Sunday, October 31, 2010

Memento Mori

All Hallow's Eve tonight. Spirits walking the streets and all. Dia de los Muertes calaveras, ghosts of Halloweens past. My brunch today was living proof that you cannot reconstruct the past. Last year's event was much more celebratory and populated. We had a guitar and some drums, which may have helped. I'm not complaining. My friends brought good spirits with them today and though our conversations were more subdued, I enjoyed the mellow, even keel and let things be what they were. The candles are still lit now a full two hours after the last guest left. I'm mesmerized by the steady burn, hardly a flicker. The centerpiece, a dedicatory altar of sorts, is beautiful with pictures mostly of grandparents and one of my cat, Django, who died about this time last year.

My maternal grandma is close to dying. The latest news from my mother is that Grandma Florence's body is shutting down and we may be attending a funeral in the next weeks. A body shutting down. Organs ceasing to digest food that is no longer needed. Timelines and memory broken up and fading. Should I be ashamed to admit that I haven't seen my grandma in years? The last visit I remember was nearly four years ago when she stayed at a rest home after a spell of illness. She knew me then, but wouldn't now. My sister stayed closer to Grandma over the years, paid a visit yesterday and says Florence talked mostly about Spring City, where she was born and raised. But then again, that's what she talked about when I was younger and would spend a week or two at her house every summer. In my mind, Grandma was exotic, maybe even glamorous. She walked with a limp, one leg shorter than the other and I don't know why. Not polio. I don't think. Her tan face powder in the pink sky-lit bathroom smelled soft and alluring. She painted on eyebrows every morning and went out dancing on the weekends with Grant, my step-grandpa. She was a talker, fascinating at times, scary at others when she'd read parts out of books about Revelations and the apocalypse. Boring, too. She had lived through the Depression and could recount tale after tale of kids who were poor as church mice, bless their hearts.

This news of her closeness to death stirs up feelings of isolation and estrangement for no other reason I can make out than that we, Florence's descendents, are a band of introverts. The last time I saw my mom's siblings together was at Aunt Virginia's funeral a few years ago, and that strange shyness in conversation and look was absolutely familiar and disconcertingly comforting. Sheepherder stock, used to long summers in high meadows, I suppose. Rugged introversion, maybe. Or maybe this is just me feeling a lack of connection to a woman I do not understand and love nonetheless.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Which Are You?


I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.


We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.


Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.


Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.


Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.


This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

What Would They Do if I Sang Out of Tune?

Quick post tonight. I'm back from a most rejuvenating long weekend in Moab with nine other women who have been my friends these past ten years. Call me lucky, blessed or whatever. If you don't have a set of YaYas, you need to get one. I laughed longer and heartier in these four days than I can remember in awhile. We practiced yoga in the ranch house living room during a rainstorm, followed by a hip-hop dance party, a wiggy photo session, hot-tubbing, hiking and hours and hours of gab. It's hard to believe that after ten years we still surprise each other with our stories. Pinot Noir helps. We cook for each other, taking care. There is no master plan. We don't all participate in every excursion. Want privacy? You got it. There's an organic cohesion. We are none of us two peas in a pod. This is what I love.

Relationships. Interesting things. As devastatingly unsophisticated and uncynical as this may sound, I'm grateful for them all--for the foils they present to my own sense of self. For the chance to see the other in others. I'm home and happy to see the faces of my family, content to think of all the friends I've known. I might even be grateful for those who've made me say on other occasions that hell is other people. Maybe that's pressing it. Still, I'll not look this gift horse of a weekend in the mouth. Why not sleep well tonight?




Sunday, October 10, 2010

Holier Than Thou

In my sleeping years, the 12 or so when my kids were babies and I lost myself in roles, I'd eat anything and move very little.  I was not in any sense holier than anyone let alone thou. The standard American diet, a.k.a. SAD was fine. Fast food? Fine. Sugar? Yep. Fine. Ah, then the wake-up call. Nothing so alarming as a triple bypass or near death encounter with cancer. No, just a look at a photograph in which I saw my lost self peeking out through a puffy, sugar cookie face.

Changes and transformations later, I had gradually shifted from doughy white flour and sugar diet to  clean, green, plant-based nourishment. I practiced yoga daily, rode a bike and presented a happier human being for my kids to be with. Not a magical shift, to say the least. I was still prone to all sorts of silly human being follies, and maybe a little more since I had the confidence to pursue some of them. In regards to food, though, I did become Holier Than Thou (caps intentional). I felt lied to by those who purvey the boxcar loads of subsidized corn in all its unholy, unhealthful incarnations. Angry, too, that I couldn't just buy all that I was sold without experiencing a decline in health and well-being. What the hell? I'd have to step out of the mainstream in order to be healthy.

For the record, life in the margins of society ain't that bad. You look around and find other beat-of-their-own-drummer souls with whom to keep company or to just admire from afar. However, I believe there is some instinct for survival that accounts for the anxiety I feel sometimes when I recognize my misfit with those around me. But I digress. Let me just say about my dietary changes that I got that missionary zeal. If this made me happy, it would make others that way, too, dammit. Wake up, People! I thought. No, I really did. Folks would ask how I managed to lose the weight but balked when I told them. Surely there must be some other way for them that wouldn't entail changing habits.

So maybe that wasn't good, that looking down my nose at others. I was talking with some friends--the friends who have every right to call me on my bullshit because they are there to support me in or out of said bullshit. I mentioned my worry for my daughter who loves junk food and pasty food-like substances. I said that the more I try to influence the more my daughter resists and goes for the chips, pastas, cookies, etc. "Maybe she's just sick of you being holier than thou!" said one friend. Oh, yeah, that hit home. I laughed because it was true. I'd made one too many wise cracks about greasy burgers and fries to friends who still enjoy those. And then I started to consider the Buddhist concept of middle way. It makes sense, and resonates still, but I may have misinterpreted. I got busy with this life of mine and gave in a little more, eating a candy here, a cookie there. I didn't want to be holier than anyone! But for someone with something like a sugar addiction, this has become more difficult to regulate. I feel the effects of sugar in my body like a low-grade headache and cells starving for nutrients. I can feel like shit AND STILL WANT MORE! That's the insanity of it.

So my apologies to anyone I've ever offended with my high-horse dietary standards, but I'm going to have to become a little holier than thou again. I won't preach to you, though, I promise.   I will more likely sympathize  with you as you try to figure out what works best for you to be happy.  I am on the same cruise ship as you, only I'll be staying away from the dessert bar. You may find me strolling the Lito Deck or playing shuffleboard with some old farts.  Maybe you'll join me for a yoga class or a bike ride, but if you don't that's OK, too.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Kinesthetics

Long, long day. I taught six hours, then had parent-teacher conferences pretty much straight from the moment students left my classroom to 20 minutes before I needed to be at the local fitness center to teach a yoga class. I changed clothes at the center and made it just as the Zumba-ites were walking out all sweaty and happy. This is a growing class and I see the regulars now, a few who are catching the yoga bug, I can tell. One woman in particular surprises me beyond belief.

She's been to several of my classes now, a beautiful woman probably in her 50's. After Monday night I was pretty certain she wouldn't be back. I joke about being a kinesthetic dyslexic teacher when I confuse left and right, but if ever there were a true case of the malady, this woman is it. I'm not sure where the difficulty comes in--auditory? Does something get lost in the translation between my verbal cues and her body? Visual? She can watch me or other students and still get tangled up in her own legs moving from downward facing dog to Vira I. Monday she toppled over from a low lunge and my heart sank. I felt responsible. I spent a lot of time with her manually making adjustments or breaking transitions down into baby steps. She got into a pigeon at last and noted how this stretched her outer hip. I was surprised to see her again tonight, and again, she tumbled. When we moved into pigeon she had forgotten the alignment and was again sinking over into her hip, looking confused about where to put her front foot or how to align the back leg. What an amazing woman. I've talked about beginner mind and trying to cultivate that sense of original wonder, and here is a living embodiment of it. I hope to see her again, though it causes me discomfort as an instructor.  I'm baffled in much the same way as when I'm teaching a struggling 2nd grade reader and have no idea how he sees the world and the printed text in front of his eyes. But I hope, too, I can learn how to make both the reading and the yoga accessible to these folks. Is there something I can say or do to assist? I don't know. But if this woman continues to show up on the mat it may just restore some faith in the human race for me.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

"Yoga Body, Buddha Mind"

I found a great article on OM yoga founder and "Yoga Body, Buddhist Mind" co-creator Cyndi Lee in Yoga International today. Here was a bit of external validation for my own experience of yoga as a physical practice. I quote:
"'Yoga teachers would say things like: 'Just surrender to God in this pose.' And I didn't know what that meant. I just didn't get it,' (Lee) says. 'But I could understand how to work for mindfulness and compassion and curiosity.'"
Damn! if that doesn't make me feel like a plagiarist. Not that I need that external validation for my own position, but it doesn't hurt.

Now I'll be putting together a little somethin' somethin' for tomorrow's Sunday session. Somethin' somethin' that resonates with using a physical practice to work for mindfulness, compassion and curiosity.