Self in the world

Lourdes, France, the Catholic healing village and tourist complex. Signs for downtown and paradise point the same way. I apparently caught a virus here, August 2005. I began writing Bad Yogi soon afterwards.




My friend David Noble Green Self says that after he hears about suffering in the world, like that in New Orleans or today's problems in Guatemala in the wake of tropical storm Stan, he can empathize, but it doesn't really hit him until he gets his heart pains. He doesn't have a career, and his theory is that men in late capitalist society without careers get heart trouble. Perhaps such men are suffering vicariously for the sins of western empires, he says.

Self has various theories about what service hypochondria performs for late capitalist societies. We feel guilty, for example, for not feeling guilty enough for the suffering of those we hear about on the radio. Heart pains "solve" this problem.

Me, I'm interested in forgiveness. Can I forgive myself? For what?

Yoga's blue rectangle, the mat, shuts the world out but keeps inside the one feature that, in this world, most desperately needs work: the self.

"Do the pose," says my teacher.