Overnight, we went from a long, wet winter to full-on Spring. It's like a liberation, like we've been sprung from the darkness, like finally, finally, we get to go play outside. Like we'd never felt it before, Joe and I walked around the garden yesterday afternoon, stunned, reveling in the warmth of the sun on our skin. Delicious!
Everything's unfurling, singing, budding. Late last night, returning home after some errands, we slowed to watch two coyotes trotting down the sidewalk and across the street. The cats were out in force, too. Everybody outside, getting their Spring on, day and night.
Welcome, baby Arugula and friends. Soak up the nutrients and push out into the light. I'm right behind you!
For months I've been having trouble answering the question of why I dropped out of yoga teacher training. I did one weekend of the training in October, and then by December -- before the second weekend -- I knew it wasn't right and had to bail. Each time I've answered the question of why, I've been stunned by how many things I wanted to say in response, in a jumble, in a rush, and yet nothing really quite captured the Why of it. I've been observing that and marveling at it a bit. How funny that something that I knew 100% clearly to be the right course of action should have such murky motivation.
Why DID I drop out?
Or maybe the question should be why I signed up in the first place.
It seemed like the next natural, logical step, particularly in a year when I was pursuing so much yoga in so many places. And because I LOVE yoga, everything about it. It makes me happy and I love sharing what makes me happy. It's what I want to be engaged in all of the time, playing on the mat or off. It seems like the Big Truth of life -- I just want to stay inside it all the time. And probably there was a little ego involved, since last year my sister completed teacher training. I had dreams of our shared studio or shared retreat somewhere - what a great thing to be able to do together!
But it didn't work for me. Teaching yoga is super-hard and I love a challenge, but I just found myself dreading the second weekend, exhausted by the number of plates I had in the air. Dreading it. Which is really not the emotion you want to have, which is not an emotion I have ever had when it comes to yoga. Which is an emotion that all of 2010's efforts and resolutions were designed to eliminate from my life.
The teacher was stellar, the group varied and inspiring. And yet, there it was: dread.
I felt a little let-down by my own self, yoga school drop-out. Dunce-capped. Lame. What was my deal, anyway?
In classic break-up lingo, it's not you, teacher training. It's me.
I dropped out because teaching yoga in this model, I now finally realize, is not me. I love yoga -- I love to practice and talk about it and, mostly, I love to write about it. And I spend a lot of time writing about it, some weeks maybe even more time than I spend on the mat.
Because writing is what I do. Writing is who I am.
So I'm good now. If asked again, I know the answer -- short, sweet and to the point.
Our story has been a lot about breathing lately, for whatever reason. I'm rejecting all attempts to make sense of it all, all quasi-mathematical postulations that begin, "Maybe the universe is trying to tell you..." -- as if somehow Event 1 + Event 2 + Event 3 = some lesson something/someone is trying to impart. Nope. Not buying that line right now, even though maybe there could be some form of comfort in it.
All I can say is that it's super-weird that two times in as many weeks, there's been something Really Big in our direct experience to do with pneumonia, lungs, danger and death.
It's making me think about breathing a lot.
Weird that virtually all of what we heard from the vets about Jasper's condition at the end is what we heard from Joe's doctors on Sunday. The same rounds of tests and xrays and ultrasound and CT and bronchoscopy and oxygen masks and danger and everywhere death, its looming possibility in the room, in the rooms next door.
I realized yesterday, sitting in Joe's quiet hospital room, wanting visitors and dreading them at the same time, that I am still grieving my dog so much, that I wasn't ready for something else to happen already, that I'm feeling a bit battered by the sight (again) of my husband's body broken by bicycle. It's so easy in some ways to be always the patient, never the care-giver, never to walk into the room into the horror of what has now been done unto the beloved, what harm this time, how many months reversal of fortune.
I'm not complaining, I'm just saying.
And breathing.
And realizing that for the first time in 14 years, the entire time we've been in this house, last night was the first time I ever slept alone here-- no dog, no husband, no kid. That's just super-weird.
And really, really quiet. I'm breathing, savoring each deep intake of breath fully, filling my lungs with it and then letting it go.
Caveat, in the interest of not wasting time: from this moment forward, many of my sentences will begin with the words, “Douglas said” or “Douglas says.” If you’re not in the mood for that, it might be a good idea to change channels for a while. Truth is that this weekend I re-confirmed (in my heart, the only place that matters) that Douglas Brooks is my teacher, a formidable wise and funny creature at whose feet I would gladly sit forever just for the chance to learn some tiny fraction of what he knows. Being in his presence makes me jump-around all-out Snoopy-dance with joy.
For me, that’s huge.
OK, it’s also true that I am prone to jump-around Snoopy-dance a lot. Life is delightful and I’m rolling in an abundance of gifts, too long a list to enumerate here.
But seriously, huge for me. I didn’t know I was looking, but I found.
That's right: I'm talking to YOU.
So, in class this weekend, Douglas said a lot of things that made my heart zing, not least of which was that the Honey Badger is the mascot of Rajanaka Yoga. Mascot! A mustelid, a relative of my favorite creatures -- Badger and Wolverine. Sold!
And why is Honey Badger the mascot? Because the Honey Badger exemplifies the second characteristic required for success, as illustrated by Arjuna in the Mahabharata: temerity. Honey Badgers, like wolverines, are indomitably themselves. They do what they are. As Randall puts it in the video we’ve probably all seen by now (linked below if you haven’t): Honey Badger don’t give a shit. Honey Badger does what it wants.
This is exactly what I was trying to get at in my new year's post on Bay Shakti, in which I wrote about wolverine, "There isn't, can't be, an animal that is more totally an emblem for wildness, for independence, for doing what you want with boldness. I am holding on with all my claws.”
DB at the console
This weekend was devoted to the subject of how to live a Tantric yogic life in the world, receiving all of what life brings, wearing each of your guises (wife, mother, employee, friend, yogi, rocker, farmer, reader, animal-eater) authentically and fully. We, like the universe itself, are imperfect, are unfinished, always in a state of evolution, change, movement. In our imperfection, we are perfect, really, containing in that imperfection the potential for greater insight, growth. We have wiggle room. Nothing is set. It’s not all karma, determined, for a reason. There is also this element of lila, of play, of random mutation, of things that happen for no reason, just like that.
Yesterday was a perfect day, really. I slept for 9 hours, which is unusual for insomniac me, and which was such a relief following weeks of poor sleep as we prepared to and then ultimately lost our sweet Jasper. I woke up on my own, no alarm, at 6:45, plenty of time to make coffee, sit a bit, get ready to go practice with the kula and Douglas. The sky was clear, and so was my mind. No headache. All systems go.
Asana with Abby Tucker was great, as usual. She made me laugh, she was thoughtful and insightful and skillful. She was Abby. The room was packed. I was happy.
We moved next door for class with Douglas, and I was delighted to be in the front row, naturally my favorite spot, next to the lovely Alexandra and with so many delightful members of the larger Bay Area Anusara kula. I had all the stuff I needed: my notebook, writing instruments, coffee, blankets and blocks to stay comfortable, my phone resting upside down, on vibrate, in case I wanted to record or take pictures. Happy.
It was a perfect day and I knew it.
Throughout class, the phone vibrated 5 or 6 times, a bit unusual for a Sunday morning, but Joe wasn’t racing, so I was less antsy about the phone ringing. Still I was aware of it, even as I was delighting in the teachings. I was completely in the room where I was, mind in the same place as body, swept up in the stories and gems of truth. Super-happy.
When I flipped the phone over and saw 5 missed calls, I knew something was up. By the time I was in the hall, the phone rang again, one of Joe’s teammates calling me to ask me if I’d seen Facebook. The irony, of course, being that I, always so wired, unplug for three hours and that’s when people are desperately trying to reach me, so desperate that when their calls to my phone go unanswered, they resort to posting on my Wall. Funny, that is.
Lila happens.
So yeah, the details are that Joe was riding downhill toward Muir Beach. He had completed about 40 miles by this time in a couple of hours. The roads were dry, remarkable given how much it’s been raining. Two of his teammates had sprinted up the hill, so crested before him and were about 100 meters ahead. He came over the top and began his descent. A car turned left directly into his path. He hit the brakes but there was not enough space to stop or avoid the car. Joe hit the car toward the back, taking the force of the impact with his right side, breaking three ribs, his clavicle and scapula in the process, damaging his right lung. He was taken by ambulance to the emergency department at Kaiser which is where I found him, a few hours later, following my perfect morning, perfect classes, good company.
I walked out of Tantra class and into the emergency room. Again. What was it that Douglas said about the universe being recursive – Lather, Rinse, Repeat? Yep, been here before. Done this before.
And you know what? It was still perfect. In all its broken-ness, absolutely fucking perfect. I mean that with all sincerity.
Of course I wish it were different. I wish my Joe weren’t in pain (again), weren’t now facing months off the bike (again), weren’t confronting that dilemma of giving up the bike for good (again), weren’t worried about making ends meet, what will happen with his business, is his bike totaled, how long will he be fucked up (again, again, again, again). But this is what happened, so this is what we’re doing. We've had a really hard month and a couple of fairly challenging years, but still we have love and friends and springtime and bees and love and love and love.
This is a Fennec. And this is not really a post about foxes.
Probably getting more than four hours sleep last night would've been a good idea. But I'm a-buzz, a-crackle even, with the lecture we had last night with Douglas Brooks, the kick-off to a weekend on Living Tantra in the 21st century. Another seven hours of this topic await today, after an hour and a half of practice, so getting up at 4:15 was really the only way (thank you, restless mind!) to do everything I want to do today, to create that bit of sukha (space) in my schedule.
And if I learned anything in natural history classes -- meaning, in hours of field trips on beaches, in woods, zoos, museums -- it's that notes taken are so much more valuable when you go over them again within 24 hours, fill in the connections while still fresh, reinforce with a colored pencil (or two) what the essential lessons were.
So here I find myself at the kitchen table, before 5 on a Saturday morning, notebooks and pencils at the ready. And yes, I said notebookS on purpose, since I pulled out last year's with its notes of other Douglas lectures, for reference.
I am wide awake, not just from the coffee, but from the sheer excitement of listening to Douglas, of knowing that I'm sitting in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment learning exactly the right things from exactly the right person. That's pretty great at any moment, but most especially and particularly right now when we've been so devastated by the loss of Jasper. I'm so grateful and eager for more. And so glad I'm getting it, in just a few hours.
I've rhapsodized before about Douglas as a teacher. I love him, all right -- it's really just that simple. Last night, in speaking about yogic traditions that place their emphasis on extricating ourselves from the bondage of human material existence, Douglas said their theme song was The Animals, "We Got to Get Out of This Place." And ever since, when thinking about the topic of the weekend and about its spirit, I can't stop destroying The Doors by singing. "S/he's a Twenty-First Century (Tantric) Fox." It's idiotic, I know that, but I can't get it out of my head. The only thing that could make it even better for me would be to be able to work that crazy nastyass Honey Badger in there, too. ;>
Nuggets from last night?
- Life is not a problem for which yoga or transcendence or enlightenment is the solution. A paradox, sure, but not a problem. Our birth is a rare chance, exceptional in so many ways. There is no gift beyond the one we've already been given. There's nothing to get that we ain't already got just by virtue of being here.
- This yoga we practice is not about finding a state apart from the state of ordinary existence. It's about the virtuosity of becoming oneself, about how we may live more fully, how we may in fact entirely commit to living the life we've been given.
- And we do that in relationship, in intimacy, which is the middle place, the mudhya, the paradoxical point of complete freedom at a clear boundary.
- We are unfinished and the yoga is a process of delving into this unfinished-ness, not to finish it, but just to delve, and most importantly to connect.
- And adhikara, my favorite word? Adhikara is more than studentship, or what I think of as the avidity (if that's a word) for knowing. Adhikara is about what you can do, what you're able to do that's like what we all can do, like what some of us can do and like what only you can do. Oh, favoritest part of all: adhikara means that what you can do IS who you are.
And that, ladies and germs, is just about as FANTASTIC as it gets -- that you are what you do and what you do IS who you is. This is what I'm jumping around about this morning (quietly, so as not to wake Joe). I knew this before, but I needed reminding, and damn if this doesn't feel like great fucking news!
Nothing to seek, nothing to shake off or escape or reject. Just endless opportunities to connect to others and the world around us, as a way of delving deeper into the gift of our existence on this earth, right here and right now.
This kind of learning truly is a reveling, a tapping into a deep wellspring of joy. I am made so happy by the sitting and listening and scribbling and thinking. And so happy by the people I'm learning this all with and from, in the room and in relationship, twenty-first century tantric foxes all!
One week ago right now, we were racing to UC Davis, desperate to see our Jasper, hoping against hope that we'd be able to cure him, take him home with us, have more time. It was not to be. Now a week later, I am still periodically feeling utterly nauseous with misery and missing him. I managed to get out of bed this morning without crying, but still have moments all day when I am overcome by the loss of him and my eyes leak.
It's so amazing to love someone -- yes, someone, even though he was a canine someone -- just so much.
I resisted going to Herpetology last night. In fact I spent all afternoon scheming a way to withdraw from the class. I lost my Sweet Pony, I said to myself -- what do I care about a bunch of snakes, anyway? All I wanted, I thought, was to go home, sit on the couch, stare out the window, think about Jassie, be sad if I felt sad.
But I went anyway. And that was so the right thing.
All week, glimmering just beyond my grief, has been this tantalizing thought that our lovely gorgeous Jasper was a temporary aggregation of molecules, of Shakti as we'd say in yoga, just as we all are. How lucky we were to share in that particular form that he took, so beautiful and brindle, so full of a boundless love.
I can see it more clearly now, with each passing day, though I am still aching from his absence and probably always will.
So yoga's been giving me that particular Tantric gift, of thinking that Shiva (goodness, consciousness) chose to take shape as Jasper, that the Shakti (energy) that animated him, is not gone. It's just transformed, returned to come again another way. And next year's peaches will be all the sweeter from his transformation, the roses that much more lovely.
Last night, sitting in a lecture I almost didn't attend, a lecture about crocodiles and alligators, oh I was so filled up again with the happiness of animals -- the sheer delight of looking at how they're constructed, what makes them what they are. It did so much to restore me, to draw my head back up, chin back, drink it in.
I will miss him ferociously forever. I would still trade just about anything under the sun to have Jasper back with me, but I see all the more clearly now what a tremendous gift his huge love was and that that big fat love persists, all around.
Every day since Wednesday has started the same way, with waking up and remembering and missing Jasper. I see his empty bed from my place in my own bed, and just feel so sad. I stand at the window in our room and look out at the spot where we buried him and just miss him so much. It's physical pain, this heart-ache. It's the worst pain I have ever felt in my life.
To people who think, "well, he was just a dog, after all. Isn't it time you got over this?", I am sending out a big Fuck Off with as much love as I can muster, out of this hole I'm in right now, grieving for my furry sweetheart who is no more.
I can comfort myself for a little while by taking a philosophical perspective, about which I will write more later, but that comfort is short-lived. I miss his face, the feel of his fur, his love and companionship so much, his sweetness and presence in every part of my life.
It made me cry more today to see that Joe had tipped the left-over kibbies from Jasper's bowl into the compost under the sink. Of course I understand why Joe did it, there was no sense leaving the food in the bowl -- he was probably trying to spare me the pain of seeing it every time I walked past it in the kitchen -- but still the finality of it all is crushing. And yes, naturally there will probably come a time when we put away Jasper's things -- his collar and his various beds and dishes -- but right now I can't erase these traces of his brief passage through our shared existence.
What's crazy is how quickly we lost him. It's a blur, really, the time between the first vet appointment on February 28th, the days between the incorrect diagnosis of pneumonia and the total failure of his poor, poor lungs. I am dreading the day that I open the mailbox and see the new tag that I ordered for him on the day we got that pneumonia diagnosis, the day I thought, "ok, he'll be all right, we'll fix this." It was only four days after that that we saw him for the last time, and now that damn tag is on its way here and he'll never even get to wear it.
But I will.
As is my way, I am keeping busy through this, trying to find ways to process my grief that don't involve keening and wailing, though I have those times too.
Broken Heart Activities:
- Compiling one big folder of all the millions of photos of Jasper we've taken over the past almost-14 years. He was such a cute baby and such a presence through so much change in our own lives - so sweet to see all of that in one place.
- Making a photo book of him that chronicles his life with us so that we can sit together as a family and treasure him.
- Designing the memorial to him in our yard. We've already selected the stone that we will place over his grave (oh, i hate that word), one large enough to stretch out on, sit on, spend time companionably with him. And now I'm thinking about what flowers to plant.
- Saying good morning and good night to him every day, stopping by to say good bye to him before leaving the house, in the same way that I always told him that I loved him whenever leaving to work or errands.
- Sitting on the bench we have pulled up near where he is buried, sometimes with Laurent or Joe, sometimes alone, and just taking in the beauty of that spot and all of the additional beauty Jasper is yielding back to it now, to become a part of the peaches and the roses and everything else.
- Reading fiction. I realized that all I had left were natural history titles and right now I don't have the brain for it. So I took myself to the bookstore in San Anselmo yesterday and snapped up three titles, with "Slammerkin" by the immensely talented Emma Donoghue first on my queue. It's such solace to escape.
- Watching too much "Battlestar Galactica." We started this earlier, when we still had Jassie sleeping on the couch nearby, and now we're hooked, nearing the end of Season 2.
- Writing when possible, going to class, soaking up all the love of friends who have been so supportive and essential through this process.
This really is so painful, so much worse than I ever imagined it would be. There is such a terrible emptiness without him here, such a loss of purpose for me: no sweet, sweet Pony to wake up for, to feed, to walk and water, to baby-talk and sing to at all moments in the day, to pet and love up and glory in every second. I realized yesterday that I have spent so much of my life caring for someone in that way: Laurent starting in 1987, then Jasper in 1997. It's hard to be without a baby, truly. This is not the empty-nest I had in mind.
I know it will get better.
He had a great life with us. We had a great life with him. We are learning to move on, now that his time with us in this form has ended. And meanwhile, I'm trying to keep busy, to delight in all of the beauty that he was and still is, somewhere beyond where I can see.
