Photo: Jynne Martin ©Adrian Kinloch
The Real Life is Real Yoga Interview
Brian Greene assured an entire audience at the Rubin Museum that linear time is merely a mental construct. We all had donuts afterwards to celebrate the news.
BY JYNNE MARTIN
I’m an 800-hour certified Jivamukti yoga teacher, with training in other forms of bodywork including Zero Balancing and Thai massage. I’ve worked in book publishing for over a decade, specializing in publicity for literary fiction authors including Norman Mailer, E.L. Doctorow, David Mitchell and Gary Shteyngart; I’m currently director of publicity at Riverhead Books.
And in the spirit of Pir Vilayat Inayat’s urging that “we do not enrich ourselves only by interfacing with the universe, but by the self-organizing creativity that emerges from within,” I also try to carve out time for meditation, quietude, and creative work, including poetry. My poems have appeared in Granta, The Kenyon Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares, and on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer.
The Magazine of Yoga 3×5 Interview
What?
What is the task you like to do best in your work?
In yoga, to soften; in books, to encounter another weird mind, and feel less alone; in creative work, to yoke disparate things into something resplendently strange.
What housework or domestic detail is most satisfying to do?
Building rock walls in the Catskills around my brother’s property. I find it a gratifying blend of creative puzzle – trying to interlock mismatched stones from rubble – and gruelingly hard labor. I fear that from my puritanical ancestry, I inherited a perverse love of chores.
What in light of your experience in life, should we not waste time on or worry about?
The future. Physicist Brian Greene assured an entire audience at the Rubin Museum that linear time is merely a mental construction. We all had donuts afterwards to celebrate the news. Or perhaps, simultaneously.
How?
How do you celebrate?
With fine champagne and a jar of Nutella.
How do you learn?
With openness and gratitude.
How do you prepare to do something?
I keep detailed notes. I bathe frequently. At times I wear gloves to protect against poison ivy. Other times I give the hotelier a copy of my map in case I don’t return by dusk.
Do?
Do you have a nemesis?
My own mind, but we try again each day to be friends. I take seriously Carl Jung’s warning “if you do not confront your shadow it will appear to you in the form of your fate.”
Do you have a vocation?
Zookeeper, bodyworker, poet.
Do you have a plan?
I did a long time ago, and the universe found that hilarious.
Faves
Favorite magazine?
The Economist, particularly their weekly obituary.
Favorite work beverage?
Carbonated water from my SodaStream.
Favorite relax thing?
Soaking in the outdoor hot tub under the stars, with just enough lantern light to make sure I’m not joined by a bear.
Photo: Jynne Martin ©Adrian Kinloch
Fives
5 things about your workspace that make it good
1. My Remington 5 typewriter
2. A heavily-thumbed, beat up copy of Anatomy of Melancholy
3. Cacti
4. A 11×14 glossy of a young Paul Auster in Paris
5. My cat sprawling on top of my all these things so nothing can get done
5 people you want to collaborate with
1. Rudolf Steiner (ghost form)
2. Katchie Ananda
3. Glenn Ligon
4. Frances Glessner Lee
5. David Bowie
5 songs from your current playlist
1. The Five Stairsteps / O-O-H Child
2. Shirley Walton / Send Peace and Harmony Home
3. Destroyer / Kaput
4. Aretha Franklin / Skylark
5. Hein Braat / Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra
Photo: Jynne Martin ©Maria Braeckel
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© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.
