The excessive dryness and unseasonable warmth make me anxious. Sixties fahrenheit and dry may feel good in San Francisco, but here it just is out of place for the existing flora and fauna. Still, I made sure to get out and enjoy the exquisite afternoon that it was. I find the skies of drought achingly beautiful and mysterious.
It was also nice, but peculiar to go out into the backyard and pick nearly a pint of ripe grape tomatoes.
All around town there are dry cleaning emporia that advertise their ability to do alterations. They are not offering complete transformations. Rather, they are offering to take down a hem or to shorten it, to take in the waist or let it out, to mend a tear or broken closure, or to make an article of clothing more up to date. The intention is to make what is altered better fit the current owner and to have it work and look its best. A tailor handed an existing piece of clothing for alteration cannot change the cloth out of which it is made or change the essence of the design.
I think the point of the yoga practices is like bringing a piece of clothing to a tailor to be altered. We cannot change our essential nature or basic form, but with the practices we can fit better in our own skins and make the clothing that is our body show us and others our best and most effective self.
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The question every yoga teacher is asking when offering the teachings to students.
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Creating and seeing
Both division and unity
Is awfully human.
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I think of the yoga practices as a useful tool. No more, no less. Striving for enlightenment or deeming anyone enlightened just creates problems. But maintaining a steady and well-rounded practice because it can make one a little happier, a little healthier, a little kinder, and a little more adaptable in the face of change–that’s all for the good.
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We are composed of nothing different than earth, water, fire, air, and space, and much of yoga practice (as are related practices such as ayurveda) is designed to recognize and align our elemental identity. It is human nature to manufacture, just as it is the nature of a beaver to make a dam or a termite to make a mound of mud that displaces what was in its path. Why then is it so common to think of man-made as completely separate from “nature” rather than to recognize the wild and extraordinary creations of humans as an integral part of the complex fabric of being on this planet?
Photos taken on a Thanksgiving trip shared with friends and family: DC to NJ, Cape Cod, and back to NJ before heading home. Without the time on highway and train, I could not have seen so much “nature” in so short a time. Nor, might I add, would I have appreciated being out exposed to the wind and water without the shelter and protection of manufactured goods (including houses, cars, and clothing, etc). This does not mean, of course, that to live better, we should not seek to balance and diminish our consumption of resources for our protection and comfort.
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Far better to do the right thing from a selfish or petty intention than a destructive, wasteful, or cruel thing with the best of intentions.
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Cape Cod Museum of Art
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