The machine does not, can never, have chakras.  It can never have bodily physical form, at least that it can know about.  The machine will never have the balancing sense of psychic awareness, of nervous sensitivity, of the energy through the spine and nervous system, a sense of touch and feeling.  It will never have the balancing seven judges of the energy centers located along the spine from tailbone upward through the center of the brain's own consciousness.  There can never be the sense of growth, of maturing adjustment to changes within and without.

Watching a cat clean herself.  She is sitting up straight, her spine twisted to one side, her head down, licking her belly, one forefoot on the ground, one on her belly, balanced.  She pauses, seemingly to think, to consider.  She returns to the same spot.  And then soon she turns her head elsewhere, higher up, closer to her chest, bobbing her head.  How does the cat know what to do, I think as I do some yoga, testing each pose by berating through each of the chakra energy centers, as if the leg muscles and the spine were posing questions to each chakra, how far to stretch, how to hold the body, going further with each breath into the pose's stretch.  Into plow pose.  Aligning warrior poses.  Let the body relax into the chakra's scale of seven or eight.  The body knows what to do, when the questions are posed through each center from the base of the spine to the top of the head.  The body knows how to balance itself, how to support itself.

Who taught the yogi how to do yoga?  Who taught the caught how to wash herself and stretch?  The balance is within, found in relaxing into balance as much as anything.



On one side of the question, there are the difficulties those of us who sense mental illnesses within must go through, like the strangeness of the employment that we can deal with, as they are careers (if they are such) of compensation, of a provision of allowance for the difficulties of the mentally ill.

On the other side, the other end of the scale, there is the sentiment of Jesus, lamenting how long he must put up with this perverse and faithless generation.  And maybe he too, these days, would be taken as a person with mental illness, as he may well have been in his day, given the stories, like the one where he speaks in the synagogue and then taken to be thrown off a cliff, in the end getting off safe by "walking through their midst" unharmed.


I must now examine my own habits, and so it is a good thing to do yoga, to get out into the sun with yoga mat, consulting the chakras, stretching the spine out, putting the muscles through the light paces of the basic vocabulary of poses.

Returning to work, after a week up with mom, I am good about avoiding drinking alone when I get in.  Off to bed.  Get up at a reasonable hour, get the body out into the sunlight.  Up at mom's, in the quiet, I notice how the liberation of wine leads to those agonized thoughts somewhere in the night, all the mistakes you made, being an idiot, back in college.  The escapist pleasure of wine inevitably leads to the depression and thoughts of regret.  I plead to somehow exorcise these old demons, of the worst memories when you could have, should have, would have.  One slight tick of difference, one less degree of neurotic reaction, one less degree of being in one's own head, and you would have had that greatest pleasure of all, sexual love with a beautiful woman you cared about, found quick, sharp, pretty, hilarious, feisty, a good buddy down to that base level the intuition senses.  The mistakes you made, against the chakra good sense, shameful...


How do you admit to yourself that you've been wrong, that you have lived in such a way as to stress yourself out...  In my case, a juvenile aping foolish things and the egotistical glamour of drinking.


The first day off, having gotten up easily and early, I get out and do the yoga again, mat laid out upon the flat field stones of the garden.  Laundry, organizing, folding the clothes strewn about chairs and on top of dressers.  A rearranging of the living room, putting like things with like things.  Lunch.  More work, and then down to Glen's Market with my little list, doing my best.  There is a fire pit patio arrangement sort of thing, surrounded by benches, and so I go and sit down with my grocery bag and a tumbler of water.  Peering into my phone, google news, I see there has been an earthquake locally.  Did anyone else feel it?  And this starts some nice conversation with pretty young women.  They happen to be school teachers.  One went to college in Maine.  They are friendly, in a way that almost surprises me.  It's a nice chat.  I tell them the truth, as I know it, a nice back and forth.  They are having a couple of beers, talking, facing each other, with a little friendly dog.  I go get a glass of wine.

It'd be nice to stay out on a Thursday night, when people are in friendly undistracted moods and modes, but I'm cold from being out a bit too long, and I walk back home as a light rain starts to fall, and I gotta cook dinner anyway.  Burger with onions, broccoli.  And I'm not going to start drinking by myself all alone.  Feeling the chill, a documentary about John Coltrane comes on WHUT Howard University public television, which fits the bill perfectly.  And then from a nap, I go off to bed.