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Strange Way to Grow

In Life, Yoga on January 25, 2012 at 7:20 pm

Pretty.

There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely, I realize. It’s a fine line, blurry but razor sharp, and easily crossed if you’re not careful.

Sitting in a coffee shop reading and blogging and people watching: Blissfully alone.

Standing under a scalding hot shower at 3 o’clock in the morning, just standing there, until the water runs cold: Pretty damn lonely.

It’s all about perspective, of course. Is it a pen, or is it something else? I know the drill.

I feel like I’ve been going through this evolution this year from “Where am I going?” to “What am I doing?” to “Why can’t I do it right?”

At first I just wanted to run. I had this “anywhere but here” kind of mentality. I’ll find work anywhere but here. I’ll feel settled anywhere but here. I’ll be happy anywhere but here. It took a lot of growing up to let myself settle down, to just live somewhere without plotting my next move. So then it became not where you are but what you’re doing.

My mom always says “Bloom where you’re planted.” The point being that where you are (on the planet or in your life) shouldn’t dictate whether or not you thrive. Fair enough. So I started focusing instead on what I wanted to do with myself, independent of where I was. I thought I’d nailed it with the whole grad school thing, but we know I’ve been questioning that for a while now.

So then it becomes this question of: What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I get this right?

Today in microbiology (what the hell am I doing in microbiology?) we were talking about the growth of flagella on bacteria. (It’s the tail.)

Hey, guy.

The curious thing about flagella growth (that could be a book title… dibs!) is that it doesn’t move from the base outward like a plant rising up from the ground. Rather, it comes from the top down. Basically (I’m going to butcher this), a little cap attaches to where the tail should grow. But rather than the tail sprouting from the body and pushing the cap outward, the cap creates all these little layers that pile up on top of the base slowly pushing it up and away.

Shwaa? I know. In the end it’s the exact same growth in the exact same trajectory. But it leapt out at me today as I was sitting there just aching in class and my professor saying in her delightful British accent, “It’s such a strange way to grow.”

Ain’t that the truth.

That’s the only thing I wrote in my notes today: Strange way to grow.

Cool.

I think maybe that’s my problem. I’m fixing things slowly but surely, yes, but maybe I’m going backwards. I’m starting with the little details.

Where will I live? What will I do? Who will I be with?

And inching outward to bigger, scarier questions.

What am I doing wrong? What do I want? (Who do I want, perhaps?) Ultimately… Who am I?

I think that all of those questions are really, really difficult to answer. But I feel like the work I’m doing in yoga is getting me there. Like the whole practice has plopped down on top of my life like a little cap and it’s creating all these new thoughts, all this new possibility. Letting life build, layer upon layer of old stuff, to slowly push me upward.

Anyway. I watched the coolest documentary last night. Everyone in the world needs to see it.

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The Saturday Spectrum

In Baked Goods, Life on January 25, 2012 at 6:23 pm

Fig granola bars

A Saturday night can usually go one of two ways: fun or boring.

But this is for normal people with normal schedules. For someone who works seven days a week, the Saturday night spectrum ranges from soul-crushingly unbearable to BLACKOUT DRUNK. (When you’re single you take the numerical equivalent of each extreme to the power of ten.)

You see, when you’re going nonstop and you get a hot minute to hit the town, you have pretty high expectations for where they night will lead you. Fall short and you fall into a pit of despair–”Noooo, my only night off WAAAASTED.”

Go hard and you’ll hardly remember you have a job at all–”My only night off and I’m gettin’ WAAAAASTED, bitches.”

Last weekend, Mitch and I went with the second option.

Cats included.

DREAM IT DO IT

Ladies and gentlemen, my brother.

I started out not wanting to go out at all but after a bottle of wine was most certainly whistling a different tune. It went a little something like THIS:

That song pretty much defines my college career. My parents are so proud.

So yeah, my day started innocently enough baking sweet little fig granola bars with pumpkin puree instead of oil and honey and things because I’m a dietitian or something.

Pure joy.

Figs make everything better.

And it ended barefoot in a parking garage somewhere uptown…

CLASS ACT.

Somewhere in between this happened:

One for each of us. Duh.

MITCH AND JOE PA'S FACES.

WHO ARE YOU

Whoops.

I’m a firm believer that this is part of a balanced, healthy life.

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Flesh or Light

In Yoga on January 22, 2012 at 10:11 pm

Salads are for winners.

“I don’t know why you do that, Katie.”

Mitch is across the table from me, eight candles burning between us because I like to pretend they create an acceptable (albeit hazardous) makeshift fireplace on gray, rainy days. I’m giving her my most recent sob story and she’s calling it like she sees it, giving it to me straight like so few people do. I have immense respect for people who can and will put me in my place.

“I know you say you don’t have your shit together but as an outsider looking in, trust me when I say this, you’re the only one who thinks that. I don’t know why you do it.”

She’s right, of course. We humans have this incredible ability to build up intricate lies in our heads about who we are or aren’t, who we like and who we don’t, what’s good and what’s bad. We have the capacity to build entire alternate realities for ourselves, and the really amazing thing is not that we can do this but that we almost always choose misery over happiness when we do. (See: Right or Happy? Your Move.) Why do we do this?

There’s a story I keep hearing in yoga and reading in books about this concept, about how things are not themselves by themselves. They are what we think them to be only because of what we make them to be. Bear with me.

Think of an object, any object, and define what it is. In yoga the example is a reed pen. A teacher holds a reed pen up to a student, “What is this?”

“A pen,” the student responds.

“No,” says the teacher. “What is this?”

“… A pen?”

“NO. What is this?”

“It’s a pen.”

“No. What is this to a cow?”

“It’s… food.”

The point is that the pen is only a pen if the seer thinks it’s a pen.

You could go further with the pen. What is it to a warrior? A weapon. To a child? A magic wand.

Try again. Think of a park bench. What is it? A place to sit? Somewhere to sip on a latte? What is it to the homeless guy that slept on it last night? A bed, maybe?

How about me?

I blew through my life savings and can’t get my head back above water. Or… I invested in my future with higher education.

I’m at the mercy of an impossibly full schedule. Or… I’m busy because I want to be.

I sell black stretchy pants at the mall. Or… I’ve met some of my best friends at a fun job that gives me free yoga.

I’m letting everyone down. Or… I’m doing what’s best for me.

I don’t know what I want. Or… I already have everything I need.

I’m lost. Or… I’m exploring.

I read How Yoga Works in the Bahamas and it focuses a lot on this concept of things not being themselves by themselves. There is one page in the book that I’ve dog-eared, underlined, starred and shared. It is this (page 179 if you’ve got it):

He shook his head tightly, forcefully. He almost saw, and he didn’t see, and it was killing him. I picked the pen up from his desk and held it up between us–my shining golden sword.

“Is this a pen; or is it something to eat?” I demanded.

He shook his head again, violently. Help me.

I leaned over intensely and slammed my palm into his chest. 

“Is this flesh–born only to die; or is it pure and loving light?”

He looked up at me, his face changing.

“And your wife, and your daughter,” I said, loudly now, thrusting my palm there, at his chest, where the highest compassion of all lies choked. “Are they dead and gone forever; or do they stand at your side, waiting to be seen, waiting until you learn to see them, be with them, be them?”

And then I slammed my hand down again on the desk and held the pen up between us. “Is it a pen or something to eat? Answer me!” I screamed.

“A pen!” he screamed back now, nearly across the border. “A pen!”

“No!” I screamed back. “Not a pen! Never a pen! Never a pen! NO COW HAS EVER SEEN THIS PEN, AS A PEN, AND SO…” I waited for him.

“And so, and so… they would say… cows would say… that there are no pens,” he finished, still thinking it out.

“The mind makes it a pen,” he went on to himself. “It is not a pen… by itself.”

And then he looked down, at his own chest, where my hand had woken him. “And the body… my body, this flesh…” he said, holding his own two hands there, with a look of wonder growing on his face. “It is flesh, it is flesh, because… because… and only because, my mind makes me see it that way.”

It’s just… enormous. This whole concept. It’s huge. It’s all I’ve been able to think about for the last two weeks. I keep telling everyone but I feel like I’m not explaining it right. I want everyone to read it and get it and, more importantly, do it. Make the choice. What do you want? Do you want to be right or happy? Are you flesh and bone here to die or are you pure, divine, immortal light?

It feels so very out there–a little too “yoga,” if you know what I mean–but I choose light. Definitely.

Fire hazard. Look away, mom.

Stay in that one pure thought, and never forget it. That single most important thing: things are empty of being what they are by themselves. Yoga sutra I.43A

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