Tin Ears and Untrained Eyes

I just checked ksl.com and no snow in the stars for us today.

Early Sunday morning. The cats are fed, my coffee is steaming in its cup, and I've plugged in the Christmas trees. It's been dark now for over 12 hours and the urge to hibernate is here but the required sleepiness is not. Tomorrow I start a run of pagan-inspired melodies and tune my senses to the natural world looking toward Solstice. I've rounded the mid-way point for this merry blog endeavor. So many hits, so little time. Tom Waits and Bob Dylan are in the queue as promised, but they'll have to wait until the days get a little longer.

Today I'm writing about nothing special. Just a run-through of the mundane details of yesterday and some of the merely practical thinking going on in my noggin looking ahead to make a day out of the next 13 hours or so.  Most likely I'll try to infuse these details with meaning. It's what I do--what humans do. Sue me! Yesterday, Saturday, I taught two morning yoga classes. The first at Yoga Sun before sunrise. I was able to heat the small room to a toasty 80 degrees which felt lovely. I had a sequence in mind that had evolved from all the classes I taught this week. The asanas came together in a way that made sense to me and I tried to watch the faces of the yogis in class to gauge their rightness for then and there. There's a fine line between yoga bliss and exhaustion, but I hope I found middle ground for the ambit of ability present. I took the same sequence to the community fitness center class which takes place in a larger, colder room. I had one student there entirely new to yoga and a pretty broad fitness range. There were perhaps too many chaturangas for this crowd, but many took my suggestion to skip these and hold a down-dog. I have regulars now who keep coming back and I see them getting stronger and more aware of their own proprioreception.  Yoga gives to me, and I give a little of it back. Aw, I knew I couldn't resist interjecting some value to my observations.

I'm spending more time with pranayama at the end of my classes lately. I was concerned about doing this at the fitness center because these are local, salt-of-the-earth people, many devout LDS who might think the breathing and meditation components of a practice are a bit too new-agey, but I do them a disfavor by thinking this way.  Me and my prejudices.  The effects of breathing exercises are immediate and accessible to every human being.  I gave the gym yogis as long of a savasana as I could and take it as a good sign that more than half of them wanted to linger even longer as corpses, appearing to savor that complete restorative relaxation that follows working hard. My own insecurities arise when the class, all quiet from such an internal close to their practice, silently roll up their mats and drift out of the room. However, a few spoke to me and asked when I teach again, so I take that as a sign that my class gave them something good. An older woman commented that my class is so much harder than the other teacher's. Is that good? Bad? Just like a tree pose, I take the feedback and make subtle adjustments to balance.

Following yoga my youngest daughter and I bravely ventured to that behemoth edifice of capitalism: the mall. Brynn had a specific list of ingredients she needed to purchase for some snow globes she is making for gifts this year. A thoughtful giver, that girl. We laughed  and said we were putting on our protective bubbles of peace before walking through the doors into the madness. Brynn said that if anyone tried to break her bubble she would kick them in the astronaut. Funny, too, she. We floated through the crowds in our balloons of bliss and stopped to marvel at the head massagers, the Samurai swords, and other strange items that emerge this time of year. The long line of kids waiting to sit on Santa's knee was perhaps the most hellish aspect of the mall. No one looked happy. Brynn and I ended up at the lone coffee shop at the end of the line and I ordered a sugar-free mocha. Brynn got a Mexican hot chocolate. We told the barista to call out Special Agent Oso when our elixirs were ready, and she did. Tee-hee! The good time with my daughter is proof enough that gift-buying can be more than mere crazy Christmas consumerism.

Ah, an hour later and still dark out, and quiet. The coffee's drunk and I'm wide awake now. Here's what my brain does: It makes plans. Plans that will set a trajectory but that will most certainly develop differently in reality. My Sunday yoga gig is coming up. I can keep a similar outline to the class I taught yesterday, but tweak it some. I've been playing around with Sun Salutation B, taking longer lunges and hip opening variations in place of the warrior 1's. I think I'll keep that. Maybe this group would like a bakasana or a pincha mayurasana. I'm not sure where to focus--maybe on attention to alignment in chaturanga. This is a posture that everyone wants to muscle through before they are ready. If I can get folks to take the modifications as they build up solidity in their core and shoulders, I think they will benefit more. That might mean a focus on humility--lovingly accepting what is and working there.

The afternoon I'll spend with Chris in Salt Lake. There's a Crafter's Sabbath at the library today--local artisans peddling their wares. We hope to find unique handmade tokens for those on our gift lists. I haven't gone off in this blog much about local, sustainable, organics, green, food politics, any of the stuff I could get really preachy about. And I won't do it today, either. But beware, it just might come up later. I'm looking forward to spending this afternoon this way. We'll find a place to eat something good and vegetarian (hard to find anything more than a salad or a frozen veggie burger in Utah County restaurants). We'll sign in at the College of Massage Therapy to put our names on the waiting list and bemoan the fact that it's a two-for-one weekend. The long wait will give us a chance to visit the fair, though, and make it back just in time to get the knots worked out of our shoulders. We get so busy in our careers and kids that time to make a personal connection between us feels rare. We'll probably spend some time pretending to be keenly interested in the details of each other's life in the work world. We'll disagree on what to buy the kids for Christmas, trying to keep it simple, balancing out our habit for consumer behavior with other values. Do we give them the bedroom makeovers promised or buy cans of non-hybrid seeds and a survivalist backpack?

Conversation will get a bit depressing when we begin to wonder about the future on a big scale, swapping opinions on the consequences of passing peak oil production, and surmising about a collapse of the government. What will people do if things break down?  We are sometimes dooms-dayers, sad to say, but it does appear the writing's on the wall. Thinking we humans are plucky problem-solvers and full of ingenuity will temporarily quell our anxiety. We tightrope walk between getting by in the economy and capitalist society we have and wondering how to adapt should things drastically or suddenly change. Strong local communities or extended families could be vital. Chris is considering switching careers which could have large-scale consequences for us financially.  We'll surmise and fret some over that, then muster up our sense of everything will be fine, better than fine, the best. Looks like we're going to have to find something to laugh about, too, or we'll never want to speak to each other again. Tough call between comedy and tragedy, isn't it? This is how the day looks in my head in this moment.  Mundane and ordinary, the stuff that most days are made of. It is as unspecial as a brown and gray Christmas, but only to the untrained eye.

That's an awful lot of writing about something that hasn't happened yet. And that's how I handle looking at big world problems. I get carried away for a bit, then remember that right now I'm breathing and that ain't bad--there's a juicy strawberry somewhere nearby. For now, I'm shutting off the computer, closing the book on dreaming of a white December 12th,  and soaking in a little silence before moving off the couch into the moments to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvF233fW4cI