El Fuego

My most distinctive memory in college was the night the dorm caught on fire. It was around 10pm and the alarm went off for probably the sixth time that week. I groaned, slipped on my leopard-print slippers (because I was very hip), looked at my cell phone, and called security from my dorm phone.

"The fire alarm is going off in Slocum"

Click.

So commonplace was this interaction that they didn't ask any questions and I didn't have to say anymore. I locked my room and started down the stairs.

My residents from the previous year were yelling as loudly as they could that this was a real fire. On the fourth floor. And these weren't the kinds of f*ckers who would joke around about a thing like this.

I turned around and ran up the stairs. The fourth floor was empty, but smoke billowed out of the top of one door and water poured out of the bottom. My fellow RA was at the other end of the hall, and we both ran towards the fire.

---

This week I ran from fire. The Waldo Canyon Fire started on Saturday about five miles west of my home. People laughed at me for packing my suitcases and gathering my papers, but Tuesday evening a change in the wind brought the fire down the mountain and 1/3 of a mile from my back porch. I watched a normal Colorado wildfire become a monster that poured like lava down the hillside in thirty minutes. In five minutes the ash cloud surrounded my house, and I grabbed my packed bags, my birds, and left.

---

What has changed in me that once I ran towards the fire, and now I run from it?

I've been asking myself that very question.

Sitting in a friend's home with a complex wardrobe of three pairs of yoga clothes, one swim suit and one wedding dress I contemplated my reaction.

I don't have an answer yet.

Things to Do When the Sky Falls

I dreamt of water last night. Soft drizzle, summer rainbows.

A fire is burning near my house. Many of my friends have evacuated from their homes as this fire is less than 24 hours old and is already more than 2,000 acres strong.

The irony is not lost on me.

In your dreams, your house represents your life. And even in my sleep, I'm fighting for mine.

In situations like this, where you are not evacuated but are not a fire fighter, are not a nurse or care provider, are not a mother or otherwise responsible for the lives of others, this time can feel the worst. Watching. Waiting. Hoping. Offering help, asking for ways to help, and twiddling your thumbs.

If you are evacuated, you are similarly idle. Perhaps worried and unable to rest, or riding the emotional roller coaster of an unplanned and undesired shift in your life.

If you are safely out of the evacuation zone for any crisis (and feel free to extrapolate this into areas of your life that are perhaps more relevant) I suggest any of the following:

1. Check in with the news media periodically, but not constantly. It can drain your energy to hear only the most sensational news. Set a time when you will check in, and take time away. Perhaps trade duties with friends if you are near the evacuation zone. You listen from 1-2, I'll listen from 2-3 etc.

2. Find and support your people. If you are part of a community, a book club, a social circle, an alumni support network, check in with those folks first and see if they need your help.

3. Hone your skill and look for ways to use it. Do you have a way to offer your service? This might be easy if you own an animal shelter or restaurant, but look for other ways to support. Perhaps you can offer your service to those providing direct service?

4. Fill your birdbath with water. Refill your bird seed. Be kind to displaced and frustrated animals.

5. Call your mother (or other friend/relative who is probably worrying about you or just misses you and will keep your mind occupied). This counts as doing something.

6. Imagine what you might take with you if faced to leave. Notice everything that remains. These are the things that others left behind. Offer what you can if you are living in a state of overwhelm and find you have too many water glasses or sandals.

7. Take some time to cultivate quiet energy. Maybe this means meditation, prayer, or simply thinking good thoughts or listening to inspiring and calming music. I believe that we can affect the energy around us, because I believe in physics.

8. Prepare your home as though you are having guests (because maybe you will). Make ice. Make up the spare bed. Plan some meals. Maybe you'll get a guest and maybe you'll just be able to take meals to those who are helping others.

9. Do not detach from the crisis around you, turn to alcohol or cable television. Be aware and cultivate the calm you can by practicing yoga, running, crafting, or otherwise being mindful.

10. Dream of rain.

The tree

I don't actually remember my grandfather, I just know that we spent time together. I've heard descriptions of our interactions, which are the closest things I have to memories of him. Case in point: the tree. Apparently, my grandfather could grow anything. Even in Colorado, even under the haphazard care and erratic watering that is the Kwinn Homestead. When I was three years old, he brought a mountain ash tree from Tennessee and we planted it in the front yard. He and my parents let me choose where to plant the tree, which ended up being too close to the blue spruce that was planted by the original owner and/or landscape architect.

This was my tree.

I always thought of it as my tree. When I was five, I thought it would grow quickly enough that I would soon climb it like kids in the movies would climb trees. As it turns out, trees don't grow that well in Colorado and it never really took off in that way. Also, it was crowded by the blue spruce. They snuggled well on cold nights and meant that there was almost no grass that needed trimming in the front yard.

My grandfather died four years after we planted that tree, so it isn't a big surprise that it didn't grow straight and tall. It divided into four mini-trunks too close to the ground.

When I turned sixteen I parked my car underneath that tree. Sometimes it would protect it from snow, but more often it would drop orange berries and tiny leaves in the fall. It was ok, though, because it was my tree.

It got nuts after college and started to really take over the driveway, so much that it was a little difficult trying to squeeze in underneath it when parking. It would get caught in my hair when I would roll in late at night and couldn't avoid all of the branches.

Then this past fall a big storm came through town and split my tree in half. A neighbor came over with a chain saw to cut it away from the driveway so my parents could drive out. They hired a landscaper to evaluate the remaining parts of the tree, and he said what we knew all along: it was planted too close to the blue spruce.

And it wasn't going to make it.

I think I cried more when I heard about my tree than I did about my grandfather, but to be fair I was only seven when he died and had no experience grieving. Now at 31, I have lots more experience with loss (and am an excellent crier).

But as sad as I am, no one mourns that little tree more than the blue spruce. It grew around the ash and now has it's own scar: a hole where the ash used to be.

I think we have a lot in common.

So now there's a big chunk of my tree sitting behind my couch. I begged my parents to save some of it for me so I could make something out of it, like a photo frame or coasters or whatever else people make out of pieces of ash. Something new.

I don't remember my grandfather, but I remember my tree. It was something we grew together; a description of one interaction. Our story.

Strong as a Bear, Wise as a Fox

The first time I packed my bags for New York, I felt very powerful. I carefully included only what I thought I would need for the trip, and saved a little room for a souvenir or gift for my husband.

When I loaded my bag into the car, I felt powerful. I had perfectly scheduled each activity in the following 48 hours to include more fun and relaxation that I'd actively planned in a long time. Shopping with my parents. Dinner with friends. Coffee dates. Connection.

When my doctor's office called me ten minutes from my destination, I panicked. I rearranged. I began to breathe one breath at a time.

I changed my plans and drove back home. I cried. I worried.

The next morning I decided to live as though the worst reality were already realized and did only what I could: go for a walk, eat blueberries, and cry.

The morning was beautiful. After months of nothing but a dusting of snow, it had started to drizzle. The plants were eager for the moisture after doing their best with what limited resources they could find. When I walked into the park I saw a skeleton. The bottom half of a deer, fully picked of every scrap of sustenance and left in my path.

I stopped.

I turned around.

I cried as I walked home, taking this moment as a sign. A SIGN. A bad sign.

Listening to my book club book and taking in the world around me, I wondered why I hadn't taken this walk before. Why I had retired three months ago and yet never stepped out to walk alone? My book buzzed by as my mind wandered elsewhere, considering my appointment. The direness of the diagnosis. The urgency. And I remembered the bears.

The bears came in 2008. A mama and two babies wandered onto my deck after the neighbors assured us that no bears had been spotted in years in our neck of the woods. At the time I took this signal as the impetus to Get Off My Ass and follow my dreams. I was also in the midst of a health-scare then. In my solitude, the vulnerable place between the doctor's appointment and the doctor's phone call, alone in the island of inland Ohio, I found my way to the Columbus Zoo. I needed to see the bears.

It happened to be a high holy day in the Jewish faith, so the schools were closed and the zoo was well-populated with local muslims who had the day off of school. It was surreal. They cast their eyes down as I cried silently, searching for the bears.

I found sun bears there, and next to them a coin press into which I could deposit my coin and create a little emblem of the sun bear. I did. I kept it with me, rolling it between my fingers and worrying its impression into the folds of my skin.

This realization came to be half-way home from my walk. Rather than seeing the skeleton as a bad omen, I decided to see it as a symbol of my bear friends doing what they needed to do to survive in these dry times.

I found my sun-bear totem. And the gorilla totem I'd made the last year in a visit to the zoo with my husband. And the coin-shaped carving of a bear I had bought in Seattle just this December. On the one side, a native carving of a bear. The other, the world "strength."

I held these tokens in my hand as the doctor cut and sampled and cut and sampled. I pressed their images into my palm. I held my husband's hand, and I breathed.

Repacking for New York, I didn't feel powerful. I felt the intense sourness of packing to leave. Of leaving behind.

Jesus drove me to the airport. I'm not kidding. I'm not partial to any particular faith despite being a confirmed Catholic, but the significance of my shuttle driver's name was not lost on me. I took it as a good omen.

On the plane I read an article about aging and how fantastic it is. The entire magazine, which I had originally packed in the first-packing, is all about aging well and gracefully. For the most part, I'm having difficulty relating right now. I've never considered life without a calendar or watch, but right now the sense of planning anything in the future, including aging gracefully, is not inside the scope of my clouded mind.

But one little poem, one little love-note made me reconsider my concept of future. In the infinite wisdom that Michael J. Fox shared to his younger self was a lesson that I needed to hear. "When the unexpected and inconceivable intrudes on life, and it will, deal with life's actual events-don't obsess about perceived eventualities."

And I opened my laptop. And I felt powerful.

"The pain which has not yet come can be avoided." ~ Sutras of Patanjali 2.16

Remember-ies or More Footprints, Please

In the Western Way of thinking, we strive to make our mark. Whether we drunkenly etch the plaster of a gas station restroom, buy a $250 brick at the zoo, or chisel a relocated hunk of super-hard stone, we want a permanent record of our time. We want the world to know:

I. Was. Here.

Which is a thought that depends on the concept of "I."

And who are you, really? What do you suppose we think when we read "Stinky was here" or "Josephine and Bruno love hippos" or "Custer last stood here"? We wonder why you took the time to memorialize that moment. Was that the best BM you ever had, Stinky? Were you so busy loving hippos that you wanted us to know how you spent your Sundays? Or a really bass-ackwards memory of what happened in battle, memorialized from the loser's point of view (and obviously not by him?). Do you suppose we get a well-rounded sense of who you are/were?

We don't really do this with important memories, otherwise sites of important rituals would be graffitied like an elementary school desk. I can't imagine going back to the chapel where I was married and carving 'I was married here,' nor to a grocery store where I witnessed a crime as a child 'I saw my first gun here.' Is it about reminding us of who we are and how we are supposed to feel? Tricking ourselves into a sense of permanence?

Now through various forms of social media, we let everyone know where we are all the time. Did you forget about me? I'm at Denny's now! Now I'm getting an oil change! Now I'm going to yoga! Think of me as: a yogi who cares for her car and also appreciates Slams of all sorts.

Is that how we want to live our lives? Spending so much time telling everyone all of our insignificant blather that we can't make time to actually DO anything? Maybe that is how detectives want us to live our lives, and if you have the sense that your life is evolving into an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, please check in. At the fire station.

I want to know the stories behind who you are. The photos. I want to see that you climbed something fabulous, or spent a weekend learning how to lay carpeting, or reconnected with family you haven't seen in awhile. I want to see that you stood up for something you believed in, not that you "shared this if you think cancer stinks, too!" Perhaps it is the anthropologist in me, but I'd rather see a photo you left near the edge of a cliff to commemorate someone special. I'd rather find wisps of prayer flags and wonder who put them up and whether their grief is as tattered as the remaining flags. I'd like to see what you did, hear what you believed, and feel how you felt. Knowing you were here makes me feel a bit more confident as I wander willy-nilly through the strangeness of life.

Nothing gives me more confidence in living this life than the Laetoli footprints, left in sand or muck some odd million years ago by two beings, walking on two legs, hand in hand.

Maybe they loved hippos, or Slams, or futuristic battle stories. We'll never know. But their footprints tell us even more.

That they would rather walk together than wander alone.

And, that they were here. Sutras, 1.40.

Reflections

My own impermanence is weighing heavily on me tonight. My role. My life. My impact.

For someone who has always struggled to share and shed emotion, I'm making up for lost time. The rain feels very appropriate tonight. Dry for months, now drowned.

For a long time I felt my responsibility as a teacher was to force or impart The Right Way. Then I questioned whether I knew enough and took a little time off. In this incarnation people keep sharing how I've helped them recognize a part of themselves. I've helped them see deeper or bring light to a subject that was previously murky or overshadowed. Perhaps I am a light?

In college I took a brief foray into the theatre, where I learned a thing about light: when light mixes, it creates different hues than you expect. Forget everything you ever knew about a color wheel and learn a whole new way of thinking. Red and blue no longer make purple. They create a mood (or when improperly aimed, a mess).

Am I creating a mess out of my other students? The 97% who never come to me with thanks? Are they wondering why the world now seems sinister or even more jumbled than before? I don't think so.

When I started teaching yoga, I added my own spin to the end of my class. I say Namaste (and students repeat if they are so inclined). It is an acknowledgement of our shared existence. An "I see you." When I started teaching, I added "The light in me sees, honors, and reflects the light in you." Which is silly, because light doesn't reflect light, it just clashes and creates weird pools and shadows.

But the reflection part makes sense. In this difficult night full of worry and fear, drowned in emotion, I've realized that I do not shine my light on anything. I reflect. I am an empty room full of mirrors.

What do you see?

Tall Tales and Personal Fables

There is a story I sometimes tell myself. It goes like this:

"I was born into a loving family at a time in the world when I could have been anything. I was supposed to be a doctor. For many years I followed the 'right' path and got all the way through the first semester of organic chemistry, when I synthesized green caffeine, decided that I was an abject failure, and gave up on my dreams. Now I teach yoga and am the embarrassment of my family."

Sometimes I tell the story this way:

"I come from a family of healers. I am very fortunate to live and breathe today. Most days I'm lucky enough to make someone laugh. Sometimes I also make them cry. Mostly I help them realize something they had forgotten about themselves. More often they help me remember something I've forgotten about myself."

I think that I might be a good yoga teacher because I've spent a lot of time being really mad at myself. And unnamed political parties and their leaders, various extremists who have strong opinions about my lady-parts, and unknown spam artists who have vulgar suggestions about parts I don't even have. I'm intimately familiar with exactly how imperfect I am. Many voices have shared their explicit commentary about the way that I drive, flirt, sleep, spell 'theatre,' and am crippled by most hours of the morning.

It took me many years to realize that most of these voices were inside my head. My Greek Chorus morosely narrates the most mundane of my daily activities. For a long time I tried to shut them out. I would point the other way "Oh look, cream puffs!" and sneak into my yoga class all put-together and self-righteous. All the shiny stuff without the bitter old baggage.

And those classes sucked.

When bad things happened in my day and I couldn't out-smart the Chorus, I taught a much better class.

After teaching many, many squeaky-clean and polished classes, I realized that students don't come to see the Disney version of me (in fact, they don't come to see me at all). But that they are not served by smiley ceramic mask. They are there because they have their own baggage, strewn haphazardly about their mats, dripping down their chins and ankles. I think they feel safer knowing my demons dance around me in every class.

Sometimes when we dance in the presence of our demons, one slips out the back door.

The melody of the old story fades away and we can hear the faintest notion of a new song. Closer to the truth. Close enough that the lead can say it out loud instead of waiting for the chorus to explain.

Perhaps because their mouths are full of cream puffs.

The power of pure consciousness settles in its own pure nature. ~ The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 4.34