Mild bruises on my inner thighs from so much half lotus. Shoulders, neck, and arms are sore. Missed most of the daylight hours today, except early morning. Missed my favorite online class because my body needed the sleep. It feels like I’m getting “nothing” done, but as I look around my apartment, huge chunks of my disorganization and clutter are now accessibly filed, and I can find things again, things are getting fixed – the tub is now unclogged, and my apartment is gradually transitioning from “a bit more inhabitable” to some place I want to spend time in, rather than “escape from through the portal of my computer monitor.” As the feng shui energy starts to flow in it again, I’m frequently feeling the desire to dive back in to some creative projects, but have to continue reworking my creative work spaces. Equipment that I’d been thinking I’ll fix someday seems like it might be better donated to Goodwill. There’s still a long way to go with all of this; the clutter didn’t accumulate overnight, so it will take some time to unravel and discard it. Unearthed boxes don’t look so much like segments of my life that didn’t work out but rather reminders of some of the amazing things I’ve done throughout my life. I find myself frequently wondering if the highly technical pursuits I’d been focused on and frustrated by might be less rewarding and beneficial to the world than the more creative and personal ones emerging from the boxes.
On Sept. 9, 2011, I bid on a Mac G4 on E-Bay. I lost the bid, and decided to spend the money on teacher’s training instead, thinking it wouldn’t depreciate in 2 years like a computer would. Instead, it has appreciated in value, and I have a dead G4 sitting on the floor that somebody gave me. Two days later the World Trade Center towers fell, and our whole world changed. My father was coincidentally re-hospitalized, struggling through a spinal infection, a consequence of a vertebral implant, while victims of 9/11 streamed into hospitals around him, and he couldn’t even talk about it.
While Bin Laden was busy trying to give the western world a slap in the face for the oppression the Islamic world felt, he seemed oblivious to the fact that his actions couldn’t possibly result in any sympathetic ears and would lead to unimagined losses on every front. The US reacted like a huge vicious dog that had been kicked too much. At Golden Bridge, seventy of us weathered the changes as we worked our way through yoga sets. Quite a lot of those people started new yoga studios from LA to Turkey; many have closed now, but many lives have been touched by the work of that group of people. Some yogis spouted unimaginable rhetoric: “If you have a strong navel center, you can’t be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those people who died in the towers didn’t have strong navel centers or they wouldn’t have been there.” (Gurushabd) The trainees jaws all dropped when they heard that comment. Perhaps there was some seed of truth in it, but it certainly seemed unfathomably insensitive. I spent most of that year watching my father die of cancer but the yoga helped me show up for him and walk through that. The stone adjacent to his grave has the twin towers engraved in it to remind people of how its resident came to rest there.
I realized today that if I continue through 40 days of persistent yoga practice, that date will fall during Summer Solstice. I can’t quite wrap my head around pursuing a work exchange at it, or arranging a trip to New Mexico. The “late” registration fees seem unfathomable. But I’d like to go. It’s been nine years since I last participated; then 3HO started requiring EVERYONE to pay something even if they were doing a work exchange. People who’d been responsible for building the buildings on the grounds and contributed 90 hour weeks each year for 20 years were supposed to pay $150+ and finally turned their backs on 3HO and took off their turbans.
I think it’ll be a long night again, and I have things scheduled in the morning tomorrow. Yes, it’d be nice if somebody gave me a massage.