Sometimes when I'm really 'on' I wake before my alarm clock goes off. Literally 30 seconds before. Some signal from my dreams or body just catapults me into my waking life. Today it was a cramp in my calf. The seizure took about a minute to let go. Try fumbling with an alarm clock while clawing a searing knot in your calf! Not the gentlest method of waking, but effective!

Went to yoga @ 06:45. Every day is different. Today I saw that none of that forward bending stuff is safe unless I hold it with my core abdominal strength. Backed off a bit and worked it from that angle. More space in my back. Less pain. Good deal.

I started doing Yoga when I threw my back out a few years ago. That's when I became aware of a traveling 'heart of darkness' in my body. I chase it around, isolate it and hack away at it by doing Yoga. I'd call it a 'knot of pain' but that's cliche and doesn't even describe what I mean. It's more like a black hole. A complete absence of feeling surrounded by a fierce network of blazing nerves & contorted muscle. Every day it's in a slightly different place. These days it's mostly in my back on the right hand side just below my kidney.

Sometimes I imagine what it must look like. An ugly fucker oozing green puss... but actually I've no idea what it is. That's what makes it such a bitch. A big puddle of the unknown. Right in my body. And my body reacts violently to this foreign substance - contracting, squeezing trying blindly to force it out. The Yoga on the other hand helps me isolate it and investigate. Surely it can't be foreign. Surely it must be me? If I could just stretch that mass of congealed muscle I can maybe sneak a peek at it and if I'm lucky recognize a piece. Such recognition goes hand in hand with physical release, increased strength, flexibility & (temporary) decrease in pain.

Got a post from Nomka today that inspired a need to fight. Challenge. Overcome. My personal cure for madness is steady work. Labour. I struggle with uncertainty -- inability to decide daily, and turn to work for direction-- writing, music, my job even.

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Don't know why Yeats sprung to mind -- something about labour being an antidote to self destructive behaviour and despair. Something about being rooted and blossoming. Something about a unity between action and what's being done -- the dancer and the dance -- that makes all metaphysical angst moot.

"Why?" is a question that demands distance. When that question / distance becomes a habit, it's crippling -- there's no answer, it doesn't 'feel' like anything -- despair sets in. That's when labour is required to break that stasis & re-establish a connection / a unity between specific action and a larger blueprint, yet unseen.