random letter excusing myself from yoga

i actually only had something really short to say, but suddenly i'm overcome with the urge to write. this is bad. (for you). this happens sometimes, i have the urge to write, and... what i often do is scan through my list of facebook not-really-kinda-once-upon-a-time friends and i pick one i haven't spoken to in ages (so that i have some perceived impunity) and i let loose.

but i see you everyday. so this isn't as comfortable as it needs to be. i could go and write on my blog, but it'd take ages to set it up and format and find a pic and all that blah blah blah aestheticisms.

i can't make it to yoga.

i'm going to tell you why.

for 19 days out of every year i fast. it seems innocuous enough. people of every religion have been doing it from time immemorial. sometimes there are secular causes too. (i'm not talking about drought in Rwanda either). Shakespeare has his players fast out of respect. Homer has people fast in honor of the gods.

but the odd thing isn't really hunger pangs, those are easily enough managed. it's more... unforeseeable reactions... things you might do or say, it's alot like being a rawer you. more you. more thoroughly you. you, but more raw. (like organic food. i know i'm titillating your taste-buds right now, but do try and concentrate, i'm opening up to you here).

alot is made of 'symbolic meaning' to physical demonstrations. this is something 'Faithful' people love to say. I find it usually is a half-baked excuse to cover up some flaw of reason or dogma, and i'm very suspicious of 'but think of the symbolic meaning of the act!' type expositions. So i don't know about that stuff. But what i do know, is that when you fast, perhaps because your sleep cycles are skewed, and because you are hungry and your fuse is a little short(er), and because you feel a little lost, and a little disconnected from the rest of humanity... there are certain whispers you hear.

little things. nudges from shadows. unexpected patterns in the fabric of sofas. people's faces alter just minutely.

i feel strange strengths open up within myself. i know that's a weird thing to say, but there... some people have a statue-esque grandeur to them. they look at you with a certain steadfastness, be it of cause, or purpose, or (very best!) of selfdom. Selfdom is obviously one of my made up words. It means: the quality of being yourself, owning yourself. I am very concerned about this point, of being myself. I feel very much that life is a long-process of drawing closer and closer to being who i really am. free of... frills and insecurities and fears and inhibitions. Given our young age, I suppose there is still soo much uphill to climb.

But this is why the fast is such a strange time. Dichotomy abounds, so that while in certain regards i feel soo powerful, and so pleased with certain of my qualities, i am simultaneously filled with rather extreme measures of self-loathing and disappointment. Certain qualities i thought i had mastered make their recapitulation, and i see that, despite i aspire to a most empathetic manner, intent, and approach... i am still soo far from being a person who is a 'source of love and solace to the hearts and minds of people everywhere'. (i particularly like that phrase).

this is perhaps why i retract a little from the company of men and women during my 19-days of fasting. a desire to concentrate on these crucial questions. a time of questioning, and a time of silent groping for mute answers. i wonder if there is ever a question of importance, that can be answered conclusively.

1. do you love me?
2. what is the definition of gravity?
3. how can there be an all-knowing god and still be room for free-will?
4. will i ever forgive myself for being me?

those BIG questions. the most fundamental ones. The ones that are our bricks, and more often, the schisms between our bricks. (and how much i hate walls).

I like yoga. I like it alot. I enjoy the counter-intuitiveness of it. the sensation of being soo strained and tested while remaining completely motionless. It is an exercise in potential energy (like moments leading to first-kisses). (magnetism) (watching something fall off a table, with a certain god-like pleasure from knowing it would happen any second now). (that tension).

i also like the meditation at the end. that feeling of being lost in a silence and a dreamless, unrecordable pit of nothing... if memory cannot absorb it it is nothing. (and being something of an existentialite, i yearn for nothingness and blackness and disappearance in a very real way). it is like slipping into a crack, a moment away from yourself. from the burden of carrying yourself (and the heavy bag of memory and fantasy and consistency of myself i carry). (how i hate knowing all the decisions, all the probabilities of my self. (which is why from time to time it's important to do something so atypical, soo uncharacteristic, soo distant from yourself so as to confused even you, who goes home and stares at the mirror and says:
how'd you do that?
how'd you think to say that?
i can't believe you're actually wearing those jeans!
i can't believe you drive a smart car.
i can't believe you wrote this random-ass letter to someone.

things like that.

i'm not coming to yoga. but i think what i'll do is this,
when i'm done being philosophizer-unextrordinaire,
i'm going to take you to the coolest place by the beach somewhere, and you can tease me about being a misogynist, baby-killing, imperialist consumer-lover,
and i can call you a jasmine-scented, organic cow-pee-pie-eating hippie. and we can laugh. which is always a most wonderful addition to any almost wonderful day.

in the meantime, enjoy your earliest morning, and yoga, and (don't hold your breath), and i'll see you after March 21st (when i can eat sleep drink normally again) at yoga and you can show me how fluently you can pull off the one-foot-in-mouth-whilst-dancing-like-a-freakazoid-polaroid-tree-hug-position.

with best
sincerity(ily)

Q person. ya know, that guy.