Yoga

So, If yoga means union, why has it become a way for people to congratulate themselves on how fabulous they are?  Not everyone, of course, put down the pitchforks and torches, but way too much promo on the topic is focused on results impacting attractiveness.  Why is the heart of the practice in fine print?  Oh, and by the way, you will feel more connected to your life?
Today I did sanding the furniture yoga, cleaning the kitchen yoga, picking burrs out of the cat's fur yoga and having popcorn and a movie yoga.  As soon as I finish posting, I'll be having bicycle yoga, but right now, I'm wondering about why all the things we can do and are doing with our lives do not rise to the level of yoga so that we are forced to go to a yoga class or training.  Seems to me that unity is always available, and it's free.
A little act of attention to where I am,  how I am moving through this molecular cloud I have specialized organs to decipher [a bit…] remembering to breathe, noticing how I get triggered to fly away, and then, coming in for a landing once more.
Why is this not yoga?

Gyno Sapiens on Wheels

In lieu of riding bikes with other people [scheduling and route issues....] I ride alone, happily, slowly, lots of stops to enjoy the non-human wildlife and the occasional snack.  To talk about bike riding, to get information on tools, procedures, etc, I turn to a Facebook Page called The Slow Bicycle Movement.  It is a closed group, I guess they were getting too many ads, and it changes over time from talking about afternoon rides of a meditative nature to people doing long term touring in fabulous places, which they are gracious enough to share stories and pictures of, advise for newcomers, some deeply nerdy conversations for those who are capable and general cheering on and bonhomie.
Every now and then, however, the topic of Babes on Bikes comes up, photos of scantily clad young women, all impossibly pretty, advertising something that doesn't remind me of bike riding, or recreation that I care about.  For every 50 of these posts, there's a photo of a guy on a bike dressed strangely, but no beef cookie shots that I remember.  [ I think I'd remember..... ]
I know I have always been a fully clothed type person, being a Yankee and wanting to not freeze to death or give pints of blood to the flies, but I'm sure I could come up with a few names of guys who would attest that I am not a "prude".  [And some who wouldn't]  I start with this defense, because it seems to be the first place some men want to go with this.  The next place is that they defend it as an aesthetic image.  The third dodge is that they are misunderstood, that they are the nice ones, and that we Gyno-Americans [Or Gyno-Euros] are too sensitive, don't consider cat calls, whistles, pinches or threats a compliment or we are humorless and exaggerating.
In the time of political correctness, it is still ok to mask your intolerance with a bit of snark, superiority and denial.
If we don't start waking up, like, yesterday, as a species, we are done.
As to this particular topic, I am using the rest of my conscious existence to stand up for the obvious.  Women, we need to insist on our right to live safely, to make choices about who gets to stay in our lives, and who has to stay out, to be paid the same wage for the same work, to be entitled to equal protection under the law, and ffs to be able to ride a bicycle without it being an invitation to assault.

The G word.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine was murdered by a stranger for no apparent reason.  She was sitting in her car with a friend whom she was on helping find a place to make a new home in the Southwest.  They were just south of Sedona.
I was too furious to attend her memorial.
She was a happy person, a positive and loving person, and most of her friends were very much glass 1/2 full types, always looking on the bright side, and I knew it would be a celebration I couldn't participate in, bring anything to or derive any comfort from.
That may not have been true, but it felt true.
All I needed to trigger my resistance was hearing of a comment a dear friend and music partner of hers said about her probably being happy to be free of her body and to dance in the light.
I thought of her children and her grandchildren losing a one-of-a-kind grandmother and the community losing a voice and a witness.  I could not square the two ideas, though I really felt, later, remembering her, that wherever she was she didn't harbor regret or rancor.
It is rare to know someone  who is interested in seeing through the hazy smear of the masks people wear, and I miss that about her.
By now I see how little I have noticed of the essence of anything, that life moves too fast to understand more than a surface, a representation or symbol of a narcissistic construct.
I regret this.
I regret that once someone has died, the chance to follow a thread any further is snipped.  I regret how much protection I still seek from feeling.

A friend of my daughter's was found in a pool recently, there's not much being said about it in the news.  First it was being treated as a suspicious death, then the paper announced it was being called a suicide.  I'm not alone in the opinion that it was a suspicious suicide.
Here it is again, though - the idea of a Deity [or not] and why a young woman who has been working hard to straighten out her life, and had made great strides against huge odds is a footnote in the tsunami of global and local bad news.
A friend of mine said " I guarantee you that if it was [insert name of person of income and influence here...] daughter who was found, the cops would be all over it and it would be on the news."
I wish I did not believe this, but I do.
When Carol was murdered, I lost whatever shreds of religion I might have still had hanging around, and I realized how much the white noise of mainstream Christianity had seeped into my belief system, even though I knew it was bullshit. [All Christians freak out here.]
I see that there are some rules that some men concocted to sooth the people they wanted to control, to get their money and their cooperation.  Nice touch to call it the word of God.  Hard to argue with an invisible being, [invisible and non-existent, looking rather a lot alike].  
The Christian Scientists speak of Father-Mother-God, and frame it as a principle of Divine Love, and that is about as close as it gets for me, though I have felt a gag response whenever I have tried to read Mrs. Eddy's work.   Maybe there's some set of dynamics, laws of physics - rules we will never be able to apprehend with our brains which are so clearly designed for things that are simpler, like getting needs met according to Maslow's order of importance.
These days, not too many people seem to get much further than forming communities of friends, and I'm barely up to that myself.
The ideas of intervention, intercession, substitution, or sacrifice make less sense to me than ever.  The questions are the same, the answers are the same, and both are itchy and unsatisfying.  One doesn't have to go very far to see how bad things are for people in huge numbers, everywhere in the world.  But there has to be some real good news, and I don't mean Jesus.
Grief is a wound that changes people. Grief is the Stygian sisters dancing through our lives until the thread is broken.  Whatever is left is a story we tell ourselves.