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Quandary, clarity

Saturday morning another intense vinyasa workout (see January 14, 2010, Morning/yoga/dance) overjoyed me. Michelle guided us in constant movement from a high lunge at the top of our mats to one at the back, over and over. Then, as on Wednesday, we sank into Goddess Squat, this time with our arms striking straight up and then forward, parallel to the ground. In each of the many repetitions we opened our fists in the outward gesture and closed them as we pulled our hands, fingers up, into the torso. Vocalization increased the exertion and the pleasure: Ha! with every inward action of the arms.

The last week of 2009 into the second week of 2010 found me in an uncharacteristically indecisive place about an aspect of my life. Quandary then clarity then quandary then clarity . . . By the Wednesday evening after the first super-activating vinyasa class clarity was mine!

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Must have been a monk!

During the retreat that I attended last autumn, all one needed to do was to meditate. (See “Gently radical changing 1,” October 18, 2009, and “Gently radical changing 2,” October 19, 2009.) You could keep a non-ticking watch or clock that you brought, but phones and other hand-held devices, along with reading and writing materials had to be turned in–they were kept safe–until the end of the course. Vegetarian food was cooked for meditators and served, buffet style, with much to choose from at breakfast and lunch. Dinner was tea and fruit. You were indeed unto yourself, with your appetites, projections, pains, and pleasures.

I’m such a monk!–and I do identify with monks not nuns–because I loved the gong that signaled meals and wake-up hour, which was 4 a.m., and called us to meditation in the center’s hall. (Lights out at 9:30!)

If in medieval Europe or further centuries and civilizations from my birth and nearer decades prior to it or in cites invisible and inaudible to the human senses energies coalesced that have brought this Joanna into being, more than once those energies materialized as a monk, one who lived in near-silent orders or conditions. At the retreat I loved the silence. Shared silence.

Silence has been one of my natural habitats since childhood, so it came easily. So did the silencing of communication through facial expressions or bodily gestures. Silence guides a person into herself and sustains her solitude among a community of other silent meditators.

Morning/yoga/dance

I usually go to a vinyasa class on Wednesday mornings. Vinyasa is a yoga practice in which asanas, poses, flow together and often feel and look dance-like. Vinyasa combines movement and breathing, both rhythmic, and can be moderately to extremely energetic as it helps a person to develop flexibility, strength, stamina, and cardiovascular fitness. Sweat, elegance, and meditation, the latter possible even during chaturanga, which is a push-up, draw me to vinyasa classes.

Yesterday was especially vigorous and included an asana called, in English, Goddess Squat.

In the pictures below, my stance is Goddess Squat. If I were strictly in the pose, my arms would be symmetrically raised with upper arms parallel to the floor, forearms and hands facing forward, and palms open with fingers spread.

GoddessSquat_head back

GoddessSquat_head to side

In Goddess Squat we shifted to the right and to the left, holding the squat while further increasing its intensity with dynamic arm gestures. We were dancing to a primally exciting audio of drumming and activating a lot of heat.

Our instructor, Michelle, in whose spirited honesty and vulnerability I learn to further love those qualities within myself, laughed as she promised, “We’ll be here a while!”  I felt taxed, and then came a loosening of the mind, a transcendence of Oh, I’m not strong enough physically to continue, to enjoy this. I became stronger, and so did my pleasure. Felt great then and feels great now!

Battleground of beauty

A friend emailed me a photo of her a couple days post-cosmetic surgery and laser resurfacing. Her closed eyes, sores, bruises, bandages, and covered-up hair create, for me, an unidentifiable person. In the text her tone is characteristically spirited and full of humor, as she tells me that the photo was taken before she could open her eyes and that she doesn’t look much different 3 days later. She notes happily that her partner, who presumably took the picture and maybe wrote the email, kissed her. Yay, him! Whose spirit and humor complement hers.

My friend in the photo is the only close friend of mine to undergo selective cosmetic surgery, and we talked a lot about her doing it throughout the process, from her wanting the procedures to her questioning her rationale to her first consultation with the surgeon to her pre- and post-operative medications to her feelings in the late afternoon before the morning when she would enter the hospital. My friend and I were born the same year. She is deeply intelligent and thoughtful, independent, and self-accepting, and as she became clear about proceeding with the surgery, I encouraged her to go ahead with it.

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Boys, men–that sex

My friend Becky calls them boys. I call them men, and sometimes, in fun, that sex. The male species. A phrase I used to use and which, I admit, is more than a little sarcastic. I don’t use it anymore. As Becky said and I agree, we love those guys!

Becky is almost 25 years younger than I am, but I don’t think that’s the reason she calls that sex boys. I think that Becky simply enjoys the term “boys,” as I enjoy the term “girls” for women friends of mine, no matter what their age.

Joanna and Becky:2

At any rate, Becky and I were just talking on the phone about men. We were feeling at once delighted and flummoxed, unable to decipher behaviors and uninterested in speculating. Patience, patience, we encouraged each other.

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Mary Daly died

Mary Daly, the extraordinarily creative feminist theologian, philosopher, and theorist, died yesterday. She expanded the minds of feminist academics, whether they acknowledged her or not in their work or their hearts, whether they agreed with her ideas or not. She was controversial to the nth degree.

After Daly’s most famous book, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, came out in 1978, I remember talking with my friend the art critic Arlene Raven about how the book changed our lives and how our writing would never be the same.

Daly’s work is fearless. That adjective can be applied to the publications of VERY few scholars. Other applicable adjectives: stunning, poetic, passionate, exploratory. And out of this world . . . of tame, tamed, and taming “right” ways to be a scholar.

In a short post at http://catholicanarchy.org/, its author Mary Hunt reminds the reader that Daly “always advised women to throw our lives as far as they would go.” Mary Daly, thank you for helping me to travel much farther than the conventions of professions, sex, and gender tend to take a woman.

Girlfriends

She helps me with everything. From art to every other expansion of the heart.

She is my prophet of integrity.

She is practical and mystical, a family woman, an honest soul.

She and I meet once a week for talk and treats, like linzertorte and carrot cake. Living is our subject. I love how we live in one another’s presence.

She reads me well and with elation, the way a person who cares about a poem pays attention to it.

She sings the songs she writes, she plays guitar, she thinks of serving others because she is aware of generosity. She follows through.

She instructs me in the asanas that inform my every movement.

She puts me in the place that anyone would call love.

She is as auspicious as the black jaguar that attached itself to my leg in a dream last week.

She is my oracle, giving word of my own state of being.