Mom reserved a room for us through AirBNB - in an apartment owned by a designer in Barcelona. I learned about AirBNB through my neighborhood listserv in Austin and it's a very cool thing. People rent out rooms in their homes, or entire houses, apts, etc. Perfect for us, as we like to meet people and since the more affordable hotels in Barcelona look really unappealing. This place was really cool, and Miguel, our host, was super sweet.
When I got there she was napping - it was pouring rain, as it would continue to do for a couple of days, on and off. The place was one of those big apartments from the Belle Epoque - large enough for a family to spend a lifetime in. Long and narrow - it was one third of the entire floor of the building. It was on the 4th, top floor. To get up there we could walk the spiral, marble stairs, or take the ancient elevator. I love those old elevators that feel like they could break at any minute but will probably be working for another hundred years. You get in and close the metal screen by sliding it shut and then close the mini French doors and push the big button for the floor you want. The elevator starts with a little jolt and sails up to the top. It always makes you feel like you're in an old movie being in those lifts. A great way to get to the front door.
I wrote a little before about the rain in Barcelona so I won't go into that much here. But it was raining so hard it was coming in under the doors of cafes, so we were limited to hanging out, pretty much. We had some great coffee and some great meals in Barcelona. And hung around those adorable little bars that are about as big as a living room and have maybe 6 or 7 tiny tables or booths. Each one was so distinct - a tiny little style universe.
We went to pick up the rental car to head up into France. I think I commented before on our lack of a really good map, which turned out to be a blessing and a curse. We had no problems getting going in the right direction but didn't have much info about what was in between Barcelona and the French border. We stopped for a late lunch in a town called Hostalric. http://www.turismehostalric.cat/en/coneix_hostalric/pagina/34 One of those ancient towns that are so common here but each one blows your mind. Dating from 12th century, the town was built mostly along one road, so we walked up it looking for a place to eat. There were a few places, and we chose the most ancient looking one, the one filled with men only and where the waiter looked like Billy Crystal in the first part of Clean and Sober. When we peered into the place the front dining room was empty and looked, honestly, like it must have looked for eons. Heavy, dark wooden tables that looked like something Friar Tuck would have been seated behind at a dram shoppe in Nottingham. You get the picture. I hope. The kind of service where the waiter doesn't ask you if you'd like a table, but why are you standing there like that - sit down! Well, it's just that we have a question or two - we don't eat meat. No problem! No problem! Sit down and we'll find something for you. Mom looks doubtful - I've been in Spain long enough to know lunch isn't going to be good no matter where we go (Barcelona was far away, already). So we made our way through the deserted front dining room into the back room, which was about half filled with a few tables of guys, aged from about 30 to 65, all enjoying a very long lunch and who were visibly disturbed by our entrance. Deal with it, I say silently.
We order wine, and now a second waiter comes over - even more of a basket case than the first one - makes Billy Crystal over there look sort of fit. A person whose skin is truly a tribute to a lifetime of cigarettes, fried food and a total disregard for vegetables unless they're fried. Looks like he probably has a great sense of humor and appreciates a good joint. Definitely could be from Long Island if he wasn't from Hostalric.
The food part of lunch is yucky and mysterious and we almost can't deal, but we're hungry and they keep checking on us to make sure their fussy lady fishetarians are happy. We go through a plate of fava beans prepared in such a way that they are completely grey and drained of any trace of the flavor of fava beans. I can detect a trace of salt but alas it was added after the poor beans were boiled long enough to cook a goat, so you have to happen upon a grain of the salt by chance. It's a grain of salt in a hay stack situation. We've ordered cod, and when it comes out, well, it would've been great to have been able to run out the back door and go somewhere else, but there we were, with all eyes on us. We were champs, I must say, and made it through enough of it to be able to claim we weren't really hungry anyway. I can't remember if we had dessert but we must've because we hung around long enough that some of the guys were going out onto the balcony to smoke. This left an opening for the men left inside to strike up a conversation with us. Turns out one of them had been living in Ecuador for the last 20+ years and was home visiting his brother who was outside smoking. Absolutely freeking charming man, around 55 or 60. His brother and a younger man (maybe 35) were outside smoking.We got into a lively conversation about the history of Spain. Those are the moments I'm glad I took out all those loans to go back to school - we had a great time and everyone relaxed and started smiling and they bought us a round of the disgustingly sweet apple digestif served so often in Spain. Not only is it gross tasting, but hard to turn down because it doesn't have alcohol, so you can't refuse on the basis that you don't want more alcohol. You either smile and accept it or out and out say No, I don't like that. You can guess which of those options is more conducive to making friends. Blech. We hung out there so long that the younger guy (who had had too much to drink with lunch) started to get a little twinkle in his eye and we had to split. Another amazing old Spanish man adventure. They're everywhere and I love them.
It was getting late so we headed back out on the highway North. We were headed to Narbonne (home of Charles Trenet) to see my lovely old friend from my year at the Universite de Toulouse 20 years ago. Unreal.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
My Country of Old Men
The landscapes in Galicia are smooth and soft, rather than bright and bold, like Andalucia, or elegant, like Catalonia. Streams and rivers in Galicia gurgle quietly, wildflowers are smaller, more delicate, and rarer than where I've been spending most of my time. Even the grand Cathedral in Santiago has a quiet humility inside, as opposed to the gaudy, gold-dipped cathedrals of Sevilla and Malaga, which inspire respect through their power suits. They impose their spiritual authority by making everything else in the world look puny and 'less gold' - but Santiago feels very personal, despite being one of the most visited churches in the world. The hush inside is soothing, and the priests holding mass while tourists roam freely into every corner of the cathedral seem unfazed by the constant movement during mass. Somehow the immense Cathedral feels intimate. What does not feel intimate is talking with people in the center of Santiago - that's where you can really feel the effects of the endless rush of visitors in restaurants, bars, and cafes. Efficiency has overridden hospitality. I've never been served so quickly, efficiently, or impersonally in Spain. So I walked out of the old part of the city into the newer, less picturesque part, where people smile and say good morning on the street. I was sitting on a bench, listening to a fast stream running through the perfect morning in a park carpeted with unbelievably soft grass and tiny white and pink wildflowers speckling the expanse of green.
An old man appears at the far end of my field of vision walking slowly, leaning on a cane, down the path toward where I'm sitting working on my computer. He walks past me, looking down, but I look up. We don't say anything, but I let my gaze follow him for a moment before turning my attention back to my laptop. A few minutes later, after having reached the end of the path and turned around to go back, he passes by me again. This time he slows down before he reaches my bench, I look up again and say good morning, and he says he's going to sit down and rest for a moment. He sits, with some difficulty, but after a careful manoeuvre leveraging his weight against gravity he's sitting comfortably and looking out at the lawn with me. I remark on what a beautiful morning it is and he agrees, saying it's warm for this time of year. I can't resist - I start asking him questions, starting with if he is from Santiago. He's still sharing my view rather than looking at me as he explains that he used to live here but now he and his close family live out by the airport. It's hard for me to pin down just what it is I like so much about how really old men talk - every little thing is treated as an important subject - like his saying he doesn't live downtown anymore. He doesn't just declare it, neutrally. His whole being responds - his expression says "How outlandish! How could that be! Living here! No, no, no!" His body expresses an energy when he talks that adds volumes of detail and information to his words. And everything is important - we talk with conviction about the benefits of living outside the congested city, about how much better it is to live in a house with a garden as opposed to in an apartment. He doesn't like apartments because there's no space and you're living underneath and over people. After 3 months in Spain I have to agree with him - and with as much passion as he displays. Spanish people are incredibly noisy and are the worst adapted people for apartment living I've ever known. Quiet is just not a thing here. The reason he moved out there initially was that his sister had a lung condition and her doctor recommended it for her health. So she and her husband moved out to the country (maybe 10 km away) and he also moved, buying a house. She and her husband bought an apartment, which he qualified as, "un buen piso, aunque no hay buen pisos el suyo era bien." Apartments are all lousy but hers was nice. Now that's a good brother. You can have something he can't stand, but yours is good, because it's yours. Love. He was telling me about his work - he worked in a factory that made car parts - telling me how they used to have 3 shifts and the men would work around the clock for days on end and then get a few days off in a row. The women worked a regular shift and had two days off per week. He told me the women worked in an area separated from the men's section of the factory floor by a glass wall and they would be there, working in a line that stretched from where we were sitting all the way to the street - a line of women that long.
He was proud of his job and proud that he never got fired. He said they used to fire people at the drop of a hat. But he was a good worker and behaved well (his words) and was given the opportunity to work in Holland at another of the company's factories and spent four years there, making his Spanish wage plus an extra wage for being in Holland. He was smart and saved his money. When his sister wrote him that their mother was very sick here in Santiago he got permission to go home for a few days to see her. He was especially proud that his boss offered to loan him the money for the trip if he didn't have it, but he didn't need it because he had saved so well. He was trustworthy and smart, and proud of it. I was proud of him, too. His eyes lit up as he talked about how responsible he'd been in his work and his pride was infectious. He was half turned toward me now, looking out past me, but at one point he turned his face to me and his eyes were so lit up with excitement and memory it transformed his face into that of a man 30 years younger.
It took him 4 trains to get home to see his mother, traveling all day and night. When he got home he described her lying in her bed, head propped up on her pillow, looking pretty. She was always very pretty, my mother, he said. She died an hour and a half after he got there.
He had intended to give his savings to his mother, but now that she had passed he offered it to his sister. She refused it and told him to put it in the bank. There was one bank there in the town where they lived, he said, and he did just that - he put his money away. He was supposed to head right back to work but wanted to stay with his family a few days and was mourning his mother intensely - his doctor wrote him a letter to say he was exhausted and needed four days to rest before going back to work.
Later on when he was back in Spain working again, his sister's husband's sister died, leaving a young daughter. His sister and her husband didn't have any children and they adopted the little girl, loving her as if she were their own daughter. They inherited the sister's apartment, so now they had two apartments, one right over the other, and plenty of space. He also told me his sister was transferred to Madrid by the company once, but she turned it down, telling them they could either leave her with her husband here or fire her. They kept her. She was also a good worker, and had the use of her boss' company car as her own.
At one point the old man realized how long he'd been talking and exclaimed "It must be almost noon! I have to go!" But before he did he told me about his thrombosis, explaining that was why he now "walked like a spider". I said I thought he was walking rather well, considering, but he showed me the difference in mobility between the right and left sides, in his arms and his legs. He was right, of course, and I was moved by his insistence that his current physical state was not one that he accepted as normal. He walks a couple of kilometers per day minimum to keep his circulation good.
As I read through the story he told me in the park, I can't help but see how insufficiently it translates his warmth, presence, animation and sincerity. Hopefully you've known a great old man like him, and maybe he was even in your family. My mother's father died before my parents met, and my other grandfather was someone I could never warm up to, having beaten my father throughout his childhood and essentially killing my grandmother by refusing to stop getting her pregnant. She was told after her 3rd child was born that she would be risking her life going through another pregnancy. She died after delivering her seventh child, from internal hemorrhaging. And that's the Twitter version of the story. Don't ask, for I might tell.
When I get old, please, God, make me an old Spanish man. Every morning here the cafes and bars fill up with old men drinking coffee, fresh orange juice, and eating toasted rolls with tomato puree and olive oil. There is no hurry, as they're retired, and in Europe being old still looks fun, as opposed to old age in the U.S., where it looks terrifying. A big part of the old Spanish man awesomeness comes from their ability to connect with others without hesitation or separation. A big part of that, of course, is their generation, and sadly, this generation is passing away. There have been quite a few lovely old men in my world these days, and I'll be adding to this with more stories about them.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
If negativity means refusing to believe in utter crap, then yeah, I'm negative.
I've been criticized lately for being negative - I just want to say, as a human being I am the luckiest person I know and give thanks so many times a day for this incredible life that I could never count them. I also say I love you more times a day than I can count, often just in my head as I walk around and mingle in the world. I help people every chance I get. Being intelligent and unafraid to face the cruelty and ignorance in the world do not a negative person make. Usually, it's the people who feel blessed and loved who take the time to point out inequality, stupidity and awfulness so that others may enjoy, at the very least, respect for their plight.
I was brought up in a house of leftist egalitarians, who never paused before saying what they thought and who truly believed that our society was capable of educating people sufficiently that they would see the ultimate common sense and goodwill in creating a more equal society. Neither of my parents came from underprivileged backgrounds - they were both the black sheep of their families. They had friends from all over the world, and my mother's business employed a mini U.N. Never did she think or say these folks were lucky to have a job, never did she think or say that undocumented (a word that did not exist at the time) employees were somehow less and should be treated differently or paid less than any 'legal' person. My mother raised us modeling the business practice of paying people as much as you could afford to, not as little as they'd accept. I was told, explicitly (likely after having made a child's joke about someone's English) that if a person spoke English with an accent that meant they spoke at least one more language than I did and that I should feel the appropriate respect for that knowledge. Our household was pretty open about facts such as American Express not granting my mother (a business owner) a credit card in her own name (it would've had to be in my father's name) - hence, she did not accept American Express at her business. This seemed then, and continues to seem, a totally logical response to the situation. I cannot imagine having thought of my mother as being an angry, negative person for refusing to do business with a company that had misogynist policies.
My parents never took us to doctors. Doctors were drugging up the suburbs like there was no tomorrow in the 1970's, and my parents had grown up without a lot of the drugs that were all of a sudden deemed "necessary" - like antibiotics for every little cold, or worse, for the flu, which doesn't respond to antibiotics. One of my mother's friends was (in the 70's and still is today) a foot reflexologist, yoga teacher and health nut who spent 25 years curing her son of extreme schizophrenia through only natural means. I cannot imagine calling my mother's astute criticism of medical profession's addiction to prescriptions negative. She was right.
I was brought up on the motto "If you've got it, give it." My parents were human, like everyone, but their faults were very much balanced by their amazing humanity and desire for all people to enjoy freedom and liberty and equality. Gloria Steinem was a celebrity in our house (until the book about Marylin). I cannot imagine saying my mother was negative for being a Feminist and actively fighting for a better world for women. She was outspoken, and lots of times it was inconvenient, but believe you me, I was never told, when I was dealing with becoming a woman and all of the disrespect that involves - that I'd see things differently once I was married. In fact my mother never ever in my whole life has asked me if I wanted to get married. Or if I wanted to buy some make up. Or if I wanted a nice dress to look pretty for the boys at school. I cannot imagine calling my mother negative for pointing out to her daughters how prepared they needed to be for the shit coming their way as women.
I was also raised to believe that religion truly is the opium of the people, and thank God, because never were truer words spoken. My parents were moved by art, nature, people overcoming obstacles, by good people helping each other. I'm not saying I was raised by the poster children for righteousness. But they were smart, and more than anything, they never hesitated to point out inequality, sexism, classism, racism, hate, or harmful ignorance. They abhorred oversimplification of complex problems and they abhorred abuse of power. I cannot call that negative.
When I was 21, I learned meditation from monks who slept on concrete slabs with wooden pillows and begged for their food and worked at whatever job was needed in their local community. They took care of their monastery, wrote books, meditated, studied, taught, and also swept floors, helped in the fields, etc. I looked up to them a lot. I looked up to them even more when our teacher addressed sexism in the Buddhist community and denounced it thoroughly, taking time to teach us the difference between the Buddha's teachings and 'cultural Buddhism' that incorporated all sorts of prejudices that had no place in the practice of Buddhism. That monk is still teaching - his name is Santikaro. We were taught to be very astute and to constantly be on the lookout for practices that aggrandized the self and made one feel better than anyone else. We were encouraged to sit, and sit, and then sit some more, until we caught a tiny glimpse of enlightenment. We were taught it may never come, but that one second of clarity would be enough to keep us going for a lifetime of searching, because it was that rare and valuable. Some of us in that retreat did get our one second preview, and it was, in fact, enough to change my whole life. We were lectured every evening on the risks of resting on our laurels and to come back every day to the practice completely free of expectation and demands.
We had a yoga teacher on that retreat, who was from Esalen in CA and who did nothing but complain about the monks, about the retreat, and who told me, among other things, that I wasn't a lesbian because my face is too open and soft - lesbians had hard, closed faces. I should've taken the hint then, that I'd always be more at ease in an environment where spiritual practice was just that - a practice, an inquiry, a never-ending journey without a compass or a map. Free of dogma. The California/USA version of spirituality was and is very similar to, well, a big mess. You could put anything you want in there, and then once you'd been practicing for a year you could call yourself wise and the bearer of love and light, and charge for sharing your 'love' and 'light'. Sorry, the monks, with all their faults, are right. Reality is not for sale, and enlightenment is not 'given' (read: bought) but experienced first hand.
20 years later I have been teaching yoga for ten years and have just been blasted by some of my local yoga community for criticizing Yoga Journal's Talent Contest/cover model contest. I do not see this as a negative thing - it's called awareness. Anger at harmful ignorance is not without value - it's what drives every oppressed people to overcome oppression and to right wrongs. It has been said before, and I hope it will be said millions of times again - without women's anger at being treated as possessions, we would still be possessions! I hate the word 'duh' but really. Really. Feminism being seen as negative is a very sad commentary on whoever says it. Really.
Real optimism and love do not launch huge advertising campaigns and talent contests that make fools of the people buying your product. Optimism and love will not be two of the contestants, either. Real optimism and love do not say, "I just can't take in any more! I'm going to pretend that everything is as it should be, even though I know it's not, and I'm going to call it Tantra and have myself a glass of wine!" There is nothing wrong with taking a break from bad news, or protecting one's heart so that it doesn't get decimated by the never ending greed and cruelty of humankind. But don't call it wisdom - don't call it Tantra - call it "dinner and a glass of wine" for Christ's sake. And real optimism and love just is...no need for sappy quotes that are mainly out of context and therefore stripped of the meaning they originally had.
I am optimistic that yoga teachers will read whole books, not just the quotes, and optimistic that even though we insist on reinventing the wheel (so that it sells as 'new') that some people will see through all of that and come to life willing to see what is there, not what we need to be there to soothe our bourgeois self image. But the people I've known who truly do that are bussers, waiters, restaurant managers, house painters, cooks, gardeners - not yoga teachers. Which is why my teachers are not yoga teachers, and why, as a yoga teacher, I've never thought I had any business advising people. I'm there to share the few things that I know well with people who want to know them, too. It's what the monks taught, and I've never heard anything truer. My job, as I see it, is to give people whatever knowledge I've gleaned about movement - not to be an ass who acts like they understand things way beyond human comprehension. Acting like we know what is going on in the universe is not positive, admitting we don't is not negative. It's what is. I cannot and will not buy into this mentality that anger is only destructive - it's also one of the most constructive forces in life. So if you're not using yours, I'll gladly take it and use it to sign more petitions, write more letters to my fascist Congress people, call the White House more, and write more letters to idiotic magazines posing as community resources.
I was brought up in a house of leftist egalitarians, who never paused before saying what they thought and who truly believed that our society was capable of educating people sufficiently that they would see the ultimate common sense and goodwill in creating a more equal society. Neither of my parents came from underprivileged backgrounds - they were both the black sheep of their families. They had friends from all over the world, and my mother's business employed a mini U.N. Never did she think or say these folks were lucky to have a job, never did she think or say that undocumented (a word that did not exist at the time) employees were somehow less and should be treated differently or paid less than any 'legal' person. My mother raised us modeling the business practice of paying people as much as you could afford to, not as little as they'd accept. I was told, explicitly (likely after having made a child's joke about someone's English) that if a person spoke English with an accent that meant they spoke at least one more language than I did and that I should feel the appropriate respect for that knowledge. Our household was pretty open about facts such as American Express not granting my mother (a business owner) a credit card in her own name (it would've had to be in my father's name) - hence, she did not accept American Express at her business. This seemed then, and continues to seem, a totally logical response to the situation. I cannot imagine having thought of my mother as being an angry, negative person for refusing to do business with a company that had misogynist policies.
My parents never took us to doctors. Doctors were drugging up the suburbs like there was no tomorrow in the 1970's, and my parents had grown up without a lot of the drugs that were all of a sudden deemed "necessary" - like antibiotics for every little cold, or worse, for the flu, which doesn't respond to antibiotics. One of my mother's friends was (in the 70's and still is today) a foot reflexologist, yoga teacher and health nut who spent 25 years curing her son of extreme schizophrenia through only natural means. I cannot imagine calling my mother's astute criticism of medical profession's addiction to prescriptions negative. She was right.
I was brought up on the motto "If you've got it, give it." My parents were human, like everyone, but their faults were very much balanced by their amazing humanity and desire for all people to enjoy freedom and liberty and equality. Gloria Steinem was a celebrity in our house (until the book about Marylin). I cannot imagine saying my mother was negative for being a Feminist and actively fighting for a better world for women. She was outspoken, and lots of times it was inconvenient, but believe you me, I was never told, when I was dealing with becoming a woman and all of the disrespect that involves - that I'd see things differently once I was married. In fact my mother never ever in my whole life has asked me if I wanted to get married. Or if I wanted to buy some make up. Or if I wanted a nice dress to look pretty for the boys at school. I cannot imagine calling my mother negative for pointing out to her daughters how prepared they needed to be for the shit coming their way as women.
I was also raised to believe that religion truly is the opium of the people, and thank God, because never were truer words spoken. My parents were moved by art, nature, people overcoming obstacles, by good people helping each other. I'm not saying I was raised by the poster children for righteousness. But they were smart, and more than anything, they never hesitated to point out inequality, sexism, classism, racism, hate, or harmful ignorance. They abhorred oversimplification of complex problems and they abhorred abuse of power. I cannot call that negative.
When I was 21, I learned meditation from monks who slept on concrete slabs with wooden pillows and begged for their food and worked at whatever job was needed in their local community. They took care of their monastery, wrote books, meditated, studied, taught, and also swept floors, helped in the fields, etc. I looked up to them a lot. I looked up to them even more when our teacher addressed sexism in the Buddhist community and denounced it thoroughly, taking time to teach us the difference between the Buddha's teachings and 'cultural Buddhism' that incorporated all sorts of prejudices that had no place in the practice of Buddhism. That monk is still teaching - his name is Santikaro. We were taught to be very astute and to constantly be on the lookout for practices that aggrandized the self and made one feel better than anyone else. We were encouraged to sit, and sit, and then sit some more, until we caught a tiny glimpse of enlightenment. We were taught it may never come, but that one second of clarity would be enough to keep us going for a lifetime of searching, because it was that rare and valuable. Some of us in that retreat did get our one second preview, and it was, in fact, enough to change my whole life. We were lectured every evening on the risks of resting on our laurels and to come back every day to the practice completely free of expectation and demands.
We had a yoga teacher on that retreat, who was from Esalen in CA and who did nothing but complain about the monks, about the retreat, and who told me, among other things, that I wasn't a lesbian because my face is too open and soft - lesbians had hard, closed faces. I should've taken the hint then, that I'd always be more at ease in an environment where spiritual practice was just that - a practice, an inquiry, a never-ending journey without a compass or a map. Free of dogma. The California/USA version of spirituality was and is very similar to, well, a big mess. You could put anything you want in there, and then once you'd been practicing for a year you could call yourself wise and the bearer of love and light, and charge for sharing your 'love' and 'light'. Sorry, the monks, with all their faults, are right. Reality is not for sale, and enlightenment is not 'given' (read: bought) but experienced first hand.
20 years later I have been teaching yoga for ten years and have just been blasted by some of my local yoga community for criticizing Yoga Journal's Talent Contest/cover model contest. I do not see this as a negative thing - it's called awareness. Anger at harmful ignorance is not without value - it's what drives every oppressed people to overcome oppression and to right wrongs. It has been said before, and I hope it will be said millions of times again - without women's anger at being treated as possessions, we would still be possessions! I hate the word 'duh' but really. Really. Feminism being seen as negative is a very sad commentary on whoever says it. Really.
Real optimism and love do not launch huge advertising campaigns and talent contests that make fools of the people buying your product. Optimism and love will not be two of the contestants, either. Real optimism and love do not say, "I just can't take in any more! I'm going to pretend that everything is as it should be, even though I know it's not, and I'm going to call it Tantra and have myself a glass of wine!" There is nothing wrong with taking a break from bad news, or protecting one's heart so that it doesn't get decimated by the never ending greed and cruelty of humankind. But don't call it wisdom - don't call it Tantra - call it "dinner and a glass of wine" for Christ's sake. And real optimism and love just is...no need for sappy quotes that are mainly out of context and therefore stripped of the meaning they originally had.
I am optimistic that yoga teachers will read whole books, not just the quotes, and optimistic that even though we insist on reinventing the wheel (so that it sells as 'new') that some people will see through all of that and come to life willing to see what is there, not what we need to be there to soothe our bourgeois self image. But the people I've known who truly do that are bussers, waiters, restaurant managers, house painters, cooks, gardeners - not yoga teachers. Which is why my teachers are not yoga teachers, and why, as a yoga teacher, I've never thought I had any business advising people. I'm there to share the few things that I know well with people who want to know them, too. It's what the monks taught, and I've never heard anything truer. My job, as I see it, is to give people whatever knowledge I've gleaned about movement - not to be an ass who acts like they understand things way beyond human comprehension. Acting like we know what is going on in the universe is not positive, admitting we don't is not negative. It's what is. I cannot and will not buy into this mentality that anger is only destructive - it's also one of the most constructive forces in life. So if you're not using yours, I'll gladly take it and use it to sign more petitions, write more letters to my fascist Congress people, call the White House more, and write more letters to idiotic magazines posing as community resources.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Letter to Yoga Journal - Et tu, Brute? - I'll be sending this in a week or so - please add on anything you like
Friends - I started a letter to Yoga Journal about their contest, and I hope you'll write your own or take a minute to add something to this one. I'll put your name if you want, or leave it off if you prefer. But do add your comments. Consciousness is writing letters to bastards with marketing degrees.
Dear Yoga Journal,
Yesterday morning I received several invitations from yoga 'friends' to vote for them in a talent search/cover model contest through your website. I was appalled. I started yelling obscenities in my mind and jumped on Facebook to start yelling them on line. Many other people had the exact same reaction as I did - we want to ask you, simply, "Et tu, Brute?" I came to yoga as a way to feel more connected to my self, my body, and to others. I wanted to be a virtuoso of the relationship with my Self. I had practiced Vipassana meditation at the Wat Suan Mokkh in Southern Thailand, and had an established meditation practice of about a decade when I started asana practice on a dedicated, daily basis. Over time I took classes, went through a teacher training program and continued to study and go through an advanced teacher training program.
Having taught yoga for ten years now, I find that fewer and fewer yoga students and teachers have any understanding that yoga is something that is not based on the values of the U.S. monotheistic, Protestant-dominated, capitalist, sexist, racist, classist value system. They are using yoga as a way to be virtuosos of the free market and the results are very sad, indeed. A lot of this comes from students looking to Yoga Journal as the benchmark for what yoga is. I have a running joke that Yoga Journal should be treated the same way as Playboy - the articles are good, just avoid the pictures. But I've kept my subscription to Yoga Journal to read Sharon Salzberg, Sarah Powers, Ana Forrest, and other insightful experts on yoga and meditation. I don't have any illusions that losing a subscriber will affect what type of contests and/or marketing you use, but I do feel compelled to speak up about this Miss Yoga America thing. I hope that others are taking the time to drop you a note about this - that is, if they're not too busy setting up photo shoots to fill out embarrassing profiles for your contest. One of the worst things about this (for me) is that now that you have gotten every yoga student or teacher who thinks they are pretty and look good doing Hanumanasana to make an idiot of themselves by posting such nonsense as "It's always been my dream to be on the cover of Yoga Journal" or "I gave up a successful career in blah blah blah to teach yoga so I could work barefoot and help people connect to themselves and to nature" the magazine will likely choose someone extremely physically handicapped who teaches yoga to other handicapped people as the cover model as a nod and a Sarah Palin wink to the deeper meaning of yoga. Or maybe you'll just go whole hog and put all the finalists in a wet tee-shirt contest. Same same.
I hope you're catching serious flak for this, and I hope you're listening. This is not yoga, and it doesn't take a swami to call this one.
Sincerely,
Amy Pancake
Dear Yoga Journal,
Yesterday morning I received several invitations from yoga 'friends' to vote for them in a talent search/cover model contest through your website. I was appalled. I started yelling obscenities in my mind and jumped on Facebook to start yelling them on line. Many other people had the exact same reaction as I did - we want to ask you, simply, "Et tu, Brute?" I came to yoga as a way to feel more connected to my self, my body, and to others. I wanted to be a virtuoso of the relationship with my Self. I had practiced Vipassana meditation at the Wat Suan Mokkh in Southern Thailand, and had an established meditation practice of about a decade when I started asana practice on a dedicated, daily basis. Over time I took classes, went through a teacher training program and continued to study and go through an advanced teacher training program.
Having taught yoga for ten years now, I find that fewer and fewer yoga students and teachers have any understanding that yoga is something that is not based on the values of the U.S. monotheistic, Protestant-dominated, capitalist, sexist, racist, classist value system. They are using yoga as a way to be virtuosos of the free market and the results are very sad, indeed. A lot of this comes from students looking to Yoga Journal as the benchmark for what yoga is. I have a running joke that Yoga Journal should be treated the same way as Playboy - the articles are good, just avoid the pictures. But I've kept my subscription to Yoga Journal to read Sharon Salzberg, Sarah Powers, Ana Forrest, and other insightful experts on yoga and meditation. I don't have any illusions that losing a subscriber will affect what type of contests and/or marketing you use, but I do feel compelled to speak up about this Miss Yoga America thing. I hope that others are taking the time to drop you a note about this - that is, if they're not too busy setting up photo shoots to fill out embarrassing profiles for your contest. One of the worst things about this (for me) is that now that you have gotten every yoga student or teacher who thinks they are pretty and look good doing Hanumanasana to make an idiot of themselves by posting such nonsense as "It's always been my dream to be on the cover of Yoga Journal" or "I gave up a successful career in blah blah blah to teach yoga so I could work barefoot and help people connect to themselves and to nature" the magazine will likely choose someone extremely physically handicapped who teaches yoga to other handicapped people as the cover model as a nod and a Sarah Palin wink to the deeper meaning of yoga. Or maybe you'll just go whole hog and put all the finalists in a wet tee-shirt contest. Same same.
I hope you're catching serious flak for this, and I hope you're listening. This is not yoga, and it doesn't take a swami to call this one.
Sincerely,
Amy Pancake
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