Down Dog, Interrupted

I’m in yoga this morning, just enjoying a gentle readjustment in the child’s pose, when the fire alarm goes off, transforming the room from the quiet sanctuary of self love and relaxation that I’d really, really needed today into a manic disco of flashing white lights and sirens and some dude saying muffled things over the P.A. system. It really is a classic summation of the experience of being me: The girl tries to relax, but the circumstances of her life make other plans.

And that’s OK though. I know I suck at yoga, because (I am strong but not terribly flexible and because) my mind does not like to shut off. The business of focusing the breath and letting the mind be clear is not my strong suit. Still, I enjoy yoga whenever I manage to get there because I love the idea that I’m doing something pure and purely for me, and my motives for that period of time are totally solid and uncorrupted and there’s no hip-hop with mean lyrics playing in the room (I love that stuff in spite of myself, so it’s usually on the speakers wherever I am) and I’m not investigating people I shouldn’t on Friendster or watching crime scene video on Court TV’s Forensic Files. It really promotes in me a sense of love—mostly love for self, but more than that too.

When I lived on East 10th, there was a yoga studio on the block. (until it closed, because who could afford a space on that block anyway? Certainly I couldn’t afford my own apartment.) And in that studio there was a teacher who always encouraged us to silently dedicate our practice for that day to someone in our lives whom we loved and was struggling and was therefore in need of good thoughts and positive energy. A dear old friend and a neighbor on that block—a very small and brilliant Korean girl with a nervous streak to rival any Jew I’ve met including myself—also used to go to that class. One day, she’d gone in the morning and I’d gone at lunchtime, and over dinner she’d said, “Girl, I dedicated my practice to you today.” And I’d said, “Oh girl, I dedicated my practice to you!” And it made me feel so warm and so loved and so grateful for my friends that the body movement part of the class was almost irrelevant.

Among the reasons I’d so needed the relaxation today: Last week my mom discovered my blog. And my guess is that her response was not unlike many mothers who discover their children’s blogs: She was “scandalized” and found my “values” questionable and actually said that I was not likely to ever meet “Mr. Right” with my objectionable values all up on the Internet. I hope she is not right about the last bit, but I know she is not right about the first bit. I do have good and honest values, and in fact I think they are as traditional as my mom’s. This is mostly about my struggle to make heads or tails of the men I’ve met along the pursuit of real love and respect and mutual admiration and attraction. And I only wish in my discussions I could be as honest as Megan or Capella.

My mom—who was nearly 30 before she was married (an old maid in her generation) and a PhD in biology, and who is a very outspoken woman in spite of her diminutive size (seriously, look out)—always taught her daughters that the squeaky wheel gets the oil, and to be strong, and to believe we could do whatever we wanted to do. So I will try to understand her visceral reaction to seeing her daughter reduce her own life to simple quips about boys and shoes (this is not the case, but this is only what she saw in her shock). But I think I will give this blogging business a little more of a go before I decide that what I’ve actually done is reduce my life to a series of punch lines about boys and shoes.

Another reason I was in need of some relaxation this morning: Turns out the delightfully easygoing Midwestern man who recently became my ex-boyfriend did have a fab time at his high school reunion. (Did I mention he was captain of his soccer team and was his high school's 6-foot-4 prom king with all-American good looks, green eyes, and freckles? He thinks he mostly won because he split the black vote. But if I’d have had a vote, I bet I would have picked him too.) A fab time that culminated with him making out with a fellow alum in a McDonald’s parking lot, followed by breakfast at a diner across the street. This bit of news actually struck me as almost retro-hot, and didn’t upset me too much. (This is probably because the girl lives in Detroit and is not likely to fly to L.A. to make out with him in local McDonald’s parking lots in the future.)

But I do still have a fondness for that man. And I respect the things about him that probably won him his prom king reign: his easily accessible wit, unambiguous smile, integrity, interest and aptitude in sports on TV and in the park, unwillingness to even pretend he was listening to my home decorating tales, sensitivity almost exclusively on the inside (except for an inexplicable favoritism for romantic comedies like Must Love Dogs), and all-around totally-from-Mars dudeness. Apparently this particular set of qualities does not a good long-term match for me make. I spent a lot of time preparing turkey sandwiches (“sandos,” as we called them, with extra avocado, which he loved and called “green gold”) for dinner (for him—I'm a vegetarian) in front of World Cup soccer or a movie on TV—which I enjoyed very much. But maybe my destiny is to do less of that and more of something else. (Although I’m not sure about this, because I watch King of the Hill with an envy for Hank Hill that is deeply unreasonable.)

After returning from an awesome summer-long Indiana Jones-like dig in Turkey, my tiny, brilliant, neurotic Korean girlfriend broke up with her long-term, dude-like boyfriend (whose primary ambition included a big-screen plasma TV for Eagles football) on the grounds of a similar sort of incompatibility. (Last Valentine’s Day, she felt like going to Medieval Times in the Bronx or wherever it was, just because she thought it would be a fun adventure. He wanted to put on a button-down shirt and go for dinner and a show in the city; this was more like his kind of adventure.) And we both think the changes in our love lives are sound and smart. But there is something very missable about a comfortable, settled life with a man like that.

Anyway, after standing around outside the Equinox gym in Westwood for a while (I was just glad I wasn’t the guy in the robe whose massage had been interrupted by the fire alarm), we resumed our yoga practice and eventually finished with a series of three cross-legged ohms and the instructor gave us each a little forehead massage using a dab of rose water. And it seems to me that this is what it’s all about: We encounter lots of noise, but if we rededicate ourselves, we always return to something sweet and soft and fulfilling. Or something like that.