Snow
Originally uploaded by Tokyorosa
The Photo
Not today's snow, but the result of a storm from two years ago.
The Day So Far
A lazy morning. Lunch with Marshall and his friend Nick, David, Raeanna. We eat Mexican food at Garcia’s on Fourth Street and exchange gifts. Nick has rellenos. Marshall has green chile chicken enchiladas. Rae has a hamburger and fries and I have menudo and chicharrones. Marshall and Nick have to leave town after lunch and David has to return to work. I’d missed Rae’s 18th birthday, so I tell her that we should go shopping. She can pick out whatever she wants. We go to Target and she picks out some bath towels, some perfume, underwear, fuzzy blue slippers, a couple of baby things. She has decided to name the baby, a girl, Briseas. I guess it makes as much sense as naming a baby Raeanna. I tell her to take some candy to Julian and she picks out some turtles. When we come out of Target, it’s snowing. (I had watched the snow move down the Sandias, wondering if we’d see any of it in town.)
I drop Rae off at her apartment and head back to Leah’s place. I am house sitting while she is in Mexico. There’s a notice on the door about an attempted flower delivery. The notice says to call and I do, expecting that they’ll return to deliver the flowers. The woman on the phone suggests that I go pick them up because it costs her money every time she has to deliver something. I don’t even get pissed off when she says this. (They’re not my flowers, after all. And if they were, I’d’ve just said I’d prefer to have them delivered.) I just want to laugh at her really. After I hang up, I pet Sam. I’m not brave in the face of snow, so he has to forgo his walk and settle for a few rounds of fetch in the tiny yard. I feel guilty, so I give him a handful of treats and let him nap while I write this.
Poem
A poem by James Tate:
Goodtime Jesus
Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn't afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How 'bout some coffee? Don't mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey. I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.
Yogini
Bea my teacher is sitting crosslegged on a slight platform at the far side of the room, but the room is so small that even though my yoga mat is close to the door, I’m really only a few feet away from her. The rooom is crowded and people have surrounded Bea with their mats. A young dark-haired woman comes in late and I have to move my mat to accomodate her. Normally this would irritate me, but today it doesn’t.
At the start of each yoga session, we sit on our mats and chant together, an opening invocation. Practice hasn’t begun, but Bea is sitting with her eyes closed and her hands in a curious almost lotus-like position, palms facing upward, a kind of modified gyan mudra. She says, “You must take your dreams into your own hands,” and as she says this, a line of four women to her left rise in a kind of swaying odissi dance. They are accompanied by a man with a stringed instrument similar to a sitar.
As they dance, another man begins to move through the room. He is carrying something I’ve never seen before, a long wooden pole with a metal cup near one end. He charges it at a standing object that at first glance I mistakenly think is on fire. He comes towards me with the pole and I am embarrassed to be singled out. As he moves the cupped end of the pole toward me, I close my eyes. I can feel the vibrations from the cup though he doesn’t touch me with it. It’s a strange feeling, but not unpleasant. After a moment, he moves away from me and returns to the standing object to recharge the cupped end of the pole.
I think he is finished with me, but he is not. He moves toward me and I watch him, but again as he reaches out with the cupped end of the pole, I close my eyes. This time he places the cup on my shoulder and I can feel the vibration so intensely that it wakes me up.
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