"The Long Goodbye"

“THE LONG GOODBYE- PART ONE”

His hands tremble and he shuffles rather than walks. He remembers events from thirty-five years ago almost seamlessly, yet he claws desperately at recent memories. He has not been able to drive a car for some time. He no longer can manage his cell phone. He can no longer even live on his own. I now have to help him negotiate his seat belt. He lives in a nursing home.

He is sixteen days older than me.

He is my best friend.

            You see, my best friend is sick, very sick, and has been for some time. The doctors are now calling it dementia with Lewy bodies, but in truth they don’t really know what the hell it is.

For almost forty years, there has not been a significant event in our lives that we were not standing side by side. 

I was there when he got the news his father had died. I was there the morning he met his future wife. I stood best man at his wedding and him at mine. He is my son’s godfather and my wife is his son’s godmother. My mother calls him her fourth son. He drove all night to be with me the day we buried my father.

Now when he first sees me, there is a dark uncertainty in his eyes and the recognition comes slowly, a faint echo off some distant wall.

He is the most magnificent bastard I have ever known. Tall, dark and good looking, he had a devilish twinkle in his eyes said to be irresistible to the ladies. A spectacular vocal mimic, he was capable of bursting into a serviceable Sinatra medley at any given moment and could imitate the rhythm and cadence of almost anyone’s voice to great effect. He had great comedic timing and an edgy, razor-like wit, against which there was no known demurrer.

He was the top fraternity rushee in the state in the summer of 1978 and quite literally could have walked into any house on the University of Texas campus and gotten a bid. He became our fraternity State Rush Captain, overseeing a summer budget of almost $50,000.00. He was “tapped-in” as one of our representatives to the Silver Spurs service organization, a much-coveted honor. He once made an A in an upper division German class which I knew he had never actually attended, except for the spare forty-five minutes it took him to blitzkrieg the final exam. He helped elect a governor, was a real estate guy in 1980’s Dallas, and worked for one of the largest and most prestigious law firms in the state. With the possible exception of his seemingly genetic inability to shoot or dribble a basketball, I have never known anything that he couldn’t do.

He made a rather remarkable entrance into my life, not unlike a prison break or a South American soccer riot. In fact, he did not so much enter my life as I was swept up into his, a maelstrom of drunkenness, spontaneity, and hilarity which has lasted the better part of five decades and which has seen us through his father’s early death, college, law school, careers, wives, ex-wives, children, and now… this.

My first image of him was prone on his back beneath a stripper, a dollar bill folded long-ways and jutting upward as she gyrated above him while seventy-five fraternity boys and would-be fraternity boys whooped and hollered as only fraternity boys and would-be fraternity boys can.

He was wearing the most perfectly wrinkled blue oxford cloth button-down shirt I had ever seen, one which had never seen anything resembling an iron and which strongly suggested he may have slept in it. His sleeves were rolled up in the most elegantly haphazard manner possible, portraying that elusive go-to hell attitude I so greatly admired. His enviable military –grade khakis were not only baggy but slightly pegged at the cuffed and frayed bottom and were a trifle short, displaying lots of ankle and a pair of a splendidly worn Sperry Topsiders.

He was also wearing a Vantage Blue in his right hand and a longneck Budweiser in his left, balancing it all – as ever- in a sort of perfect disharmony which was already something of a trademark and which had already made him, even at eighteen, something of a legend.

That first night, as he charmed the pants off the stripper and everyone else in that room at the Albert Pick Motel in Houston, he was everything I aspired to be: independent, carefree, cocksure, and, I would learn, utterly brilliant, with a genuine intellectual pedigree which consisted of, among others, a firebrand civil rights lawyer, a University of Texas department chair, the Dean of the U.T. Liberal Arts school, and the first female member of the Wisconsin Bar Association.

I found it inconceivable that all these disparate elements could be amalgamated into one actual person. To combine them with a debonair style was beyond my ability to comprehend.

The truth was I was almost afraid to talk to him, fearful my own anemic credentials could never pass close scrutiny in such a world.

I had never met a boy my own age who intimidated me- the mere thought of such an admission could send one tumbling precariously down the Darwinian ladder of locker rooms and fraternity houses. On that first night, I simply assumed he was already an active member of the fraternity.  When I realized he was a mere rushee, I was all the more intimidated.

But my best friend has never been “mere” in his entire life. Hell, his fears, insecurities, and failures are large enough to put most people’s lives in.

The following morning we were both on a bus from Houston to New Orleans for the annual New Orleans State Rush Party, an event which often determined the fate of guys whose brothers had not been back- to -back state rush captains, as mine had. If one emerged unscathed from the Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s, the rather shopworn strippers, or the lure of the more forbidden delights of side- street hookers, one just might be asked to pledge. Ironically, it is sometimes the more calamitous behavior of some rushees which actually guaranteed their place in the pledge class, as the trip is the stuff of which legends are made.

In retrospect, it seems improbable if not downright suicidal that I would be reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World on a bus full of drunk frat boys rambling toward New Orleans, but that was precisely what I was doing. It was not that I was not against drunk fraternity boys nor morning drinking- it was simply that I did not drink beer, an admission I disliked making to anyone because it made me seem weird and unmanly, as if the whole reading- Aldous Huxley -on -a -bus -full – of - drunk -frat -rats thing hadn’t already sealed that particular deal.

Shockingly enough, the seat next to me on the bus was open, allowing me to read and smoke in peace. He appeared out of the void, plopping down luxuriously onto the seat beside me, bumming the first of thousands of cigarettes and giving me a graduate –level synopsis of the book and of many others. I learned that day that he could ad-lib with actual and presumed authority on almost any topic.

We talked all the way to New Orleans from Houston and discovered in due course that we both were life-long Democrats, that we were both to be liberal arts majors, and that our greatest aspiration in life was to be burnt –out trial lawyers, fighting the good fight to the bitter end, at which point we would die early in a blaze of glory, having thrown ourselves unflinchingly at the injustices which only we, in our infinite wisdom, could properly redress.

Before we had even gotten to New Orleans, it had already been decided that if we were to change the world, we would need a partner.

For good or for ill, we have been yoked together ever since.

Even in the dark days long before “bromances” and “man crushes,” our relationship would ultimately morph into something resembling that of an old married couple.

This would never be more evident than the night I laid twenty-six points on the Navy ROTC guys in an intramural basketball game at old Gregory Gym, wearing Stevie Wonder sweepback shades and a bandanna tied around my head. He had just pulled down a rebound, if in fact that’s what you call it when a basketball, as if on its own accord, happens to drop into your hands under the basket. As he had been strictly forbidden by me to ever even consider dribbling, I called for the ball as I drifted back for the outlet pass.

Rather than pass me the ball, he simply let it loose and dramatically called a time-out. I was immediately summoned to the bench and obliged to enjoy a short walk down the sideline, away from the others, when he stopped, looked me dead in the eyes, and with an uncharacteristic resignation in his voice, said, “T.C., you know I love you, right? But you’ve got to quit calling me ‘honey’ in front of the sailors.”

For the balance of the game, I, of course, launched into what would now be considered a politically incorrect falsetto every time he got the ball, until he eventually began throwing the ball out of bounds rather than throw it to me.

I tell him these stories now and sometimes I know he is feigning remembrance, but other times he contributes details cut out of whole cloth. He seems content then, if only for moment, but there is also frustration and anger in these moments of clarity, as if he realizes he is supposed to be someone else.

He is lost now and so am I.

This is usually the place in the blog where I transition into a discussion of yoga but I am at a loss as to how to do so, but this is a disease which allows for no smooth transitions and even fewer answers.

And then it hit me.

It is like those days when I find myself adrift on my mat, wondering why I do not feel inspired or even particularly grateful. While I would like to say that in every class there is always a moment of clarity or insight, that is not always true.

There are those days when I leave as empty as I entered, my practice devoid of meaning or purpose. And then there are those days when I find the deeper expression of a pose or some peace in a transition that had confounded me or perhaps even just the resignation that I must accept that a modification or the use of props to assist me in my journey.

Sometimes it is satisfying and sometimes it is not. But whatever my limitations, it is always a gift.

            I have to remember that my best friend is still a gift and that I must strive to find meaning and purpose in this newest incarnation of our friendship, even if that means- at first -as little as simply showing up.

And while I will miss the deeper meanings and expressions of our friendship, I am obliged to accept it as it is now and I pray we can modify our friendship to accommodate the limitations which confound it.

            The last time I went to see him, I took him a picture my brother had taken of the two of us on the bench the night we played the Navy ROTC guys. It was a picture of two guys who planned to change the world.

            I had placed it in a frame so he would have it for his room.

But he didn’t know where his room was.

© Thomas C. Barron, 2016

"Get This Fat Girl Off Me"

“Get This Fat Girl Off Me”

            With three letters and a mere syllable, I watched the weight of the world’s judgment descend upon my daughter’s ten year-old shoulders. It was as if a giant fist had seized her and literally squeezed the crocodile tears from her eyes.

            There has been a collision under the basket of my daughter’s ten and -under summer coed basketball league and my daughter had landed on a blonde boy, who had deployed the word out of embarrassment and frustration at having been man-handled by girl all game long.

Having volunteered to coach the summer league team, I had watched her confidence grow with each game. She was asserting herself more and more on both ends of the court and, more importantly, her self-assurance off the court had skyrocketed.

            But with the deployment of one word, this all disappeared in an instant. As she ran off the court with a splotchy face and tears in her eyes, my sad rage was the only thing maintaining my own humanity. Had I been able to unloose the gates of hell at that moment, I would have gladly done so.

            When she said she was quitting, I was very nearly blinded by anger.  I was struck by the metallic sound of my own voice.

            “No, you’re not,” I said, “go wash your face,” was all I could think to say.

            Her teammates- tough, inner-city kids quite fond of their designated rebounder, pick- setter and defensive stopper- were prepared to make the offender disappear on the spot.

            As a father, I was at a loss as to what to do. A post-game dissertation on institutional prejudice and the objectification of women seemed altogether inappropriate. Punching the coach was another option considered and ruled out as too indirect. A scathing op/ed piece in The Times was too remote.

            Thank God I was standing on a basketball court because, as a basketball guy, I knew exactly what to do.

            So when she returned, I said this to her, “We may both get kicked out of this sumbitch, but the next time he comes down the lane, drop him like a sack of ashes.”

            I know. Father of the Year.

            Her teammates were admonished to open the lane to make an inviting target and the blonde boy dribbled directly into the kill zone, whereupon my daughter drilled her shoulder into his sternum and sent him crashing ignominiously to the floor, his perception of fat girls forever and inalterably changed. 

            My sense of satisfaction almost made me sick.

            All of a sudden, eighteen kinds of hell broke loose. The blonde kid crying. His parents screaming. The opposing coach calling for my ouster and banishment from the league. The referee actually making the foul call.

            And in the midst of the chaos, I glimpsed my daughter observing the scene with the wizened countenance of a major league pitcher who has deliberately hit an opposing batter- all business. I was almost as proud of her teammates for masking their glee. I do remember them surrounding her like a pride of lions, their wary looks telling the ten year –old hoops world a new enforcer had been born.

            I distinctly remember the opposing coach insisting she be ejected immediately and perhaps burned at the stake. The referee’s reply was the one I had hoped for:

“I heard what he said.”

While I am not proud of my behavior that day, I am less ashamed because the incident seemed to propel my daughter’s self –assurance into another dimension. She had taken their best and cheapest shot and emerged a larger, more complete young woman.

In that moment, I believe she ceased being a fat girl. In fact, her already bigger-than-life personality has become even more robust and expansive in the twenty years since the incident. It is as if her shape and size had been sculpted from the inside out to accommodate her grand spirit. In that moment, she began to grow into herself.

The fat girl has done okay: she played in a Dallas Parochial League basketball championship, swam in two state high school swim meets, joined a college sorority and was invited to join the Dallas Junior League- all supposed bastions of mean girls with reputations for intolerance. 

More importantly, she has earned her college degree, is wildly successful in a job which perfectly suits her talents and personality, works tirelessly for charity, is a true and loyal friend, and is fiercely protective of family and friends.

She has taken on the role of enforcer in all aspects of her life as a natural extension of her own empowerment.

And she has found love.

And it could have been so different.

 

It has been my experience that one does deploy the word fat by accident. It is a tactical nuclear strike designed to cripple one’s enemy.

The word carries with it a payload of institutional negativity so profound that no one dares even challenge the underlying (and fraudulent) notion that bigger women are not as beautiful as smaller women.

As shown above, there is no room for a proportional response. The only proper counterstrike is carpet bombing the enemy.

My yoga practice has allowed me to see true beauty- the beauty others see in themselves. The internal focus of a yoga practice radiates beauty both inwardly and outwardly. There is no greater interpersonal gravitational pull than a confident woman- yet it is an attraction that only a strong and secure man (or woman) can truly appreciate.

In almost any yoga class, traditional definitions of beauty are thrown to the winds, giving way to the tightly controlled dance of concentration, balance, focus, and power that is in all of us. Beauty is not always found in the yogis who achieve the fullest depth of a pose but rather in those yogis who stay within themselves, accepting where they are along the path.

True beauty resides in the peace of that moment of acceptance. For in that moment of acceptance is the ever-hopeful notion that there will be another moment, that their journey will continue, and that they will continue to evolve in their wisdom and in their beauty.

That beauty exists in the eyes and in the countenance. It exudes from the spirit within. It is a beauty borne of hard work, discipline and self-sacrifice. It is beauty that not all can accept. It should not be easily squandered.

There can be no lying or falsity in that beauty. There can be no objectified physical ideal of a woman. There can no airbrushing, photo-shopping or touchups.

And there are no fat girls.

"Lamentations of a Fifty-Something White Guy"

THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

“Lamentations of a Fifty- Something White Guy”

            My once fabulous gay friends are now paunchy but adorable as they excuse themselves early to relieve the babysitter. The President of the United States is a black man. My daughter is a high- powered business woman. Computer geeks are the richest people on the planet.

But I was born into a world run by fifty-something white guys. And while we no longer live in that world, my expectations of myself are premised upon the notion that I should exert authority, wield influence, and be financially stable and secure, an unerring source of protection and comfort for others.

            Growing up, I was told one should bear up manfully against all manner of crises and dutifully shoulder the load so as to be a “good provider” for my wife and family.

            Anything less was utter, abject failure.

            You first learn that boys don’t cry. Tears were the acceptance of failure. If you cry, you’re a sissy and acting like a girl. Which would mean you couldn’t be in charge because women can’t be the boss. It could also mean you’re gay. And if you’re gay, you can’t be big and strong and have muscles and exert authority and power. And if you’re gay, you can’t have a family because only straight married men can have families.

            In fact, boys of my era were not allowed the luxury of any emotions except hubris and anger. If you won, you got to gloat but it was better if you didn’t. If you lost, you were pissed off. And you used that anger as fuel to win the next time.  

            All other human emotion in boys was superfluous and the subject of intense scrutiny- not to mention anxiety. Sensitivity and creativity was suspect as unmanly and irrelevant. Even intellectual curiosity was regarded with some suspicion, a way station for selfish and unproductive behavior.

And in the midst of all this, I was told I had the advantages as a white male.

But for me, this advantage was the privilege of suppressing any independent and creative urge I had, rigidly adhering to strictures of race, sex and money I found repugnant, and otherwise living a life of mindless conformity- all so I could cling to some fraudulent posture of prosperity inexplicably reserved for white American males.

And for far too many years, white males were the beneficiary of some sort of unexplained cosmic largesse. 

Bu there was this:

            “To whom much is given, much is expected.”

I think that’s from the gospel of Luke.

I think.

 

And this:

“‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.’"

Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby.

I know that one for sure.

For me, these advantages came with unwanted responsibility and unintended consequences.

No matter how hard I worked or how far out of my way I went to disavow these advantages, it was always assumed that I had attained what I had through privilege and station, not hard work, discipline or even creative sunburst.

Yet the truth is I matriculated into a world without a Good Old Boy Network.

Even more galling is the notion that I could actually be part of the problem, the attempt to associate me with an “establishment” that no longer exists in any identifiable form.

The true irony in this is that I have tried to help-in word and deed and spirit –to dismantle these archaic notions throughout my life.

My bona fides in this regard are beyond reproach- so don’t even try:

The worst -kept secret in Tyler, Texas in the late seventies was that I had a black girl friend in high school- a place and time you could still get lynched behind that shit.

I survived the “Political Correctness” rhetorical movement in graduate school in the early eighties, where I took more than one punch for opening a door and lighting a cigarette for female classmates.

I was part of the first law school class in SMU history with more women than men.

My church would not be happy with my views on gay marriage.

My general attitudes and outlooks about the world in general were shaped more by literature than business, more by Fitzgerald and James Baldwin than Lee Iacocca (for my younger readers, think Donald Trump).

I did all this in times and places where it was neither easy nor popular to do: locker rooms, country clubs, fraternity houses, and deb parties.

Before you even say, Oh poor Tom, he had it so rough, my father was a poor boy Golden Gloves boxing champ from North Tyler who fought and charmed his way from Homer Hester’s corner filling station to the country club in one generation.

The charter given to my brothers and myself was production. “Putting something back in the pot,” a mandate my Depression-era born father was more than fond of pronouncing.

My parents saw to it that we performed. My brothers and I navigated the shark-filled waters from junior high school football to frat –boy politics to debutante balls to law school because we felt the obligation to carry the torch onward and indeed tried to do so without the awkwardness or crassness of first generation wealth.

We didn’t just have to do it- we had to make it look easy.

The mere introduction of a discordant note in those circles could have moved things back decades if not generations.

Sensitive boys who want to go to Paris and be writers had best button their lips.

You might not have to hide your Playboys but you damn well better not get caught reading something that was not on the Honors English reading list, much less something written  by a gay black revolutionary.

Hiding behind my Economics textbook was not a centerfold but James Baldwin, Jerzy Kosinski, Amiri Baraka or Erica Jong- the kind of seditious literature that could get your ass whipped quickly if not permanently in East Texas.

Accordingly, I am a servant of two masters with equal presumptive rights to my soul, the one to which I feel a certain obligation and the one to which my allegiance naturally gravitates.

The yoga practice I have differs from the yoga practice I want because one part of me requires performance while the other part is willing to accept the consequences of failure.

My practice remains a microcosm of the pitched battle being waged for my soul.  I have never been fully rid of the expectations I have of myself, which intrude daily into my attempts to accept failure as a means of growth and which explains the rage I cannot entirely control.

Yoga is a means to sort out the inherent contradictions in my life. I would have feared much less in my life –and, ironically, succeeded more- had I accepted failure early on.

Had I known early on that falling out of a balance pose builds the muscles and the muscle memory to ultimately achieve the posture, I would have known that most things in life are not heaven-sent and didn’t always have to look easy.

My inability to stand on one foot is a mirror into my soul: Do I stand here cursing myself for my failure or do I concentrate on why I failed? Was it my failure to maintain my gaze at a fixed point? Did I forget to stand on one foot as if I were standing on two? Did I draw up chest higher to lighten the load? Did I simply forget to breathe? Too much coffee for breakfast? Or was I just plain trying too damn hard?

Or am I simply unworthy and helplessly broken?

Yoga has given me insight that my self-loathing and anger has become not just irrelevant but dead weight slowing my journey.

I’ve spend a lot of my life trying – in one way or another- to stand on one foot. When I failed, I cursed myself for failing despite the advantages that I have had. Failures have sent me into downward spirals which take weeks and months to correct.

I have never been able to simply trust in these dark times that my failures cleared the path for peace, self –containment, understanding and enlightenment: a path forged by me alone, where my feet were sure and light and the road ahead less frightening as the challenges had already been faced directly rather simply providing an excuse to descend into meaningless self-pity.

Yoga has taught me my failures are not the result of my fundamental unworthiness and that dwelling upon such things will not forward this pilgrim’s progress one step as I continue my wretched stagger toward redemption.

Next time: “Get this fat girl off me.”

"SEX TAPES AND CHRISTMAS LIGHTS"

“SEX TAPES AND CHRISTMAS LIGHTS”

 Before the Kardashian sisters oozed their way into the American spotlight, the gold standard for dark-haired, doe-eyed beauty was set by the Evans girls of Fry Street in Tyler, Texas: Shelley, Kelley, and Holley. If you were a male born between 1955 and 1972, you more than likely had a serious jones for one or more of the Evans girls.

            To my knowledge, the Evans girls still hold the southern regional record for Cut-Off Levi Wearing, Sister Division. They babysat, waterskied, went to sock hops, raised money for charity by doing car washes, dated quarterbacks and pitchers, and learned hand to hand combat in movie theaters and parked cars.

            And they had the absolute, ultimate, greatest Christmas light show. Ever.

            As in the entire history of Ever. It was massive display of lights visible from space long before Google Earth. It was the capstone of Christmas light viewing, which in Tyler, Texas is rightly considered an art form.

            And not one of the Evans girls earned their reputation by doing a below average homemade sex tape with a third-rate rapper, whose real claim to fame was being the brother of a second -rate pop singer. (When Aretha Franklin or Alicia Keys tells me Brandy is an R and B singer, then I’ll take it under advisement.)

            Unlike Kris Kardashian Jenner, whose own claim to fame was being divorced from one of O.J.’s lawyers, Maxine Evans is one mother who would have been heard on the subject of a sex tape and I can all but guarantee the phrases “not one of my daughters” and “take her over my knee” would have been deployed early in the conversation. And I can’t even begin to conceive of the medieval shit Everett Evans – a bruiser of a guy seemingly built to be the father of three pretty girls- would’ve come up with in this situation.

But we live in a world of “brands” and not dignity, a world where a mother would not only countenance her daughter’s homemade sex tape but use it as a stepping stone to pimp out the balance of her clan.

The sad thing about it all is that it wasn’t even Kris Jenner’s idea in the first place. The publicity arc of homemade sex-tape gets leaked/beautiful girl becomes famous for being famous/ starts perfume line/gets appearance fees for showing-up/has reality show/dates a series of rich guys had already been charted by another genius, Paris Hilton.

Just one look at Bruce Jenner‘s face should tell you everything you need to know about Kris Jenner in the first place.

What does all this have to do with yoga?

Nothing. And everything.

You see, my dear old friend Holley Evans is among my small but deeply disturbed readership. She had lost a leg thirty-four years ago in a boating accident.

After my last installment in which I implored everyone to attempt a yoga pose at home, I got a message from Holley which assured me that my wise-ass old friend had not changed much over the years.

She asked simply: Should I try it leg on or leg off?

I could actually see the smirk on her face and the evil twinkle in her eye when I read it.

I replied that she was still one of my favorite smart -alecks and that she had found her inner yogi. I may not have been kidding.

In typical Evans Girl fashion, she didn’t ask if, she asked how.

The essence of a yoga practice is having the dignity and courage to accept who we are and to modify or adjust our true selves to achieve any pose. It is only from a fearless physical inventory that we are able to achieve the poses we are attempting.

Legs are too short, arms are too long, and shoulders are too wide for certain poses, forcing us to modify and adjust our stances with our feet, the position of our hands or the alignment of our head, hips, shoulders, or arms. Shoulders do not rotate enough, hips are too open, and -wait for it- some people are too limber.

A month or so ago, I was next to this clearly advanced yogi who had to be constantly adjusted in order to reach the full expression of poses because she suffered from what the swami calls a “bendy” back, i.e., she is too flexible and can in fact get injured just trying to get any stretch at all. Throughout the class, she was adjusted and modified in order to get some stretch and not injure herself.

For a man quite proud to simply touch his toes with straight legs, this is not exactly my problem.

Throughout most of my classes, I mostly hear but do not see my fellow yogis, but this day I could sense an advanced practice next to me: the steady flow of breath, the smoothness of transitions within postures and from one posture to the next, the stillness and strength in the holding of poses, and the lightness of movement that comes from strong, engaged muscles and a properly focused mind.

The irony came at the end of class when she was putting on her hoodie.

She had one hand.

I was truly disappointed that I had missed seeing her practice because I missed the modifications necessary for her to do poses. I am far from a formal student of yoga but I am a true fan of the practice and this would have been a treat, watching her smoothly transition through the advanced stages of poses with one arm. 

Like watching Kevin Durant win a three-point shooting contest- with one arm.

Later, it struck me that Holley and this woman actually have a certain advantage in yoga as they are exceedingly cognizant of their own unique physicality and have spent a lifetime adjusting and modifying as a matter of course.

So when I asked my teacher, Jennifer Hensley (periodically referred to herein as simply The Swami), about how one would do a lunge with one leg, I should not have even been mildly surprised when she immediately asked about the nature of Holley’s prosthetic, its range of motion and ability to rotate and then proffered the solutions of using a chair or a bolster to modify entry into or holding the poses.

It took about thirty seconds, start to finish. Within three more minutes, she provided a variety of adjustments and modifications which could be used as Holley’s practice progressed further.

(I had forgotten that Jennifer and Lotus Yoga had begun a yoga class for veterans under the auspices of the Wounded Warrior project and as such is particularly attuned to dealing with adjustments and modifications of this sort. Interesting, Holley’s son is a soldier recently returned from Iraq safe and sound.)

Like the rest of my journey, I was amazed at the simplicity and practicality of it all.

But it was more than that.

Holley’s unique physicality underscores all our uniqueness.

Perhaps for the first time in my pilgrimage, I came to actually accept there is no perfect pose for the cover of a yoga magazine, those Kardashian moments of air-brushed, beatific-faced fraudulence which hide more than they reveal.

A perfect yoga pose is what is perfect for our own bodies at that moment in time and nothing more. Everyone achieves their depth in a pose in due time, aided by teachers, modifications, adjustments, props, patience, discipline and a honest appraisal of our own weaknesses and strengths.

This was yet another moment when my practice reached across time and space, harmonizing my past with my present. I am proud of my old friend, my teacher and myself, where I came from, where I am and where I hope to go.

One last thing. I think yoga magazines should show people falling more.

It may be the only way I’ll ever make a cover.

© Thomas C. Barron 2014

THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

“Breathless”

            I remember the waves crashing against me and my strength giving out. I remember my arms feeling like lead and my legs simply not working. I remember craning my neck to see how far I was from shore and the diving platform. I even remember going under and swallowing a mouthful of nasty lake water.

            But more than anything else, I remember that moment of utter panic when I realized I wasn’t going to make the swim from the boat dock to the diving platform. It was a physical shock which drove the breath from my lungs and paralyzed the rest of me.

            I was going to drown.

            I made it back up just long enough to see a red–suited lifeguard flying down the hill to the lake on the dead run and then entering the water in a full-on Mark Spitz racing dive. (Even his name was perfect: Paul Champion. It sounds like something the Southpark guys would dream up.)

The next thing I knew, I was being pulled up from under the surface and hauled ignominiously back to shore, a seven year-old weakling kid who couldn’t even make it to the diving platform.

It seems inconceivable but that was my first instinct, a wave of self–loathing that I had humiliated my brothers, my family and myself by being such a physical abortion. (The cruelty of my brothers’ teasing was often in direct proportion to whatever perceived shame I had visited upon them and, well, this was a doozy.) This was not just humiliation but a public humiliation and someone else–a lifeguard, for God’s sake- had to pull my ass out of the ditch. The taunts of their friends would burn their ears and I would pay the price in my tears and their disdain.

I know this sounds all very melodramatic.

It also happens to be true.

Not true in a sense.

True.

            There are those who would I say I am a man who cheated death that day and I should live each day as if it were my last.

Well, trust me on this one. That’s a load of shit.

            Far from acceptance of my own mortality and an invitation to embrace all the good in the world, this was an early object lesson in the assertion of my will:

This will by-God NEVER happen to me again. I will never feel this way again. I will live my life in such a way as to control each aspect of it, right down to people’s perceptions of me. No one will ever have to pull me out of the drink again. People won’t ever have to feel sorry for me again.

            Strangely, I didn’t even cry that day, even when I saw my mother’s hands pushing her not insignificant head of hair away from her forehead while bouncing on her tiptoes, a nervous gesture she generally reserves for births, surgeries, and close playoff games.

            Instead, I ran to the woods, squatted down, pulled my arms over my head in shame and held my breath, every fiber in my body tense and rigid to meet whatever blow would land on me.

Some scholars have called this the “fight or flight” instinct. Wrong. Take it from the youngest brother of three, there are times when you can’t fight or fly.

Sometimes you just curl up in a ball and take an ass-whipping.

            In those situations, you hold your breath to keep it from getting knocked out of you.

            Or you hold it so you won’t swallow lake water and drown.

 

            I smoked for twenty-seven years, which means I held my breath for about ten thousand hours between 1975 and 2002. (Do the math: a pack a day at twenty cigarettes per pack at five to six minutes per cigarette comes up to about an hour a day when accounting for inhaling and exhaling. Multiple that by 365 days a year for twenty-seven years. That’s 416 days.)

            I have also received over eighty jury verdicts in the last twenty-six years, which means I’ve heard that knock on the jury door eighty times. That too will knock the breath out of you.

            I have witnessed the birth of my son, preached in churches, stared down tavern –keepers and judges, ran a political campaign, been the victim of a violent crime, and coached in six basketball championship games.

            And I have fallen in love.

            Each one of these things will take your breath away.

            So yoga has its hands full.

 

We talk a lot about breathing in yoga, as if it is entirely new thing- which for me at least- I guess it is. We talk primarily about controlling the breath, as opposed to losing it. We talk about synchronizing our breath with our movements, trying to time our transition from one stage of a pose to the next with our breath in order to move ourselves in strong, mindful ways rather than flinging ourselves into poses.

We talk about “catching our breath,” another phrase I never truly understood until yoga.

When you are trying to move your body in syncopation with your breath, the breath can get behind movements and you try to literally catch up to your movements. I never really thought about that before yoga. It is essentially the same in running, when you speed up unmindfully to catch up with your opponent, leaving you gasping. This is why runners with a great “kick” have an advantage – they know when they are going to make their move and do so with purpose, i.e., in syncopation with their breath.

            I try to remember to breathe before I do anything now. Before I even lay down my yoga mat before class, I have to think about my breath. But like with anything else, the things you are trying not to do are generally more important than what you are actually trying to do.

            First, don’t hold your breath. Seems simple to people who didn’t smoke for twenty-seven years.

            Second, don’t breathe through your mouth. Breathe in through your nose and out through your nose as much as possible. Breathe into the diaphragm, not the lungs- much larger capacity. It will keep your heart rate from accelerating. You can control your heart rate this way rather than being reactionary.

Third, adjust your activity level to your breath. Breathe first. This is what Serena Williams is talking about when she says the tennis match looks to be “in slow motion.” What she means is that she is controlling her breathing. Her response to the pace of the action isn’t rushed or panicked. Instead, she is able to dictate it her own response and control the tempo of the match.

Also, time the length of your inhale with the length of your exhale. Try not to hesitate in between. Let it flow.

Finally, don’t beat yourself up for not breathing. You will fail.

            If your breath is regular and not panicked, your mind is clearer and you can concentrate more fully on the task at hand, like trying to figure out why you are trying to balance on one foot with your hands over your head in the first damn place.

            I breathe all the time now since starting yoga. I breathe at the grocery store, in my car, in Mass on Sunday, and sometimes I even breathe in court. I breathe on the golf course while putting, which allows me to control my heart rate. Three steady inhale and exhale breaths through my nose until my heart calms, I smile a bit to relax my face, and then I stroke the putt, which now goes only three feet past the cup as opposed to six.

            If I had known yoga at seven, I might not have almost drowned. I might not have panicked and I might have been able to roll onto my back and float until my breath regulated. I could’ve sent fresh oxygen to my lungs and to my brain, which would have relaxed me, allowed me to think clearly and then send a more soothing message onward to my flailing arms and legs.        

            If I remember to breathe now, I find myself much less likely to lash out in anger or frustration. I lean toward defensiveness in all things, whether ducking a punch and protecting myself from humiliation by adopting a cocksure, reactionary mask. The closer someone gets in discovering my disguise, the more defensive and flinty I tend to get. My reactions in those situations are rote in any event, owing less to the truth of my feelings than to the construction of a plausible public persona.

This is yet another learned behavior I often try to dismiss as an occupational hazard but the truth is this whole “never let ‘em see you sweat” thing is just another failed paradigm in my life.

The fact is there is nothing more obvious and sad than seeing a carefully crafted exterior crumble, whether it be a sweaty Wall Street –type doing the perp walk for insider –trading or a lawyer consumed by flop-sweat after making a closing argument fumble and trying to cover it up with even bigger words than the ones which failed him initially.

For me, it is as if my body has its own truth that I must accept. The moisture at my hairline tells me I was not prepared or thoughtful, a damnation of whatever petty falsity or disingenuousness I had concocted.

            I am a hare learning to be a tortoise, trying to accept that the difference between truthfulness and a brilliant disguise is often as simple as taking the time to breathe -and accepting the notion that people might actually like the person I am rather than the person I let them see.

© 2014 Thomas C. Barron

HOME: PART THREE- “THE ‘A’ PARTY LIST”

My yoga studio, Lotus Yoga, is located in the heart of East Dallas and basks in the reflected neon glow of the iconic Lakewood Theater marquee. It is a shanked nine-iron from the Lakewood Country Club and within a good spitter’s range of Whole Food’s Market, the spiritual center of the New East Side. While its property values skyrocket as young professional types flock to the area in search of cheap land and craft beer, the East Side steadfastly maintains its distinct bohemian vibe, a nurturing bosom for scholarly, creative and independent thought.

So falling out of Warrior III or Revolved Triangle would generally entail me crash –landing on some innocent history professor or creative writing instructor from one of the local colleges. I almost suffocated a blogger once falling out of Half Moon and broke three ribs on a poor graphic designer coming out of a headstand. Or I might simply flatten one of the chefs, set designers, Thai masseuses, artists, dancers, interior designers, writers, teachers or lawyers who regularly share their practice there.

The space itself is sparse and utilitarian: a tiny desk to the left of the front door and cubbies for one’s shoes, purse and handgun to the right. Beyond that is the main yoga area. It is carpeted and can comfortably accommodate about twenty–five normal size yogis who haven’t had a big dinner. In the back, there is a small room for private lessons and massage, a bathroom, changing space, water fountain and storage spot for mats and the all-important Navajo blankets.

                But the studio is just a vessel, a safe haven for the broken, the lost, the fearful, the hurt, the nerdy, and the weird.

We are all broken.

If you don’t know that, you’ve never been to a yoga class.

There will be a point in every yoga class where the realization hits you that you simply cannot do a pose because your body or mind will not let you.

There is no “powering through it” or “getting mean” or “showing it who’s boss.”

For some, it is balance poses. For them, it might be inability to focus the gaze on an immoveable object or weak ankles or poor orientation.

For others, it is forward folds, which involve a hell of a lot more than just touching your damn toes. Trust me, it is hard to breathe comfortably in that position without first knowing how to engage one’s core and orient one’s back (flat, not rounded) and align one’s head (top of the head forward, not up- too hard on the neck). Even at that, you might just have tight hamstrings, like most Olympic sprinters.

When you start combining balance poses with flow (the transitioning from one pose to the next using syncopated breathing), the fun really begins. People have been known to move far away from me when this part of the class starts, often as far as Cleveland.

In order to get a feel for what I’m talking about, let’s all try this at home.

Find an open spot away from anything expensive.

Begin in a runner’s lunge with one knee bent over the ankle while the other leg is extended as far behind you as you can comfortably get it with your back knee on the ground. Curl your back toes. Make sure your feet are wide enough apart to support you. Your hands are down flat on the floor and you are looking down.

Now lift your back knee off the ground.

Uh, huh.

Now lift your hands off the floor a bit so only the tips of your fingers are touching. For five counts.

You’re sweating some now.

Now raise both arms over your head with a straight back.

How many of you fell on your ass?

Liars.

This transition is basic but hard as hell. It requires balance between the feet -front and back and side to side. It requires great core strength to stay on ones fingertips with your body rising up. The transition to get the arms overhead seems impossible until you realize that it is harder to stay on your fingertips than to rise up.

All the teetering and sweating and falling is part of your practice. It awaits you every day. In fact, the joy and wonderment of your yoga practice is knowing and accepting that you will fail at something every class.

In the words of this generation, it is often an Epic Fail.

But for those with the stones to accept that challenge every day, there are moments of breakthrough and utter joy. After my first headstand, I was telling perfect strangers about it in line at the cleaners, my wife having vetoed the full–page ad.

There is also a childlike wonder in every class as someone does something really cool. Today, my buddy Damien did this transition from Plow where he pulled his legs over his head and flipped over, landing in a perfect pushup position.

(Alright, smartasses, in case you don’t believe me, look at the video below.)

It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

I am fifty-three years old. I don’t get to feel like I’m eight very often.

I strongly recommend it.

Now Damien is in his mid-twenties and could go bear hunting with a switch. He has a rangy, muscular frame like the soccer player he used to be. But even he has trouble with certain alignments, which produces not Schadenfreude but an even better understanding that we all struggle.

We have the CFO of a huge investment concern who had a heart attack before he was forty and who jokes this “hippie shit” not only has healed him physically but has helped his professional career, as well.

We have former ballerinas who have trouble standing on one foot.

            There are former high school football players who have trouble with pushups.

            We have a high school middle-distance runner who could run to Tibet and back but who forgets to breathe during poses.

But there is also the professional writer–a former rakehell whose demons she routinely revisits in her monthly column-who could hold a plank pose in a typhoon.

We have a high-powered fifty-something corporate litigator who drops his suspenders and contorts his large frame into Mermaid pose, an impossible affair which requires twisting back with his right hand to grasp his right foot while keeping his chest open to the sky.

While balancing on one knee.

We have Damien’s pregnant wife who can do Warrior III with a baby on board, standing on one straight leg with both arms outstretched in front of her and her opposite leg kicked back in line with her arms, like a “T.”

Yep- got a picture of that, too. See below.

I’ve seen seventy- year old women do headstands and stocky rugby players reach back to grab their feet in Bow pose.

This is my new “A-Party List,” the people who I see every day aspiring to make themselves whole again, even if it means staring directly at their own demons.

Through our movements in class, we step forward into our futures without fear and into our pasts without judgment or attachment. New poses are attained through discipline and patience while we learn from the failures of our past.

We all come to the room with different gifts, different inadequacies and different fears, yet we come mostly without ego or pretense or even expectation.

But mainly, we just come. We each decide for ourselves that the journey lasts at least one more day. As the Swami says, the hardest part is getting to your mat, making the decision to confront both the best and worst parts of yourself one more time.

We aren’t just broken.

We are also whole.

NEXT TIME: Breathing is very important.

© (2014) Thomas C. Barron