 28th.

Now, I don’t know how many people are out there reading this, but this seems like a noble endeavour that my readers might want to encourage… because — and if you aren’t familiar with Mr. Pollack’s work, I highly recommend you plop yourselves down at your local supermegabookstore chain and read his Anthology right now (and then leave without buying anything) — his is the voice that we need to see in black and white, his humor is what we need to shake the shoulders of the American yoga community and wake it/us up, his are the stories from the front that are going to be the real, honest exposed truth they won’t tell you in Yoga Journal!

Okay, I’m only HOPING about that last part, because I don’t really know, but I have a good feeling about it. A really good feeling.

So get behind it, people! Pledge your support! Because if he makes it through teacher training, and I find out you’ve contributed because of me… I’ll pledge enough to get us our own private yoga class with him. Promise.

Nothing Isn’t Nothing

I often wake up with songs already rattling around in my head, as I’m sure you do, too. Some days my brain is tackier than others (insert joke here), so some songs stick longer. I was discussing this with my friend Suzann the other night, and also how I’m less inspired to write Facebook status or Twitter updates (much less blog posts) —especially relevant ones— than I’d like to be. She suggested that I update Facebook status with whatever song is in my head… and a couple of other supportive gals (this one and this one) suggested I post ‘em here, too. So.

I’ll spare you the Joe Walsh and the Chumbawumba and The Carpenters. I’m ecstatic, however, to share with you a gem of a find I stumbled across in 2002,  just when I needed him most: Ben Kweller.

He was just a kid, barely 18 when he recorded this one, and I was involved in what felt like a messy, complicated relationship. Along comes this naïf, singing simple little love songs about simple little relationships. His innocence and clarity cleared away the crap and (it’s weird to say, but true:) lifted me out of that relationship.

Lessons Ben Kweller taught me:  Things shouldn’t be hard when they’re supposed to be good. One shouldn’t have to squelch oneself to be loved. It’s never that complicated.

Behold, the title(ish) track on 2002 album Sha Sha, “The Way It Should Be (Sha Sha)”:

when i was a movie star, an asteroid had hit the earth and prematurely ended my career. i thought out loud, but no one heard me saying:

“nothing isn’t nothing, nothing’s something that’s important to me. that’s right. and everyone’s a little nothing, that’s ok, that’s how it should be.”

that’s right. sha sha. sha doo.

when i was an astronaut, i bought a fancy charm. i thought you liked it but you called it cheap and at my feet it felt like:

“so sue me, it’s up to me if i decide to be what i think is right. and don’t bother me when i’m watching ‘planet of the apes’ on t.v.”

that’s right. that’s how it should be. sha sha. sha doo.

Go find it on iTunes, or better yet: Visit your local independently-owned record store and buy the whole album. That’s how it should be. Sha doo.

Now: What song is in YOUR head?

Yoga Bitches in T-Shirt Magazine!

Hey, friends (and foes: eff you!):

Yoga Bitches (and other Mofo fabulosity) is featured in the T-Shirt Magazine #61 article, National Scene: San Francisco!

I’m not sure how they heard of us, but we’re in great company with the adorable WilloToons, street- and skateware purveyors HUF and proud local historians Gangs of San Francisco.

Think globally, laud locally. Thanks, T-Shirt Magazine!

Say hello to Juror #9

The Buddha says to meet suffering without resistance, so that is what I endeavor to do, because I really do believe that we can embrace adversity with a sincere — and even hearty — “Namaste!” even if we still grumble “mthrfckr…” under our breaths.

This week, I got seated on a jury, and am now making $15/day, instead of being able to go to my much-needed part-time day job, which pays for the minimum (and by no means all) of my expenses. So I might make some gas money, for when I get to go back to work.

Yet, I found myself in the county courthouse with a surprising sense of calm, and/in the deep knowledge that I would become a juror this time.

I’ve been summoned countless times, including summoned to serve in San Francisco as soon as I moved to New York City, and vica versa, as soon as I moved back. Since then, approximately every year or two, I’ve called the automated attended the night before the summons date, each time, and instructed to call back in the morning, and sometimes then instructed to call back at noon for a potential arrival time of 1pm. Always, I was dismissed and told I’d fulfilled my jury service simply by calling a disembodied, recorded voice. Always, I wondered what kind of civic duty that was, exactly.

This time, somehow, I knew it was my turn. Maybe it was Murphy’s law, because before, I’d been summoned when I had a day job, the kind that stresses you out just to think about it, the kind about which I’d enacted the rule which states: I Don’t Talk About My Job When I’m Not There. Now THAT was a time I’d've liked to take a federally-mandated jury duty holiday from the job. Or last year, after I’d quit that job and became my own boss. I was pretty flexible with my schedule, and an extra $15 a day would certainly have been a boon. But no. THOSE times, I just called the number, got excused, and resumed my business.

THIS time, sure, I need the cash, but not more than the rate at which I can earn it if I’m NOT listening to the facts of a case I’m not legally allowed to talk about right now and then deliberating on those facts with eleven other jurors (and two alternates) whom it just took two complete days to select.

The Universe has a sick sense of humor, indeed, and I enjoy a good joke.* So. Something in me said to just embrace it, roll with it, let it flow, and the answers to my personal financial dilemma will become clear.

Because what are the options? Bitch and moan like the other folks summoned for jury duty? That won’t fix it or change it or make it go faster. Resistance makes it harder on the resistor, and, I hear, is futile.

So best to welcome the frustration and suffer less. This is my new tack. Wish me luck.

*In all honesty (not that I wasn’t being honest this whole time, I mean shit, I raised my right hand and swore my honesty twice over the last two days), though, jury duty is our civic duty, it is our right and privilege as citizens. Sure, we organize and we protest and we vote, but if we’re not in the majority then, in the end, our voice doesn’t count. On a jury, our voice is one-twelfth of the deciding whole, and that is just statistically much more direct and immediate and, I hope, satisfying. And how often do you get satisfaction with the government? (Y’know, besides voting in somebody supergreat this time around?!) So when YOU get YOUR jury summons, go out there and rock it!

April is the cruellest month…

It’s been tough, this month. Lots going on. Nothing going on. It’s not spring yet. Oh sure, it sprung, but then it ran away and hid again. It’s hard sometimes to get one’s groove on when These Economic Times™ are bringing everyone down, when the networks are cancelling all my favorite teevee shows, when my grandmother can only wait for the cancer to overtake her, when a new virulent epidemic is on the sweep, when people are actually criticizing our fair president for all the myriad things it just wasn’t possible to do in The First One Hundred Days instead of lauding him for the admirable first leaps in the great climb out of the hole that’s been dug for him, when we’ve lost Bea Arthur, when finding a part-time day job is actually the height of my joy.

Oh, and another thing from this month: The 15 year anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death.

Truly, I’m ambivalent about this, as I was fifteen years ago. Then, I remember my dad saying, “It’s not like he’s John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix or something, what’s the big deal?” At the time, I had already been in and done my stint as a college radio deejay, and was one when ‘Nevermind’ hit the big time. So, y’know, I was already over him by the time Frances Bean was born. But it did feel like a big deal, and I didn’t know why.

I still sometimes see the young kids with the t-shirt with the Cobain head on it, and wonder why they wear it. Because he was cool, and then he died, and so he’ll always be cool, like Marilyn Monroe or James Dean — or Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon, for that matter, so that makes them cool by way of identification? Is that why we wear t-shirts of cool bands? I guess it is.

Fifteen years ago, I wasn’t really surprised by the suicide, because man, who could win in his situation? His wife was a nasty mess and he’d just become a father. His band was about as big as it could get, so the rest had to be downhill. He’d been upheld as the voice of a generation, and that’s a damn lot of pressure. He’d become a role model for kids everywhere and then one of his own and he kept singing songs that said “fuck you.”

Maybe those kids wearing his face on their chest are really just walking around saying what Cobain no longer can, representing him from beyond, and what those t-shirts really say, without saying it, is “fuck you.”

Now, I’m no music critic, and I’m also not a particularly big fan of Nirvana (with a capital N). But I like them, especially ‘Nevermind.’ (Because I’m a sucker for a good hook, and every last song on there had an awesome one.)(And also because it seemed like the most polished but least selfconscious record they had.)(Which is a great combination.) So I don’t have any deep or researched thoughts on the matter, and I don’t claim to totally know what I’m talking about here, and it’s probably true that Kurt Cobain wasn’t Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon. But they both had their distinctive ways of being creative and political and saying “fuck you,” didn’t they? I mean, Hendrix psychedelicized the freaking National Anthem. Lennon dared to compare his band’s popularity with that of Jesus. He & Yoko held a “bed-in” for peace, for chrissakes.

I don’t know about you, but if I was just a greasy grunger with some hard-edged melodic ways to say “fuck you” and then I was held up as the voice of a generation — an entitled, ignorant, despondent, celebrity-culture kind of generation, I might want out of that situation, too. I might offer an ironic “fuck you” to the ones who held me up and co-opted my voice, and bail.

And leaving that generation with a role model for “fuck you”… well, that is loaded a kind of politics all its own.

Namaste Mofo hits the Urban Dictionary

or, “All PR is good PR, where PR = PUNK ROCK”

For every thousand kudos, well-wishes and heartfelt smiles that Namaste Mofo™ has garnered in these 3 years online, at street fairs and on t-shirts and bumper stickers which YOU are walking and driving around proudly displaying… for every thousand good vibes, only ONE crap-ass comment comes up. Here’s the latest one:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Namastucker

We made it to Urban Dictionary! …and they just don’t get it.

Namastucker: A portmanteau of Namaste and Mother Fucker conveying a feeling of contempt for behavior regarded as incongruent with the values relating to the practice of Yoga.

Keywords: namaste, asshole, yoga, douche, motherfucker

Bret: What’s up with that douche selling the Namaste Mofo tee shirts? I hear the name is even trademarked!

Sally: Just another Namastucker capitalizing on Karma.

DUDE. I just got called a douche! AWESOME!

The thrust of this term — and its adorable example of usage — is that, because I have a) combined a term used in yoga to connote reverence and inclusion with a wholly offensive term of profanity; b) slapped a ™ on it so as to protect my brand (not the term); and c) am selling things with this motto on it, that all of this is incongruent with yogic values.

First, I want to talk about the “capitalizing on Karma” thing briefly: When we break even someday, then you can talk to me about capitalizing. And, tell me you don’t shop LuluLemon or Gaiam or buy Yoga Journal. Fuck you.

Next, you clearly don’t know what Karma is.

Most importantly, can we agree that we are human and that rare among us is an enlightened one (certainly not one who posts such a divisive term to Urban Dictionary) and that yoga is a PRACTICE and hence practitioners are not, by definition, perfect? How is it wrong to acknowledge the human parts of us that are not perfect, that we get angry, at ourselves and/or others and may need to swear a little? It is exactly that holier-than-thou “yogic” attitude that needs to hear this:

In absolutely no uncertain terms, Namaste Mofo™ stands for speaking one’s truth, for embracing the complexity and multiplicity inherent in any individual, and for not giving a shit about what anyone else thinks.

And we get a lot of positive feedback for it. We’re resonating with a lot of people out there, and we’re grateful for their understanding and embrace.

And if you don’t get it, then YOU are the people we are talking to. To YOU, we say it loudest: NAMASTE, MOTHERFUCKER.

We mean it, both words: We understand that you want to be One with the universe, but you don’t see that you and us, we’re connected too. We are punk rock, and we understand who we are. We just wish you could be honest with yourself, and go easy on your not-perfect parts. So we use profanity, to shake you up. We know it seems incongruent, but we want you to THINK about it.

We honor the Namaste part just as much as the Mofo part, and we keep our senses of humor and humanity. We don’t truncate it into your fugly, cowardly portmanteau that pretends to be more ‘congruent,’ more yogic. You are merely hiding the profanity in the contraction, even though you still intend the contempt…

Now, that’s not very yogic of you, is it?

I am grateful to you, Vahe Katros, for posting something so ridiculous, and giving me the opportunity to state again, with more venom, what I already said in the site’s FAQ (which you obviously didn’t bother to look at).

I hope I get some hits — and maybe even some business — out of it.

Pre-Launch: a Once Upon A Time story

So I started this whole business in 2006. The shirts were born in 2005, just in time for the holidays, but the business of Namaste Mofo™ began in earnest in 2006. The state of California granted me official corporation status in March, the website went live in July, and I hosted a launch party in September. I wanted to make some schwag to give away, but the whole thing almost died, poisoned by my own medicine.

In my previous life (or my parallel universe, at the time), I was in the business of buying printed materials for an ad agency, and had relationships with vendors who produced all manner of printed items, including doo-dads like buttons, badges, and bumperstickers. I requested quotes from my man Sam, and he came back with some really good prices on things. I got my art to him JUST in time to get the buttons and bumperstickers made, and went about my business.

A few days later, Sam called to tell me that he was having a problem. See, his company’s in the middle of Illinois, and he was subcontracting to a company in Nebraska. That subcontractor saw my logos, which read Namaste Motherfucker and Namaste Mofo, and refused to print them. Sam shopped them around to other companies in his general, midwestern area, and got the same response.

I related the dilemma — what to do? where can I get my stickers made so cheap… and now FAST?! — to various friends and colleagues, all of whom were PISSED, on my behalf. “How dare they?!”, “What, they don’t want your business?!”, and “…fucking BIBLE BELT…” were all responses I got. Ah, sweet friends, so quick to punch someone out, if only verbally, to protect me… but I remained pretty calm.

I mean, I was anxious as all hell, trying to figure how I could get shit printed in time for the launch party, but I’d made a professional life of getting stuff done under pressure and tight timelines.

The reason I was calm was this: People who own companies can choose to do business however they please. If I, as a business owner, have the right —and the privilege— to refuse service to whomever I choose, then that’s my right. I never disparaged these midwestern companies that right. I’m always PRO putting oneself in someone else’s shoes; I reasoned, if, let’s say, I owned a company that made t-shirts and someone wanted me to print some kind of anti-choice message, I’d decline that, too. It’s my right, and MY loss of income.

So I can get behind their decision, even if it fucked up my schedule.

And it afforded me a BUSINESS opportunity to use my new mantra:

NAMASTE, MOTHERFUCKERS!

I was happy to find that, even in the heat of a deadline, my natural tendency is to stay on-message. (Of course, this turns out to be a fucking great message.)

(c) Kristy Duncan

Audience Interpretation

Bazaar Bizarre SF: Neat!

This is our little shop at Bazaar Bizarre SF yesterday. Gorgeous day out, and we were in the courtyard to enjoy it, and greet The Public before they went inside.

We debuted Yoga Bitches shirts, and the new Asana line of Mofo tees.

We made new vendor-friends, including 11:11 and Thank You For Not Being Perky, and fell in love with The Mincing Mockingbird.

The best part, though?  This kid.

Many, many unending thanks to Becky (as always), KD, Jaene, and Alyse for doing the dirty work. And thanks to Bethany P., Sheila, Dave Adams & family, and —surprise!— Patricia McF. for dropping by to say hi!