I woke up from my nap a while ago wondering why I wonder? Not to be confused with "I wonder as I wander...". I mean really, it is a pretty queer world in which we live, don't you think? Why yes I do, thank you very much. For example, "isn't it rich, isn't it queer, losing my timing this late, in my career?" Bring in the clowns. Very funny, eh? I never really had much of a career, wasn't born knowing by the age of 4 "oh yes, I want to become a concert pianist" or "I knew from a very early age I was born to do great things in this world." None of this ever happened to me. I'm still searching like a lost soul for answers wherever I can find them, and honestly, I don't spend much time even doing that.
We all have our priorities, I mean really, if I can't have my bowl of Fiber 1 in the morning then you might as well put me in front of a firing squad, and take away my coffee and I'll voluntarily put myself in front of that same firing squad. I've taken to walking the long sidewalk outside from my studio to the garage, probably a distance of about 150 feet, one way. At night when I wake up to piss. Barefoot. Actually, totally naked. (I cannot wrap my mind around how in the world people can sleep wearing clothes). I look up at the marvelous night sky and feel overwhelmed and yet joyful, somehow absurdly safe. Which is quite ironic, what? Those bright lights up there that are coming at me at the speed of light are hitting me after about a million years. Is that queer or what? Take your pick--the phenomenon of this whole incredible universe or me walking outside at 2 in the morning star struck and naked, and feeling pretty damn vulnerable. I wonder if wandering bands of armadillos ever attack humans?
If you take time, which is "a conscious dimension created by man", whatever that means, and put it on a clock, not a digital one, but an analog one, and say that this planet's age can be summed up in its' totality by assigning it a 24 hour life span, then we, as human beings, have been here for about the last second. Or is it 2 seconds? The point is, it's a minuscule piece of the circle. Pretty strange for an animal that has managed to nearly destroy the planet, huh? The dinosaurs were here for millions of years and the last theory I heard was that a huge meteor hit the earth like a thousand and one atom bombs and a heavy cloud dust encircled the globe, hence no sun, no grass, no something--saurases anymore. And here I am worried and denying it to all who might ask that I can't do half moon pose. One day in class a yoga teacher, in describing something like a difficult hip rotation said "it really is just ridiculous" and I thought, wow, you just said something pretty funny and pretty profound. It is ridiculous, it is strange, it is queer. Another something I find exceedingly odd is why do so many people like to fantasize about what it would be like to be rich. REALLY rich. Most people that I've met in my life that are pretty darn rich are also pretty darn unhappy. In fact, some are raving mad lunatics who bemoan the tragedy that they were born into wealthy families. They wonder how rich life might be if only they were like the rest of most of the world, NOT rich (monetarily, of course).
I read about a very poor Indian man who went daily to his local temple and prayed before the statue of a goddess to "please, please, let me win the lottery" (in the spirit that this would bring an end to all his suffering). This went on for days and days until finally the statue of the goddess came to life and said "hey you, would you please, please buy a lottery ticket?" You get the point, but in reality isn't winning the lottery close to impossible? I think I've read that you are more likely in your lifetime to get struck by lightening 54 times before winning the lottery. (not Cash 5 or Two Step and some other exceptions). I've also read that a study of big time lottery winners has shown that most find their lives shattered in a bad way, big time. It's just too much to handle for most. They learn that their money cannot buy happiness. Still, knowing all this, I bet most of us would still like to win. Weird.
My nocturnal walks on the sidewalk leading to the garage have me wondering what it would be like to sit my butt down on the sidewalk and try meditating, without moving, until sunrise? Could I possibly do that? Would I want to? I spent a small fraction of 2 afternoons this week picking up trash that someone threw out their window onto our property. Plastic bottles, empty packages of cigarettes, Taco Bell wrappings and drink cups, can after empty can of tree wound paint. That's right, people who would spend their days trimming and pruning trees, painting the cuts with a thick, gooey black dressing so as to prevent any sort of boring insects from infecting the tree would, without thought, toss the equivalent of 2 large plastic garbage bags of trash out onto some unsuspecting person's property. Don't they know it's been over 100 degrees out here in the afternoons and it ain't fun picking up someone else's trash? So as I picked up all this trash I kept wondering what it would be like if I could be out here in this sweltering heat picking up this trash and just be in the moment and enjoy myself? Stop thinking about the who, or what, or why of any of it but just slowly and mindfully pick up the cigarette butts, the rotting jalapeno wrapped in saran wrap, the cans of tree wound goo and just put in the my black garbage bag and say to myself, I can be totally contented doing this right now, in this moment? I tried it and it worked, sort of. Well, it did, sort of. Well, not totally, but I gave it a good effort. Then I found a piece of paper amongst all the garbage with some names and phones numbers listed and made a couple of calls. My messages were like this: do you know who might have thrown garbage on my property? Don't they know it's illegal? Don't they know someone has to pick it up? And so on like that. And yet calmly (well, kind of). The next day *they* sent someone out to the house to pick up all this trash! Excuse me, I said, but in my message I thought I had stated that I had already picked up all the trash? Whatever, it was all very strange.
I'm doing an Iyengar workshop every day this week and still making it to my focus on form class. It's not really an immersion, but still, we are a very small group and get lots of individual attention. I can never get it totally right. Who can? It's a process that has no end, no ultimate goal whereby you can say eureka! I've gone as far as possible with this and now I'm going to be out there amongst all those stars in another dimension totally enlightened.
I highly recommend Vanda Scaravelli's beautiful book Awakening the Spine published by Harper Collins. In her 80's or 90's there are photos of her doing viranchyasana, yoga nidrasana (sleeping pose), kapotasana (back-bend with knees bent on the floor, top of head touching the floor, elbows to the floor, tops of fingertips touching bottoms of toes). It really is just totally ridiculous. :-) But beautifully rich and queer.
