Yoga

Use Your Bandhas!

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I stepped my bare feet to the front of the mat for Mountain Pose, the way we begin every Ashtanga class. Ashtanga is the same, somewhat rapid series of poses every time, which means that the first time I was here I spent most of my time stumbling around and looking bewildered. But not this time, I thought. I’d been going twice a week for three weeks, and now this was my seventh class. Time to rock.

Our instructor Elliot entered the class and smiled, turning down the music. From the first time I saw Elliot, I secretly referred to him as “Moby”: like Moby, Elliot has a very shiny head. Unlike Moby, Elliot could probably kick your ass if it didn’t go against everything he stood for. I am massively intimidated by Elliot, and also kind of in love with him: the way I am in love with anyone who even slightly touches me.

“Welcome, everyone, to the secondary series of this class. Is anyone new to secondary series?”

Secondary, secondary, I flickered vaguely. Isn’t this class usually called primary?

“On the last Tuesday of every month, this class becomes the secondary series. It’s a little more advanced, and with a lot of back bends, so . . . feel free to stop whenever you need to. Everyone okay?”

This was met with blank, uninterpretable stares. Wait, what did he say again? Should I —

“Now let’s take a deep breath.”

Fuck, you’re out of your element, aren’t you? I thought to myself rapidly, raising my arms upward. You’re out of your element. Exhale and bend. Whooooooosh. Here we go.

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Dialogues, Minneapolis/St. Paul

In Other People’s Windows

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The last time I went home to Minnesota, I got together with my best friends from high school and we stayed up through the night — first watching an ill-advised screening of “2 Girls 1 Cup” and then recovering for the next six hours, talking and eating flan — until eventually we’d convinced Adelia to break her teaching contract in Korea.

“Yeah!” she said. “What am I doing?”

“Seriously,” we concurred. “What are you doing.”

“I don’t even want to go there!”

“You don’t even want to go there.”

“I want to go to Europe again!”

“Dude, you should seriously go to Europe again.”

“I’m going to email the program director right now and tell her to send me back my diploma.”

We watched her do it, then we convinced Kristy to kick out her silly boy roommates (with their utter lack of pans), then we convinced Adelia to move in to Kristy’s newfound living space, and then we played a Dave Matthews song I won’t tell you I like and danced in our sweatpants by the over-sized windows in Kristy’s living room. “Is this . . . the kind of thing I do?” I wondered briefly, flailing my arms around like I was at some Lilith Fair concert. “Oh, baah.”

It was something like three in the morning, and every now and then I could hear the oncoming and fading swishhhh of cars driving down Grand street, their tires throwing brown slush onto the curb.

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Dear Diary, On Writing

Is It April Yet?

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Every now and then I go through a phase where I have absolutely no desire to write, whatsoever. It generally means that I’m either being dishonest to myself about something, or I just haven’t felt real sunlight on my skin in too many days (or is it weeks, or is it months).

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Poetry

Diorama

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In my dreams you say that loneliness
has caused your teeth to diminish over time, to become thin and
bent

You pry open your lips with both hands and
I place my head in your mouth to investigate.

Your pink softness like chewing gum.
Your bones, weightless and crumbling.

If someone were to walk in the room at that moment

(Which they do, they always do:
Your mother or my lover or some boy I once knew)

They would think to see a circus, freakish and sad:
A ringmaster with her elderly tiger,

only
I never had any power over you.

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Radio

First Coast!

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In honor of the Third Coast Audio Festival, and my friend Dennis (front center, beardy) visiting our one-pony town, we held the first annual First Coast Audio Festival: in a basement rare books store, with pizza, nice scotch, and cheap wine. Because that’s just how we roll.

“Uh, that greasy pizza box is sitting on top of a signed book by Adlai Stevenson,” I noted. “Cool?” I was eyeballing the e.e. cummings paintings leaning nearby against the stacks, John Adams’ framed copy of the constitution.

“Eh,” the technically-an-employee shrugged. “Yeah.”

Every now and then I would sneak upstairs to the art gallery, which was brightly lit and completely empty at this late hour, pristine and silent — exactly the way I’ve always wanted art galleries to be when I visit them. I padded along quietly in my rubber-soled shoes and imagined that this was my house.

Update: see more photos here and here.

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