A STOP ALONG THE WAY

Joan Brown, The Cat Bride

It is going to take some serious fortitude to get through YTT today. I am exhausted from yesterday. The day is rather blustery and tending toward overcast, although there are sporadic sun showers as the Washingtonian statefolk say. I am a champ at dreading, so I am worrying that I have such a long day ahead, four hours of teacher training and I signed up for a workshop. I may keep my participation on the low key side.

There are physical manifestations of my training. My right arm is not sure what is going on. I feel my arthritis all over my shoulders and neck. Having not practiced intensely for the past couple of weeks due to health and teeth issues, I am not at my peak strength. Stoved up.

Doing this training is walking into a wall of your own fears and self-reality. I made the grave mistake of putting my mat down yesterday next to one of the most advanced students in the whole studio. That doesn’t do anything for one’s confidence and feelings of accomplishment. I guess the contrast is easy to see with the best and worst side by side.

Realizing, really having to be in the moment(s) with one’s age is a challenge. I feel very much like an outsider, not unlike, in some respects, it felt to be the only female living in Boystown. I can never measure up, no matter how much I want to or how hard I try. I am at odds with myself, reminding myself that maybe I can’t do a jump back to chatauranga, but that there are other things I can do. I will be surprised if I don’t cry today in training. 

My conversations with myself that this is good, breaking down one’s ideas about abilities and limitations might bring me closer to a true self. Perhaps other bad or non-salutory habits can disappear along the way and maybe I will end up in a better place in life.

Right now, there is that old feeling of less than and not good enough. Old and in the way. Non-important. Non-essential. And very other.

WOODEN

In the presence of supple

goodness, some people

grow less flexible,

experiencing a woodenness

they wouldn't have thought possible.

It is as strange and paradoxical

as the combined suffering

of Pinocchio and Geppetto

if Pinocchio had turned and said,

I can't be human after all.

— Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, New York, Grove Press, 2010