Tonight I needed yoga more than I have in a long time.
I got a ton of work done for the apartment today. When I go upstate to the ashram it always gives me a shot of energy to refresh what I am doing in the city. So today I left the house early for Manhattan Ave. to look for a hardware store. I ended up finding 2 within blocks of my house; Greenpoint is such a great community. I ended up going to a lumbar yeard on Clay Street—right on the Riverside. There was a daper older woman at the desk of the quiet warehouse of wood. I didn’t assume she was the woodsmith, and was surprised when she asked for the measurements of my shelves and put on her work gloves to get ready to grab the planks and take them to the table saw. She was really pleasant, a true Brooklynite, maybe inherited the business from her family. She was wearing a button down salmon oxford shirt and pearl earrings. She was annoyed by people calling for exotic woods—that’s not her expertise, if they want Redwood they should move to Caslifornia—amen sister. She was not a soured soul though. She was happy to share her fascination with a local puppeter who comes to her for weathered antique wood and mahogony—he carves marionettes the old way. She told me his finished characters are hanging in a nearby restaurant that is only open when the chef feels like cooking. I walked back home with my two planks and my brackets, excited to further compose my microcosm of a bedroom.

I went on to start brown rice in the rice cooker, go back out for paint supplies and groceries, cook a burrito for lunch and paint half the bathroom.

After all this activity I was in a weird space, worn out, out of my body. I had fun doing all this material stuff but I definetley lost my connection to spirit. I made it out the door just in time for 6:30 class and was so revived by the teachers offering. I remember now how powerful it is to be in someone else’s hands and to let them bring you back to the point. The class started simply with breathing and sitting. I needed that. That was all I really needed, someone to hold the space, to remind me and allow me to open back up, because all day I had been gradually collapsing into broken records of thoughts and schemes (and probably high off paint fumes!). So the child's pose melted me, and downward dog was a revelation! I remembered my body and I was so ready to move. I love being in the body! And like the Sufis say, union is beautiful but the longing for union is also beautiful. When you are not in it it makes it all the more gorgeous when you get back your yoga bhav. Om shanti

Tolstoy

Two weeks ago I had a fever and had stayed in bed for most of the weekend. On Sunday afternoon, I motivated my achy body to take a walk. It was such a lovely day—65 degrees in November-- and it had taken me the whole day to get rested enough and ansy enough to journey outside. I piled on a few sweaters, scarf and wool beanie and took baby steps down Franklin Ave. towards the neighborhood bookstore. I had been wanting to support them and now was the time, as I was in need of a reminder that a life outside my small, sweaty bed existed.
Word, the bookstore on Franklin Ave., is small but has a great selection. I was so happy to be there, I looked at almost every bookshelve—partly because I am an indecisive Libra and I like to make a fair, balanced decision. But also partly because I was enjoying browsing so much. So after about an hour and a half, as I got hotter and hotter in my layers, I decided to go with a book of short stories by Leo Tolstoy. I never read him in college, and friends of mine raved about his classics, but I feel like I missed the boat and that I wouldn’t enjoy War and Peace or Anna Karenina as much not in a class setting. I still don’t have a huge desire to read these myself, they seem so overbearing, but I am falling in love with Tolstoy for another reason...

At the checkout counter there was a display of newly designed covered for a series by Penguin Book’s called “Great Ideas”. One was “A Confession” by Tolstoy. I am always attracted to small books—you can carry them in your coat pocket and easily take them in and out on the subway. The quote on the cover “Where there is Life there is Faith”...

“A Confession” is so potent. Tolstoy reports his soul seeking plain and simple. It is such a revolutionary work because he is so candid and ruthlessly direct about his experience. His rational mind took him to the brinks of suicide, feeling helpless and meaningfulness in life. What he experiences is that you reach the edges of what you can know and still there is a light that sustains us. I highly recommend this book to everyone! It is so good.
This is from his eureka moment at the peak of his questioning: “Live in search of God and there will be no life without God!”

Reading “A Confession” verifies that we all have to understand life on our own terms. It is so beautiful to have such an account of how someone else did it, and that even the people who we hold to be super human went through dark dark searched to come to their understanding. He gives you permission to be pissed off and lost and you can see how important it is to make the confession, to be honest and really approach your path genuinely. As he writes “To know God and to live are one and the same thing. God is Life”