The week was: Monday double practice (both of which were fabulous), Tuesday to Friday, evil sinus cold from hell and a lot of school and car repair, Saturday a Primary over at the studio (which rocked). So, a sinus cold sandwich on yoga bread; hah, try ordering THAT at your local deli.
The Monday early practice (and I do mean early, underway at 8:45 am, which is early for me, since baby care begins at 6 am and must include daycare dropoff) was my classical full practice, to Kapo, and I dropped back and just hung out, walked in once, no feet. I did, however, drop back 3 out of 4 times and stand up all 3 times, so I was pretty chuffed.
The Monday late practice was Intermediate, and I walked in, in Kapo, and took my left foot (could not get righty by myself). Suprise of! I did it a second time and got the same result--left toes, no right ones. Carol was able with a light adjustment to get me all ten toes. Sweet! I also dropped back once there and stood up, so that solidified my always-shaky belief that I can, indeed, drop and stand.
Tuesday I had the BEST intentions, but the sinus cold from hell just blew me down. I could hardly breathe, medicated or not, and it's a miracle that I led a class of art students through three hours of Dada film without collapsing.
Wednesday I was soaked in mucus and exhausted, and still taught, and then Thursday I felt better, but not well, and again, still taught. I felt distinctly better but got trapped at school ALL DAY because my morning car dropoff turned into "hey we better fix your alignment" and what should have taken four hours, took seven. Then it was daycare pickup, and when seventh begins, nothing else can be done.
Friday was the moon, and to be honest, I was exhausted from a week of bad, mouth-breathing half-sleep and mucus, and I just wasn't down for practice. And so be it.
Saturday there's an ashtanga class at 11 am and I've subbed it for two weeks, so it was like being with "the regulars," you know? I went, and I did full Primary while Carol led (we all teach essentially mixed levels, and we all let the experienced folks do whatever they've memorized; it's KINDA Mysore-style, but the limit is that most people don't damn memorize). Warm room, great practice, quick and easy vinyasa, AND I did 3 backbends that I had to fight a bit with, but STILL dropped back and stood up, one time. THAT, I was sure would have disappeared, so again, I was psyched that I still had "the power."
I'm very silly about that. We all do this, maybe until we start 3rd series, hah! You get the pose or do the thing or grab the wrist or whatever it is, and it's all yay, yay, I rock the planet, the gods love me, yay. This of course has to be gotten over, and eventually seems to disappear, but I think it's right to pump the fist a bit when the pose comes (what are you gonna do, repress it?). It's a bit like dancing after the touchdown. So I remain pretty cranked that I can still, with four days of mucus hell off, STILL drop back and stand up.
Seventh series remains really fucking hard. Consistently. The kid middle-of-night-wakings, with my sinus cold at full power, were fucking MERCILESS HELL. Bend over to get him out of the crib? Felt like being slapped in the face with a hockey puck. But sitting in the chair with him draped in my lap, head on arm, let us both space out together, and he'd sleep (eventually) and since I could breathe better there than in bed, one night I just hung out with him in my lap for 45 minutes. I still curse seventh series regularly for its domination of my life (which does not give way, no matter what I do), but it's all pointless anyway. As I think I wrote not long ago, you can curse that thing left and right and it just sits there and glows like fireplace embers. You can't do a goddamn thing, your agency doesn't exist, you mean nothing. YOU DO or you DO NOT. Cursing seventh series is like cursing wind chill. Can you feel your cheeks? No? Then blaming the wind is really getting you somewhere, isn't it?
So another week soon begins. With it, health seems ready to return. With that, practice intention returns. I don't mind in the least practicing in the open at that YMCA, it's cool. I have learned just where to arrange the mat in order to jump back without the squishy gym mats under my feet, and just how far I need to pull my mat out, to do a comfortable Tiriang or Krounchasana. The people passing by--because I practice with glasses off and can't even see a foot from my face clearly--are all absorbed by pratyahara. Nearsightedness is GREAT for that.
I could add mini-rants about how there are ashtanga videos online where obviously the practitioner is only doing what he/she excels at (hey, this video has 14 backbends in it, one arm balance and 3 inversions, wonder what she's got skill in), but then, in public, you'd probably show off your super powers, not your challenges. It would take a specific mind to demo one's challenges to the world.
A silly closer: today I was in a foodie cafe, and I saw a dude behind the counter with a t-shirt which read, "I like pig butts, and I cannot lie." I was amused.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
I may have a full-time job!
Short and sweet: I have received a phone offer of a full-time lecturer position at the place I'm currently working, which would begin in Fall 2010 (September for you non-academics). I'm waiting on paperwork and if/when I accept and send it in, it's a lock! Score!
Take that, academic job market!
Take that, academic job market!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Seventh Series: Still the hardest thing in the Universe.
This past weekend was the Sick Baby Edition of Seventh Series. They say that the first illness (the first big one) that a baby gets, is harder on the parents. CHECK. Technically the kid just had a mucousy cold, but every time he was fed for almost 48 hours, the coughing from that cold would kick off his gag reflex and he'd barf, all over us, the rug, the furniture, you name it, whatever's nearby. 48 hours of that, almost. Usually he has a bedtime bottle and because he is locked into sucking-is-comfort, this is how he gets to sleep (otherwise, and especially early on, it could be two to four HOURS of screaming pre-sleep; he still hardly EVER goes to sleep without some screaming and writhing first). So with this sickness, it'd be ahh comfort, ahh sucking, wait, COUGH COUGH BARF. And that really sucks, you know?
So we turned to electrolytes and grape juice, and he hated the electrolytes, so wouldn't feed, and this was on a weekend, of course, right from Friday night onward, so the only doctors available are in emergency rooms, and we're all freaked out about dehydration, because in 24 hours he only got 12 ounces of liquid and wasn't peeing, and then diarrhea showed up, and that's further dehydration, so the whole weekend was, in short, a panic festival, and J panics more than I do, so I had to be the voice of rationality, which where baby things are concerned, is just hilarious.
Hardest weekend EVER.
Monday, of course, was a holiday, so we first got phone advice, and then a pediatric clinic was opening at noon, so we went in, and were told that he was in fact still hydrated enough to avoid IV's, and had an ear infection as part of the ocld, and yes, a cold. We got eardrops and pink Amoxicillin and the cold is already better. We are on the up. He won't sleep reclining, and so as I write this, he's next to J in a carseat, and sleeping happily while she sleeps on the backache-inducing futon we've rolled out every single night since he was born.
********************************
So, what's the lesson here? I mean this as a question for seventh series generally.
Karen posted this great thing about karma, which got me thinking of this question.
My most frequent complaints about the pregnancy/newborn/infant care have been these:
1. Where the fuck did my free time go? Even two minutes of it?
2. Why is there no interaction? How the fuck do I relate to this person?
3. Fucking SEVENTEEN virtually sexless months? Are you trying to make me motherfucking SUICIDAL?
4. No climbing? Yoga only with effort? Where the fuck is my "ME" time???
Those probably cover the major bases.
Let's see what we can learn about this. The only one that is ACTUALLY about the child is number 2: What's up with interactivity? How do I relate to someone who is so instinctless that he needs to be fucking taught to SLEEP, much less to speak or anything that is, you know, regular "adult human" interactivity?
When I thought about "children" before having one, I imagined little people who walk around and can help you stir batter and who have imaginary friends and all of that. Basically, I imagined four year olds. BABIES are completely out of my realm of imagination; at least they were. I see how people like babies--they're cute and they have big developmental stages (he smiled at me! He crawled! And so on: a lot of "firsts") and you can carry them around and they don't tell you "no" like (I gather) all older children can and will.
HOWEVER
Babies are demanding to a degree that is SUUUUUPERMOTHERFUCKINGHUMAN, man. They are literally helpless: cannot move, cannot self-feed, cannot speak, and at birth can't even communicate with gestures or even fucking EYE CONTACT. Dig that for a second: THEY CAN'T EVEN COMMUNICATE BY GAZE. The ONLY thing they have is crying. And boy howdy universe, can those fuckers cry. My kid is almost eight months old and he STILL cannot speak, cannot feed himself, and is just barely crawling around, but he's got such non-judgement about the world that he's as likely to try on a mouthful of toilet paper as he is a mouthful of baby formula. So basically, he's still helpless. A four year old, he's not.
Ok, so I disenchanted myself there; my image of "having a kid" means having a forty-eight-month-old, so this illusion is my fault, great, I own that.
The pain I'm having about this is about interactivity's lack: I want company, I want someone to perform for and to educate, I want someone to make up stories with, to read to, you know, to DO LANGUAGE WITH.
Most of my interactions with the kid, even when we're co-crawling or I'm offering him toys and he's well-rested and playful and smiley, have an undercurrent of anxiety, because I know that Mr. Hyde is tucked away in there and if there's insufficient food or sleep or a wet diaper, he's gonna come roaring out. I like Dr. Jekyll, but the Mr. Hyde in this kid is a ferocious beast! More and more, however, EXCEPT FOR SICK WEEKEND, Mr. Hyde CAN be chilled out. It's a mix of the kid getting older and my getting more experienced. When the kid was sick, however, Mr. Hyde was in charge. Crying, insatiability, cannot be put down, needs to be carried and touched all the time, all of that. And sure, you think it's lovey-dovey to touch you baby all weekend, but YOU come over here and carry around 21 pounds for four hours a day, with the condition being that every time you put that kid down (you know, to do things like feed yourself), the crying comes.
Ok, so that's that. I'm into language interaction and this "pure emotion" interaction has me insecure, anxious and a bit freaked out. Not on my game, not playing to my strength.
The other three main complaints are ALL about me.
Essentially they are all the final question of number 4: WHERE is my ME time? What the FUCK, man???
From 2003-2008, I had many afflictions, the two chief of which were having to write a humanities dissertation (oh, are you writing a hard science dissertation? Sorry chief, you don't know what difficult is. Definition of "hard science": psychology is hard science. Sociology is humanities) and having to reckon out the past seven years (1995-2002) of fuckedup relationship.
When I finished the diss in 2007, a new affliction appeared, which was having to pay what eventually became $1700 A MONTH in loan payments. Yes, I said A MONTH. TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS a year. As a new graduate, with adjunct teaching gigs, nothing permanent. Yeah, that was pretty anxious.
So why do I think I had all this "ME" time in that situation? I had three things:
1. I could climb--especially when I lived in Bloomington, which was until summer 2005--ALL I wanted to. Got twenty minutes' drive? Great, you're there.
2. I had a yoga practice, from summer 2004 onward, which really got me away from the anxieties.
3. I had a new and cool and interesting relationship, from summer 2003 onwards, which while necessitating a lot of Indy-Bloomington commutes, provided me with intense emotional sharing, non-singledom (I am DEADLY toxic to myself when I'm single), and frequent fabulous sex, which remains, to this day, the BEST WAY IN THE UNIVERSE to chill me out. There is NOTHING like a wicked, excellent shag.
Anyway:
The same said relationship saw us get pregnant in September 2008. Within one month (ONE, man, ONE!!) the sex evaporated and has never come back. Sure, we've had some experiences here and there, but they are now quick, silent and painful, which is about as sexy as the January mud.
The climbing got difficult when I moved up here in summer 2005, and since 2009 began, I've been down to those walls ONE TIME.
Since the child's birth in May 2009, the yoga has become a during-daycare-only affair. If it weren't for daycare, I would be UNABLE TO PRACTICE. I'm NOT KIDDING. You think it'd be easy to find 20, 30 minutes, right? IT'S IMPOSSIBLE. We both work. I need to prep classes. Morning practice is out of the question. We usually get up at 6:30 if the kid doesn't get us up earlier, and J is off to work by 7:30. In the fall I needed to leave then, to start teaching at 9 am, and this semester, I teach at 10:30 but you can't park if you arrive after 9, so the same schedule applies. She works until 5. On a day like today when we don't take the kid in, she begs off work for the morning so I can teach, and then I go home and do kid care while she goes to work, and then at night it's feed him, feed ourselves, give medicine, entertain kid, feed cats, do laundry, wash bottles, prep bottles in daycare bag, put other gear in daycare bag, bathe kid, put kid to bed (which takes several tries and currently means he sleeps ONLY on someone's lap, which means someone else has to do the rest of the night prep), and then put out night bottles, empty cat litter, do other house hygiene, put sleepy kid in carseat next to futon bed, and THEN, only THEN, at about 8:30 pm, does the free time begin, and of course, I could be better using it answering email and doing course prep.
THAT is what my "time for asana practice" is up against. EVERY DAY.
(ED: one thing that DEFINITELY changed for the better was the financial adjustment thanks to Income-Based-Repayment, which changed my monthly payments from $1700 to $800 (!!!!!)--that was a freakin' LIFE SAVER, man!)
I FEAR weekends, because I know how emotionally demanding they're going to be. I FEAR vacations, because I know vacations are all about the kid. I haven't relaxed in MONTHS, not anywhere, not anyhow. J and I had, yesterday, an ACTUAL CONVERSATION for about ten minutes. Sometimes at night we hold hands before we pass out, provided that we can BE in the same bed long enough to do so.
Now, what was I talking about? Yes, "me time" and karma. Yes.
"You have to decondition it with your whole body." This makes sense to me; it's been part of a series of inconsistent and spontaneous practices that I've been doing over the past year and a half.
OBVIOUSLY, there's some sex stuff in my karma. I haven't even gotten into my life trajectory where this is concerned, but ever since age 13, the fucking curse of desire has been upon me like a horde of sharks that smell blood. Let me generalize slightly so that some of the emotional/psychological history is filled in accurately:
a) I don't think my sexual desire is any greater than anyone else's, but it has historically been accompanied by fear and anxiety, which contain it, compress it, restrain it and thereby make it hotter, angrier, and more ferocious (thanks Catholicism).
b) The first two decades of my sexual existence (ages 13-33) are characterized by long, unwished-for periods of denial, in large part from the same built-in fear. I didn't have intercourse until I was 23. When I was 24, close to 25, I got into a long bad relationship that would be virtually sexless for six years.
c) So it is not a case of addiction or compulsiveness on my part. I know that some people consider THAT a curse of desire, but my curse is this dual yes-no that owned me from puberty until I walked out of my bad marriage.
So given those conditions, I found it really refreshing--a true sea change--that from 2003-2008 I was able to go without my customary frustration-fear-anger cycle. It felt like the first healthy relationship I'd ever gotten into, and it probably was. Still is. This, of course, is where the rub comes in.
What do you figure happens to me psycho-emotionally in 2008? What seeds of what past karmas do you think grew into monsters and demons? Give you one guess.
Here's how it worked:
a) Patrick sees the appearance of a long-term, unwished-for sexual deprivation.
b) This echoes all of the OTHER long-term, unwished-for sexual deprivations.
c) Many of those are associated with relationship decay, with breakups, with meanness, with great emotional pain. Those memories ALSO come to life again.
d) A tidal wave of terror, made out of all of this pain and frustration, the ghost sequel of the bad marriage, comes marching onward.
That took a LOT of sorting and putting down.
It took me probably the ENTIRE pregnancy and at least the first three months of newborn care, to put that stuff away. It didn't probably get solidly mastered until the fifth month was over. That was less than three months ago.
When J and I met in July/August 2003, we'd talk on the phone for HOURS, while I worked this fucking stupid night job desk-clerking. We'd talk like 3 hours a night, four nights a week. All about life and history and a lot about gender roles and sex roles and stuff that I was processing. She was fantastic, she was a miracle; she in no way shares my anxieties, and so was able to be this sounding board with no echo, no investment other than listening and asking pertinent questions. One could ask for nothing better.
There are two historical moments of processing whatever my tidal wave of sexual karma stuff, is. One is December 2002 and through 2003. The breakup, the final destruction of the anxiety-fear-frustration machine, the death of it in my daily existence. That was a freedom greater than anything I'd ever imagined.
AND
There is another processing, this recent one, of the same material. Now, this time, it was a ghost visitation, a reassembly, a zombie movie of the same samskaras.
Proofs remain:
1) J and I might be pretty distant on the relating front, and our connection the thinnest of threads, but we are not hostile to each other, not broken up, and not harmed, I think, in the long run.
2) I have on several occasions "preserved the bindu" as the yoga texts put it, for weeks at a time, actually choosing frustration/retention, and with no harm. When I was a teenager, or even at any time in my twenties, I could not have summoned the presence to exercise such restraint, I simply couldn't have done it.
3) I know what would be involved in having a "mid-life crisis," and now that I see what parenting is (how kid-centric it is, and how one could EASILY forget ever again to work on oneself, to "be alive" again), I see how easy it would be to walk down such a path. But I see it in such clarity that I can either CHOOSE IT or NOT, and with FULL WILL. I have light, not darkness. It might be a very challenging, hard-to-look-at, Kali-ful light, but I have it.
I'm not sure what I'm processing, exactly, as I don't have the siddhi of seeing my past lives--yet--but there's got to be sexual stuff in my karma, given how MASSIVE the presence of this history is in my life.
What I would like, sometime, in the future, the nearer the better (and yet I know that I can do this for a while without getting this), is to have again the long, deep conversations, the security, the emotional bath, the comfort. Right now--and for the last year and a half--I've felt like a heat-resistant tile on the outside of the space shuttle. I feel like I'm the outermost layer of culture, of humanity, the layer that has to fend off the solar wind so that the vehicle remains safe, the layer that has to take the re-entry heat and the elements. A guy standing on top of the highest peak, being blasted to skeletal remains by solar wind. And yet standing it. Facing the full flames of Kali, seeing her even when his eyes are closed. No escape, constant test, ultimate and quintessential horror, and yet standing it. After all, there's no way to escape, no way to duck, no way to close oneself to it. There's no way, so even if you hate it, even if you wish it had all never happened, great, say it again, hell, say it louder, there's nothing for it.
Not to be a cheeseball, but "to be a ringbearer is to be alone," you know?
How do I keep processing this until it is "a sheet of paper"? I suppose it's "see what is there and what isn't there." The frustration isn't there. Well, yeah, of course it is, but if I can elect restraint (and that was a REALLY important body exercise), then maybe it isn't there. I notice that my fantasy life where all of that is concerned has focused on my OWN PAST rather than some imaginary alterity. What I want, is what USED TO BE, not some anonymous, spectacular WISH IT COULD BE. Maybe that's progress. Not sure.
This is certainly an intense lesson in non-attachment. For one, and in asana terms, I consistently lose my dropbacks-standups because of seventh series. I practiced for four days, and then got four days off, with sick kid. Last night I did a Primary side-by-side with one of my students and had a creaky, stiff practice. Blah. For two, yeah, seventeen months without any goodies, well, no GOOD goodies anyway. I keep imagining--in my spectacular self, my illusory self--that that would result in homicidal activity, but then I realize, I look at what's ACTUALLY true, and I see ten years of frustration early on, and I lived through that, and then I see six more later on, and I lived through that. Admittedly I answered those frustrations through other channels, and with addictiveness, for those years, but I did nonetheless survive. This is only SEVENTEEN MONTHS. Six years is FOUR TIMES that long. Ten years is SEVEN times that long.
Must remember that the GOAL of this practice (for it is a practice) is to UNDO the KARMAS, not to get the no doubt wickedly excellent shag that awaits at the end of the tunnel, right? HAH!! Yeah, I had to throw that in. Gotta have a sense of humor about these things.
Ok, "see what's actually there, and what is not there." Ok, gonna chew on that one.
So we turned to electrolytes and grape juice, and he hated the electrolytes, so wouldn't feed, and this was on a weekend, of course, right from Friday night onward, so the only doctors available are in emergency rooms, and we're all freaked out about dehydration, because in 24 hours he only got 12 ounces of liquid and wasn't peeing, and then diarrhea showed up, and that's further dehydration, so the whole weekend was, in short, a panic festival, and J panics more than I do, so I had to be the voice of rationality, which where baby things are concerned, is just hilarious.
Hardest weekend EVER.
Monday, of course, was a holiday, so we first got phone advice, and then a pediatric clinic was opening at noon, so we went in, and were told that he was in fact still hydrated enough to avoid IV's, and had an ear infection as part of the ocld, and yes, a cold. We got eardrops and pink Amoxicillin and the cold is already better. We are on the up. He won't sleep reclining, and so as I write this, he's next to J in a carseat, and sleeping happily while she sleeps on the backache-inducing futon we've rolled out every single night since he was born.
********************************
So, what's the lesson here? I mean this as a question for seventh series generally.
Karen posted this great thing about karma, which got me thinking of this question.
My most frequent complaints about the pregnancy/newborn/infant care have been these:
1. Where the fuck did my free time go? Even two minutes of it?
2. Why is there no interaction? How the fuck do I relate to this person?
3. Fucking SEVENTEEN virtually sexless months? Are you trying to make me motherfucking SUICIDAL?
4. No climbing? Yoga only with effort? Where the fuck is my "ME" time???
Those probably cover the major bases.
Let's see what we can learn about this. The only one that is ACTUALLY about the child is number 2: What's up with interactivity? How do I relate to someone who is so instinctless that he needs to be fucking taught to SLEEP, much less to speak or anything that is, you know, regular "adult human" interactivity?
When I thought about "children" before having one, I imagined little people who walk around and can help you stir batter and who have imaginary friends and all of that. Basically, I imagined four year olds. BABIES are completely out of my realm of imagination; at least they were. I see how people like babies--they're cute and they have big developmental stages (he smiled at me! He crawled! And so on: a lot of "firsts") and you can carry them around and they don't tell you "no" like (I gather) all older children can and will.
HOWEVER
Babies are demanding to a degree that is SUUUUUPERMOTHERFUCKINGHUMAN, man. They are literally helpless: cannot move, cannot self-feed, cannot speak, and at birth can't even communicate with gestures or even fucking EYE CONTACT. Dig that for a second: THEY CAN'T EVEN COMMUNICATE BY GAZE. The ONLY thing they have is crying. And boy howdy universe, can those fuckers cry. My kid is almost eight months old and he STILL cannot speak, cannot feed himself, and is just barely crawling around, but he's got such non-judgement about the world that he's as likely to try on a mouthful of toilet paper as he is a mouthful of baby formula. So basically, he's still helpless. A four year old, he's not.
Ok, so I disenchanted myself there; my image of "having a kid" means having a forty-eight-month-old, so this illusion is my fault, great, I own that.
The pain I'm having about this is about interactivity's lack: I want company, I want someone to perform for and to educate, I want someone to make up stories with, to read to, you know, to DO LANGUAGE WITH.
Most of my interactions with the kid, even when we're co-crawling or I'm offering him toys and he's well-rested and playful and smiley, have an undercurrent of anxiety, because I know that Mr. Hyde is tucked away in there and if there's insufficient food or sleep or a wet diaper, he's gonna come roaring out. I like Dr. Jekyll, but the Mr. Hyde in this kid is a ferocious beast! More and more, however, EXCEPT FOR SICK WEEKEND, Mr. Hyde CAN be chilled out. It's a mix of the kid getting older and my getting more experienced. When the kid was sick, however, Mr. Hyde was in charge. Crying, insatiability, cannot be put down, needs to be carried and touched all the time, all of that. And sure, you think it's lovey-dovey to touch you baby all weekend, but YOU come over here and carry around 21 pounds for four hours a day, with the condition being that every time you put that kid down (you know, to do things like feed yourself), the crying comes.
Ok, so that's that. I'm into language interaction and this "pure emotion" interaction has me insecure, anxious and a bit freaked out. Not on my game, not playing to my strength.
The other three main complaints are ALL about me.
Essentially they are all the final question of number 4: WHERE is my ME time? What the FUCK, man???
From 2003-2008, I had many afflictions, the two chief of which were having to write a humanities dissertation (oh, are you writing a hard science dissertation? Sorry chief, you don't know what difficult is. Definition of "hard science": psychology is hard science. Sociology is humanities) and having to reckon out the past seven years (1995-2002) of fuckedup relationship.
When I finished the diss in 2007, a new affliction appeared, which was having to pay what eventually became $1700 A MONTH in loan payments. Yes, I said A MONTH. TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS a year. As a new graduate, with adjunct teaching gigs, nothing permanent. Yeah, that was pretty anxious.
So why do I think I had all this "ME" time in that situation? I had three things:
1. I could climb--especially when I lived in Bloomington, which was until summer 2005--ALL I wanted to. Got twenty minutes' drive? Great, you're there.
2. I had a yoga practice, from summer 2004 onward, which really got me away from the anxieties.
3. I had a new and cool and interesting relationship, from summer 2003 onwards, which while necessitating a lot of Indy-Bloomington commutes, provided me with intense emotional sharing, non-singledom (I am DEADLY toxic to myself when I'm single), and frequent fabulous sex, which remains, to this day, the BEST WAY IN THE UNIVERSE to chill me out. There is NOTHING like a wicked, excellent shag.
Anyway:
The same said relationship saw us get pregnant in September 2008. Within one month (ONE, man, ONE!!) the sex evaporated and has never come back. Sure, we've had some experiences here and there, but they are now quick, silent and painful, which is about as sexy as the January mud.
The climbing got difficult when I moved up here in summer 2005, and since 2009 began, I've been down to those walls ONE TIME.
Since the child's birth in May 2009, the yoga has become a during-daycare-only affair. If it weren't for daycare, I would be UNABLE TO PRACTICE. I'm NOT KIDDING. You think it'd be easy to find 20, 30 minutes, right? IT'S IMPOSSIBLE. We both work. I need to prep classes. Morning practice is out of the question. We usually get up at 6:30 if the kid doesn't get us up earlier, and J is off to work by 7:30. In the fall I needed to leave then, to start teaching at 9 am, and this semester, I teach at 10:30 but you can't park if you arrive after 9, so the same schedule applies. She works until 5. On a day like today when we don't take the kid in, she begs off work for the morning so I can teach, and then I go home and do kid care while she goes to work, and then at night it's feed him, feed ourselves, give medicine, entertain kid, feed cats, do laundry, wash bottles, prep bottles in daycare bag, put other gear in daycare bag, bathe kid, put kid to bed (which takes several tries and currently means he sleeps ONLY on someone's lap, which means someone else has to do the rest of the night prep), and then put out night bottles, empty cat litter, do other house hygiene, put sleepy kid in carseat next to futon bed, and THEN, only THEN, at about 8:30 pm, does the free time begin, and of course, I could be better using it answering email and doing course prep.
THAT is what my "time for asana practice" is up against. EVERY DAY.
(ED: one thing that DEFINITELY changed for the better was the financial adjustment thanks to Income-Based-Repayment, which changed my monthly payments from $1700 to $800 (!!!!!)--that was a freakin' LIFE SAVER, man!)
I FEAR weekends, because I know how emotionally demanding they're going to be. I FEAR vacations, because I know vacations are all about the kid. I haven't relaxed in MONTHS, not anywhere, not anyhow. J and I had, yesterday, an ACTUAL CONVERSATION for about ten minutes. Sometimes at night we hold hands before we pass out, provided that we can BE in the same bed long enough to do so.
Now, what was I talking about? Yes, "me time" and karma. Yes.
"You have to decondition it with your whole body." This makes sense to me; it's been part of a series of inconsistent and spontaneous practices that I've been doing over the past year and a half.
OBVIOUSLY, there's some sex stuff in my karma. I haven't even gotten into my life trajectory where this is concerned, but ever since age 13, the fucking curse of desire has been upon me like a horde of sharks that smell blood. Let me generalize slightly so that some of the emotional/psychological history is filled in accurately:
a) I don't think my sexual desire is any greater than anyone else's, but it has historically been accompanied by fear and anxiety, which contain it, compress it, restrain it and thereby make it hotter, angrier, and more ferocious (thanks Catholicism).
b) The first two decades of my sexual existence (ages 13-33) are characterized by long, unwished-for periods of denial, in large part from the same built-in fear. I didn't have intercourse until I was 23. When I was 24, close to 25, I got into a long bad relationship that would be virtually sexless for six years.
c) So it is not a case of addiction or compulsiveness on my part. I know that some people consider THAT a curse of desire, but my curse is this dual yes-no that owned me from puberty until I walked out of my bad marriage.
So given those conditions, I found it really refreshing--a true sea change--that from 2003-2008 I was able to go without my customary frustration-fear-anger cycle. It felt like the first healthy relationship I'd ever gotten into, and it probably was. Still is. This, of course, is where the rub comes in.
What do you figure happens to me psycho-emotionally in 2008? What seeds of what past karmas do you think grew into monsters and demons? Give you one guess.
Here's how it worked:
a) Patrick sees the appearance of a long-term, unwished-for sexual deprivation.
b) This echoes all of the OTHER long-term, unwished-for sexual deprivations.
c) Many of those are associated with relationship decay, with breakups, with meanness, with great emotional pain. Those memories ALSO come to life again.
d) A tidal wave of terror, made out of all of this pain and frustration, the ghost sequel of the bad marriage, comes marching onward.
That took a LOT of sorting and putting down.
It took me probably the ENTIRE pregnancy and at least the first three months of newborn care, to put that stuff away. It didn't probably get solidly mastered until the fifth month was over. That was less than three months ago.
When J and I met in July/August 2003, we'd talk on the phone for HOURS, while I worked this fucking stupid night job desk-clerking. We'd talk like 3 hours a night, four nights a week. All about life and history and a lot about gender roles and sex roles and stuff that I was processing. She was fantastic, she was a miracle; she in no way shares my anxieties, and so was able to be this sounding board with no echo, no investment other than listening and asking pertinent questions. One could ask for nothing better.
There are two historical moments of processing whatever my tidal wave of sexual karma stuff, is. One is December 2002 and through 2003. The breakup, the final destruction of the anxiety-fear-frustration machine, the death of it in my daily existence. That was a freedom greater than anything I'd ever imagined.
AND
There is another processing, this recent one, of the same material. Now, this time, it was a ghost visitation, a reassembly, a zombie movie of the same samskaras.
Proofs remain:
1) J and I might be pretty distant on the relating front, and our connection the thinnest of threads, but we are not hostile to each other, not broken up, and not harmed, I think, in the long run.
2) I have on several occasions "preserved the bindu" as the yoga texts put it, for weeks at a time, actually choosing frustration/retention, and with no harm. When I was a teenager, or even at any time in my twenties, I could not have summoned the presence to exercise such restraint, I simply couldn't have done it.
3) I know what would be involved in having a "mid-life crisis," and now that I see what parenting is (how kid-centric it is, and how one could EASILY forget ever again to work on oneself, to "be alive" again), I see how easy it would be to walk down such a path. But I see it in such clarity that I can either CHOOSE IT or NOT, and with FULL WILL. I have light, not darkness. It might be a very challenging, hard-to-look-at, Kali-ful light, but I have it.
I'm not sure what I'm processing, exactly, as I don't have the siddhi of seeing my past lives--yet--but there's got to be sexual stuff in my karma, given how MASSIVE the presence of this history is in my life.
What I would like, sometime, in the future, the nearer the better (and yet I know that I can do this for a while without getting this), is to have again the long, deep conversations, the security, the emotional bath, the comfort. Right now--and for the last year and a half--I've felt like a heat-resistant tile on the outside of the space shuttle. I feel like I'm the outermost layer of culture, of humanity, the layer that has to fend off the solar wind so that the vehicle remains safe, the layer that has to take the re-entry heat and the elements. A guy standing on top of the highest peak, being blasted to skeletal remains by solar wind. And yet standing it. Facing the full flames of Kali, seeing her even when his eyes are closed. No escape, constant test, ultimate and quintessential horror, and yet standing it. After all, there's no way to escape, no way to duck, no way to close oneself to it. There's no way, so even if you hate it, even if you wish it had all never happened, great, say it again, hell, say it louder, there's nothing for it.
Not to be a cheeseball, but "to be a ringbearer is to be alone," you know?
How do I keep processing this until it is "a sheet of paper"? I suppose it's "see what is there and what isn't there." The frustration isn't there. Well, yeah, of course it is, but if I can elect restraint (and that was a REALLY important body exercise), then maybe it isn't there. I notice that my fantasy life where all of that is concerned has focused on my OWN PAST rather than some imaginary alterity. What I want, is what USED TO BE, not some anonymous, spectacular WISH IT COULD BE. Maybe that's progress. Not sure.
This is certainly an intense lesson in non-attachment. For one, and in asana terms, I consistently lose my dropbacks-standups because of seventh series. I practiced for four days, and then got four days off, with sick kid. Last night I did a Primary side-by-side with one of my students and had a creaky, stiff practice. Blah. For two, yeah, seventeen months without any goodies, well, no GOOD goodies anyway. I keep imagining--in my spectacular self, my illusory self--that that would result in homicidal activity, but then I realize, I look at what's ACTUALLY true, and I see ten years of frustration early on, and I lived through that, and then I see six more later on, and I lived through that. Admittedly I answered those frustrations through other channels, and with addictiveness, for those years, but I did nonetheless survive. This is only SEVENTEEN MONTHS. Six years is FOUR TIMES that long. Ten years is SEVEN times that long.
Must remember that the GOAL of this practice (for it is a practice) is to UNDO the KARMAS, not to get the no doubt wickedly excellent shag that awaits at the end of the tunnel, right? HAH!! Yeah, I had to throw that in. Gotta have a sense of humor about these things.
Ok, "see what's actually there, and what is not there." Ok, gonna chew on that one.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Return of dropbacks/standups, 2010.
So, the week's practice. I'm calling tomorrow the moon day. The Primary/Intermediate double, then full Intermediate, then Intermediate to Dwi Pada, then Primary with six dropbacks and three standups. MTWR, there it is.
Operation Exhibitionism is in full swing; it's not as exhibitionistic as I thought it was. I mean, yes, a wall full of people on bikes do have me in their eyelines, but no one says anything except one dude with whom I had a short and pretty cool conversation about low back aches and my unusual flexibility (yeah yeah yeah).
Tuesday's full Intermediate kicked my butt, but in a way that I really liked. Great practice, hard practice. Two days of pretty intense soreness in the lats, pecs, shoulders. Hi, inversions!
Wednesday's Intermediate (I'm doing Intermediate vs. my "full practice" which I guess would be Primary and up to Kapo, because it simply feels better right now; I'm sure I'll go back to the traditional program at some point) was low on bandhas; I know I'm having a bandha-low day when I can't land a Bakasana B. I still take prep breaths and pump myself up for it every time, but it's been forever since it took me more than one try. Wednesday I couldn't land it at all, not in 3 tries.
I do, however, REALLY enjoy backbends after Dwi Pada; massive forward bend good for building back bends. Oddly. Yoga paradox. One of many.
And then today's Primary was the big power Primary that I'm used to, when I'm practicing regularly. Sure, Mari D still tough, but I bound both wrists. Sure, Supta K still hard, but I came up in Dwi Pada-ish, and hit the showy exit with Tittibhasana/Bakasana. Garbha Pindasana to Kukkutasana in one go, knees did not touch the floor. That sort of thing. Easy and powerful vinyasa, a lot of poses that were meditative rather than physically challenging, and then six (six!) dropbacks; I made myself do them until I came to standing 3 times. It was flub, knees, standing, and then standing, knees, standing. That sixth one REALLY got into my psoas, when I was hanging back; the stretch I felt was really IN the hip basin, like DEEP in there. Sort of sickening, and yet, when you're used to it, just what you want.
I can hang back for EVER as long as I can bear the stretch. You read all this talk online about "how do I hang back longer" and I've never understood that. When I go to drop back, currently, I take thumbs to tailbone, and arch. Then I engage the quads and stand as straight as I can, after which I walk the hands down and rotate the thighs inward more, and I feel the low back sort of expand and release, which is really "aahhhh!" I hang back with hands on thighs, take a few breaths, and then move hands to prayer position at forehead, and hang like that for five breaths, and then I extend arms straight out, inhale, and exhale I drop. If I wanted, I could hang that extended-arms position for EVER. The quads are massively engaged, I'm standing up, basically, and there's no danger of falling. I go when I want to, not when gravity calls. I know, I know, I know I should viddy it. Maybe someday if I can find someone with a high-powered enough camera.
To come up, I still rock-and-walk. I land from dropping back, and immediately walk in about six inches (that's 15 cm for you Europeans). Then I rock, and try to walk in a bit more, and then it's rock, fingertips, back, and then rock, pop, STAND! It takes about three rocks for me to come up right now, but this is easily where my backbends were last February/March when I first built dropbacks. The recovery is coming faster and easier than last year.
Today the bend was SO, SO intense. The vinyasa after the post-backbend-Paschimo was freakin' comedy. Kino and Matthew had both said that intense backbending should make you feel it in the abs (MS had said, you'll feel like you got hit with a medicine ball). My take-it-up in that vinyasa was just pulverized in the abs; so, so difficult, so much sensation. And then the upward-facing-dog was hilarious. So, so much sensation in the spine. I think I looked like some kind of amphibian arching up out of its evolutionary pond. But post-shoulderstand sequence, it was all fine again.
Threw back the uth pluthi lotus from the air, called it a practice, did closing chant, took rest, got up, took a few breaths of pranayama (hard!) and took a shower and a hot tub soak. That's the major benefit of the Y, man. You take your mat, you get it on, and then you soak. Mmmhmmm.
Operation Exhibitionism is in full swing; it's not as exhibitionistic as I thought it was. I mean, yes, a wall full of people on bikes do have me in their eyelines, but no one says anything except one dude with whom I had a short and pretty cool conversation about low back aches and my unusual flexibility (yeah yeah yeah).
Tuesday's full Intermediate kicked my butt, but in a way that I really liked. Great practice, hard practice. Two days of pretty intense soreness in the lats, pecs, shoulders. Hi, inversions!
Wednesday's Intermediate (I'm doing Intermediate vs. my "full practice" which I guess would be Primary and up to Kapo, because it simply feels better right now; I'm sure I'll go back to the traditional program at some point) was low on bandhas; I know I'm having a bandha-low day when I can't land a Bakasana B. I still take prep breaths and pump myself up for it every time, but it's been forever since it took me more than one try. Wednesday I couldn't land it at all, not in 3 tries.
I do, however, REALLY enjoy backbends after Dwi Pada; massive forward bend good for building back bends. Oddly. Yoga paradox. One of many.
And then today's Primary was the big power Primary that I'm used to, when I'm practicing regularly. Sure, Mari D still tough, but I bound both wrists. Sure, Supta K still hard, but I came up in Dwi Pada-ish, and hit the showy exit with Tittibhasana/Bakasana. Garbha Pindasana to Kukkutasana in one go, knees did not touch the floor. That sort of thing. Easy and powerful vinyasa, a lot of poses that were meditative rather than physically challenging, and then six (six!) dropbacks; I made myself do them until I came to standing 3 times. It was flub, knees, standing, and then standing, knees, standing. That sixth one REALLY got into my psoas, when I was hanging back; the stretch I felt was really IN the hip basin, like DEEP in there. Sort of sickening, and yet, when you're used to it, just what you want.
I can hang back for EVER as long as I can bear the stretch. You read all this talk online about "how do I hang back longer" and I've never understood that. When I go to drop back, currently, I take thumbs to tailbone, and arch. Then I engage the quads and stand as straight as I can, after which I walk the hands down and rotate the thighs inward more, and I feel the low back sort of expand and release, which is really "aahhhh!" I hang back with hands on thighs, take a few breaths, and then move hands to prayer position at forehead, and hang like that for five breaths, and then I extend arms straight out, inhale, and exhale I drop. If I wanted, I could hang that extended-arms position for EVER. The quads are massively engaged, I'm standing up, basically, and there's no danger of falling. I go when I want to, not when gravity calls. I know, I know, I know I should viddy it. Maybe someday if I can find someone with a high-powered enough camera.
To come up, I still rock-and-walk. I land from dropping back, and immediately walk in about six inches (that's 15 cm for you Europeans). Then I rock, and try to walk in a bit more, and then it's rock, fingertips, back, and then rock, pop, STAND! It takes about three rocks for me to come up right now, but this is easily where my backbends were last February/March when I first built dropbacks. The recovery is coming faster and easier than last year.
Today the bend was SO, SO intense. The vinyasa after the post-backbend-Paschimo was freakin' comedy. Kino and Matthew had both said that intense backbending should make you feel it in the abs (MS had said, you'll feel like you got hit with a medicine ball). My take-it-up in that vinyasa was just pulverized in the abs; so, so difficult, so much sensation. And then the upward-facing-dog was hilarious. So, so much sensation in the spine. I think I looked like some kind of amphibian arching up out of its evolutionary pond. But post-shoulderstand sequence, it was all fine again.
Threw back the uth pluthi lotus from the air, called it a practice, did closing chant, took rest, got up, took a few breaths of pranayama (hard!) and took a shower and a hot tub soak. That's the major benefit of the Y, man. You take your mat, you get it on, and then you soak. Mmmhmmm.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Return to practice--big time!
Three practices in two days, thanks to a suprise substitution of my substitution on Monday night. Monday morning Primary, sweet and slow, and then suprise Monday night Intermediate to Karanda, and then Monday afternoon Intermediate, all of it.
Carol, whose Monday night ashtanga I sub on the second Monday of the month, returned, telling me that her meeting which necessitates said substitution had been moved to the THIRD Monday--so be it! "I'll bend, yeah cool," I think is what I said.
The morning Primary had been of the "welcome back, take it easy" variety, and on the living room floor, at 68 degrees, in shirt-shorts-polar fleece (my usual). I did everything, pretty much as I was used to, with some reluctance from the hips, some stiffness in Mari D and Supta K. No big deal. Two sets of three wheels, no dropbacks. Mellow, sweet. Good times.
The suprise Intermediate that night (about 5-6 hours later) had me really wired; shaking, even some shaky breaths, all nervousness and excitment. Intermediate! Wow! It was like meeting an online lover for the first time in person (not that I'd know anything about that sort of business, AHEM).
By the time I got into the Prasaritas, I'd calmed down, and then poses were completely fantastic. An actual EASY Pasasana; no wrist bind, but who cares? Backbends not wiping me out with need for extra breaths. Kapo dropback with a walk-in (no feet yet). Easy Bakasana B. And then suprise of suprises, a successful and somewhat undifficult Eka Pada Sirsasana, even on the right side. This took me totally by suprise (a night of suprises). I was not able, as usual, to balance in Dwi Pada, but I press up with ease. Tired after the Titti's, and hard balancing in Pincha (which I managed) and Karanda (which I did not; couldn't hold the balance).
That was enough; three wheels and one long hangback, and called it a practice, and I felt like a freakin' MILLION BUCKS after that practice. I could feel it hours after--heck I could still feel it at midnight when the kid woke up.
So after that, I figured, "Intermediate; you do!" for Tuesday, and I taught my 10:30 class, got out at quarter to noon, did some computerizing and office moving-in and was on a mat at probably 1:30. Two hours later I'd done the whole thing, with my usual modifications (no feet YET in Kapo; coming), 3 breaths balance in Dwi Pada, thanks to the fact that the Y (my first Y visit for practice, exhibitionism and all) uses gymnastic mats which squish when you sit on them (this makes jumping back hard, but balancing in Dwi Pada much easier), no slow-motion lower-down in Karanda (I can sort of quick-drop into it, but then I can't come up).
I lost the foot on the first side of SUPV but kept it on the second, and dropped out of the seventh headstand. Two sets of three wheels, three dropbacks, came to standing the FIRST time (wha??? suprising as hell!) and then couldn't come up for the last two. 25-10 closing and called it a practice; loved it, all of it.
And now, again about 4 hours later, I am feeling the SORENESS. Yikes! It's mostly in the shoulders, the pecs and the triceps. That, to me, has these criminals written on it: Pincha, Karanda, Tittibhasana perhaps, and Seven Deadlies.
I did the headstands the "hard way" according to the Kino disc, lowering down from down dog into headstand position, which means that I got a major shoulder workout as I came down, each time, and of course, an inversion is itself a pretty substantial shoulder workout. I know, too, that when I'm tired and/or sore, I let myself go in the lats during Pincha and take more of it in the trapezius (bad man!). So this is unsuprising. Although, it does let me understand, in a deep way, how the seven deadlies prepare one for the jumps to Sirsasana II (tripod) in the Advanced A.
Tomorrow is an afternoon class day, which means morning practice (probably around 9:30 am or so). We'll see if I get more sore or less. But so far, this practice-while-kid's-in-daycare is TWO THUMBS UP.
Carol, whose Monday night ashtanga I sub on the second Monday of the month, returned, telling me that her meeting which necessitates said substitution had been moved to the THIRD Monday--so be it! "I'll bend, yeah cool," I think is what I said.
The morning Primary had been of the "welcome back, take it easy" variety, and on the living room floor, at 68 degrees, in shirt-shorts-polar fleece (my usual). I did everything, pretty much as I was used to, with some reluctance from the hips, some stiffness in Mari D and Supta K. No big deal. Two sets of three wheels, no dropbacks. Mellow, sweet. Good times.
The suprise Intermediate that night (about 5-6 hours later) had me really wired; shaking, even some shaky breaths, all nervousness and excitment. Intermediate! Wow! It was like meeting an online lover for the first time in person (not that I'd know anything about that sort of business, AHEM).
By the time I got into the Prasaritas, I'd calmed down, and then poses were completely fantastic. An actual EASY Pasasana; no wrist bind, but who cares? Backbends not wiping me out with need for extra breaths. Kapo dropback with a walk-in (no feet yet). Easy Bakasana B. And then suprise of suprises, a successful and somewhat undifficult Eka Pada Sirsasana, even on the right side. This took me totally by suprise (a night of suprises). I was not able, as usual, to balance in Dwi Pada, but I press up with ease. Tired after the Titti's, and hard balancing in Pincha (which I managed) and Karanda (which I did not; couldn't hold the balance).
That was enough; three wheels and one long hangback, and called it a practice, and I felt like a freakin' MILLION BUCKS after that practice. I could feel it hours after--heck I could still feel it at midnight when the kid woke up.
So after that, I figured, "Intermediate; you do!" for Tuesday, and I taught my 10:30 class, got out at quarter to noon, did some computerizing and office moving-in and was on a mat at probably 1:30. Two hours later I'd done the whole thing, with my usual modifications (no feet YET in Kapo; coming), 3 breaths balance in Dwi Pada, thanks to the fact that the Y (my first Y visit for practice, exhibitionism and all) uses gymnastic mats which squish when you sit on them (this makes jumping back hard, but balancing in Dwi Pada much easier), no slow-motion lower-down in Karanda (I can sort of quick-drop into it, but then I can't come up).
I lost the foot on the first side of SUPV but kept it on the second, and dropped out of the seventh headstand. Two sets of three wheels, three dropbacks, came to standing the FIRST time (wha??? suprising as hell!) and then couldn't come up for the last two. 25-10 closing and called it a practice; loved it, all of it.
And now, again about 4 hours later, I am feeling the SORENESS. Yikes! It's mostly in the shoulders, the pecs and the triceps. That, to me, has these criminals written on it: Pincha, Karanda, Tittibhasana perhaps, and Seven Deadlies.
I did the headstands the "hard way" according to the Kino disc, lowering down from down dog into headstand position, which means that I got a major shoulder workout as I came down, each time, and of course, an inversion is itself a pretty substantial shoulder workout. I know, too, that when I'm tired and/or sore, I let myself go in the lats during Pincha and take more of it in the trapezius (bad man!). So this is unsuprising. Although, it does let me understand, in a deep way, how the seven deadlies prepare one for the jumps to Sirsasana II (tripod) in the Advanced A.
Tomorrow is an afternoon class day, which means morning practice (probably around 9:30 am or so). We'll see if I get more sore or less. But so far, this practice-while-kid's-in-daycare is TWO THUMBS UP.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Colorado and environs.
The family returned from Colorado about four hours ago, in terms of landing, and ninety minutes ago, in terms of front door. We have now seen both sets of grandparents (one in the Boston area, one frequently in Philadelphia, but currently in Colorado) by air. Hah! Travelling with a five- and now a seven-month old has been some serious challenge, and yet, some serious reward.
I can FEEL the added patience work, from the summer, accruing. I feel it when I look at my bank accounts and when I start a winter practice in the living room, and in other places. I feel it in my non-road-rage.
We left on a Saturday for Colorado--yes, Colorado, in JANUARY (are we mad??)--and got forty minutes of futzing plane delay for no explicit purpose, and the boy was fussing. The packing had been outRAGEous. Diapers and all baby gear, where to put the bottles, how to pack the duck tub (yes, inflatable duck tub), whether to bring grownup clothing changes AT ALL (extra bags cost you more, yo), and so on and so on and so on. There was so much travel that one day, and so little sleep, including the boy being up and curious for TWO HOURS of the flight out, that when we finally landed in a hotel at 7 pm local time (9 pm eastern, and Indiana, ridiculously, is Eastern, not Central, even though I doubt Chicago is an hour west of here), the fussing had turned into full-on tired screaming. I called in a pizza and we put the boy to bed and called it a night. The next morning--after what could be at BEST four hours of scattershot sleep--we met J's parents at the continental breakfast and her brother came out to drive us UPWARD another four thousand feet and two hours.
Blissfully, the boy slept on the ride in the massive EXPEDITION (have you ever been INSIDE one of those fucking things? It's like, quite literally, being swallowed by a gigantic, heavy metal whale, with wheels). Frisco, Colorado. Nine thousand feet high. I've done a Primary series on the porch of that condo before. Unfuckingbelievable beautiful weather, clear blue skies, winter air, that altitude. A purity in the physical realm that calendars lust after. Snowcapped peaks, but not cliche anymore; the REAL thing. Walk out into the driveway and look east and you can see a 14,000 foot peak which I dragged J up to the top of, a couple years ago.
But most of our time here was spent inside, on the floor, entertaining the boy who is learning to crawl. He can either put knees under or press his hands down, so basically, he can either do Anahatasana (chest to floor) or Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. But he can also swivel, in a circle, and quickly. All of the pieces of crawl are there. I encourage him, even though his ability to crawl will drastically reduce my already reduced free time. Right now, I can refill a coffee cup, and leave him on the floor. When he's crawling, no way Jose.
The next day, with increasing cloudiness, and after ridiculously bad sleep where the boy refused to sleep consistently for more than FORTY MINUTES AT A TIME, ALL NIGHT LONG, we decide to get our cross-country skiing on. After a two-year lapse. Now sure, I can put a foot behind my head and I can surf gravity on my hands for about four poses worth, and so forth, but X-country skiiing KICKED MY ASS. Up and down the street! It was, of course, silly pretty, like LOTR pretty, in the once-forested-now-kinda-scrubby-pine plains of snow, and there was quiet like you CANNOT get in populated areas, and a defiant, almost SPOOKY nature, the kind that Jack London knew, that kind that WILL EAT YOU, but in that prettiness, I hit exhaustion that had me cracking up with laughter, there was just no other way to handle it. Trance and persistence and laughter. It wasn't the altitude or the low oxygen either; it wasn't the aerobicism of it; it was the sheer muscular demand, through the shoulders, and particularly IN THE FRONT TOP OF THE FOOT. I'm sore THERE, of all places.
I drank water non-stop up there, to defer what was once-upon-a-time bedridden altitude sickness; I remember a migraine that absolutely paralyzed me, my first time at altitude. Not so this time. Not a trace. Of course, when you're up every hour all night, you can drink water at each lap, and become Hydration Itself.
The flight out was 3 pm, two hours away. Snow predicted. We left at 10:30 and drove--in a funny irony of descent from altitude--up to the 10,500 foot pass in order to descend at a 6% grade, to Denver's nice, gentle 5,000 foot altitude. Snow was not disabling, but was consistent. I looked at the reddening, oddly dying forests on the high slopes and saw greenery persist, more densely, at lower heights. I saw a short, roundish tree, a sort of noble shrub or shy ent, clumped around itself on the ground. Rhizome geometry. I looked at every--EVERY--tall rock face that we drove by, seeing the flakes, slopers, crags, jugs, and other potential hand-holds and hand-resisters. Seeing, and thereby TOUCHING, the textures. Yes, I might have climbed only ONCE in the past about ten months, but I still have it in me.
The boy would not eat regularly, not at any time on the whole trip. Our doctor had said, "No problem at altitude, just keep him hydrated." Ok, no worries. HAH! Double-check that: worries! J would work herself into tears trying to feed him and having him resist, purse lips, back-dive and cry. At one point I told her to leave the room and not to go to pieces, and I fed the boy between two mirrored walls; either way he looked, he could see himself, and he was fascinated. Know what a fascinated boy does? He sucks down formula while he doesn't realize it. Rawr! J's mother also did hip-hop-like rhythms to provide like distractions on other occasions. That's pretty hilarious; she's like 72 or something.
So the boy would not eat in the airport, and Frontier airlines, who pride themselves on "the classic" level of care and such and their access to "Direct TV" which claims to show "previews" and actually shows nothing but advertisements ("Now to return to your FREE previews"--uhhh yeah, do you mean my free ADVERTISING? Golly gee I'm glad I'm not paying for you to ask me for my credit card number!) was so half-assed in its announcements regarding boarding that we were trying to change a diaper and wash two bottles by the time the sudden call for boarding began, and then it was panic, and since we'd acquired tickets through an agency, we didn't have seats together, and it was more panic. She had the stroller to gate-check and I had the diaper and bottles and I cleaned up that business and she checked and walked the boy on-plane and then I was sitting next to an immobile elderly couple (it would have been rude to ask them to move) and she was sitting four rows back with a mother-and-daughter couple that would not be broken in two. So we faced our fear of boy-on-plane-with-parents-separate and we survived it.
She even had me come back, mid-flight, pick the boy up, and I changed his diaper ON MY LAP, with pad rolled out, diapers exchanged, and no spills, no jets of urine into the air, no chaos (hah! take THAT, Lars von Trier!!), and cuteness everywhere. I'll say this for the boy: he garners praise and appreciation EVERYWHERE he goes. Everyone likes him. Well, I'm sure there are plane passengers who don't appreciate it when he gets fussy, but most of the time, everyone who comes near him as he's strolled about or who makes eye contact at an airport, gives one of those "awwww you have a cute baby" smiles or comments or knowing nods.
These things are better than puppies, for attention-getting.
I gave him his plastic key-toys at the airport baggage claim and he smiled at me with big, great big shameless eye contact, the kind that grownups are afraid to make. Ok, kid, I'm starting to see the magic reward that grownups talk about. Ok.
I took the massive forty-pound bag and the twenty-pound carseat (what, do you think you can encumber a prior-climber and current-ashtangi? Hah! You CANNOT!) and went to the parking shuttle, got the car, packed it, started it, drove around the parking lot in circles, to Tesla's "Love Song," while the windshield defrosted, and then paid the forty-five bucks, went to get J and the kid, and took a 20 minute screaming-all-the-way drive home, and now there is quiet except for the furnace running and my fingers darting over this keyboard in the rapidfire way they do.
I haven't practiced since December 30. And back then, I was well on the way to recovering my dropbacks. Standups were to knees. So, begin it again!
So, simultaneously the most tiring trip I can ever remember, but then, given how much sleep I've had in the past year, I can't remember much. But also, a weirdly empowering trip, like we not just survived the big wave, but surfed it.
I can FEEL the added patience work, from the summer, accruing. I feel it when I look at my bank accounts and when I start a winter practice in the living room, and in other places. I feel it in my non-road-rage.
We left on a Saturday for Colorado--yes, Colorado, in JANUARY (are we mad??)--and got forty minutes of futzing plane delay for no explicit purpose, and the boy was fussing. The packing had been outRAGEous. Diapers and all baby gear, where to put the bottles, how to pack the duck tub (yes, inflatable duck tub), whether to bring grownup clothing changes AT ALL (extra bags cost you more, yo), and so on and so on and so on. There was so much travel that one day, and so little sleep, including the boy being up and curious for TWO HOURS of the flight out, that when we finally landed in a hotel at 7 pm local time (9 pm eastern, and Indiana, ridiculously, is Eastern, not Central, even though I doubt Chicago is an hour west of here), the fussing had turned into full-on tired screaming. I called in a pizza and we put the boy to bed and called it a night. The next morning--after what could be at BEST four hours of scattershot sleep--we met J's parents at the continental breakfast and her brother came out to drive us UPWARD another four thousand feet and two hours.
Blissfully, the boy slept on the ride in the massive EXPEDITION (have you ever been INSIDE one of those fucking things? It's like, quite literally, being swallowed by a gigantic, heavy metal whale, with wheels). Frisco, Colorado. Nine thousand feet high. I've done a Primary series on the porch of that condo before. Unfuckingbelievable beautiful weather, clear blue skies, winter air, that altitude. A purity in the physical realm that calendars lust after. Snowcapped peaks, but not cliche anymore; the REAL thing. Walk out into the driveway and look east and you can see a 14,000 foot peak which I dragged J up to the top of, a couple years ago.
But most of our time here was spent inside, on the floor, entertaining the boy who is learning to crawl. He can either put knees under or press his hands down, so basically, he can either do Anahatasana (chest to floor) or Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. But he can also swivel, in a circle, and quickly. All of the pieces of crawl are there. I encourage him, even though his ability to crawl will drastically reduce my already reduced free time. Right now, I can refill a coffee cup, and leave him on the floor. When he's crawling, no way Jose.
The next day, with increasing cloudiness, and after ridiculously bad sleep where the boy refused to sleep consistently for more than FORTY MINUTES AT A TIME, ALL NIGHT LONG, we decide to get our cross-country skiing on. After a two-year lapse. Now sure, I can put a foot behind my head and I can surf gravity on my hands for about four poses worth, and so forth, but X-country skiiing KICKED MY ASS. Up and down the street! It was, of course, silly pretty, like LOTR pretty, in the once-forested-now-kinda-scrubby-pine plains of snow, and there was quiet like you CANNOT get in populated areas, and a defiant, almost SPOOKY nature, the kind that Jack London knew, that kind that WILL EAT YOU, but in that prettiness, I hit exhaustion that had me cracking up with laughter, there was just no other way to handle it. Trance and persistence and laughter. It wasn't the altitude or the low oxygen either; it wasn't the aerobicism of it; it was the sheer muscular demand, through the shoulders, and particularly IN THE FRONT TOP OF THE FOOT. I'm sore THERE, of all places.
I drank water non-stop up there, to defer what was once-upon-a-time bedridden altitude sickness; I remember a migraine that absolutely paralyzed me, my first time at altitude. Not so this time. Not a trace. Of course, when you're up every hour all night, you can drink water at each lap, and become Hydration Itself.
The flight out was 3 pm, two hours away. Snow predicted. We left at 10:30 and drove--in a funny irony of descent from altitude--up to the 10,500 foot pass in order to descend at a 6% grade, to Denver's nice, gentle 5,000 foot altitude. Snow was not disabling, but was consistent. I looked at the reddening, oddly dying forests on the high slopes and saw greenery persist, more densely, at lower heights. I saw a short, roundish tree, a sort of noble shrub or shy ent, clumped around itself on the ground. Rhizome geometry. I looked at every--EVERY--tall rock face that we drove by, seeing the flakes, slopers, crags, jugs, and other potential hand-holds and hand-resisters. Seeing, and thereby TOUCHING, the textures. Yes, I might have climbed only ONCE in the past about ten months, but I still have it in me.
The boy would not eat regularly, not at any time on the whole trip. Our doctor had said, "No problem at altitude, just keep him hydrated." Ok, no worries. HAH! Double-check that: worries! J would work herself into tears trying to feed him and having him resist, purse lips, back-dive and cry. At one point I told her to leave the room and not to go to pieces, and I fed the boy between two mirrored walls; either way he looked, he could see himself, and he was fascinated. Know what a fascinated boy does? He sucks down formula while he doesn't realize it. Rawr! J's mother also did hip-hop-like rhythms to provide like distractions on other occasions. That's pretty hilarious; she's like 72 or something.
So the boy would not eat in the airport, and Frontier airlines, who pride themselves on "the classic" level of care and such and their access to "Direct TV" which claims to show "previews" and actually shows nothing but advertisements ("Now to return to your FREE previews"--uhhh yeah, do you mean my free ADVERTISING? Golly gee I'm glad I'm not paying for you to ask me for my credit card number!) was so half-assed in its announcements regarding boarding that we were trying to change a diaper and wash two bottles by the time the sudden call for boarding began, and then it was panic, and since we'd acquired tickets through an agency, we didn't have seats together, and it was more panic. She had the stroller to gate-check and I had the diaper and bottles and I cleaned up that business and she checked and walked the boy on-plane and then I was sitting next to an immobile elderly couple (it would have been rude to ask them to move) and she was sitting four rows back with a mother-and-daughter couple that would not be broken in two. So we faced our fear of boy-on-plane-with-parents-separate and we survived it.
She even had me come back, mid-flight, pick the boy up, and I changed his diaper ON MY LAP, with pad rolled out, diapers exchanged, and no spills, no jets of urine into the air, no chaos (hah! take THAT, Lars von Trier!!), and cuteness everywhere. I'll say this for the boy: he garners praise and appreciation EVERYWHERE he goes. Everyone likes him. Well, I'm sure there are plane passengers who don't appreciate it when he gets fussy, but most of the time, everyone who comes near him as he's strolled about or who makes eye contact at an airport, gives one of those "awwww you have a cute baby" smiles or comments or knowing nods.
These things are better than puppies, for attention-getting.
I gave him his plastic key-toys at the airport baggage claim and he smiled at me with big, great big shameless eye contact, the kind that grownups are afraid to make. Ok, kid, I'm starting to see the magic reward that grownups talk about. Ok.
I took the massive forty-pound bag and the twenty-pound carseat (what, do you think you can encumber a prior-climber and current-ashtangi? Hah! You CANNOT!) and went to the parking shuttle, got the car, packed it, started it, drove around the parking lot in circles, to Tesla's "Love Song," while the windshield defrosted, and then paid the forty-five bucks, went to get J and the kid, and took a 20 minute screaming-all-the-way drive home, and now there is quiet except for the furnace running and my fingers darting over this keyboard in the rapidfire way they do.
I haven't practiced since December 30. And back then, I was well on the way to recovering my dropbacks. Standups were to knees. So, begin it again!
So, simultaneously the most tiring trip I can ever remember, but then, given how much sleep I've had in the past year, I can't remember much. But also, a weirdly empowering trip, like we not just survived the big wave, but surfed it.
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