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KYLE THOMAS MARSHALL

Kyle Thomas Marshall guides yoga and meditation at Moksha Yoga Uptown and Downtown.  The downtown studio is where Naomi reconnected with him when she began practicing just 6 months after he discovered the Moksha community.  With an interest in learning more about Kyle's spirituality and life story, we met up on a snowy morning, days before he left for Los Angeles to attend a seminar for Moksha yoga instructors. Our conversation left my mind spinning with lasting influence.

In his early 20s Kyle suffered from an episode in which his "center was blown open in a second."  Fevered visions plagued him for 3 weeks, leaving him with the question "who am I really?"  It was Ojelanki Ngwenyama, a family member and professor of Information Technology Managment  at the Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson, who became his teacher and guide, leading him to meditation and an awarness of the ineffable.  I consider myself a "seeker" after the big questions.  Kyle is calmly rooted in the answers, and understands, like the great teachers, that the answer is simple, so simple that it is hard to accept in our seemingly complicated world.  What I gleaned in our limited encounter is that the purpose in life is for consciousness to realize itself.  Once this is achieved you realize that: you lack nothing, you don't have to be burdened by conventions and expectations, and everything is one.  In reaching this realization you are free to do anything.

An image that has stayed with me is a pendulum that Kyle described.  He explained that if the pendulum is your life, most exist at the swinging end, chasing something unattainable, controlled by our petty moods and insular mindset, and unable to see the big picture.  The goal is to spend most of the time at the top of the pendulum, observing the swings of fortune and misfortune but remaining unfazed, centred and self aware.   The concepts are clear but the achievement can be hard.  Kyle credits spending time at the Ontario Vipassana Centre outside of Barrie, where he attends 10 day retreats of total silence.  It will often take him 7 days to turn off the chatter of the world but he reaches a point that he described loosely as "meditation happens when there is no meditator."

It is human nature to question our purpose and I think that Kyle has been called to guide the discovery to the answers that are right in front of us, teaching Yoga and meditation as a means to this end.  I appreciate how grounded in reality he is, how clearly he speaks and how unbound he is to any specific tradition or system.  We ended our conversation discussing Jesus (the man and teacher, not the god), and Kyle recommended reading the Gospel of Thomas, a cryptic apocryphal text.  Ideas we discussed resonated in some of the passages which I thought you may enjoy:

3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is

in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they
say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.
Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and
you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living
Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty
and it is you who are that poverty."

70)  Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you

bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is

within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
 
91)  They said to Him, "Tell us who You are so that we may
believe in You."
He said to them, "You read the face of the sky and of the
earth, but you have not recognized the one who is before you, and
you do not know how to read this moment."

Passages sourced from Sacred Text Archive

LOS ANGELES UNION STATION

Looking back through my photos from a trip to LA last November, I found some of Union Station.  This grand building was recommended as a must-see during our visit.  Coincidentally we needed to drop off a friend who was catching a train to San Diego, so I took a bit of time to photograph some detail shots of this Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 101.

Replacing La Grande Station and Central Station, both built in the early 1900s, LA Union opened in 1939 and was designed by a number of different architects resulting in a number of different architectural styles; Dutch Colonial Revival meets Mission Revival meets Streamline Moderne.  It is a strange and interesting combination of contrasting time periods, motifs and materials.  The terracotta tiles, inlaid travertine marble, eclectic clock faces, eight-pointed star motif, and painted wood ceiling are conflicting aesthetics which, in my mind, speaks to a conflicted origin.  

Wikipedia tells me that in 1926, the citizens of LA voted between a new vast network of elevated railways or the construction of this much smaller Union Station to consolidate the railroad terminals.  The election took on racial controversy as the proposed location for the new railway hub was in the original Chinatown, which many conservative citizens wished to dissolve.  The vote was close, at 51 to 48 percent in favour of Union Station, which meant that much of Chinatown was demolished.

Often successful design is the product of a clear and focused vision.  In this case the design was born from many visions, and the final result is aesthetically unclear and unfocused.  Though, I would not call this building unsuccessful. I do think it accurately represents the diversity and complicated history of its city.

 

 

 

 

CLAIRE DOLAN

Claire Dolan is a rigorously designed and organized film that offers an excellent in-depth study into the concept of oppression. Claire, played by the impressive Katrin Cartlidge, works as a high end prostitute in order to pay back a debt, whose origins are never made entirely clear, to her pimp, Roland.  While Claire moves through the chilling atmosphere of New York's city's high rises, she performs her sexual acts with a cold, disengaged demeanor. The world created here is alienating and austere. The characters are in a state of perpetual conflict...overtake or be overtaken. Then Claire meets Elton, a sympathetic cab driver. The two fall in love and Elton promptly pulls together the money required to settle Claire's debt. 

If the movie ended here it might be considered a more sophisticated and intersting version of Pretty Woman- but instead of wrapping up- things start to unravel.  Elton begins to feel conflicted by Claire's history. When she becomes pregnant with his child he can't seem to accept her as a suitable mother. Roland, determined to break Claire, tries to convince her of her abnormality, debt paid, or unpaid, she will "always be a whore" he claims. Resolute, Claire aims to quit the business and have her child. The ending could  easily be considered the saddest and most brutal part of the film. What makes this otherwise painfully depressing film radically subversive is the clever way film maker, Logde Kerrigan, manages to avoid stereotypes. Instead, he creates a movie that speaks to the complicated contractions of how to exist within a demeaning  capitalist society.

Feminism kind of seems like a hot topic these days...whether people feel like it's an obsolete concept or in the midst of a rebirth, it still has the potential to polarize. Certainly, while I was watching this film, I could not  help but feel it was expressing some of the more involved notions of justice conceived of by second wave feminism of the 70's.  Take for example Susan Brownmiller's famous quote from Times Magazine in 1970.. "The goals of liberation go beyond a simple concept of equality." What Browmiller strove for was a transfiguration of society that included politics, business, child-rearing, sex, romance, housework, entertainment and academics. While Claire Dolan is not generally held up as the quintessential articulation of the feminist project it certainly provides an interesting place to start a conversation about women, society, sex and subjugation.  

Guest contributor Lisa DiQuinzio

KAMASUTRA GANJIFA

Contained within an evocative box, these circular playing cards are from Nepal (purchased in  Kathmandu).  I believe them to be a set for Ganjifa: a game similar to poker originating in Persia and popularized in India in the 16th century.  Workshops of artisans (chitrakars) produced Ganjifa cards using materials ranging from ivory and tortoise shell, to wood, palm leaf, paper and leather.  Senior artists hand-painted the figures while junior apprentices worked on backgrounds and simple motifs.  With the introduction of printed cards in the 19th century, the more expensive hand-painted cards became obsolete.  Learn more here.  You can see more examples here.

MAN (WOMYN) SILKS

3 buddies from the 90s, just lounging on the unmade bed.  Darryl abandoned his forays into hip-hop to pursue an MBA and now lives a relatively stress free life running a Pet Value.  Mitchell thought he could make it as a sports star, got a US scholarship and ended up managing a mid-town Washington bistro.  Dylan had a hard time coming to terms with the end of adolescence, drank too much, but turned it around when he met Sally while working as a temp.

The days of loud-patterned silk shirts are over for these gents but the ladies of 2013 are loving them (the shirts.)

From the collection of L DiQuinzio