Saturday, January 25, 2014

Being 38, the almost-unbearable tackiness of being

Warning: If you are the sort who may be offended by hypothetical (but not actual) Barhmacharya violations, I suggest you skip this post, and read no further.  

Hello everyone, I understand that I have not posted anything here for more than a month now. Well, I'm still alive and kicking, and am still working on my Karandavasana.

These days, the practice is something that I do in the morning, and then I shower and go to school (after putting some clothes on, of course!). I feel that the practice is now part of the background machinery of my life. I do it to keep my physical and mental and spiritual life going, but this is also probably why I haven't had much to say about it. I mean, would you blog about the state of your AC or heating unit at home everyday? I'm guessing the answer is no; I mean, we should all be grateful to have AC and/or heating, and offer thanks for that. But blogging about every little sound and vibration that it gives off is just a bit... much, don't you think? This is kind of what I feel about yoga blogging right now.

But after getting an email earlier this afternoon from a friendly reader (you know who you are) who pointed out to me the lack of posts on this blog, I suddenly felt guilty enough to actually write something today. But what should I write about?... Oh okay, here's something: I turned 38 yesterday (January 24th). Yay! Happy Birthday to myself (Cue cheesy music: Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you...). What did I do on my birthday? Well, I didn't actually do anything on my birthday itself. But the day before (the eve of my birthday, if you will), I went with a couple of friends to the local brewery, where we had a few too many glasses of beer and wine. We stayed there till midnight, and my friends wished me a happy birthday on the stroke of twelve. And then one of the bartenders had an offer for me: Would I like to go on an all-expenses-covered trip to the local... (what's the polite term for this?)... gentlemen's club?

As freaking intoxicated as I was, I actually said no to the offer! Now, before you get any exaggerated ideas about my supreme mastery of Brahmacharya, I'll like to politely inform you that my refusal of the offer had less to do with my mastery of my baser desires, and more to do with my aesthetic tastes: I simply find the very idea of going to a gentlemen's club on one's birthday to be supremely tacky. Why is it tacky? I can't really explain, it just is. It probably has something to do with the idea of gawking at a female stranger's lady parts on the anniversary of the very day on which I came out of another lady's (i.e. my mother's) lady parts! If this isn't tacky, what is? And moreover, due to some funny clause in Idaho law (this is a red state, remember?), the gentlemen's club is not really a gentlemen's club, technically speaking: Idaho law actually requires the ladies to keep their lady parts covered! So it should probably be more properly referred to as a lingerie club...

But why quibble over semantics? Hmm... is this story even appropriate for a yoga blog? Well, I haven't been blogging for so long, I no longer even have a sense of what is yoga-blog-appropriate and what is not. But what the hell is yoga-blog-appropriate, anyway? Do we yoga bloggers inadvertently censor ourselves in our writings? Hmm... something to think about, no?