I unrolled my mat and sat down next to a goddess today in yoga. I haven't been to yoga in probably nine or more months, which is stupid because just entering the room made me feel relaxed and peaceful. The goddess is a Scottish supermodel, and she lay flat on her back with her eyes closed, her long yellow hair splayed out, a tiny gold ring on one of her toes, a tiny tattoo on the top of her slender super-model foot. I hummed
yellow is the color of my true love's hair in my head because the goddess is married, I think, to Donovan's son and that's my favorite Donovan song, one I first heard when a boy I loved sang it to me in much the same type voice in a room at the top of the stairs in a house in the woods. The goddess lay perfectly still beside me, a pale angel, breathing in and out, and I wasn't put off, I wasn't intimidated, despite my cumbersome form,
brown with gray is the color of my hair right now, and I settled, rather, into her energy and that of the kind people around me, the wooden floor, the soft voices, Ganesh on the wall. Yesterday, one of my college friends posted on Facebook her alarm that
God was removed from the Democratic platform, and I commented that some people of faith didn't think religion had a role in politics. Someone I don't know also left a comment that sounded as if she were terrified, terrified of God-language being removed from a political platform, terrified of
where the country is going, how different it is. I stopped there (good for me!) and thought the rest of the evening about fear, people's fear, and what are people afraid of and why aren't I afraid? I thought it again last night when I watched a bit of the Democratic Convention, the colors of the people, the beautiful brown-skinned mayor of San Antonio, the beautiful black skin of the First Lady. I thought about it again as I sat next to the pale white goddess and another woman with long magenta-painted hair and yellow men's long johns, whose crotch sagged to her knees, carefully place her yoga mat in front of me.
Green is the color of the sparkling corn, in the morning when we rise and
blue is the color of the sky, in the morning when we rise. What are people afraid of and why? Why aren't I afraid? I stumbled through the yoga class, barely able to do most of the exercises except the breathing, the deep in and out, and whenever I peeked through my closed eyes at the goddess next to me, the long-johned woman in front of me, they, too, were breathing in and out.
Mellow is the feeling that I get, when I see her, the boy I loved sang to me many years ago.
That's the time, that's the time, I love the best. What are people afraid of and why? Why aren't I afraid?
Freedom is the word I rarely use without thinking, without thinking -- of the time, of the time, when I've been loved.
