March 26
When my great-grandmother Nomma passed away, I was four or five and hadn’t yet known a person who’d died. My mother told me she was in heaven, which I pictured as a beautiful room with high ceilings and red velvet curtains on all the windows, where someone, anyone, would answer every question you’ve ever had.
Life, death, why this elaborate and heartbreaking game? I knew life was a game, because I was told there would be winners and losers at the end of it. And I knew it was heartbreaking, because I saw Gram crying, and she told me her heart was broken. Nomma was her mother. If Gram’s mom could die—if any mom could die—then what on earth was the point? I thought that Nomma was in that beautiful room, learning the answer now, and that when it was my turn to go there, it would be Nomma who would pull me onto her lap and stroke my thin baby curls as she passed her perfect knowledge on to me.
That room came to me a lot when I was little, in dreams, in reveries. I remember feeling that it was where I had come from, and where I would return someday.
Red curtains? High ceilings? A memory of the womb, perhaps?
I felt it as a peaceful, dreamy place.
That’s sort of what meditation feels like, now. Like I dip down into some familiar, dreamy place where I am nothing but a soul waiting to be born.
March 27
Indra and Lou are beautiful and supportive and loving.
Today, Indra kept telling me to slow down and breathe. She says I’m doing deep emotional and physical processing right now and so I shouldn’t push it, but just focus on my breathing.
I don’t want to. I am kicking ass, spiritually speaking. Everything I do is effortless now, from meditation to arm balances. I don’t want to just focus on my breath. I want to stretch and soar.
Later
Lou and I are connected on a spiritual level that no one else could possibly understand. He is psychic.
And so am I.
I sent him a message in class today. We were meditating, and I decided to test him out.
Over the past few weeks Lou has mentioned that my head was turning to the right a little during guided meditation. I used to do that in piano lessons, too—I think I hear better with my left ear. That’s my theory, anyway.
We were meditating, unguided. And I said to Lou, in my brain, Lou, tell me if I’m tilting my head to the right.
And I swear to God, Lou responded immediately, out loud. He said, “Suzanne, your head isn’t tilting. Your posture looks good.”
I want to do this forever. I’m never going home.
March 28
Since we arrived, I’ve had a million questions for my yogamates: What exactly is chatturanga dandasana? What are the Yoga Sutras really about? Why, in Horse pose, do I have to breathe through my vagina?
But now! Every night we gather around the table on our veranda just as the last drops of liquid sun dribble down our shiny tiled steps, and my yogamates ask me question after question after question about my kundalini experience. When I speak, they lean in and listen.
I keep thinking of sixth grade. That’s what this is like, sixth grade, except that this time? This time I’m the first girl to get her period, and everybody else wants to know how soon they’ll get to join the club.
God, I really love my yogamates. I feel like I understand them now, truly and deeply.
March 29
Today I found myself bonding with plants. I meditated on these big, green, leafy things stretching toward the heavens and thought, Yeah. I know what you mean.
I am detached, and I am engaged.
Lou told me that there is a difference between detachment and disengagement. It took me a while to understand what he meant by that. I think I always thought of yoga and Eastern philosophy as having to do with detachment, that you just sit on a mountaintop not giving a good goddamn about anyone or anything, just zoning out. Lou says that is disengagement, not detachment, and that it’s not the goal of yoga at all.
The idea is to be detached from the fruits of our labors, which means that we do things simply for the act of doing them. Today, for instance, I wanted to tip up into headstand, but couldn’t get there gracefully. Normally I would waste loads of energy worrying that my yogamates were watching and judging, or feeling superior to me because they can get into headstand and I can’t, and so I would muscle my way into it or give up entirely and rest back in Child’s pose. But today I realized that the goal of headstand wasn’t the point—headstand was the outcome I needed to be detached from. The act of trying to get up gracefully was enough, so I just worked on that.
It’s why we try to speak only the truth: because we use language to manipulate one another, to get a particular response. So if we speak the truth, we can’t use our words to elicit a particular outcome. For example, telling a waitress, “No, it’s really no problem, I mean, you could bring me some salt for this underseasoned dish, but it’s really no big deal if you don’t, I mean, I don’t have to taste my food” is the opposite of yogic.
It would be a lot more yogic simply to say, “I need some fucking salt.” Truth! Oh my, if I brought that kind of yoga practice back to Seattle I would get lynched by the Nice Police. Good thing I’m headed to New York.
Being detached means recognizing our emotions as what they are: clouds, sunbursts, weather. They pass. So rather than feed on my anger or sadness, rolling about in it like a pig in its own filth, I see that it is weather, and know that in time it will pass.
This clarity I’ve had since my kundalini breakthrough isn’t an emotional state. I don’t see it as weather so much as a whole new sky. Today, Jessica wondered out loud if maybe it was emotional, if all the attention I was getting from my teachers and yogamates was giving me a sort of well-being high. That would’ve bugged me if I didn’t have this clarity. Which proves my point: it’s not emotional.
I wish Jessica would bring it up again, so I could point this out to her.
March 30
Javanese workers have descended upon Ubud and the surrounding villages to harvest the tall stalks of rice. They wear those pointy straw hats that look like the shells my siblings and I used to call Chinese hats. Sitting in the wantilan before class, watching the workers with their strong arms slice through the dry, yellow stalks in the middle of the lime-green rice terraces is unbelievably beautiful. It occurred to me today as I watched them that I would ordinarily feel guilty if I caught myself thinking that the work these men and women do is beautiful: like, here I am, sitting in a yoga pavilion, romanticizing their sweat. But now I’m just taking it in, and it’s beautiful to watch.
I accept the world as it is.
ALTHOUGH.
I would like to see more of Indra. I was sort of thinking that now that I’ve had this breakthrough, we would spend more time together outside of class. That I could come over and hang out with her on the balcony drinking tea, talking about the path, braiding each other’s hair. Or something.
March 31
My yogamates keep talking about how difficult meditation is. Not like Louise did. It’s not annoying. But Jason and Lara were visiting and they both said they were having such a hard time with it, and they were looking for some advice.
“You lucky duck,” Lara said, and I think her green eyes were extra green. From jealousy. “You’ve had what we’ve all taken thousands of dollars of workshops to experience.”
“Tell us about the dream again?” Jason said, and I did, and I just felt so sorry for them. It’s like they’re in this loop of self-sabotage, telling themselves it’s hard and then wondering why it’s hard. But it’s not hard at all! If you just let go, it’s really easy.
But I wonder if I know it’s easy because I’m just really gifted at meditation.
Later
Class ended rather strangely today. Jason does a pitch-perfect impersonation of Lou, in which he sits in lotus, rubbing himself like a massage therapist on speed and calling us “people” in a faraway voice, his eyes going vaguely cross-eyed as if he were transc
ending to another planet. We made him do it for Lou at the end of class, and I stood to the side, next to Indra, watching. Everybody was laughing, especially Lou, who looked more tickled than I could ever have imagined him to look. It’s hard to believe I was ever afraid of this sweet, gentle man.
I kept stealing sidelong glances at Indra. I could feel her next to me, her posture rigid with tension. She was smiling, but tightly, as if she was just waiting it out. As if she was experiencing something unpleasant and inappropriate. I got the sense she didn’t know what to do with herself. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her like that. Ill at ease: it’s not how I think of her.
I wonder if she felt that we were being disrespectful? Or did she wish we had a similar tribute to her?
Then again, she’s always been somewhat distant after class. Maybe she was just hungry and wanted to get to lunch. Baerbel noticed it as well, though. “Well,” she said as we sat down to our own lunch of greens and rice at Casa Luna, “Indra did not like that one bit.”
April 1
Easter Sunday.
I’m lying in bed, trying to accept that yes, I’m in a little pain, but it will pass. I’m detached from my pain, and engaged only in this writing.
That said, there is the cutest little baby gecko running around on the windowsill. It’s smaller than my pinkie finger!
Anyway, today: Easter. The Resurrection. We didn’t go to church. I don’t even know if there are churches on this island. We didn’t go to any temples, either. I mean—why would we? No, we went to a spa. It was called the Sacred Spa. Which is sort of holy, right? (Sometimes it strikes me as funny, this New Age business. In the eighties, I’d bet the spa would’ve been called “You’re Rich, They’re Not! Spa.” But these days anything that costs a bit of scratch has got to be spiritual or we don’t approve.)
Which is cool. I mean, in a way, my spa experience did feel spiritual. But maybe that’s just where I am right now—there’s no difference, anymore, between my mind and my body, so being touched and coddled is amazing. I feel like Zorba the Greek, opening my arms to the world.
Jessica cried a little while we got pedicures. The woman who was taking care of her insisted on shaving off about twenty layers of skin and calluses from Jessica’s heels. She probably lost a shoe size. I’d bet she was the highlight of her pedicurist’s day.
“I got those calluses walking the earth,” Jessica said, watching the shavings collect beneath her feet like so many slices of Parmesan. “That was my whole life built into my feet.” She looked at me helplessly.
“Your heels have been reborn,” I replied. “Consider it an offering in honor of the Resurrection. Beginning of a new cycle.”
That cheered her up a bit.
Now that I think of it, my time at the Sacred Spa was a bit of a spiritual journey. I walked through fire in order to reach salvation. I scaled the cliffs of fear and suffering and found myself closer to God.
For you see, today I had my first bikini wax.
What’s crazy is that I’ve spent so much time in meditation and yoga practice that I’ve learned to relax instantly. So even though I howled with pain each time Reni, my aesthetician, ripped a swath of hair off my inner thighs, I fell asleep after each one. I dozed as she smoothed the hot wax on my leg, and gently pressed the cloth to the wax, and then I came awake with a shriek the instant she tugged it off.
I wailed as if she were skinning me alive. But then I fell back asleep until she pressed on a newly bald spot, which made me howl again. Reni winced, but I could tell from the way her mouth twitched that she thought I was completely bizarre.
“Sick, sick!” she said, hiding a laugh with a cough. I opened my eyes and yelped as she tore another patch of hair off. “Sensitive, sensitive!” It looked almost painful, her screwing up her face to keep from laughing at me, so I started to crack up, and once I started, she busted up, too—just as she went to pull at a strip of hair. Her grip slipped a little and instead of ripping the hair out, she just gave it a ragged tug.
I moaned like a dying cat. And then I dozed.
After she was done abusing me, Reni walked me over to the shower, holding on to my arm as I would guide my grandmother. Next to the shower was a large claw-foot tub, the bottom of which was lined with fresh flowers and spices. She ran the water in the tub while she soaped me up in the shower. Now I really felt like a little kid. She even washed me between my legs—which naturally made me start laughing again. I turned my head to the side so Reni wouldn’t notice, but she gave me a quizzical look anyway and sort of shrugged, like, What, you don’t want to be clean?
She guided me over to the bath. The warm water had lifted the flowers up to the top, so I pierced a layer of gardenias and frangipani as I got in. Reni gave me a yellow clay mug of hot water with chunks of ginger and loads of honey in it, and then left me alone. I sank into the water, a gardenia grazing my chin. I watched a little pang of guilt, or maybe fear, drift across my inner sky, and depart. It was the same guilty fear I’ve been feeling for ages, but now I just looked at it, acknowledged it, and let it move on by.
It struck me that this was the most extraordinary thing I’d ever learned how to do.
I lay back in the tub and looked up at the sky through the glassless window above my head. I kicked my leg through the floating blanket of flowers and rested it on the side of the bath, sinking deeper into the hot water, laughing a little bit at my gynecological shower experience and marveling at this curious, unfamiliar feeling of liberation from myself. I sipped my tea and looked at my body. The flowers were canary yellow, magenta, pink and creamy white, and they cast revolving shadows on my belly—smudges and blobs like Rorschach blots.
The tea was perfectly spicy, and I imagined it cleaning my insides. When all that was left in the mug were chunks of ginger and cinnamon sticks, I dumped these remnants into the bathwater and leaned over the side of the tub to place the cup on the tile floor. I loved the sound it made, that muted clink of clay on the stone tiles.
Thank you for that sound, I thought.
I reached my wet arm over the side of the bath, tiny flowers and bits of yellow and red spices sticking to my skin, and picked the cup up again. I lifted it to my nose, smelling the last traces of ginger. Then I put it back on the ground to hear the clink again. Like dress shoes on flagstones. I lifted it up, I put it back down.
Oh, thank you for that sound! I thought, directing it toward the window. I splashed my hands through the flowers at my sides. Thank you for this bath. Thank you for the waxing I’ve just had and the rash that will surely follow. I thought of my yogamates and my friends at home, my sister, my brothers, my parents and grandparents; my entire family. Thank you. I thought of Indra and Lou and Jonah, lifting my arms above my head, flowers falling into my hair, overwhelmed. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I lowered myself back into the water until my mouth and nose were submerged and I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. The flowers floating on the surface of the water were at my eye level. From this angle they looked like a bright, colorful jungle. I stared at them like this for a long time until I felt the first few pinpricks of pain in my inner thighs, which swiftly became a crimson irritation that now has me lamenting the existence of wax.
Until I remember, now, that it’s just pain. And see? Just like that, it’s gone.
Hmm. Well. Almost.
April 2
There was a spider the size of my hand on my bath towel this morning. I didn’t have my contacts in yet, so I didn’t see the spider until my face was about an inch from its hairy green back. At just that moment, Jessica, who was brushing her teeth next to me, let out an incredible wail of fear, but I didn’t even jump. I just moved my face away.
I’m fine with the bugs now. I didn’t used to be. But now I look at the bites all over my arms and legs and find myself admiring their differences. Some are as big as quarters and as pink as my lips, others are like a rash of whiteheads. The one on my knee looks like Saturn, a small round bite with a red ring around it. W
hat interesting work you do, I say to the bugs.
I figure, I eat from the rice fields, the bugs eat from the me-fields. We’re all working together!
Jessica wouldn’t come back in the house until I had tapped the spider off the towel and into the bushes along the side of the veranda. Poor thing. She’s really got a ways to go yet.
Later
Something strange and new happened today. I was in Warrior Two pose, feeling very powerful and open, when a teensy-tiny little fart escaped me. A little soubrette of a fart, a light, sweet soprano sigh.
You know what I discovered? Farting in public is fun! In fact, it was liberating! It was like an extension of my mindbody state. An audible meditation. Like chanting, but, um—with my ass.
Ohhhhhh, okay, I’m lying. It was mortifying. I wanted to die. I still want to die. But I’m trying to work with it. I’m trying to be detached from the fart. Farts and emotions are like weather. They pass.
But, oh. Cringe.
Later
It’s raining.
I’ve been meditating on the bed, trying not to think about certain things. Trying not to relive certain moments when I could’ve been more repressed. I don’t know. I don’t want to be repressed.
Oh, goddamn it to hell. Repression is something I like in a GI tract.
I want to die. And I can’t stop laughing. I’m in straitjacket territory.
Still Later
I’ve been a little hysterical. Laughing and moaning and hiding under the covers. Jessica can hardly believe I’m this upset over a little fart. She brought me a tray with some ginger tea on it and a little yogurt. She said yogurt is good for the GI tract, and then she made a farting noise with her lips, like a kid. She sat down beside me on the bed and did it again. “Excuse me!” she cried, and then she made more fart noises until she was giggling uncontrollably and spilled the ginger tea all over herself.
Yoga Bitch Page 14