**Warning. I use a mild swear.**

 

We just came back from a visit to Arizona - to our cultural version of order and friends and family. It was too soon. We weren’t ready for a visit - mostly because I was once again unprepared for going back. The only thing keeping me afloat at the moment is the ol’  “This is only temporary” and the following story:

 

A couple of years ago, in a yoga class at the highly esteemed Desert Song Yoga studio in Phoenix, I arrived in class to find a substitute for the regular teacher. Her name was Linda and she was a more mature woman than my regular teacher. It was an intermediate class and I could tell that most of us were wondering how she would lead us through a session. (This is really because we are all morons and knew nothing about Yoga that actually teaches that the most accomplished and wise yogis will be mature, etc.)

 

She senses this I think, and says “We are shaking things up a bit today, just to make sure this is about you and your practice, not the teacher.” Alright we think - we can buy this. The room is large with wood floors. There are mirrors on two opposing sides of the room with the back wall being covered with cupboards full of yoga mats, eye pillows, blankets, and other equipment. And the front wall blank with statues and plants on either corner. We take our places and get our “areas” ready facing the front wall. We settle in with our mats, set up our blankets just right and get our belts and eye pillows. Most everyone is doing leg stretches or lying back on their mat in meditation.

 

Then we hear Linda again, ready to begin class. “Before we begin, we are going to move class so we face a different wall than we usually do.  Let’s turn around and face the back.” This makes no sense and it is really quite annoying. There is no mirror and the front wall is perfectly fine and this is going to waste like five minutes of an already expensive yoga class. And we have to look at cupboards and equipment while we try to do our yoga thing.

 

We follow her instructions.  This does take five minutes. Then we are ready. Cross-legged and focused, she puts her hands to her heart center and welcomes us to class. We follow and put our hards to prayer position over our hearts and repeat the Oms with her. I am still feeling annoyed and the relaxing thing is not kicking in yet. After the opening of class, she says she wants to talk about something before we begin with the first pose. “I am sure that many of you are wondering why I made you move your set-ups to the back wall. The real power comes from being able to adjust to any situation and be okay regardless of where you are. Yoga is about finding stillness in chaos, about being able to be in any situation and find calm.” The she suggests that we use the next hour to breathe and find the same relaxation and concentration that we would if class were being held normally.

 

I think about this all the time here, and most especially in the past couple of days being back here. Can I just turn my set-up to the back wall and be ok? I went running yesterday in my neighborhood. Just on a run, there is so much to take in. The women and men already up and working on the construction at the end of the street. There is a baby crying at the site too and it dawns on me that babies are raised - sleep, eat and play on construction sites. And this baby was either hungry or awoken by metal pounding metal. The drivers washing the cars they are hired to drive. The house boy walking his employee’s dogs. The stray dogs hanging out by the garbage cart two women are organizing. A woman standing inside the gate to a partially demolished house brushing her teeth with her finger. And this is all before I reach the walking park.

 

The park has about 10 walkers, going at different paces around a paved oval in the middle of the park. I am in a t-shirt and long running pants. I avoided wearing shorts but I notice that my pants may be too tight. I think to myself - this is odd that a mormon girl is having to worry about being more modest. There are an even number of women and men. A couple of women in groups. One group is three, two women in saris and tennis shoes and the other in pants. Some others are scattered around the oval track, sitting on the benches in various stages of meditation or sleep, hard to tell. A woman takes a breather on one the benches as I run past her. We meet eyes and I smile. But she only stares back, lips close together without a commitment either way. This happens a lot. People smile at the kids but not at me. Sometimes, well often, people stare like us do at one of those moving eyes portraits in haunted houses.  

I try smiling at two more women and then give up.

 

A brief explanation of my walk in pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These walks take 30 minutes but I see more in that 30 minutes than in 2 years of running in the neighborhood. Sometimes, I think this is honorable - even enviable. But sometimes, like this particular morning, I feel weird, out of place, an intruder. I felt like my pants are too revealing. There’s a woman I pass home each day who with her look convinces me I’m doing something wrong. Usually I just feel skanky like the time I snuck a tank top to junior high and changed my clothes in the bathroom before first period. As I walk home, I spend time worrying and then being convinced that this woman sees me as more than skanky but as someone who is where they shouldn’t be. I reason to myself that really, I am taking resources and money away from India and that this is wrong. And I think about the mom with her baby on her hip walking to the construction site. And the rich guy doing nothing beside her. And then I remember that I too am rich and doing nothing. And the kids in the park who watch my kids play. Who never change their outfits and whose only toys are the makeshift plastic containers and the rusting old metal equipment still fastened to the dirt. It can just be too much. Too much going on. Too much guilt. Too much talking myself out of the guilt. Too much difference between the lives of children - solely dependent on where and to whom they were born. Too much happiness from people who should be sad and too much sad from me who has everything she should need to be happy like all the time. Too much pressure to be smart in situations where I don’t know what is going on. Too much expectation to do something brilliant with everything I’m seeing.

 

It’s just so much here - so much going on. Even in only 30 minutes. Damn the back wall.