108 sun salutations under a sacred oak tree in City Park, New Orleans
At City Park in New Orleans there is a giant oak tree with oversize wind chimes hanging from its branches. The sun shone on the tree this morning, with strong winds blowing the chimes into a cacophony of sound. A group of yogis and yoginis gathered beneath the sun and the tree, their mats forming a loose circle facing inward. I rode my bike up to join them, feeling a reverence for the life so vibrant all around me.
In this circle we were joining a community of yoga practitioners all around the world who were taking a stand against human trafficking in India by offering up monetary donations and 108 sun salutations. The money will go to an Indian-based organization called Odanadi, which means ’soul mate’. The Odanandi web site Yoga Stops Traffic claims that “over the past 20 years Odanadi Seva Trust has rescued and rehabilitated more than 1850 children, carried out 57 brothel raids and brought 137 traffickers to justice.”
The New Orleans event was organized by Jessica Blanchard, who feels that India has given the west so much, and this is a way for us to give back. I came by way of my yoga school, Swan River. Several of my teachers were there, taking turns with teachers from other schools leading us in the sequence of asanas that make up the standard sun salutation.
The number 108 is sacred in many traditions and mythologies. For instance, the chakras are intersections of energy lines, and the heart chakra has 108 energy lines converging into it. I have been living from my heart lately, or at least striving to. This morning my heart was full, nourished by the sun, the wind, the beautiful people gathered around in the circle, and by the sound of the chimes mingling with the voices of the teachers.
I reached my hands up to the sky over and over again, and each time the sun had risen a little closer to being in my palms. There was a dog sitting in the grass behind me, and each time I bent down into downward dog and looked out between my legs I saw her sitting there enjoying the day. To my left was a new friend, who later went out to tea with me at Fair Grinds Coffeehouse, where we shared little pieces of our lives.
I am in love. In love with this city, with this life. I felt tears welling up inside me thinking about the people sold into slavery as I practiced my asanas. Are we all just manifestations of the same spiritual matter? Could I be them, could they be me, could any one of us be anyone else? What is the veil of ignorance that makes us forget such an obvious truth, exponentiating the suffering in the world? Every day I spend trying to understand and to weave the understanding into the fabric of my being so I won’t forget.
Namaste. Ahimsa. May all be free from suffering. May all feel the sunshine of a perfect spring day in New Orleans, shining upon them as they raise their hands up in prayer, and lower their faces to the ground to honor the earth. We are one.
Swan River Yoga teacher Michelle Baker leads us in a sun salutation
Me, Jaimie Lynn and Aviva pose with hoops before Eris
Mardi Gras in New Orleans was a strange and wonderful time. Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday, but the celebrations leading up to the actual day last for about two weeks. Besides the celebrations around the Super Bowl, the peak of Mardi Gras for me was marching in the Krewe d’Eris Parade on Sunday the 14th of February.
Eris is an unauthorized parade, as described on NOLA.com
“As Sunday night slithered out and Lundi Gras scuttled in, The Vieux Carre was swarmed by the filthy vermin of the Krewe of Eris, a wild and phantasmagoric walking (and bicycling and wheelchairing and shopping-carting) krewe dedicated not to misrule but to no rule at all. Unorganized, unauthorized, un-permitted, and unconcerned, the Krewe of Eris is an open-membership tribe honoring Eris, the goddess of discord and strife. In the mythology of the Greeks it was Eris who threw the golden apple that sparked a feud between vain deities, revealing the pettiness and weaknesses of the powerful, and thus the Krewe of Eris gives the lie to the grandiose and flashy motorized superkrewes, mostly by being much, much more fun.”
I was part of the Hula Hooping corps, coordinating with our friends in the flag corps. We marched at the front of the parade along with a luminous dragon and a marching band. The theme of the parade was “light and pleasure” and along that vein my friend Aviva and I both got LED hula hoops, and our third hooper Jamie Lynn marched between us to catch some of our light. We all decided to dress in costumes of white and gold. I had a fun marching band hat with gold horns made by a talented woman named Jade. The rest of my costume I got from second hand shops.
Marching for about three hours with a hula hoop was both exhilarating and tiring. I had so much fun tossing it as high as I could and catching it, watching the swirls of light making pretty patterns in the sky. The crowd loved us, and was us. People seemed to wander in and out of the parade, adding to the chaos and beauty of it. We had rehearsed a routine but found it impossible to carry out. It was all just fun and celebration.
Since I was hooping I could not photograph the parade itself but I found some cool photos online on the Wandering Dreamers blog and also on l*ght//motion’s flickr page. The slideshow below is of the photos I took before the parade…
On Tuesday I biked out to the famous Louisiana Superdome to watch the New Orleans Saints Parade take off. I propped my bike up against a palm tree and stood on the seat to get myself above the crowd to take these shots. I started daydreaming about building a bike with a photo stand or maybe just a really tall tricycle. But for me it always comes back to stilts. Gotta get me some.
I have been here about a month and have enjoyed watching the Saints mania build to a ever pitch, explode during their Super Bowl victory, and leave us with an electricity in the atmosphere around New Orleans that is palpable. I am normally not one to wax poetic about sporting events but this team has brought hope and renewal to this city in a way I couldn’t understand had I been living anywhere else during this time. I am grateful to the universe for arranging my visit.
Double Dutching in Jackson Square before the Super Bowl
In looking back upon my life, I have noticed a strange pattern. I have lived in the geographical fan base of successful football franchises much of my adult life. The first time it happened was kind of heartbreaking, living in Syracuse and Rochester (NY) while the Buffalo Bills played in and lost 4 consecutive Super Bowls in the early nineties. At the turn of the century I moved to New England in time to witness the Patriots go to 3 Super Bowls, winning two of them. Now here I am – a new decade, a New Orleans, and at the epicenter of the wildest football scene in the history of the universe. And yes, the Saints victory over the Colts in Super Bowl XLIV has beaten the shit out of every other football experience I have ever had. WHO DAT!!
Aviva hooping it up!
It is really funny because I am not a football fan, per se. I have watched a handful of Super Bowls and playoff games over the years, but here in the Big Easy there is no way to avoid the Saints mania. This is a city only five years out from being nearly destroyed by Katrina and the Saints seem to represent something beyond sports. They are the Phoenix rising up from the flames, with all the aura and legend of that mythical creature. Even my yoga teacher waxes poetic during class, prophesizing that the Saints’ victory is going to end the Hindu Kali Yuga and usher in the Dvapara Yuga. She tells us that we are all about to become beings made of light, and if my quantum calculations are correct she just might be right.
I spent the day out with my new friends who love to Double Dutch and hula hoop. We rode our bikes through traffic jams and dog parades (Barkus) to get to Jackson Square in the early afternoon, where we set up shop and drew a huge crowd around us. The Saints fans (aka all of New Orleans) were all out in their black and gold, some wearing more elaborate costumes. The sun was shining and our little boom box was playing upbeat music and it was all pretty picture perfect, as my perfectly pretty pictures hopefully convey.
For the game I went to a party, with the usual anarchists and artists you find at random parties around New Orleans when you are a freak like me. I sat inside an old warehouse building of some sort on a dingy car seat watching the game projected on a giant bed sheet. The setup would occasionally lose reception and about half way through someone put Saints Radio on instead of the CBS audio, making the famous Super Bowl commercials seem even more surreal. There was no heat and so I went out at half time to warm up by the fire while The Who played and we all secretly wondered if they regretted the lyrics in “My Generation“.
The second half of the game was epic, up to the point in the 4th quarter when the Saints made the game’s only interception and ran 70 yards to victory, and into history. After all the hugs and victory cries and high fives our posse once again rode out towards the French Quarter, busting out the jump ropes and hula hoops on the corners of Frenchmen and Royal. Once again a jubilant crowd gathered around us, while cars drove by honking and the whole city took to the streets in celebration. Everyone yelling “Who Dat!!” over and over again. All people united by one event, a celebration well deserved by this amazing city. I am blessed to be here, and to be a part of it all.
I have been here in New Orleans just over three weeks and have landed my first job, as the New Orleans Vegan Examiner! The Examiner is an online news and blogging site that deems itself “the insider source for everything local“. They have hubs in most of the major US cities and recruit people like me who have a passion for writing about interesting topics to do columns. The pay is based on the popularity of the column and any advertising we can help them secure.
While I do not expect to become rich talking about veganism in New Orleans, I think that it will provide some other nice benefits. I am hoping that I will be able to use the column to encourage restaurant owners and chefs to try vegan options and add them to their menus. I hope it will bring more people to the vegan events being held here in New Orleans. I am also aware that Examiner articles get high Google rankings, so I think that it will bring more publicity to my other vegan projects and perhaps even my personal website. Beyond all that it will help me to hone my writing skills so that I can someday write that New York Times bestselling book I have in me somewhere…
If you would like to help out, please subscribe to my column, post comments on my articles, and keep coming here to check out this blog. You will get so much good karma you won’t know what to do with it all, and you will have to pass it on to others.
photo i took on my iphone through a gallery window in the French Quarter
In my last post I spoke of giving selflessly and building community as paths that can lead us out of our own drama and suffering and into a better future. After writing it I felt an awkwardness, wondering if my thoughts and actions really measured up to the things I had written. It is great to be able to write and perhaps inspire people with words, but it is in the realm of action where we are truly tested. I heard a small voice in my head telling me that perhaps I was promoting ideals that I wasn’t quite living up to.
I have been in New Orleans less than two weeks and I am sure nobody expects me to be a community leader or the patron saint of reaching out to neighbors at this point. However for the first time in about 15 years I am a minority in my neighborhood, a pale white face in a sea of darker skinned people. Coming from a far less diverse community in Northampton, MA I find myself plagued with white guilt. Our culture is the operating system that runs in our minds, and even after years of disk maintenance, software upgrades and attempts to understand the problems that cause racial divide it is difficult to transcend it. I feel a bit unsettled when I walk out my door, as if my neighbors all distrust me and perhaps I should distrust them. It is a fear I knew I would have when I moved here and one I wanted to confront in my life so that I can evolve my being.
David Hammond with his snowballs in NYC
There is an artist named David Hammond who I learned about while studying Fine Art Photography at RIT back in the mid nineties and the lesson of his performance piece has stuck with me since then. In the middle of winter in New York City with snow on the ground free for the taking, he set up a spot on the sidewalk and began selling snowballs. In googling the work now I find that the concept behind his piece was to mock the commodification of the art world. But what I remember is a deeper lesson. In selling snowballs Hammond was able to connect with people that would normally walk by him with eyes averted, who now were curious and ready to strike up a conversation. He said something like “two strangers are naturally going to be uncomfortable around each other, but given a common object they can make a connection”. I wish I could find his actual quote about that now, because I am sure he said it more eloquently than that.
At any rate, yesterday proved to be a turning point in my evolvement. I brought a small toy guitar here with me because I wanted to reignite my passion for playing but could not fit a full sized guitar in my luggage. I am typically quite shy about playing publicly, but yesterday I wanted to play and it was too stuffy in my apartment. I somehow overcame my fear of being the cracker playing folk songs in the hood and went out onto my front steps to play. Within a couple of minutes the kids across the street took notice and came closer to watch me. I had assumed that street musicians were so prevalent here that no one would care much, but something magical happened for me. People were noticing. An old black woman came over and stood next to me with her eyes closed and her heart totally open to my music. The kids across the street were now dancing and a few more people had come out. I realized then that this talent was one of my gifts, something that can make people happy. I realized that all the street musicians are down in the French Quarter trying to get money in their hats, but there is no money in my neighborhood, so this was more unique. The shared experience of the music turned me from stranger into a new member of our community.
Later that night I went out to the Hukah Club with my landlord and his partner. It was Hip Hop night and once again I found myself a grain of salt in a pepper shaker. Perhaps because of my earlier experience I did not feel the usual discomfort. The music was like a steam engine propelling my bootie barge into motion. My inhibitions dropped once again and I lost myself into dancing. I hopped around and shook my hips and all the while looking people in the eyes and smiling. I think that it moved people to see this white boy unafraid even though I don’t have the requisite moves usually performed in the hip hop genre. The men started giving me various secret handshakes and teaching me little shoulder pops and hip thrusts. People were smiling with me.
I ended up at the edge of the dance floor near a raised platform where some women were sitting and dancing. They started taking pictures of me and then dancing with me, posing with me, laughing and letting loose. They even started doing that grind thing where they would bend over and put their fine booties into my groin area and move it them all around. Jump up jump up and jump down. So I started doing it too. All the yoga I have been doing has gotten my quite limber and flexible, and these girls loved dancing with me. I was dancing with the guys around me too. It was some of the most fun I have had in a long time. I was aware of the difference in our skin tones, but the dancing and celebrating transcended the cultural baggage in my mind and set me free. We are all one people after all, with many variations and flavors.
I feel like time is speeding up for me, like there is some great force propelling me onward. There is no more profound spiritual fulfillment than to be finding ones purpose in this life. I am so grateful to have these epiphanies coming more and more frequently, like I have opened up some channel for the universe and it is starting to flow more easily through me. I keep getting this deeper and deeper sense that we are all on the cusp of some great change. I also have a sense that I am meant to play some small roll in bringing it about. I believe we all are, if we can open up and let it in. At night I walk through this beautiful city and I can feel the trees speaking to me, I can hear the voice of the Earth, feel her warm breath in the air. She is my lover and my friend, who sustains me as I go. I make my promises to her, that whatever it is and whenever that time comes I will be ready. She in turn brings to me the experiences I need in order to grow. All the while she cultivates this love in my heart, shimmering and effervescent, that flows out from me to all sentient beings
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At the end of the night I came home and recorded The House of The Rising Sun on my guitar with my new Samson USB mic, it is one of my favorite songs about New Orleans and I would love to share it with you:
Derek Goodwin is a vegan photographer who splits his time between Northampton, MA and New Orleans, LA. Derek specializes in documentary style photography, weddings, portraits, animals, events and music. He is well known for his photographs of rescued farm animals living in sanctuaries. He also creates visionary fine art photographs of night time cityscapes and fire dancers.
