Non-Attachment in Binary Times

October 2020

Non-attachment in yoga recognizes the nature of impermanence. It does not imply that one doesn’t have opinions or desire a final result. It does mean that things have a beginning and an end and if you don’t see that then what you’re holding on to will hold on to you.

Is it possible to not be attached to the outcome of the 2020 election when a win by Trump feels like a plunge into a bottomless cesspool in the dark? Is it possible to not be attached to the outcome of one who will tip the balance of the Supreme Court to deny human rights in a country reputed to be a beacon for freedom?

When Trump was elected in 2016 I was fairly calm. I thought I understood that people voted for him because this government needed a shake down. Things were not that great here and the time was ripe for ripping the status quo a new one. But with each aberration of Trump and his support team and supporters growing exponentially worse I no longer understand.

And acceptance is out of the question as he and his coven of Stockholm syndrome sycophants place a young cult follower into the Supreme Court declaring that no one should be judged on their religious beliefs. This opens a door to a Q-Anon appointee or a maybe someone whose religion is cannibalism. In a country where you can declare anything you want to be your religion this is an unacceptable non-qualifier. And that appointment is permanent unless you want to bank on death which is just a lousy karma way to think..

Non-attachment seems like a cop out though who wouldn’t want to claim it? How does living under a despotic regime not claim you even though you turn inward! It does. But at least there are elections unlike the permanence barring death in the Supreme Court.

“It is what it is” is now a death mantra of a broken down accidental President whose “it is what it is” referring to 200,000 dead citizens happened because he was more attached to the stock market than the welfare of the people he was supposed to protect.

Man! I am not a fan of it is what it is. Such a cop out. Derisive detachment.

The destroyer in chief is Shiva opening the gates of awareness. Scum is rising as he’s encouraged it to surface. We are a country ridden with racists, morons self serving money hoarders and sexual deviants. Thank you. Now we know. Now get out of here.

With such a boldly villainous outreach from the Republican party, any backlash by the opposition seems by contrast that much nobler than perhaps would be the case in more moderate times. They are by default the good guys. Even more, the heroes of the people. Or that would be how one side sees them.

The title here is binary and binary is because things at the top are black or white. Like prison stripes. That is the prison of our choices made this narrow by this extremism by one party. Yes, I said one party because they are responsible. Not good people on both sides anymore. The other side may seem holy by default because it is the only position left in this dual but they are the humanitarians now.

Non-attached is delusion. What happens in your country does own you whether you like it or not. You are attached. There are no free woods to camp or farm, no free water, you have to pay the price that someone demands, you have to live by the rules that someone sets for you. Maybe you think you can live in prison like some do and find God or whatever peace you call it within those confines. Maybe you can bank on it’s not forever although it’s your forever if you are older or your kids forever if the impact will last for decades.

And what of sifting the real from the unreal? The moment from the potential? What of the veil of illusion we yogis consider to be the detriment of reason? This time of stark differences, this battle for the soul of a country has mounted a war on emotional balance as well. One has to manage the mind to keep hysterics at bay. The assault against the weakest has frightened most of us.

We are living in a what if time. Binary feeling like will I live or die? Will I thrive or falter? So much shift to the unknown that was always so but now marked in real time by real problems. Masked, sanitized and hunkered down not knowing who or what will be the ax or anvil.

I’m off to have a hip replaced. I have ignored the pain and limping for as many years as I can remember to avoid putting this body in the hands of anyone, to avoid the risk of a foreign body in this body.

On my surgery day the Supreme Court will be decided, Biden and Trump will battle at Belmont University for the presidency, a stranger will dislocate me and put me back together. I will ,whatever happens in all this, have to shift, find peace in the space within the seeming solidity of chance and all its what ifs.

Is there non-attachment to personal outcome? Can one protect the integrity of “I” apart from outcomes beyond our control?

In a world where the surface is home it is not easy to imagine that. Yes, we live on the surface. The surface matters.

There is a biblical reckoning happening here. The truth of mortality seems realer than ever. Things some of us could not fathom are forming. We are called to resist harmful outcomes. We are called to stay sane and calm despite them. We are called to ease attachment to that which we can’t control. But only once we’ve given all to control it.

Good luck.

Nowhere Man

I’m awake which sucks because it’s almost dawn and if I slept it was fitfully. Frustrated, I hurl myself out of bed, poetry writing itself in my head.

 

Writing words that no one will read

Painting pictures that no one will see.

Huh.

I take stock of my thoughts. Plainly I’ve got work to do.

 

I am way overtired. We’d been to a party of dear friends. We party like it’s a job interview that we will kill. We celebrate with abandon which despite our lovely lives is not our lot.

 

It’s too early and even for a morning after I know I will suffer too much. I make a play for sleep again and it comes though an hour later my new pup wakes me with a muscular swipe at my face. I roll out of bed and throw on my robe as a song starts playing in my head.

He’s a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land…. Oh you’ve got to be kidding.

 

In the 70’s Lennon told Rolling Stone Magazine how he conceived The Beatles song Nowhere Man. “I was just going through this paranoia trying to write something and nothing would come out so I just lay down and tried to not write and then this came out, the whole thing came out in one gulp.”

 

I get that and thank you John for helping me to believe I may be more like you than just the lazy creative free procrastinator I  imagine myself right now.

 

And then there’s the nagging realization that most beautiful creations will go unnoticed. They come from souls who no one will know. But that doesn’t mean they’re nobody.

 

Never Not Broken

Never Not Broken ~ Pajama Jam / December, 2014

Never Not Broken is the title of a body of work to be published. It is also the name of a website not yet visible.

 

It is 7:00 A.M. on a bitter day, sad songs playing on the radio as I head down an empty highway to a job I’m grateful for as the parameters of work feel crucial to opposing lethargy during this winter holiday.

 

This uncommon cold has got me depressed. Or maybe depression invited sickness so I’d have some lung/grief quality time. Either way, depression is not my thing. I usually arrest at anger, keeping depression at bay with cynicism and cautiously placed rage.

 

I took my grieving lungs to Nordstrom to return something for my husband which was an excuse to wander around a place that had things I didn’t need, couldn’t afford and didn’t want. Still, it channeled energy otherwise involuted. In a store filled with beautiful things that women who want to feel beautiful want to put on, I was drawn to sleepwear. Even though I don’t wear pajamas, I walked out with an armful because they were soft, on sale and baggy and even though most of the clothes I own are basically pajamas because they are yoga clothes, I am weary of the uniform related to my job. Pajamas feel like a timely standard.

 

Last night my husband went to a poker game and I bounced off the walls with jittery boredom in my not so satisfying pajama clothes. It made sense to forget this day; to shut down the house and escape into a hot bath and cool sheets with a novel. The inbox on my computer screen had two unsolicited and disturbing announcements. WordPress revealed that a year’s accomplishments in writing boiled down to a couple of posts that were popular because they railed against stupid in yoga and Facebook became shame book as it portrayed the wasted year of a useless life, with a cheesy high school yearbook type page highlighting  irrelevant postings. Thanks for the tacky souvenir of my wasted time, whoever thought this up.

 

My most intuitive and complex writing was more or less overlooked. I consoled myself with the thought that blogging is not the best forum for this sort of thing. My Facebook posts are rarely personal as my personal life is in person. I post things I think useful. But I think that’s not the point. I wouldn’t normally give a hard glance at those e-mails but I was ready to be disturbed and they did it. These distractions are not much in a life but little cracks in our creations make for breaking points that defines freedom.  The question is what does one do with freedom so it does not become a prison? Hopefully it’s true that good questions are more important than the answers.

 

Today I reluctantly put on the yoga uniform to meet a client down the highway and turned on the local radio station that caters more to cutting edge than heartbreak but a slew of heartsick love songs was on the queue. Someone was feeling the dark side of intimacy. Bad news and bad love; I thought reflecting on my most popular writing; that’s what sells. Could it be a prophylactic measure against certain upheaval? Are we imprisoned in a disaster preparedness course that never ends?

 

The ceaselessly cyclical cycle of breath and tide is marked by consistent breaks; broken, unbroken, broken, unbroken. What is change if not a break between what was and what becomes Do we practice heartbreak and battle to be assured of staying aloft on a planet that wobbles?

 

I get it. My descent into a bored depression is giving the broken its due. I have a vague sense of worthlessness and no confidence in the next move, yet in this gutter of inertia the break is already the mend. I have become a seed; all energy pulled into a fragile shell waiting to be split open.We must break to become again in a new way. That is change and change is this life.

Without that we would not be worth a darn.

This post was written several weeks ago but I didn’t have the desire to publish it. But after all, it’s only a blog. This post  inspired me to push the button.

Feet to the Milk White Sky

Feet to the Milk White Sky

 

Warm legs slip from tangled sheets at dawn

The shock of cold air is a sweet relief before it assails

 

Enfolded in fleece

I put the coffee kettle on

And head to the office to push this button for later

Set the day

 

Coffee steeping and my house sleeping

I slip off the robe, flip onto my head on the red living room rug and send my feet to the ceiling

A forest falls from a milk white sky

Spidery black branches are pen and ink paintings on the emptiness

Cool air caresses skin warmed too much too quickly despite the morning chill

 

Temperature control is random these days

Mine moody as the climate’s changes

Record highs, record lows

 

Upright again, the groundswell assaults me

THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON DOWN HERE

Chaos below with my head in the clouds

Infinite space with my feet in the air

 

Is it true the sky is falling?

Chicken Little!

Cautioned a cup- half- full mother to a nervous child

 

I learned to pull my work boots on

And pulled my head from the sand

To notice the beauty in chaos

To modestly wade knee deep and do what one does for love

It muffled the alarm that rings through my sleep

 

 

But should all fail and the sky fall

Uncharted at dawn by even the birds

I make peace with the milk white sky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOGA PH.D. – A Review

 Critical Thinking is Critical to Spiritual Pursuit

Carol Horton; doctor of philosophy, social scientist, research consultant and academic is no stranger to critical thinking.

But she was an innocent and cerebral guest in her own body until she brought that body to yoga class intent on adding something new to her fitness regime. What ensued was an enthusiastic quest for uncovering the history, the mystery and the totality of yoga. When an inquisitive scholar scrutinizes a mystery it is bound to be more than a superficial embrace. As superficiality is contradictory to yoga, it does not seem incongruous to me that an intellectual found herself absorbed in every aspect of the enigmatic phenomenon called yoga. However Yoga Ph.D. begins with the premise that this was an unlikely or at least unexpected coupling. As complex a subject as yoga and its effect is, perhaps the irony is not that an academic embraces yoga but that anyone with less than an intellectual interest is willing to pursue it at all.

 

In a mere 150 pages, 8 short chapters and three sections; Historical Reflections, Personal Reflections and Sociological Reflections, the author manages to paint a comprehensive and succinct picture of the history of yoga, offer a well told tale of an accidental pilgrimage into a mysterious practice, and contribute to the notion that there are no longer yoga people but people who do yoga and these people have created a definition of what modern yoga is.

 

I met Carol Horton through her blogging where I was often the commentator responding with apocalyptic and jaded observations; yeah people are weird, so what. But she is the rare bird who is not rattled but buoyed by a challenge.

Her cool demeanor and ability to take on any controversy without vitriol is unusual. It is not surprising that what may appear to be just another yoga book amongst many is not. It is social commentary, history, politics and America in the context of an autobiography that is meticulously documented and informs with remarkable clarity as she organizes her thoughts for the reader’s greatest benefit. Horton plumbs the depths of the subject of yoga with an objective and calm approach while revealing her own journey with a dispassionate tone that will resonate with a wide audience.

 

I read the book as a galley before it went to press. Carol published the compilation 21^st Century Yoga first and by the time I’d read and reviewed that I was a bit weary of the yoga discussion in general and took a break from thinking about yoga except where it was me doing it or teaching it. When Ph.D. was later published I set out to read it again for the sake of a review but life got in the way and it sits on a great stack of deliciously anticipated reading by my bed. It has occurred to me that a book reviewed long after it has been read is a brilliant idea. After all, when it comes to a scholastic work (which I consider this to be) it’s not in the reading but the retention that one fully comprehends the meaning of the written word.

 

The take away from Yoga Ph.D. is this: Here is a concise and tidy history of modern yoga. Beyond that is a well told tale of a person who finds another dimension to herself. Finally and perhaps most relevant is that this is a book that opens a discussion of modern yoga and the humanity that embraces it.

Where some embrace the popular notion of the poet Rumi that there is a field beyond right and wrong where we should meet, this author believes that yoga has the potential to, if not level, then even the playing field.

 

 

In the last few decades it is common for what once seemed unlikely candidates to become yoga enthusiasts Where yoga was once a pursuit of the fringe, eccentrics and earnest young rebels it is now the exercise program of choice for countless professionals; CEOs, doctors, lawyers, engineers as well as the playground for people from all walks of life, all manner of profession. Many great and curious minds have been blown by body/mind experiences that expose previously conceived concrete reality as no longer absolute.

 

What makes Horton’s experience singular is that she wrote about it, gave it context, history, and a long view that includes the implications of how society affects and alters the things it claims as its own. A study of modern yoga reveals that who does yoga eventually will define what yoga is. An individual stamps and creates the practice once the practice has left its mark. With Yoga Ph.D., Carol Horton leaves her mark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She Moves In Mysterious Ways. It’s All Right.

Or Is It?

 

This pear is too pretty to eat but there’s an order to things

Fulfill your purpose or rot

So I do the thing that makes sense

To me

Kiss it

Take a picture, say goodbye and thank you

Cut it up and eat it covered with shiny flax seeds and sprinkled sprouted almonds

What would you do for love?

 

I used to kiss my knees every time they rose to greet me in a yoga pose

Just a yoga teacher doing what came naturally and I taught them to do the same

I didn’t second guess myself

Some of you remember that

Would you do that for love?

 

I rode a wild horse through the woods that bolted and charged for the stable

Fearless friends raced to save me but that horse threw me hard as it could

I didn’t move for a long time

They thought I was dead

Bounced and bounced and still

I didn’t bother to get checked out

It made sense to me at the time

In hindsight, to you, it may sound foolish

You may be right

Or not

 

 

I took an untamed path down a ski slope and landed on my shoulder

My arm hung suspiciously behind me and refused to move in any way for many days

I didn’t bother anyone about it

Which made sense to me at the time

I was young and wild

I didn’t noticed that shoulder was wrong till a yoga pose brought it to light

But it didn’t really bother me for almost 40 years

Till a foolish yoga teacher brought me down

 

I hold the pose called mountain

Eyes closed I notice I’m not standing on my bones

My muscles are doing the bone’s job and I’m getting exhausted just standing here

I lack the grace that is balance

How long has this been going on?

 

I think of the poses that aren’t in this plane

You know, the cockeyed ones, the twisty ones, the ones that turn part of your pelvis forward and part of it back

I wonder what’s happening to my spine and am I standing on my bones or are my muscles being used badly

What would you do?

 

I want to live a fearless life, like you.

I won’t know the consequences till I make the action

Your body is not mine

You may suggest something to me but you don’t know for sure

I may suggest something to you in your wild life

But you may not listen

Here in zero gravity we are trying to hold on and we are hoping to let go and we never know for certain what will happen before we jump

 

You are a mysterious person, doing mysterious things

Like motherhood

Every child different and you don’t know how to be but there’s an order to things

You do what you think best so they don’t go bad

You are trying to affect energy you’ve never seen before

It moves in mysterious ways

You will become energy you have never been before

It moves you in mysterious ways

 

We are all kin and sometimes I am the mother and sometimes the child

In all ways the student and mostly the teacher

But no matter

Mystery is when you don’t know the outcome

What would you do?

 

This pear is too pretty to eat but there’s an order to things

Fulfill your purpose or rot

What would you do for love?

P.S. When my husband Rob Lindsay takes a picture of something he loves, he turns it into art. 🙂

Not Ready To Be Born Though This Endless Winter

Two o’clock and dark as dusk;

 I sail home on flood waters glacial and grey

 A furious sky banished the sun

It tries to crush us

Rush into the house grasping wet packages bursting with promise

I light the hearth and organize the groceries

Admire the warm lamp light on blue walls and

Red tulips in a silver vase

The house soon saturated with spice and vanilla to keep the damp dripping at bay and give the oven purpose

My dog dances under foot as he knows the last walk waits for the waning sky and too late will be too dark for a decent outing

In luck as the sky pauses for breath, we race into the bracing wind without worry

Packed in ice

No flame or fire touches once aching limbs heavy on warmer days

Now weightless

Fluid duck feet scoot me through a silken pond

A pack of deer pause; ghostly shadows frozen in the fog

They neither fear nor welcome us but take us as passing phantoms

We stare back and wait till they float across the field as one spirit

No cars pass

No others walk past

I am all sense but no sense to stop though the light is waning

Enchanted in this mist

It is my dog who finally stops and looks up to say it is time to turn back

I hadn’t realized we’d gone so far

It will be pitch before we see home and now it begins to rain again; a grisly rain to bow our heads

Though soaking feet are no pleasure the sunless sky and solid air have a hold on me

Don’t pull away from me

You are not ready to move on

It is true

Once the clock passes midnight of the old year the promise of renewal comes quietly

The light begins to shift

The plants move under the ground

That promise of renewal means rise to the occasion!

I am not ready

We do not stop

We did not stop

Our phones attached to our bodies

Our computers ever clanging

We raced around and braced against nature

To keep our pace

To hold our schedules

Where once one was unlucky enough to just try to survive

Now ease becomes burden as survival is assumed (though not for all)

And the icing on the cake is now the cake

And the sweetness becomes cloying

Choking

Here this life of unchanging pace is not the survival of life against death

But the gruesome survival of transformation not subtle but violent

And coming ever quicker

No time to check the tide of rising power of those drunk with self interest

As the forward thrust of high, always high tide threatens to swallow us

Clashing humanity clawing, advancing was ever so and there is no complaining

And so

This night as every night

When I slip into heated sheets in a room kept purposefully cool for nothing less than my pleasure

The habitual smile as I slip into the cocoon

Is the relief of one who knows that hibernation must be embraced in small ways

Stay the tap- tap- tap of doing

To melt into the cocoon

To pause in this transitory bliss

A moment is not too short for gratitude

There are only many moments together

In this endless winter

Do These Pants Make My Ass Look Fat?

Caution: This material contains some judgment.

The CEO of Lululemon sportswear attire aligned his company with the yoga community years ago in a successful effort to corner the yoga apparel market. The society of yogis fell prey to the promise of promotion, free swag and membership to an elite community; their own, as re-gifted to them by the long arm of  a clothing chain with Mafioso chutzpah.

Lululemon has been cited for one questionable act after another but if the yoga public flinched it didn’t show in sales records; not until the company made a pair of yoga pants that woman complained were too sheer.  And CEO/founder Chip Wilson countered that their fat thighs were responsible for burning those threads bare. Not his fault; they were not his targeted clientele. You know, not everyone looks good in his yoga pants.

He’s right and not every company caters to every body.  It’s the only thing I’ve heard him be right about since his company starting getting bad press but that’s what took him down. Don’t fuck with women’s self image. We are too insecure to handle that. Take advantage of Chinese workers. Brainwash and manipulate your employees. Just don’t say that our asses are too fat. That is our moral breaking point. That is our moral outrage.

I’ve said my piece about this company long ago. I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do with their bad luck upside down horseshoe branded clothing. That’s how this country’s commerce works. You do what you can to make a buck and let the buyer beware.  Lulu was deep in the drink by the time they came to Nashville. I’d never heard of them but it didn’t take long to see they weren’t “yoga people” (whatever that means now) but people selling pants; period.  And they knew how to work a system that was increasingly commercialized and dependent on its own sales.

I was under the impression that most folks don’t know anything about Lululemon’s policies although it’s probable that anyone on the yoga blogosphere does. I didn’t see the company’s stock plummet when the internet was alive and aghast with the underpinnings of the company’s philosophy; survival of the fittest and no tears for the losers, the CEO’s outspoken defense of employing Asian children at a pittance or his delight in creating a name for a company that would sound funny when Asians tried to pronounce it. How many folks quit wearing the clothes or detached themselves as ambassadors when they discovered that the company’s staff training extended into their personal lives? And will the yogis aligned with the company bail because of a fat ass attack where a manipulative people baiting money making machine was not reason before?

The attempt to blame shoddy workmanship on the consumer was stupid. Chip Wilson is smart enough to be a millionaire entrepreneur but it took a clueless pot shot at women’s bodies to show that he is nothing more than a guy with an opinion that most guys know not to share. Any guy who’s known a woman knows if a woman asks: “Do these pants make my ass look fat?” the answer is no.

Is it possible that people who knew the company was un-cool turned their heads until insulted by the implication that their bodies weren’t hot enough to turn someone else’s?

Why are we undone by some pants maker’s opinion?  Surely clothing designers everywhere have these conversations behind closed doors.  Did Lululemon so successfully run a clothing sale campaign that we believed they were an entity interested in our well being, not just our attire?  And why the indignation when it comes to our looks more than indignation about a company that inserts itself into the local chapters of our business?

What Will I Do With This Awareness?

In this season of silver grass and sharp light I reflect on the shadows that do not reflect but absorb light.

I am a yogi, a yoga teacher, a teacher of clarity; of awareness sustained, of purpose defined and attitude checked.

Yoga teacher:  One who shines light?

Light shone at light makes a blind spot. There assumption may ripen.  Shine light at darkness to reveal what was not there before.

Embrace the yogi who points to the darkness. Do not tell her about the poverty of negative thinking or that her vision reflects her soul. She calls attention to the unattended which even if born of light is not always bathed in it but sometimes hidden in shadow.

And what will I, the yoga teacher, shedder of light, do with my own awareness?

Will I find happiness or comfort? Will I be better off?

As the day dawns on another threat of a government shutdown I ponder the little project I just signed on for; teaching a tiny segment at an event to bring yoga to the warring tribes of Africa.  The video that persuaded me to participate indicates that yoga has had a positive effect on a few thousand people and the hope is that it will enhance the opportunity for peace. I see no harm in it but I wonder at yoga’s effects on our own warring nation.  In fact I see that Lululemon seems to have some part in promoting this event, a business known more for the havoc it wreaks than any humanitarian bent.  And indeed I am aware that some yoga community politics are in play even here.

The fragmented tear sheet of harmony amongst us is a scrapbook that sits on the shelf of hard covered hard edged, dusty tomes that set the tone of both our doing and undoing despite our best intentions. Still, we cannot stop doing. It is what we are.

That is why yoga has begun an evolution as a social service for the at risk and less fortunate who are more than the churches can handle, more than the families can handle while the government; an overwhelmed, ungainly lumbering beast rumbles through the mist trampling delicate underlings in its myopia.  It is a noble thing to help others find peace.

Here’s a news clip that shows a line of very overweight people waiting for free food boxes. The correspondent reveals “all sorts of things to keep a family going: donuts, pancake mix, white rice, pasta, commercial peanut butter and mayonnaise”.

We are unevenly informed even if we share a heart. Our perceptions are different even when we are evenly informed. We are a diverse, disparate people. We will not storm the gates together. Our greatest cohesiveness is majority vote. Cohesion is a patchwork quilt of mismatched swatches.

If awareness is turned inward so that we might discern what to let in and what not to let in, will the world wait for us? How many invitations to save the world, how many pleas, invitations, how many e-mails, texts, tutorials will wait as we contemplate?  Eyes and ears tuned to beauty, love and light will give respite though we cannot remain there without pause or interruption.

I am teaching a class at Vanderbilt. People are losing their jobs en masse. We share our thoughts about why, when and who.  Extending the conversation from the astonishing to the absurd, one of my students evenly says, “My new yoga mat can cause cancer”. The room of scientists, researchers and medical professionals are aghast.

She hands me the cardboard wrapper from the yoga mat bought at Wal-Mart. The label says; this product contains one or more chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects and other reproductive harm.

The mat is named “Lotus”.

I think back to a sign I saw posted outside the walls of the new age/yoga Chopra Center in Carlsbad last month. Chemicals used in this facility have been known to cause cancer, birth defects…….

My cancer causing mat owning student says she was born in the 70’s and purposefully stays there. She lives in the country, listens to old rock and does not watch the news. She describes herself as a woman of faith who keeps her eye and mind on the good words of the good book. She says nothing about returning the cancerous yoga mat she is lying on. She picks the battles she feels she can win.

I asked my students what yoga does for them. I want to know if the work has the desired effect of creating awareness and if heightened senses bring peace or agitation. They tell me that they come to class frazzled and leave refreshed; that yoga helps them manage stress more efficiently for about 24 hours.  Then they do it again. I think of a friend who has just confided that she’s taken a pill every day for 10 years to keep her positive. She’s afraid to go off.

We are so aware that we can’t handle all that confronts us. Nothing in this life will let us go back to sleep. Is yoga a break, a temporary fix with a cumulative effect? Perhaps that is enough. But as the yoga teacher, it is not a break but a constant call to awareness that has no filter.

I am driving from one job to another and traffic is not on my side. I finally get around the driver with a handicapped badge on his rear view mirror who drove with infuriating exactitude 10 mph below the speed limit. I have reflexively unwrapped the chocolate bar I’d stashed for the infusion I’ll need three hours from now. It’s still early in the morning.

I look at the old gentleman beside me in his upscale car and careful attire, well groomed hair. I imagine him a native to this once sleepy Southern town; a man who has deep roots while all around him is changing as immigrants like me have changed his home. I imagine him gracious about that, generous in his acknowledgement of the good that has come with the traffic, crime and bad manners.

I see a picture from my childhood; a picture that is a feeling collage more than one image. I am relaxed. Life is good in my 50s middle class world. There is slowness.  There is quietude. There are friends and there is time and there is a wide open empty highway in the darkness that two headlights pursue in sureness toward a promising destination. It is gone. Maybe it was never there.

 

What will I do with this awareness? Will I live like a prisoner making paper dolls? Will I storm the prison walls?  Or will I expand my revelation that silver grass in light sharpened by a darkened  sky  is the field of all of us.  I choose always to be reborn by this temporal  beauty as the mud beneath and the sky above will shift and shift again.

The Others

I am the others.  Hours waiting in a medical facility on the North side, the side for people without health insurance, without money, without connections, I am privy to the service of the underprivileged.

I am a white middle class statistic without health insurance with a shoulder that was hurt in a white middle class Iyengar studio and a fused sacrum that’s becoming more troublesome.  I cannot do my job as well as I need to. I am in pain and I am a lucky one because I am allowed free medical attention through an effort called Art Docs which is to alleviate the suffering of starving artists.

Turning the corner into the hospital parking lot I pass a shoot -out at a pawn shop. The parking garage that is the only option for General Hospital is full. I make several passes before parking several floors above ground and my instinct in an unfamiliar setting tells me to take my chance on the stairs. Do not get into an elevator in a parking garage in the hood.

The entrance and alien waiting area is stripped down and I think of an army triage in a war zone. The place feels abandoned but for the gentle mannered young girl behind a plastic window who takes my name and steers me to the elevator toward my destination. It smells of cigarette smoke and despair.

I enter the next waiting room and then another. I have not seen another white face. I have seen the legless, the toothless, and the hobbled before old age, the starved and overweight, the overburdened and the other world.

The nurse who checks me in laughs when she weighs me and tells me of her battle to lose weight. She takes my input and seems bemused that I have nothing to note but an allergy to Sulfa. Do you drink, smoke, suffer abuse; any meds, surgeries or accidents?  No, no, no and I know how lucky I am to be a rare statistic here. I am sensitive to being out of place; an observer who can walk out through the worn doors to freedom.

Two hours later I’m seen by a kind very young doctor who attempts to use each of the hand sanitizer wall dispensers which are empty. He quickly rinses his hands at the sink and thoughtfully extends one to me with his introduction. He has me go through some mobility tests. He tells me that MRIs and X-Rays are expensive and he doesn’t think I need surgery so why bother. He gives me exercises to do that I have in fact been doing since last November and suggests I double up on anti-inflammatory meds.

I ask him about my displaced sacrum and he says he doesn’t know what to make of it but I can tell my time is up. Relieved, I thank him and head quickly out the door catching the eye of a woman in another room. A scarf covers her head. She sits on the table with her husband in a chair by her side and casts me an imploring glance, making a gesture of helplessness with her hands.  She calls softly; I have been here such a long time. No one is coming.

What can I do but smile to say that I get it. No one is coming feels like the banner for the poor.

I stop at the plastic window to have my parking pass validated. There is a distressed young man, a dark skinned foreigner with poor English accompanied by a parking garage guard. His car has been towed. He didn’t understand the sign; explains that he doesn’t read English and now his car is gone and the powerless clerk behind the plastic window just repeats again and again; you parked in veterans parking. There is a sign. I can’t help you.

He gestures for me to hand him my pass. I am the lucky one. For this guy… no one is coming. As I walk away I hear the guard asking the hapless desk clerk what he should do. I wish I had the money to get this guy’s car back but I’m dealing with first world problems that leave me no resource but my prayers for the helpless.

I live in the light, where civilization seems to flourish but I know it’s an illusion. The leader of our country wants to punish Syria for spraying poison gas on its innocents while Monsanto is allowed to poison our innocents and those we import our produce to. We pick and choose who we will champion based on its bang in our bank and how it might affect our future. We mandate equality for all and demand societies whose constructs we do not understand to follow our moral code while our people go hungry and illiterate and our financial leaders dictate our compass.

We are not protected. The leaders may think themselves immune but few can stand the allure of Tolkien’s ring. My precious will ensnare all who come in contact; that can touch the power, feel the power, be befuddled by the power.  We are pawns on that board. Our future hangs in a precarious balance; all of us.

Still, some of us have a better cushion than others; a bigger space between us and the grit. Some of us are lucky. I am the lucky one. It’s up to me to pay that forward. I began today with a greater effort, extended myself purposefully into the discomfort where I can do some good as I’ve done before but confess to being so often relieved when my extended hand is not taken. Today I did not take silence for an answer but kept pushing.