Day 55 Monkey-Mind Chatter
Most of the usual crowd had other things to do on a sunny Saturday, so there was only eight of us in the hot room this afternoon. I’d worked in the yard, gone grocery shopping, took my daughter out, and ended up being very nearly late for class. Which wouldn’t be good, because then I’d have to make it up somewhere in a double, and I’m NOT going to do that again.
But despite my rushed start, I found myself having another strong day. That’s, like, several days this week. Whoo-hoo! And although I haven’t been doing it deliberately, it seems that as my physical abilities improve, my practice is becoming more… meditative, maybe.
Although I still want to execute a perfect Standing-Head-to-Knee one day, I wonder if quieting the monkey-mind chatter, moving inward and focusing on the breath isn’t an even more important exercise.
And at least as difficult.
Day 54 Listening to the Mountain
It’s warm and sunny today, which means I get to spend a few hours digging in the dirt, before I do my yoga for the day! Give me a wheelbarrow and a couple yards of bark mulch and I’m happy. Give me a vacuum cleaner and a floor mop and I’ll tell you exactly what you can do with them.
Our backyard is a rocky slope, made up of fill that has, over the past nine years, naturalized with mostly native grasses, thistle and blackberry.
Pastoral from a distance, but close up, it’s an eyesore. So I’ve been working on turning it into something beautiful, but still natural and low-maintenance.
My plan is to cover the wild and weedy area on the northside of our house with landscape fabric and bark mulch, continuing what I started around the west side. I call it my 20-year project. But hopefully this season I will make it across to the east side, nearest our neighbour, who has been patiently and kindly ignoring the overgrown mess adjacent to their manicured outdoor entertainment area.
Mine is no namby-pamby white-cotton glove affair. It’s a put-your-back-into-it job that usually leaves me with pleasantly aching muscles, cuts and scrapes from brambles, sweat and today at least, mud.
When I began this project, I should say, way back when we first looked at this lot, my mind began whirling with the possibilities and potential. We could have Butchart Gardens, right in our own backyard, I thought!
Then I realized I was being ridiculous.
Minter Gardens. Maybe.
“I’m strong and creative,” I told my husband. “I’ll make this into a showcase.”
“As long as you can do it all yourself,” he answered, “because we’re house-broke.”
So, that’s how it started. I’m strong, creative and Mennonite, babe. You won’t believe what I can do with nothing. Tillers of the earth, ya’ know.
“What’s your plan?” hubby asked, dubiously, when the biggest change was an enormous, and unsightly, pile of dirt.
“I’m not sure,” I answered. “A path through here, I think. Unless I hit a rock. Or a big stump.”
“Then what?” he persisted, the line between his eyebrows deepening. “Terraces? Steps? Retaining walls? How are you going to keep the weeds out? Won’t the deer eat everything you plant? How long will it take? This is going to cost $70,000, isn’t it?”
Unless he costs out a project himself, he believes all endeavours will run either $700, $7000 or $70,000. It’s just where his brain goes. Either that or “and we’ll all die.”
“I have to buy bark mulch and fabric,” I admitted. “But it won’t cost much.”
“Maybe you can draw out a schematic for me,” he said. “With estimated completion dates. So I know what to expect.”
I took a deep, cleansing breath, straightened my shoulders and looked at my mountain. It’s not going anywhere. If I put the right plants in the right spots, work with what I have, I can bring out the natural beauty of this slope. If something doesn’t work the first time around, I’ll try something else, until it feels right. Maybe not Minter or Butchart. But right.
I looked him in the eye. “Honey,” I said. “I’m listening to the mountain. I’ll do what works, and I’ll be done when I’m finished. Don’t worry. It’s going to be beautiful.”
I was remembering this conversation while I was doing my standing postures in class today. Despite a morning of hard, physical, dirty work, my practice was strong and smooth. Even Standing-Head-to-Knee! Not perfect, far from it, but… better.
It seems that, as with my landscaping project, there’s a limit to the control I can exert over my muscles, my body – my 80-year project, hopefully. And I have to focus on the potential, instead of the potential problems, to find the right way. My right way.
The name of my favourite standing meditation pose?
Tadasana. Mountain Pose.
Day 53 A Disturbed Minority
Well, a reader corrected me recently on my use of slang. I referred to the heft on my torso as “meat flaps” when I should have used the term “bat wings.”
Whatever. To-may-to, to-mah-to, right?
Not so much, according to the Urban Dictionary. “Meat flaps”, I’m told, might be confused with “meat curtains” or “beef curtains” or a few other terms, all of which refer to “pendulous external female genitalia.” Urban Dictionary goes on to illustrate the usage as follows: “So, I was doing this slut the other day, and her beef curtains were hanging almost to her knees.”
Am I the only one that finds this sentence incredibly offensive?
Don’t get me wrong, the definition creates a funny visual. Having put myself through college working in a nursing home, I can assure you, there’s some truth to it. And it’s not just women; time and gravity is even harsher on elderly scrotums. And, while I’m on the subject, there’s nothing like bathing a dementia patient happily sporting a full-grown erection. Or, a Parkinson’s patient with unimpaired mental facilities, weeping with humiliation in the same situation.
I got quite the education, while getting my education. There’s humor and pathos in the human condition.
But back to Urban Dictionary. Some of it is hilarious. For instance: “hangry:” so hungry you’re angry, or “Dutch oven:” when your mate traps your head under the covers after releasing a particularly vile stench, or “paper GPS:” any non-electronic format for finding directions.
These are great. Unlike the beef curtain comment.
I think what bugs me is that it illustrates a pervasive attitude toward sex, reducing what can be an act of intimacy to an impersonal exchange that’s less, and worse, than casual. There’s an anonymous brutality that disturbs me, partly because so few people see it.
“It’s a joke,” people say. “Don’t be a prude.” Okay, but the “slut” is someone’s daughter, even if she’s just a placeholder in a joke. And the guy “doing” her is a man who’s learned to treat his “dates” as service providers at best, and interchangeable objects – pieces of “meat” – at worst. And the more we accept things like this, laugh at them, the more we normalize them.
Most people with similar sensitivities to mine just avoid this kind of content, or they laugh at the visual and leave it at that. But, perhaps because of the recent, horrifying trial of the two teenagers in Victoria, sentenced as adults in the sexual torture and murder of Kimberly Proctor, it hit a nerve with me. If this is the sort of culture our young people are immersed in, no wonder we’ve got monsters like Cameron Moffatt and Kruse Wellwood among us.
And yes, I know I tend to over-think things. But I’m not apologizing. Somebody’s got to do it.