Observations

Down dog days

Feb 27, 2013 9:58 pm•By: •What say you?

I’ve been taking yoga on a weekly basis again — yes, yes, old habits die hard and new habits often get aborted before they’re even born — but I’ve managed to keep it up for several months now.  Unlike last time, when I managed to keep it up for two whole weeks. This newfound dedication is called My Chiropractor Co-pay is How Much?

This particular yoga class at this particular studio with this particular teacher has been good all around, and I often find myself leaving classes not only with some lower back pain relief but with a much more even  temperament for the evening.  I might even go so far as to use the word “relaxed” to describe the way I feel afterwards.  Despite my best efforts to remain a hardened little cynic within my shell of pessimistic sarcasm, a little positivity sneaks in anyway.

But not tonight.

Tonight I arrived a little bit late to class, and the class was full.  I got stuck with a tiny space in the corner, where I couldn’t stretch out without bumping into a wall.  Stupid wall.

Then I realized the person next to me was one of those super-stretchy petite Asian girls who can neatly fold themselves in half in any direction, while I look like a flustered T-rex flailing my arms by my ears in an attempt to reach my distant knees.  Stupid stretchy Asian girl. 

On top of that the guy across from me was terribly tone-deaf, oblivious to his tone-deafness, and totally enthused about the mantras our class was chanting.  Stupid tone-deaf mantra enthusiast. 

From that point it was a steady spiral of negative thoughts until I reached my couch with a glass of cabernet, where the only thing I stretched was my sweatpants.  And as I relaxed — tonight thanks to the wine, not the yoga — I considered that my crankiness had been way overwrought. I was acting like that kid who gets a little splinter and screams like he’s being stabbed to death with a wooden stake.

But yeah, there are days where life’s tiniest possible annoyances — life’s splinters — get the best of me.  The lady in front of me in line who takes two seconds longer than I’ve judged necessary to pull out her wallet.  The toddler on the subway who wants to play peek-a-boo with me when oh my god this hangover I can’t even see with my eyes.  The couple who walks too slowly in front of me on the street (when here I’ve been that couple too many times to count).  All just minor irritations, but then I start to dwell on them. And once I’ve started to dwell on them, it’s like a splinter that lodges itself too deep to extract and starts an infection.

Sometimes our bad days are just things we bring on ourselves with our own myopia.  I’d like to think that yoga classes help me to develop a more intentional presence of mind so that I can identify the downward spirals before I reach the bottom of them.  But on those days like today where I don’t, it doesn’t hurt to try and find a more positive spirit by reaching for a bottle of spirits.

 

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Worst Year Ever

Jan 7, 2013 8:23 pm•By: •What say you?

According to an informal poll of people I casually know, 2012 was the Worst Year Ever.  This was a sentiment expressed by both liberals and conservatives, so I can’t chalk it up to a bunch of sad Republicans getting stuck with Obama for another four years.  But I agree with my acquaintances – it was pretty much the Worst Year Ever.

Maybe there were some foul astrological forces at work.  My horoscope for 2012 could have simply read “Fuck you, Scorpio.”  By the end of autumn I was just limping through life like a wounded wildebeest dragging itself across the Serengeti, hoping to die peacefully before being torn apart by lions.

Despite all the conflict, illness, uncertainty and loss of this year — it was a constant tumult of negative happenings punctuated with interludes of merely uncomfortable circumstances — in  the end I came out unscathed by the capital letter problems: Divorce, Death, Bankruptcy and Cancer.  For that I am grateful — I know others were not so fortunate.

Being in these first few weeks of 2013 is like experiencing the first signs of spring after a harsh, cold winter.  I’ve never felt such relief at leaving a year behind, Nor such optimism going into a new one.  In years past, the change over to a new year was just a matter of throwing out an old calendar and buying a new one.

But this time it was different, because 2012 was the Worst Year Ever.

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Follow the ruined brick road

Aug 21, 2012 8:33 pm•By: •What say you?

Walking back from the gym through part of Independence Park the other day, something struck me as amiss.  I couldn’t put my finger on it right away — it was the nagging unease of your eyes seeing something that your brain isn’t registering.

It’s like those brain teasers in the back of weekly rags, where two photographs appear identical on first glance.  But you stare at them longer, and you start to see that in this picture, the man stands beside a gate and wears green socks; in that picture, the fence has no gate and his socks are red.  Suddenly, you see that there are dozens of differences between two things that looked exactly the same a few minutes ago.

So I concentrated, and looked around, and tried to figure out what was causing the mismatch between what I thought I should be seeing, and what was actually there.  First I looked for DANGER! in the form of shady men or suspicious packages, but the park was benignly serene as usual.  Then I looked for changes in the scenery: had a tree been cut down, or some new benches introduced?  Nothing seemed different, so I looked for something that seemed wrong.  Maybe my eyes were annoyed by the sight of something and my brain was slow to agree.

And then, like the moment when a 3D dolphin leaps off the page of a Magic Eye book and into your face, I realized what had me put off about the view:

So many weeds. Because the National Park Service is busy looking nice in their hats.

The brick walkway through the center of the park was being overtaken by a grass infestation to the point where the Park Service will just have to start mowing it in a few weeks if they don’t do something soon.  These clumps of grass are so large and mightily established that I have nearly tripped on them more than once.  Is the federal government so broke we can’t afford a bottle of Roundup?  Maybe some of those guys we pay to stand around could put on garden gloves and clean this mess up.

As it is, the United States seems to be headed down the road to ruin. And now the neglected pathways of our federal parks provide a ruined road for us to walk.

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