Breathing fast and slow

Early morning Thanksgiving in my part of the world, the sky was intensely red. The color seemed to leak into the leaves of the trees already marked by fall's color wheel, making them pop even redder. It reminded me of a morning last December. It was the morning before a friend's memorial, and I was out with the dog. The dog was engaged in his business, and I was engaged in mine. In that time before thoughts take over, I was enjoying the dawn air and light and sounds. I remarked then--and later at our friend's memorial as a way of paying tribute to times I'd spent with him and the directions our conversations would so often travel--at how the dawn light seemed to be bleeding into the trees, so much so that the color seemed to drain from the sky and into the trees' leaves right before my eyes. I wondered how science might explain this, this early morning illusion, this mystery at dawn. This is the stuff I feel fortunate to witness. It makes me feel good. About me. Y

The poet Galway Kinnell writes the following poem and calls it Prayer : Whatever happens. Whatever what is is is what I want. Only that. But that. I call that a life's work, which, I suppose, is close enough to what prayer is. It is a mantra worthy of repetition for what we come up against, what we experience and endure, and for that matter, what endures. Whatever what is is .... On the cover of the Los Angeles Times Tuesday morning was a picture of a small group of women in the Philippines walking, according to the caption, in a religious procession--arms laden with religious icons--against a background of devastation left in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan that wracked much of the Philippines on November 8. It is the sort of photograph that looks like a painting, and the women look more like warriors than like those suddenly rendered homeless by natural disaster. It is a remarkable photograph, worth more than its share of a thousand words. I found myself going back to it many

As I got to the top of the stairs the other morning for practice, there, lying just beyond the reach of the door to the yoga studio, was a homeless person rolled up in a blanket too thin for November's early morning air and fast asleep. In the years that I have practiced at this studio, I have, upon occasion, seen other homeless people slumbering near the entrance, their few belongings piled neatly beside them, socks tucked down inside their shoes. Always, I wonder what it is that draws them to this particular entry way. The answer is not so difficult to imagine. At the top of the stairs is a generous landing, buffeted by a short wall on all sides, except, of course, where the stairway leads to it. Here, then, is a small, somewhat hidden sanctuary where a person could sleep undisturbed, or as undisturbed as someone is capable of sleeping when living out on the streets all day. I cannot imagine it. Me, who has a difficult time of it on the rare occasions I have to sleep alone in

My husband is not a morning person. In fact, he would say that getting up early is for the birds. And, of course, he'd be right. Every bird worth its weight in feathers knows that the early morning is the best time to harvest worms and to sing its ode to the dawn's early light. While I have no interest in competing with the birds for their morning grubs--as long as they leave enough for the garden--I am, nonetheless, one of the flock when it comes to paying tribute to the dawn. According to the latest evidence in sleep research, this penchant for the dawn makes me a "lark," a morning person, someone who feels she is capable of her best work in the morning. Those who burn the candle at the other end of the day are known as "owls" because they, like their nocturnal namesakes, tend to be more productive in the evening. I imagine that if I talked to enough "owls," I would find that, like me, they have a special reverence for their particular time o

I often joke with friends that in my next life I am going to be a dancer. I have a dancer's build and a good sense of balance, and I have always held a soft spot for ballerinas, gymnasts, acrobats, and the lithe bodies of street performers and mimes. While I am not necessarily good at following direction backward in a mirror, I have a decent sense of rhythm and spent a fair number of nights as a young adult on a dance floor where I escaped alcohol and drugs by getting lost in movement. I have gravitated toward sports and activities that promote graceful lines, powerful energy and a feeling of expansiveness. One of the many things I love about rock climbing is that I often feel like a dancer moving across stone. The height, the airy terrain, the play of the wind in my hair all add to the allure and keep me returning for more. Yoga is a natural fit for someone who likes to dance. And the discipline of ashtanga appeals to the inner gymnast in me that never had a shot at the balance

I am reading Dani Shapiro's most recent book Still Writing . It's a strange feeling, discovering a piece of myself on every page. In her adept, practiced hands, Shapiro is laying bare every insecurity I have ever felt as someone who takes up a pen to write. I thank her for giving voice to those idiosyncrasies I have not yet found the words for, but which plague me nonetheless when I sit down to write. Mostly, though, I thank her for making me feel less alone, less like a freak or an impostor, in the habits and quirks that persist when I approach a blank page. Writing is like any endeavor we devote ourselves to, it becomes better with practice. Shapiro says, in fact, that "the practice is the art." Guruji, of course, said the same thing when he repeatedly spoke the mantra that endures as his legacy to all ashtangis: "Practice and all is coming." I know this; I have even experienced this. How, then, to hold on to this? To trust in this the next time I am pl

This semester I am reading the novel A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines with  my students. As I do every semester before we begin to read together, I devote a class session or two to a discussion of the selected title and, sometimes, I also distribute a supplemental article, essay or poem that provides essential background. These discussions serve as a way to generate interest in the chosen book and to engage my students in a bit of inquiry before we actually begin the process of reading. Pedagogically speaking, I am preparing my students to read. In other words, I am working hard to help my students find a way to make a connection to a book that they have been told they have to read to pass my class. Simple right? After all, this is a college class. The sad truth is, every semester I have to work that much harder to sell my students on the title. By the end of the semester, I know that a handful of students will have completed the book in its entirety. Another handful will hav

Michael has died. Another friend is gone. Sunday, we bid our farewells to him at a memorial service  in the open air on the grounds of one of the colleges where Michael once taught. Students, colleagues, mentors and friends gathered together and did what the living do when a friend dies: We shared with one another our stories about spending time in Michael's company. We ate; we drank; we laughed; we cried. Together, we remembered what it was like for us, uniquely, to be with Michael. It occurs to me just now that perhaps this is how we make our friends immortal. All those individual stories become part of a collective memory that we can later dip into when thinking of our friend. Michael, then, becomes more than he ever was to any one of us, which just maybe helps us to see more of who he was to us all. Like Edward Bloom in the movie Big Fish, who becomes at his death the mythical creature he believed he was--larger than his one life, in other words--Michael exists now in our lives

For 10 years, I was the founding member of a book club. In that time, I read more than 50 books with a group of women that I am lucky to call my friends. When exchanging e-mails with the group, one of the members routinely began and ended her missives with "Aloha." She had visited Hawaii many times, and until my most recent--and first--trip to Hawaii, I did not understand the affection for this word. Unlike the sand I have continued to shed for the better part of this first week back from Maui, finding it every morning in the sheets with me upon waking, I am reluctant to let the way of Aloha, or the spirit of Aloha, slip away. I like how this word expresses both greeting and farewell as well as love, affection, peace, compassion, and mercy. " Aloha ," one says, so that love protects one's goings and comings. That's a whole lot of sentiment for three syllables, much like the three sounds of A U M, which are said to express the first three stages of consciou

New York Poet Laureate Marie Howe wants us to learn to pay attention. As a daily caregiver to her brother when he was in the process of dying from AIDS, Howe learned how to notice "the particulars" of objects and sounds and sensations. She found that she learned to live in time again--in the present--by becoming aware of these particulars--everything that is ordinary, in other words. According to Howe, we can only really describe what is happening or what transpired by talking about what we have observed. Then, when we talk about the bed, the garden, my daughter's bathroom floor covered in beach sand, or the kitchen sink full of last night's dinner plates, we know there is a space between all of that where "what the living do" unfolds. I stumbled upon this insight of poet Marie Howe a couple of days ago while at the beach, again, with my daughter. Give me a moment, and you will understand my emphasis of "again." In the summer issue of Tricycle,