I could be anything

If you could be anything, what would it be?

“Anything?” she said.

“Sure. Anything.”

hmm… famous, beautiful, rich, immortal, a whale, a dolphin, a famous movie star…

“I’ve got it!” she said.

“So soon?”

“So soon, so obvious.”

“Well then, oh clever one, what will it be?”

“Complete.”

***

“And,” he said, after a pause punctuated by kisses and rejoicing, “What would that look like?”

“Ah,” she said, and rolled onto her back to look at the ceiling. “Therein lies the problem.”

***

What was it about the spaceship in Battlestar Galactica that appealed to me so much? At first glance, I’m sure the hybrids are meant to inspire horror, the mumbling form trapped forever in a vat of slime. “Oh!” I said, “I want to be a spaceship!” My partner was duly scandalized: “WHAT!?!”

“A spaceship! I want to be a spaceship.” No five-year-old was ever more certain than my 40-year-old self in that moment.

“But they’re trapped there!”

“No, they’re not. They can feel all the bits of the ship. Their body extends out into space. They can feel the minds of everybody on board. And they have long range scanners! What’s not to love?”

***

Several weeks later he asked me, “Do you still want to be a spaceship?” (incredulous, I think, although he could repeat back to me my reasoning.) “Yup! Plug me in, baby!”

Now the weirdest thing is, I would claim not to have a transhumanist bone in my body. I don’t even carry my cell phone consistently; forget about being all Borg-y with the Bluetooth. What kind of chicken-keeping, organic-gardening, yoga-twisting, home-birthin’ hippie holds secret aspirations of becoming the beating heart of a spaceship?

Well. Me, apparently.

***

Neil Young’s Legend in her Time comes on the radio and I sing loudly. “…somewhere on a desert highway, she rides a Harley Davidson, her long blonde hair flying in the wind…” My voice catches in my throat, the image so vivid, so appealing… even though I would never ride a motorcycle without a helmet. I know that yearning, to be… to be… somebody else. The somebody you once were, dreamed of becoming, might have been.

I don’t, I now admit, really want to be a spaceship. I’m sure if the aliens turned up tomorrow with a waiting place for me, I would balk, run back to my waiting children. Who would drive them to swimming lessons? (my last meek protest before booking my plane ticket to India last fall) But there is something in this prospect of merging that I can almost taste. I imagine finally having enough mind to encompass my thoughts, these things outside my control which go racing, tumbling one over the other until I can’t tease out the separate threads into a coherent paragraph mathintoscienceintophilosophyintoendlesstodolists. It is the eternal torment of the incessant “why” that I want to escape.

I could hop onto a motorcycle and let the wind blow it all away, or jack into a greater consciousness…

The spaceship still has a body, I insist on pointing out. It is a body made of wires and tubes, but a body nonetheless. A mind that runs incessantly, popping into conscious communication now and then to communicate only a garbled and mysterious prophecy. I don’t know. This should sound awful to me, but there is something so compelling… so… familiar…

***

“… when I went in seeking clarity…”

Losing My Head

I don’t know about where you are, but around here we have a saying, “She’d lose her head if it weren’t attached.” It is (I fear) applied to people like me, those of us who are wont to put things down where we are standing and then wander around for half an hour saying, “Where’d I put that cup of coffee?” (Ans: look in the microwave.)

But at least I was pretty confident about my head.

Until I was at yoga practice one morning, doing a simple side bend, and the teacher came along and put his hand on the side of my face to straighten up my head. There it was, off at some random angle, probably twisted forward as well, being used as a counter-balance, or whatever habitual thing I do with it.

That afternoon, we were concentrating on hip-centred forward bends, keeping our spines neutral. “Watch what people do with their heads,” he said. Well, look at that. There we go again, moving our heads without paying attention to them, necks kinked backwards even when they think they’ve kept them in a line for the whole manoeuvre. Nope. Even though they are attached, here we all are, losing our heads. It was a humbling moment.

This is why we do asana… or at least part of it. We train ourselves to know where we are in space, to pay attention to the subtle movements of our limbs and joints. Adopting a posture, we make gross movements with control. “Bend forward from the hips, going only as far as you can maintain a neutral spine.” (1) And then, once we’re there, we can make the subtle adjustments necessary for the alignment of the asana.

For the last month, one of my key lessons has been Finding My Head.

As I take my seat, where is my head? Slouching at the table, reading something on the screen, my head slides forward and its weight is placed on my hand, straining my neck. I notice, correct, notice, correct. The principle of non-violence applies: I do not call myself names or roll my eyes. Just notice, straighten. Move the weight into the weight-bearing column to relieve the stress on the muscles. As it becomes a habit, I have noticed that I have to correct less frequently.  It gets easier to bend and get out the laundry without kinking my neck. I can sit at the keyboard longer and knit for longer periods of time without pain in my shoulders and hands.

This is the thing I want to teach in my yoga classes: it isn’t about the time on the mat. Think of the class as a lab for life. Here you are in a stripped-down environment with distractions kept to a minimum. The job is to pay attention to the body, and the breathing, and the mind. We do it on the mat to learn it as a skill. And then we discover that the job is always to pay attention to the body, and the breathing, and the mind. The mind is racing: bring it back to the task at hand. The breathing is shallow, jerky, warning us to listen… anxiety? Fear? Are we folded up and feeling draggy? The body is overstressed, reaching for sugar to keep running, or warning us at the limit of our extension that we are about to overstretch and pull something. Listen.

For now, I start with my head. Where is my head? It turns out that I’d lose it, even though it is attached.

---

1. People don’t like this instruction; they seem to want to touch their toes however they can get there. But then they miss the great benefit of going slowly, taking the lessons as they come.

Entering the Fallow Time

It is a blustery day in Cape Breton. The river is dark and capped with waves, the sky is dark and a not-quite uniform grey. The leaves are starting to turn, and we are down to the final few days in the garden, in a race to get the greenhouse covered before it is Too Late. I think I’ve figured out how to attach the ends. Please cross your fingers that I have figured out how to attach the ends. There will be weeping if this one falls down or blows away.

There is a nigh-enforced period of reduced activity in a climate as “temperate” as the one I live in. The inflow of energy is obviously cyclical when you find yourself north of 45. All too soon after the days of swimming and picnics, autumn arrives. The sunlight dims and the temperature falls. It is a matter of weeks before we can anticipate being snowed in, at least for a day or two at a time. We know: it is the time of stews, and blankets, and long sleeves and dark clothes.

I slow down at this time of year, and I just keep getting slower until the end of February or so. I need more sleep, I have difficulty getting going, and I want to stay home a lot.

This is not what our culture allows.

September ramped up my activity level to a point that I started waking up at 4 in the morning. Exhausted, but awake. Mind racing, schedule ruling my life, demands of the schools running through my mind. Gym shoes, school fees, swimming classes, registrations, and the like, overlapping drop-offs and pick ups at times outside of my control and at locations separated by tens of kilometers. Oddly enough, I started having anxiety problems. I cut down on my caffeine, increased my intake of EFA’s, started taking a B-vitamin, made myself go to bed at 10 every night, added meditation and yoga to my calendar on a (nearly) daily basis. (I’m feeling a lot better, actually.)

But why? Why do we do this to ourselves every fall? Just as our bodies are settling into the swamp of lethargy for a nice long stay? Where is the honour for the natural rhythms?

So, over there somewhere, I’m working on a new business. But I won’t be planning a product launch in November. That is a recipe for burning out. It is the time of winter wheat and over-wintered crops. We will lay in the last of the harvest, and bring in the firewood. We will finish planting the garlic. And then we will scale back to the necessary. I will write, and ponder, and consider. And play with my babies, and make bread, and hang out next to the woodstove, and do yin yoga. It is the time for deep rest. Our bodies know.

I know.