It begins...

#500WordsADay for 30 days.

I’m working on writing more for potential publication, but in order to still stay accountable, I will post something each day.

If it’s relevant to Yogabun, I’ll put up the whole thing.

And if not, a snapshot of a piece of whatever I wrote.

1/30. Friends.

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A Strange Handkerchief of Wishes And Lies

“What do you have faith in?”

As a matter of course, I’m not religious and it took exactly one slight shift of my eyebrow for my brother to amend his question.

“I’m not talking about spiritual things necessarily,” he said. “Where do you place your faith? When do you trust that something will work out and why?”

Placing faith. Like a handful of eggs in a lace handkerchief, set somewhere safe to hatch.

I generally feel like I carry one single egg around in my pocket, willing it to open while inconveniencing myself at every turn because I’m carrying a fucking, delicate-ass egg around in a pocket for no reason.

Force of will over assured faith.

Apparently, when I was little, I asked my parents what we were.

“Are we Methodist?” My friends were Methodist.

“No.”

“What are we, then?”

“We don’t really have a group.”

“So we’re nothing.” I was just trying to clarify, but this struck a chord and we spent the next few years popping into various services. My mom didn’t feel right going back to her Catholic roots, but my dad had a better experiences in temples. When I was 12, we decided to try on Judaism in full.

This, however, was not what I had intended with my questions. I wanted to be more like my friends, not even weirder and now, suddenly, with terribly dull plans for all Friday nights in the foreseeable future.

Religion, therefore, didn’t stick for me the way it does for the earlier indoctrinated. There is, however, something about saying “I’m nothing” that rings false even still. There is something tenable but intangible on which to place a fragile, lacy handful of eggs; I just don’t have the map of where it is.

Twice now, I’ve moved across the country. Once with no plan, no money, and no friends, and the other time with a little bit of savings. If you were to ask where my faith was both times I would have said, “half tattooed on my skin and the other half in the wind.”

I knew I would make things happen. I don’t know where I get this from but it’s deep like a bone. Or popcorn under the back molar, next to the gums.

Every January I sit with my planner and do some goal-setting. Reluctantly, like it wasn’t my own idea, and then furiously, like I’m sending wishes to a genie.

And, like wishes, it feels finite, numbered, constrained.

“This isn’t all going to happen,” I have said, out loud, to my pen.

I must ration these.

And yes, prioritizing is a main tenet of goal-setting, but so is belief.

This, I think, is the crux of the New Year’s Resolution. This list in particular is the pile of things we have no faith in actually achieving. Or else they’d be done by now, secured in the secret place we put things of delicate value.

This is the year I finally become a person who enjoys mornings.

Where are you putting this strange handkerchief of wishes and lies?

And where, instead, do you place your faith?

I have been so sure and so wrong, and maybe I’d rather just be one or the other.

January, as I’ve said countless times before, is not when things start new for me. It is when things are dead and cold and cracked. But I live in a sunny place now, so that could explain the softening.

There are the things I’ve never fully trusted will work out. Not in the way I believe in finding joyful employment and making friends. The things I carry around half-heartedly like they are plastic Easter eggs and not something I am determined to protect and hatch against all odds.

This is the year I get a literary agent.

This is actually the year I stop sending that out into the universe and instead believe in it like it’s something I have control over. The truth is, the answer to my brother is that the things I have “faith” in are things I believe I can do all on my own and for which I don’t need a special lace doily. Just a pocket.

But if you count up all the times I’ve been sure and wrong and still OK, it will tell you that this answer cannot be the whole truth. It’s not nothing and it’s not just me by myself and that, well, that’s the best I can do. A map on the scale of Neverland, but a map nonetheless.

Put A Lid On It

“Do you have anything in that cup?” 

It took me a second to answer because 1) I was wearing headphones, 2) I had said hi with a weird grin because 3) I am never sure if I have enough money on my bus pass. But the driver pointed to my mug again, and I unplugged one earbud. 

“Oh, yes it’s just coffee.” 

“Just” as opposed to what, exactly, I don’t know, but last week some guy popped open a bottled beer inside an actual paper bag like a 1920s hobo on a train, so at least not that. 

“You need to have a lid.”

“I’m not going to spill it…” 

“That’s what they all say.” 

I laughed a little because do they all say that? Also I was trying to lighten the mood because the bus was already ten minutes late, I could feel myself getting angry about nonsensical rules, and I didn’t have a lot of options left to get to work on time if I got kicked off the bus. 

“Next time I can’t let you on the bus without a lid.” 

“OK,” I said. But I didn’t say it in a nice way. I said it like I was 15 and in trouble for talking too much in class, which I have a lot of practice saying while rolling my eyes. I wish I had more practice saying effective and adult things, like, “how is this more of a problem than the man eating an onion salad on the Sunday bus?” 

But alas, I spent the rest of the ride preemptively clutching my almost-empty, air-temperature coffee in a reusable mug because I’m trying to save the planet, worried both that I would spill it by accident or reflexive spite, and that I would be banned from Culver City busses for life. 

Of course there are rules, otherwise public transit would be a seething pit of sticky messes and everyone would slosh on, solo cup in hand. And yet I have legitimately seen a woman clip her toenails on the bus, and one time I sat in Doritos. 

This is where I’m supposed to tell you how yoga makes you a better person who never gets angry, but the indignity of a double standard will get me every time. Being fired up about something isn’t inherently bad, and has created many and important waves of change throughout history. 

This is not one of those times though, and it is equally important to check in with how a singular, personal convenience relates to the bigger picture. I don’t particularly care about having to use a lid on my mug. I just hate being told what to do. 

“I’m not four, I don’t need a sippy cup,” I explained to my friend after I got off the bus in a huff. 

“Wait, you don’t have a lid for your mug?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Yeah, but what happened to it?”

“I dropped it on the ground and it shattered.” 

But like, we can all agree on the toenails, right?

False Positives

A few weeks before this challenge started, I posted a video to Instagram about the trap of forced positives. It was partly on the heels of a discussion with a friend about general yoga culture annoyances, and partly in response to specific classes I had taken.

It’s a well-established fact that I hate being told to smile. As if some outward social nicety has any bearing on my actual feelings, is any of your domain to demand, or specifically belongs in a practice designed for introspection and neutrality. Among other things. 

In much the same way, and because as a theme I hate being told what to do even if I like to do it, I find the current yoga world narrative of “be positive at all costs” nauseatingly shallow. 

One of my articles on a yoga website in 2013 had a fair amount of traffic, and contained a large amount of snark. The comments weren’t moderated, which meant people could be as shitty as people are on the internet, without fear of retribution. One guy called me a douche. Another called me a bitch, but I’m used to that. 

But one lady took the time to spell out just exactly why I am a horrible person, and then signed off, “In Love and Light.” 

That is not how this works. You cannot negate all the bad shit you said by deciding it was well-intentioned, thus deserved, and absolve yourself of treating people badly. 

When I first moved to Boston, I had an audition at a newly opened yoga studio wherein we each had to teach part of a class while smiling throughout our segment. One girl actually cried the whole time. Tears of joy from how moved she was by taking us through two poses, which I thought was kind of breaking the rules, but then again, I really struggled with the whole constantly-grinning-while-talking thing. 

These might seem sort of extreme as examples of inauthenticity, but take any of the popular hashtags or yoga culture phrasing:

Good Vibes Only

Attitude of Gratitude

Choose Happiness

Any of these are well-meaning and if applied carefully, can create a healthy mindset. If applied with the sense gathered from white-washed social media, they simply feed into an avoidance tactic masquerading as an agent of change. 

You can’t ONLY HAVE GOOD VIBES. It is not possible, nor is it valuable. 

“Thank you sir may I have another,” isn’t what most people would rank as a mantra. 

And I would like to choose happiness, in the same way that I would choose to be a millionaire or to not get stuck outside in torrential rain, but it doesn’t exactly work like that. 

It works like work. Like practice. Like having the tools to be able to direct your energy in productive ways while also feeling the feelings you have. You have to be able to sit with things and get to the center of them before you can send them on their way. Otherwise, you’re really just shoving them in the closet and telling your mom you cleaned your room, and I can tell you how that ends. (Not well.)

“Leave your problems at the door,” is another phrase that gets looped into this. As if you could step out of your own life when you walk into class. As if you should. Not only are we in the business of literally bringing things into union, not compartmentalizing, but your emotions live in your body because you live in your body. You can’t actually get out of it, you have to go through. 

There is a ton of value in going to therapy, and it cannot be replaced by taking a bunch of yoga asana. I think people forget that. 

There are some ways in which yoga, and asana specifically, becomes a useful tool in the deeper version of a progression into positive mindsets: 

  1. Focus on the breath. When things get tough, go straight to basics. What is happening now, and how can I get to a steady place in order to think it through? Full inhale, slow exhale. 
  2. Be in your body. Along with the breath that you have, where are your feet, how are you standing, what is clenching? If one shoulder hikes up, slide it down. If your hands are making fists, soften them a touch. Notice if any of these small changes affect what you’re thinking about or how you feel. 
  3. Sit with your feelings. Not to give them any unnecessary weight, but to know the story that you are telling yourself. See if it’s true. 

One of my very favorite teachers says to do things “without judgment or praise.” Generally, if we aren’t critiquing ourselves we are giving ourselves props. Can you do neither and just do a thing? 

It’s actually nearly fucking impossible, but wildly important. It’s where we get to that zero hour. The place of neutrality where there is room for life again. Because only when no one is shouting at you to smile can you truly find what it means to be happy. 

Gaslighting

Heaven, if it exists, begins with someone washing your hair, and a deep scalp massage. I don’t know what happens after that, but at least you are clean and presentable for the afterlife. 

When I was little, I was convinced the stars were angels, and that this was why, “I wish I may, I wish I might,” worked any at all. It wasn’t wishing so much; it was praying. Then I saw It’s a Wonderful Life, and loudly proclaimed that they stole my idea, which everyone laughed at since the movie premiered in 1946. 

The first time I went as blonde as I am now was by accident. They sat me in the dryer with foils all over my head, as I’d been doing for a year with soft highlights, and then forgot about me. I read a whole, outdated magazine with a bunch of stories I already knew, and I wondered at the construct of time and how anyone functioned without checking an iPhone display with every fidget. 

My hair turned out to be exactly what I never thought I wanted, but loved. When I asked for the same thing next time, they didn’t believe the color I was suggesting.

“No, we never go that light for you.”

“That’s what it was last time - I have a photo.”

“No. I always write the color down, see, yours is not that blonde.” This, in fact, proved nothing to me as it was just a string of numbers. I felt strongly that the photo was a better argument, but I acquiesced to some kind of compromise which was, at its core, not bad and not not bad either. 

It’s difficult to make yourself heard when you aren’t the one holding the bleach. 

“Are you allergic to anything?” I was filling out paperwork, and we were at the medical history section. 

“Bees,” I said. 

“Um, how about medicines? Penicillin, or…” 

“Oh. Morphine.”

“Morphine? That’s it?”

“I mean, I think? I had it in the hospital once and I got very hot and my throat started squeezing.”

This to me seems like a poor reaction to something designed to give you ease, but it never fails to garner a raised eyebrow, like maybe a rapidly closing airway isn’t the worst that can happen. 

The ghost I had in my Wrigleyville apartment tried to choke me once. I woke up gasping and swatting the air. He was a trickster, not a pervert. I think he was ten or twelve. Once I saw him bouncing a basketball into the street. 

He snuck all around the building, and wasn’t always in my place, but when he was, he’d slam the doors, make like a breeze with all the windows closed, and constantly turn off the heat. Occasionally, and only for company, he would turn the shower off mid-rinse. One time he knocked the bedroom doorknob out in the middle of the night, you know, just for funsies. 

I wasn’t bothered by him until the choking, which I’m pretty sure my then-boyfriend did not believe. 

“You do have terrible dreams,” he said. 

“But I don’t wake up like that. It was like when the ghost at home used to sit on my bed,” I said, derailing all of my credibility. 

I moved shortly after that, but my next place had mice and I kind of missed the pre-teen angst. I hope he found some solace, and moved up to that head massage we all long for.  

In the weeks before I moved to California, as more and more people found out, I got a flurry of unsolicited advice. 

“Good luck out there with all the other yoga babes.”

“I couldn’t live out there because I’m too career-driven, but maybe you won’t care as much.”

“You kind of look like everyone else, but I hope it makes you happy.”

All real things that real people said because people are not self-aware nor very helpful. And I am glad that I didn’t listen to any of them beyond writing them down so I could do exactly what I’m doing now, which is list them as evidence of wrongness. 

That line between knowing when to fight for what is true and when to let things be false is a dotted one I think. Porous. You are able to float between sides like a ghost. 

I always wish the same thing on stars. I won’t tell you what it is, but you can know it’s never changed. Sometimes I pick a star and realize it’s a plane and I get sad that I wasted sacred breath on something less than an angel. 

We all have a story and we want it to be right. For life to have meaning and for hurts not to be in vain, and to be special and different and true. 

When my dad was little he never understood the big reveal in The Wizard of Oz. They didn’t have a color TV, so when Dorothy landed in her magical new world, it looked to my dad as pretty much the same. It wasn’t until he was an adult that he saw it in color. 

“Did you know it was supposed to be in color?” I asked. The Wizard of Oz was my favorite movie as a kid, and I couldn’t imagine unknowing the yellow bricks into grey bricks. 

“I mean, I guess I had heard that. I don’t know, it was still cool. It was still a different world with talking scarecrows and singing. But it was wild to see it in color!” 

I have a hard time letting things be false, but sometimes there is more magic in that state. When a plane is the brightest star you’ve ever seen, coming straight for you, at least for a moment. 

Shark Baby

For a stretch of time, my dad and I would watch old movies in the middle of the night. Somewhere in my college years, I think, when we were both trusty night owls. My dad flips through channels slowly, in a way that makes you think, “possibly we will watch this channel until the TV dies.” 

C-Span, PBS symphonies performing atonal horrors, closed-circuit county courthouse footage, anything really, my dad gives it a full chance. 

“Let’s just see,” he will say. 

We’d entertain a few lame options before the late-night, black and white movies would show up on the higher numbers. 

We watched Rear Window this way. And The Bad Seed, which in retrospect, was not a good choice for 3AM because it is scary AF. 

And, of course, The Hustler. 

This was a few years after my dad had taught me how to play pool. Taught me and then we didn't keep up at it, so my skills were rough-hewn at best, though this didn't stop me from being fully invested in the movie’s plot-line as if it were my written destiny.  

I have always wanted to be good at pool. In the same way I want to be good at knowing about cars or playing poker, neither of which are things I can do in any way. 

To walk into a room, (looking like me and not Paul Newman obviously,) pick up a pool cue and just nail it? That’s a kind of power they make (one very iconic) movies about. 

Instead, I can awkwardly hold a pool cue while wondering where to grab it, sometimes not hit the lampshade with it, and most of the time I don’t miss the cue ball completely. 

Last night I only lost by three, almost all of the times I played. The other time I lost by like the whole set of solids. 

There’s a Donald Duck cartoon about the math involved in billiards, that I think I also watched in the middle of the night, where he pictures all the angles in his head before the shot and it breaks down how it bounces. It is simultaneously overwhelming and triggers some kind of challenge instinct in me, wherein I think if I could just turn my brain off enough, I would be able to have geometric visions and suddenly become the pool player I’ve always wanted to be. 

This, however, works less well than just aiming higher on the cue ball, or, as discovered last night, looking at the ball itself instead of staring off into the distance where you’re hoping it ends up. 

But, let’s just see. 

My dad is now more of a morning person, while I have remained a night one. It will be my birthday in exactly an hour and a half - nearly 3AM. I feel like it is no surprise that I am so drawn to the quiet and spaciousness of that hour. It is how I came into things.