Breaking News: The World is Not Inside My Computer

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Funny thing happened yesterday morning.  The alarm sounded at 6:00.  I hit the snooze button three times (per usual) and then leapt from bed at 6:15 with a song in my heart.  I sprang (yes, I’m a morning person) over to my desk with a skip in my step and opened my laptop with eager anticipation.

And waited…

waited some more…

Where are the bars?  Where are the little black bars?? 

This was the point where panic began to set in.

WHY ARE THERE NO BARS!?!?!  WHAT DO YOU MEAN CONNECTION TIMEOUT!?!?!

The Internet had abandoned me.  I was a woman alone on an island with no means of discovering what had happened in the world while I was asleep.  I began to blame myself.  What I had done wrong?  Did I stay up too late last night?  Did a crumb of tabouleh fall between the keys?  Did I forget to pay my bill?  My bill…that’s it…I forgot to pay…

I paced for a bit and considered going back to bed but the kettle was ready to boil and the Tazo Black teabag was in the mug.  I sent a text to a friend – the one with whom I have early morning Facebook chats with when I should be…wait a minute…when I should be writing.

Huh.

Well.

I guess I could write.

Great Caesar’s Ghost what a novel idea!

With a cup of fresh brewed tea and a few notes I managed forty-five minutes of sustained and even somewhat lucid sentence construction.

But then I remembered Pete’s Coffee.  Why, didn’t I drive by a Pete’s (if I took the slightly more circuitous route) on my way to my first client?

I arrived at a curiously empty Pete’s with an hour to spare before the real workday began.  I traded tea for the Coffee of the Day (with room for milk) and sat outside in the gorgeous morning sun, opened my laptop and…

Please enter your access code.

What access code?  WHAT ACCESS CODE???

Yes, I know that all I had to do was step inside and ask.  But then I realized:  it was a beautiful morning, the sun was warm, the coffee was good and I felt alive.  Something about breaking the routine; something about feeling the earth beneath my feet and listening to the commuter traffic one hundred yards away. I felt connected to the world.  A part of something.  Something my morning dip into the Huffington Post and scrolling through two hundred Facebook updates has never managed to do.

I closed my laptop, and then my eyes, and sighed.  It was a good morning.

Dancing with My Heart

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Woman at left is painter Suzanne Valadon

Image via Wikipedia

“Open your heart.”

What does he mean, open my heart.  My heart is already open.  Isn’t it?

I would describe it as a modified version of the classic closed-eyed-swaying-amoeba dance from 1967.  I was definitely moving.  I was even managing a steady rhythm although I can’t be certain whether it was to the music flying through the air or the music in my head. All I know is that my body swayed. It might not qualify as ‘dancing’ but I was having fun in my own ‘I’m just fine where I am’ way.

My friend, on the other hand, arced across the room. I watched him shift from the cerebral to the intuitive as he left behind convention and expectations. He moved like a planet abandoning its orbit, half satyr, half nymph.  A shooting star.

He was not alone.  The large studio was filled with men and women giving their bodies like offerings to the music.  There was nothing pre-ordained in how they moved.  It was a pure call and response.

I had yet to pick my feet off the floor or move my arms or walk more than two feet away from the safety of the sturdy wall at the back of the studio. I was happy near the protection of the wall. I was safe and content to continue my swaying amoeba dance.  I figured it was a miracle I was moving at all.

So I don’t know how it happened that I was suddenly in the middle of the room with my friend.  We were spinning and I was trying not to fall over and praying I wouldn’t stomp on his toes.  We whirled around one another, ducked under arms, turned forward and then back again.  A few minutes passed and then he leaned toward me and said,

“Open your heart.”

And when the track ended, my friend moved on and I moved back to the consolation of the wall.

What did he mean – ‘open your heart’?  Wasn’t my heart already open?  Just because he can leap around a room and not care who’s watching and I can’t doesn’t mean my heart isn’t open.

A chance encounter a few days later helped me understand what my friend meant.

I was at the Cal Train Station in San Francisco on Sunday with an hour to kill.  A family with a young boy of about four walked into the station and sat on the bench beside me.  The boy and I made eye contact and I asked him about his souvenir cable car filled with chocolate.  His brown eyes were lit with adventure.  He could not sit still.  He wanted to chase pigeons.  I watched him race back and forth with his dad, arms outstretched, laughing louder and happier on each pass.  His contagious joy echoed through the station. We all smiled as he ran with his shoulders rolled back and his spine arched.

And then I had the “aha moment.”  The little boy chasing pigeons at the train station was doing what my friend had hoped I might do. The boy was running with his heart leading the way.

It wasn’t the mythic heart my friend was imploring me to open.  He knows me well enough to know I have a seeker’s heart. What he wanted was for my body to help my seeking heart on its journey.  My friend simply wanted me to create space in my heart center so the mythic heart would have room to breathe.  Room to grow.  Room to laugh.

So this week I’m making a promise – to give myself space and to move through life just like that little boy at the train station who danced with an open heart.

Epiphanies and Death Trap Accordion Doors

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I was so lost in thought at lunchtime yesterday that I narrowly avoided being crushed by the folding doors at Piazza’s Fine Foods.  The good news – other than I survived intact – is that had the doors had their way I would have died with a smile on my face.

Yep.  That’s right.  I was smiling.

I don’t know why I feel compelled to mention my smiling brush with death – and let’s admit it – it’s closer to death by embarrassment than death by automatic accordion door – it must be the Summer Doldrums.

I like the doldrums.  Life slows down this time of year. Work dwindles while clients and their kids take vacation breaks.  At first I fidget for a bit with too much time on my hands.  I worry about the dip in income. But then the hot, sunny days slow everything down to a gentle simmer and somehow being alive becomes more about embracing my ‘aliveness’ and less about my cold, strident race to the finish line.

Because the whole mad race to the finish line really isn’t working for me.  Not only does the finish line keep moving but I’ve realized that I’ve been so busy racing against myself that I’ve forgotten to experience the world beyond my doorstep.  I’ve been watching everyone else – my friends, my clients, my yoga students – live their lives.  Meanwhile I’ve forgotten to live my own.

And as long I can master the art of stepping through folding accordion door death traps, the truth is, life is pretty damn good.

Listen to Your Mother!

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Me and Mom

“Do what your mother says – enjoy NOW.”

This was my mom’s response after an email exchange where I bemoaned the fact that I would really love to purchase this Sparrowharp. Except that its purchase would put a pretty big dent in my budget.  It’s not that I couldn’t do it, it’s just that – well –isn’t giving myself this gift just a wee bit self-indulgent? What does one do with a Sparrowharp anyway?  Besides, there’re starving children to feed, homeless folks to shelter and animals to rescue. And don’t even mention the debt ceiling.  We’re in the middle of a fiscal crises and I’m thinking about purchasing a custom-built Autoharp?  Why?  I should be investing in my future, not buying musical instruments I can barely play.  I should be donating to charity, not blowing my savings on a hobby.  I should be saving the world.  I should be…I should be… I should be more responsible.  Shouldn’t I?

Or maybe, just maybe, if I want to save the world, I should think about saving myself first.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that joy begins at home.  We need to remember to nurture our own spirit and embrace what makes us happy.  When we understand how to bring joy into our own lives, we’ll find the strength to be a source of joy for others.

Am I going to buy the Sparrowharp?  I’m still thinking about it.  Playing music is a source of joy for me – it takes me out of head and into my heart.  For that reason alone, a Sparrowharp sounds like a pretty good investment.

Besides, a kid should always take her mom’s advice, right?

ps…if you want to hear me pluck out a wee tune on my guitar click here, and then click “Girl From the North Country.”

Today, Music is My Yoga

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Maybelle Carter

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My music teacher in elementary school was a big, buxom woman with dark eyes and even darker hair that she kept piled in curls on the top of her head.  She’d go from classroom to classroom, tapping out rhythm, encouraging us to sing, rallying the boys in the back of the room.  I loved her.  I especially loved her on the days that she brought the instruments – a cardboard box full of triangles, tambourines and wooden sticks.  But the best instrument of all was the one that came in the odd-shaped box.  The Autoharp.  I always volunteered to play the Autoharp, and Mrs. Soldridge always chose me.  Maybe it was unfair to the other few who could manage to keep time, but I didn’t care.  I wanted that instrument.  I wanted it bad.  It was heavy and wonderful and all you had to do to make a sound like angels calling was press a button and strum the felt plectrum across the strings.  And there were so many strings they were impossible to count.

By the time I was in high school though, I’d forgotten all about Mrs. Soldridge and her Autoharp.  I was too busy failing in my attempts to play the opening of Stairway to Heaven on my guitar.  The Autoharp was old-fashioned and silly and so were all those traditional folk songs I loved as a kid.

Flash forward more decades than I’d like to count and enter Evo Bluestein.  Evo brings traditional folk music and dance to schools across the country.  His ability to charm even an introvert like me into believing she’s musical is legendary.  I could take a few pages to sing Evo’s praises but it would be easier for you to just click here.  On Saturday Evo offered an Autoharp Workshop at Gryphon Music in Palo Alto.  With my friend Sarah’s encouragement, I signed up.

The workshop began at 1:00 when I pulled a 21-bar Evoharp (Evo’s custom built version of the Autoharp) from its case.  By 1:15 Sarah and I were playing our first song.  Knowing he had two (cough) extraordinarily talented students in front of him he decided on a more accelerated course.   By 2:00 he and Sarah – a music teacher with a classically trained voice and her own 14-bar Evoharp – were playing exquisite melodies while I attempted to keep a steady rhythm (pick strum pick strum pick strum…).  Our voices rang out in three-part harmony.  By 2:30 Evo was introducing me to more complicated strumming patterns and by 2:45 my left arm was ready to fall off.

He ended the workshop by playing a Bessie Smith blues number.  It was unbelievable.

Music transforms you.  It alters the beat of your heart and the way blood spills through your veins.  I walked into that workshop a bit blue and more than a little nervous.  I left two hours later knowing there had been change on a cellular level.

Today music was my Yoga and every cell of my body was filled with joy.

I loved every single minute of that time spent with my friend, with Evo and with music.  I’m no Mother Maybelle, but damn that was fun!

My Weekend with Hermann Hesse

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Siddhartha (novel)

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When someone is seeking … it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything … because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.

I have a stubborn streak.  I took me ten years before I saw the movie ET the Extraterrestrial.

And I knew only one thing about Hermann Hesse’s book Siddhartha:  It was the paperback tucked into the back pocket of anyone attempting to look more enlightened than the rest of us fumbling saps when I was beginning college in Nebraska.  Sure I wanted to hang with that clique, but I refused to fall for the hype.

So when a friend asked incredulously, “You haven’t read Siddhartha?” I had to sheepishly admit my literary and yogic faux pas.  He pulled the book from his shelf.  “Here.”

I took the book from his hands and thumbed the pages.  It looked thin enough.  Even though I had several books ‘on the go’, what harm would it do to take the weekend to read this one?

I opened the book and a bottle of Hefeweizen that afternoon.  Beautiful, lyrical prose.  I kept reading, the beer grew too warm to drink and the truth began to reveal itself.  Somewhere in the final pages I recognized my clinging, grasping nature.  More than that, I realized that what I was trying to grab hold of was an illusion.

There’s a part of me that regrets not tackling Siddhartha when it was suggested reading for my Philosophy 101 class.  But there’s another part of me that believes the book fell into my hands at the perfect moment.  My advice?  If the last time you read Siddhartha the Beatles were still together, consider reading it again.  And if, like me, you were waiting?  All I can say is, for what?

Maybe I Have His Smile

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Today I decided I wasn’t a writer.  I was done.  Not up to it.  Why did I want to write anyway?  Didn’t all that time spent jotting down ideas, taking notes and blogging simply distract me from my “true” calling?  Didn’t it take away from the time I could be practicing Yoga, nurturing a tenuous connection to what might be the beginning of a social life, or watching So You Think You Can Dance?  Besides, the plastic bins of research gathering dust in my kitchen took up too much floor space in my already cramped studio.  I’d be better off taking them down to my storage locker.

Nope.  I was done.  Finished.  Finito.

And then this happened:

I went back to the family photographs my mother gave me when I visited her last September.  Only a few include images of the father I never met. I have no idea if I walk like him or if I have his sense of humor.  I won’t find out if I’m impatient because he was, or if he liked spicy food.  But maybe if I looked hard enough I could see something in his face.  Tonight I needed to be convinced he and I shared something.  I held the photographs close and then, with my face just inches away from the mirror, I searched my eyes, my cheeks, my nose.  Like almost every other middle-aged woman, all I could see was my mother looking back at me.  I stared at the photographs and back again at my reflection.  I compared his image to my mom’s and then me until finally I could see it.  There it was.  His smile.  I’m pretty certain I have a bit of his smile.

As I slipped the photos back into the treasure box I keep them in, I thought about the protagonist in the manuscript taking up space on my kitchen floor.  She’s just sixteen, but she’s missing a dad, too.  I wondered what she might feel, how she might react, seeing her father for the first time.

I opened my laptop and took a few pages of notes for a manuscript I haven’t touched for three months.

It turns out maybe I am a writer after all.

 

 

 

 

 

Half Moons and Flying Dragons

I remember the evening twenty-five years ago when our teacher led us into Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose).  I had been attending Karl’s class for just a few weeks and it was my first Half Moon.  It wasn’t pretty. I distinctly remember thinking that night would be my last night at Yoga.  My standing leg was shaking, my extended leg’s hip was screaming and my brain was telling me “This is nuts. You can’t do this.  Just go home.”

But I didn’t go home.

To this day Ardha Chandrasana ranks as one of my favorite poses.  Several classes after that first attempt, when I smoothly transitioned into the pose from Triangle and felt the strength in my balancing leg and the openness in my hip, I was free.  I felt like a soaring bird.

And when I introduce Half Moon to a new class for the first time, teaching in the same studio where I was taught, I always stand in the spot where I attempted the pose for the first time and tell the class “Things change.”

These days I’m adding modifications to my Half Moon.  Sometimes, with limited success, I bring my fingers up from the floor to rest the hand on my heart chakra.  More often I’ll take the ankle of my extended leg and pull myself into something I’m certain has a proper name but I call Sideways Bow.

We grow.  We learn.  We fall down. We try again.  We grow.

It took a lot of prying to open my mind to a new way of thinking about Yoga.  My practice was firmly rooted in Iyengar.  There was no other way.

But things change.

While I will probably never, ever understand how I can further my Yoga practice while listening to rock music (please, someone, explain this trend to me), a few years ago I was encouraged to explore the possibility of a fluid, non-alignment based practice.

Enter Flying Dragon. Wait a minute, wasn’t that a Bruce Lee movie?

The truth is, I can be a little bit…ahem…rigid in my thinking.  I like having a place for everything and everything in its place.  Just like an Iyengar practice. I’m not saying Iyengar theory is rigid, only that it might appeal to someone with rigid thinking.

When Suzee Grilley introduced the Flying Dragon sequence to us on a summer morning at teacher training my brain was telling me, “You can’t do this.  This isn’t Yoga.  Give Up.  You’re too out of shape.”  My brain even said this, “You’re too old.”

Several mornings later and I was flying my dragon with joy.

Flying Dragon is the cure for my rigid thinking.  I can feel my soul open to the universe when I practice Flying Dragon.  It lifts my spirit.  It is a balm for the type of depression that feels heavy and leaden.

Different approaches to Yoga fill different needs. Right now I need less formal alignment and more fluid movement.

And for the past few weeks I’ve had this idea in my head that I can’t shake.  There’s a local park not far from my home, and I see myself there, teaching Flying Dragon to anyone who wants to learn.  When I mentioned this to a friend he suggested I was ‘giddy’.  I probably am.  But the thought of a Flying Dragon Flash Mob puts a big smile on my face.

So that’s what I’m going to do.  If you’d like to free your rigid mind – or just feel like flying your dragon – join me for a morning of Flying Dragon (with a few Golden Seeds thrown in for a nice warm up) this Saturday at 11:00 in the park on Homer Street in Palo Alto.

Update:  Four hours after I posted Half Moons and Flying Dragons the August (August?  Seriously?) issue of Yoga Journal arrived.  My “Sideways Bow” variation of Half Moon has a name:  Ardha Chandra Chapasana.  Whew.  Now I can sleep tonight.

Me, Rod Stewart and High School, 1975

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High school gymnasiums in 1975 had an unmistakable odor – a combination of sneakers, sweat and pom-poms.  No amount of low lighting, Charlie perfume and Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers could change that.  But we still showed up for the dances.  On a Friday night in rural Pennsylvania there wasn’t that much else to do.

Guys leaned against the edge of the gym stage and girls slipped under their arms like accessories.  Four hips stayed pressed tight together with legs wound and lips nibbling until our driver education teacher sauntered by with one raised eyebrow and a waggling finger. Being caught necking was quietly admired as girls who had guys looked down at girls who didn’t with a mix of pity and pride.

Lynyrd Skynyrd’s endless Freebird took couples to the dance floor until the seven-minute mark, when the song broke away from fulsome ballad to screaming rock anthem.  As couples returned to their post at the gym stage, clutches of girls took over the floor and danced in circles to The Captain and Tennille.

And then I heard her lyric opening notes.  Maggie May. I didn’t know who Maggie was, I didn’t understand how she wore him out and I didn’t care.  I loved that song. Two thick whacks on the tom-tom, a ringing guitar and Rod’s dry rasp and I was there.  That night I ran out into the center of our empty high school basketball court and I danced to Maggie May.  Alone.

More than thirty years later I can still remember those four minutes of my sixteen-year-old life.  I remember being watched from the edges as I whirled across the floor.  I didn’t care who saw me and I didn’t care what they thought of the weird girl dancing with herself.  I felt free in my body.  Free in my mind.  I knew exactly what the rest of my life held for me.  I knew I’d always be as strong and confident as I felt in that moment.  And I knew I’d always dance.

Truth or Consequences

I’m sorry.  I’ve been distracted.  I’ve been spending some time with my new blog at skirt!, which you can find here.

You know how it is. A website offers you the thrilling opportunity to write for free and you can’t pass it up.  They massage your ego with an application process that makes you feel special.  Chosen.  You say, “Oh, yes, I want to write for free!” and off you go.

It’s all right.  I don’t mind.  I know it wasn’t six months ago that I posted I would never give my writing away again – complete with a link to Harlan Ellison’s rant – but that was then, and those were different circumstances.

We never used to practice in public.  Secrets used to be between our hearts and the diary we hid under our mattress. Today, however, every nuance of our lives is documented.  I can’t believe this is a good thing, and yet here I am, willing participant.

Over sharing is the norm.  Bad behavior no longer shocks us. Instead, it numbs us. Bores us senseless.

My blog on skirt! is deeply personal.  In contrast, I’ve skirted (pardon the pun) around issues here at Practically Twisted.  Hedged a little.  When my Practically Twisted posts arrive at the precipice I dodge the truth with a bit of alleged wit.

I have no regrets about what I’m currently sharing with a couple hundred of the closest skirt! friends I’ve never met.  My ego (today at least) is healthy enough to believe that maybe my posts will benefit someone living with similar circumstances.  But as a writer telling a personal story I need to be clear with myself.  How much of my truth am I willing to share? How much of our truth should we share?  How much does the reader need to know to keep the truth compelling enough to turn the page?