THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

“AMERICA’S PACT WITH THE DEVIL”

It has been said that the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his otherworldly guitar mastery. Johnson died at twenty-seven, the victim of an angry husband who poisoned his whiskey. One of the greatest guitarists of all time, he is buried in an unmarked grave, whereabouts unknown.

Dr. Johann Georg Faust’s preoccupation with the occult allowed him to summon the devil, with whom he bartered his immortal soul for twenty- four years of pleasure. After sixteen years, Faust reconsidered and tried to re-negotiate the deal. As every high schooler knows, it didn’t go well for old Johann, either.

It went only a little better for St. Theophilus, who in his desire to become an archdeacon sought out a wizard to connect him with Satan. In a contract signed in his own blood, Theophilus agreed to renounce both Christ and the Virgin Mary. Theo too rethought his whole deal and repented. After forty days of fasting, the Virgin Mary appeared to Theophilus, chastised him for his blasphemy and most assuredly busted him across the knuckles with a metric. After much begging and thirty more days of fasting, Mary granted him Absolution and promised to intercede with God on his behalf.

It took another three more days of negotiation with Satan and a full confession to a bishop before Theophilus was unburdened from his contract, whereupon he died.

In this most recent and rarest of all presidential elections, we as Americans made our own pact with the devil, bartering our immortal soul for a peek up the skirt of the Statute of Liberty to see if she’s wearing panties.

We have witnessed a political race like no other in the history of our country. It is the ultimate cautionary tale- an election to establish not who we are but -hopefully-  who we are not.

It is beyond my understanding how the American electorate can pretend to be all shocked and shaken that we could not find in all this great land- from north to south, east to west, from sea to shining damned sea- two more likeable candidates for the highest office in the country?

Having peeped through the open window of our neighbor’s bedroom for years, how can we now possibly claim to be appalled that our presidential election has devolved into a reality show?

Rather than conducting a grand national debate on the issues which could serve to better us all, we had a peep show, where we hungrily gorged ourselves in real time on an endless loop of dirty laundry.

And why not? We have greedily leered as others have sold their souls to the devil for their Faustian fifteen minutes of fame. Given our collective attention span, that fifteen minutes is now closer to three so you have to cash in while the window is still open.

We have blithely watched as mothers cash in on their children’s porno movies, turning Kim Kardashian West into a national monument.

We are amused to have the anchor of a major news channel and a former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives in an argument reminiscent of Vikki Gunvalson and Tamra Judge of the Real Housewives of Orange County.

All that was missing was the smiling and smug but utterly delightful Andy Cohen.

(It is hard – if not downright gross- to imagine Tip O’Neal or Sam Rayburn saying to Walter Cronkite, “You’re obsessed with sex.”)

It is certainly the first election in which a major candidate has bragged he has a large penis. Not exactly Webster’s Reply to Calhoun.

Friends are lost because of political Facebook postings.

We’ve viewed emails, both public and private, heard about Donald Trump’s hands, Hillary Clinton’s ankles, and otherwise witnessed a shit show the likes of which makes the Hamilton- Burr duel seem downright genteel.

There is nothing off-limits. Sex. Religion. Race. There is nothing too personal to share or reveal.

Our national obsession with the profane is neither new nor even uniquely American, but we do have a new wizard of the occult, the twenty-four hour news cycle, whom we summon to conjure up demons big and small.

 We have relinquished our ability to know that some things are inherently wrong for a glimpse up the teacher’s skirt.

We have surrendered our license to think.

          I have seen the devil and it is us.

          As for me, I’ve got my own damn demons to dispel. So ninety- one days ago I decided to reset, to get back to First Principles, to try and calm the turbulence in my own small mind and soothe the unrest in my own unholy soul.

          While I cannot change the acrimony I see, I can change me.

 For I am the devil I know.

Whether as my own personal protest or perhaps as penitence, I decided to do ninety yoga classes in ninety days.

          It has forced me to discipline not just my body but my mind, reminding me that to transcend requires not only transcendence but, in fact, a starting place, a benchmark from which to transcend.

It is this part of yoga that has always held a mystical allure for me, not because of the transcendence but because it stabilizes me, it gets me back to myself- even when I’m a real asshole.

          The first principle is you have to be there- you have to show up. I have to make the time to go to class very day and I have to actually show up -because history gets made by those who show up.

          The next principle is that I have to start at the beginning, not in the middle. I have spent a lifetime starting in the middle. Whether from birth order (I am the youngest of three brothers), a nasty competitive streak, or a preternatural cosmic impatience, I have always simply wanted to be farther down the road than I deserved to.

My life before yoga was a high-wire act without a net, more style than substance and more balls than brains. It requires daring- and profound arrogance- to teach college at twenty-two and run for the legislature at twenty-three, particularly considering the fact that I was an utter fraud in both.

But on my mat, I have to start at the beginning; indeed, I have to start with my shortcomings. Not only do I have to show up every day, I have to be prepared, never one of my strong suits.

I have to get there early- not only to stretch and warm my creaky old muscles and joints but to prepare and open my mind for the challenges ahead.

To start class, I root my feet on all fours corners, grounding myself into the earth with a genuine stability I have never known. I lift and open my chest, place my hands in my prayer at my heart, and raise my head to the heavens.

All things considered, not a bad place to start for a dinosaur ex-fraternity boy from East Texas.

Throughout class, I have to remember to stay within myself even as I try to push beyond my limitations and realize that the power of a particular pose always comes in overcoming my own weakness of mind, body or spirit, not in flinging myself into them.

I have spent a lifetime flinging myself into poses, allowing momentum to propel me forward even when I was not remotely ready. But that only cheated me, depriving of discipline, focus, and, alas, genuine satisfaction.

As a result, I often find myself actually angry during class, almost always in those poses which make me fearful or uncomfortable or for which I am unprepared. Balance poses which combine any forward folding or twisting seem to positively wring anxiety out of me.

A simple half-moon can send me so far into the throes of terror and frustration that I can almost feel myself falling deeply into the abyss. A revolved half –moon can send me into years of therapy.

On my mat, I have nowhere to hide because no one is looking but me, so the demons are where they always were.

But at the end of each class, there is rest. It is more than physical recovery. For about three minutes, I lay quiet and still on my mat. The physical exertion has loosened the death grip that my fears have on my thoughts, allowing them to roam untethered, free of intent, purpose, or meaning.

In these moments, it is not simply the absence of motion but the actual presence of peace. Oddly, it is here where the yoga begins. If I transcend in these moments, it is from my own demons.

As a profoundly imperfect man, God knows that it enough.

There is no dealing with my demons. There is no minimizing them. There is no distraction from them through sleight of hand.  So I must accept it and surrender. Or get pissed off.

I have spent a lifetime dancing without a net on the wire, trying to prove my own worthiness to others even when I did not believe in it myself. A poor man’s Don Quixote, I tilted at windmills and slashed away at my demons with my wooden sword.

I cannot eliminate my demons but I can control myself- my breath, my focus, my patience, and my discipline.

This is my mastery. It may not be transcendental or pretty, but it is mine.

And I didn’t have to sell my soul for it.

           

           © Thomas C. Barron 2017

THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

“THE LONG GOODBYE, PART TWO: THE LONG RUN”

It is thirty-six years later and I find myself again on a synthetic track in the oppressive Texas summer sun, the heat still emanating from the ground in its familiar amoeba pattern. I am now at Woodrow Wilson High in Dallas and the ghosts of its two Heisman Trophy winners, Davey O’ Brien and Tim Brown, are keeping me company as I complete my run.

At 57, I now have an entire complement of ghosts- living and dead- to guide me through my day.

But today my heart is racing in an unfamiliar way and feel a slight skip every now and again, which will give a man my age a moment’s pause. My breath is choppy, my legs are wooden, and my back hurts with literally every step.

It is so much harder now.

But I push on, step by step, if for no other reason than I have absolutely no idea what else to do.

Just like 1981, I am running to fat again, undisciplined, and totally lacking in focus.

And I am scared to death. I am fearful in a way I have not been fearful before- not of the unknown but of the known.

I hate the things I know now.

I’m back to where this journey began, in the fervent and prayerful hope that I can reclaim some clarity and purpose.

For ten days now, I have been in what could only be called the mother of all existential funks, sleep -walking through days before falling, exhausted and usually drunk, into a fitful and dreamless sleep.

So, I’ve decided to go back to First Principles, to see if I could summon the courage to put myself together one more time from the scattered jigsaw pieces of fifty-seven years.

You see, ten days ago, I went to see my best friend.

He didn’t recognize me.

Before when I would visit, there would be hesitation and then recognition. I would sometimes actually see him mouth the words “Tom Barron” or “TC” and there might even be a slight glimmer of mischief in his eyes, as if he were remembering the nights he put the alligator in my bed or taught me to drink beer at the Deep Eddy Cabaret or found me naked on the floor of my apartment looking for a joint.

There were even those cherished moments when he could reconstruct entire episodes from our life, including several that alcohol has hazed over in my own memory.

In those moments, I thought I could see him digging into the deep recesses of his memory because it seemed important to him, as if he knew our lives were intertwined and that to know me was somehow to know himself.

But not this time. He looked at me with a vacant stare.

In one instant, thirty -nine years simply vanished- not just misplaced but gone forever.

Worse than that, it seemed as if he could no longer conjure the Herculean effort it took to try.

I made it through less than five minutes of idle chatter before I had to excuse myself. I stood in the bathroom, begging for the tears to come and cursing when they wouldn’t. I reached for everything I had in the arsenal: anger, humor, logic, prayer.

Nothing.

The last five minutes with him were a blur. I tried everything to garner some recognition. I felt like I do when I am trying to get my adorable but Buddha-like neighbor child to giggle, using whatever clownish expression I can muster without any sense of vanity.

Still nothing.

I couldn’t even find my own way out the door of his new facility, one which specializes in “memory care.”

There’s a little irony for you.

The tears found me on the way home. They were neither comforting or cathartic.

I’ve been a mess ever since, falling into fine but rigid patterns of hard-wired behavior:  withdrawal, isolation, and fear. And I have been drinking far much more than I should.

It was time to break those patterns. So, I went back to the track.

First Principles: Those things that are the hardest are best for you.

As I schlepped through the first lap, I had my first epiphany: Like him, I will never get better, only worse. Not only will I never be young and strong again, every slight memory lapse or moment of indecision will cause my heart to skip a beat. 

And I feel guilty as hell- not just for the fact that I cannot do anything for him or that I don’t see him as often as I should or even that I am still whole- but for something far more selfish and cowardly.

It is the fear I might be next.

I hate the things that I know.

It took only another lap in the hot morning sun to have another sunburst: It is not going to get easier, only harder. The drive to Austin will get longer and my visits will get shorter and decidedly less satisfying. Do I have the strength to keep doing it? What if it was me? Wouldn’t I want him to be there? Would he be? If he doesn’t know me, why go? If he doesn’t remember I’m there, why go? Does it help him? Does it hurt him? What purpose does it serve for him? For me?

I also hate the things I don’t know. And I hate the fact that I don’t know them.

I am at that point in my life where I am supposed to be wise and I am not. I am supposed to be at that point in my life where I am supposed to be able to help others and I cannot.

I hate things the things I know.

And is all this about a friendship which was- as Bill Hurt said in The Big Chill- for a short period of time a long time ago?

Or is our friendship truly enduring? Were we, in fact, born kindred souls? And does this moment define that friendship separate and apart from all that preceded it? If I fail him now, is that the legacy of my friendship?

I choose to believe in our friendship because to deny it is to truly erase those thirty-nine years.

But I also make that choice because of those people who have done the yeoman work for him, who have shouldered the load in ways I cannot imagine. Those who have been there for him are not always those who are the most demonstrably warm or open. Oftentimes, they appear just the opposite. But they have been there nonetheless, doing the hard things.

I have spoken to literally hundreds of his friends about his plight and all their pursed lips and false frowns of compassion together don’t add up to a bucket of warm spit. Their furrowed brows and mock whimpers are the same as they would have reserved for a crying baby or a dying aunt who had never been altogether civil to them. 

They are like those people who form committees to absolve themselves from further moral responsibility, who are in fact providing moral relief for themselves but very little practical relief to those who actually need it.

Epiphany number three: You never know who will who will be there for you.

This is how this one ends, my desperate attempt to understand karma and interconnectedness and that there is a tenderness in seemingly the most ostensibly hardened of us.

On Sunday, I will try to run the Too Hot to Handle 15k in Dallas, folly for even the most hardcore runner. At the 7:30 start, it will be 77 degrees and, when I finish (presumably sometime before mid-afternoon), it will be in the 80s.

Heart Attack City.

Maybe I am running precisely because it is hard, pushing my outer limits again because I owe it to him to do what is hard.  Maybe I am punishing myself. Maybe I am doing it because I need to know I can still push my own limits, that I can summon the will to get off the mat one more time.

Maybe this track is somehow a road back to a place where something good started years ago. Just because the track is a circle doesn’t mean it doesn’t go somewhere.

Or maybe I am just a lost pilgrim staggering toward redemption.

I don’t pretend to know. I know only that I am sad.

I hate the things I know.

© Thomas C. Barron 2017