Why Haven't I Posted?

Time seems to have stood still except for this manuscript I'm writing. It is going slowly. I'm adding music to it now, so it won't be much longer, I hope, but the work is meticulous.

Meantime, I'm make a huge effort to never miss a yoga class. It keeps me focused and centered so I can work more effectively with fewer doubts. I really want to forget about the outcome and just enjoy the process.

I hear Judith Lassiter's new book, re: yoga and life is terrific. Lots of common sense and acceptance. I wish I had time to read it. 

So, I'll be back, now sure what with, but something good! Oh how I envy those authors who can knock out a story in half an hour. 

I bake a lot when I'm writing intensively, so lots of sweet breads and puddings. Great mother's day, too.   We're refinancing the house, my daughter is visiting, and my mother has been sick. My brother, just this weekend, decided it was time to get 'stuff' out of her house so after she went to sleep, he picked up whatever looked like junk to him and piled it into his rental car and dumped it into any dumpster around town that he could find. And, he is into forward thinking recycling, reuse and repair! Hah! 

Hopeless or Helpless: Poverty and Hunger

She sits under the stairs, against the building, scrunched as far away back from the sidewalk as she can get. Dark brown hair that could be pretty, green eyes that could sparkle, probably an English complexion underneath that sad, dry face. Twenty-five, 18, who knows. She looks 50. The filthy clothes are a dead give away she's been like this for awhile.

"What would you like?" Christine asked her. "A burger with everything from In n Out? Fries and a shake?" 

"That's a stupid question," Christine's friend said in her ear. "Just get her some food, anything."

"I need money," the girl grunted. "You've got some." She stared at the sidewalk, clasped her hands so tightly together that dirty nails must have been piercing her palms. "Leave me alone," she said. Squatting further back into the corner of the stairs and wall, it became evident she wore no panties.  

"OMG," Christine's friend said. "We'll be late for yoga class. Let's go." She grabbed Christine by the arm and hauled her up the stairs. "Don't look down, we'll bring food later," she said.

"There's time before class starts," Christine said. 

In n Out wasn't open, but in the same mall a coffee shop was. Christine picked out an apple fritter, container of whole milk, banana, and huge blueberry muffin.  Packed in a clean, white paper bag, the food fit perfectly in Christine's Coach tote bag along with her jeans, tee shirt and sandals for later in the day.

The girl had moved around the corner from the stairs and faced the back of the parking lot when Christine arrived. "Eat this. You'll feel better," Christine said, pulling the bag from her tote and holding it out to her. "Please, take it. I eat a banana every day."

"NO," the girl replied. Her teeth chattered, her body began to shake, her eyes sunk deep into their sockets, and she slumped sideways. 

Christine sat the white bag beside the girl. Then she wrote on the side of the white bag: "If you will go upstairs to the yoga studio, the owner will give you a coupon for the In n Out burger."

Late for class, Christine tossed her mat in the only available space, tightly scrunched beside the wall. It was claustrophobic, but as the meditation came to an end, she thought of the girl. 

And hour and a half later when class was over, Christine skipped down the same stairs with her friend. They looked all around the building but the girl and the white paper bag were gone. Christine shoved the Coach tote bag in the trunk with her yoga mat. 'I'm going home," she said to her friend. "What do you do for someone like that except give them some food?" 

And that's the truth. To some extent.

Yoga: 9 - 10:30 AM on Thurday

COMPLACENCY.  I've worn it like a mink coat on a summer day for awhile now, feeling smug that I had this great coat but complaining how it was miserable. The word's been around since the mid 17th century, so it would seem a lot of people have been stuck in the complacency rut. 

The word itself came to me in yoga class after a conversation about using a mental eraser in order to start over. Yes, my mind was wondering, but that's what complacency will do. There was so much mental goo to erase. Where to start?  

Meantime, I was flowing through sun salutations, I especially like upward facing dog. It takes strength, a flexible back, and an open heart which means the shoulders should move easily onto the back. Thing is, from here the body flows into downward facing dog. That means the toes, see them in the picture, the nails clicking on the mat--ruins a pedicure--must roll over backwards.

         

I rolled one foot's worth of toes over, then the other, Gosh darn, I was good at this. Done it hundreds of times. I'm just going with the flow. The instructor plopped down on the bamboo floor in front of my plush mat and rolled all ten toes over at the same time.

Okay, I'll give that a try. Whoa. Lost my flow when I gave it a go. There was no extra foot to take the weight of my body. The discomfort, okay it was pain, gave me the mental jolt that I'd been looking for. When I went for the second dual rollover, it was necessary to go back to the one foot, other foot method.

Mental eraser at work. I was on a new journey. Where would it take me?

This isn't me in the picture, below, but it could be.  Looks like me from a distance. For the first time, I balanced myself on my arms and shoulders. I didn't get up so high. I like to think my butt is smaller. Maybe it isn't. I know it isn't a flattering posture. But, hey, you try it.

It's called Crane Pose. It's vital to breath while perched in this position. Thought I'd share just in case you're in a rut. Complacency. Since the 17th century.

Yoga: 9 - 10:30 AM on Thurday

COMPLACENCY.  I've worn it like a mink coat on a summer day for awhile now, feeling smug that I had this great coat but complaining how it was miserable. The word's been around since the mid 17th century, so it would seem a lot of people have been stuck in the complacency rut. 

The word itself came to me in yoga class after a conversation about using a mental eraser in order to start over. Yes, my mind was wondering, but that's what complacency will do. There was so much mental goo to erase. Where to start?  

Meantime, I was flowing through sun salutations, I especially like upward facing dog. It takes strength, a flexible back, and an open heart which means the shoulders should move easily onto the back. Thing is, from here the body flows into downward facing dog. That means the toes, see them in the picture, the nails clicking on the mat--ruins a pedicure--must roll over backwards.

         

I rolled one foot's worth of toes over, then the other, Gosh darn, I was good at this. Done it hundreds of times. I'm just going with the flow. The instructor plopped down on the bamboo floor in front of my plush mat and rolled all ten toes over at the same time.

Okay, I'll give that a try. Whoa. Lost my flow when I gave it a go. There was no extra foot to take the weight of my body. The discomfort, okay it was pain, gave me the mental jolt that I'd been looking for. When I went for the second dual rollover, it was necessary to go back to the one foot, other foot method.

Mental eraser at work. I was on a new journey. Where would it take me?

This isn't me in the picture, below, but it could be.  Looks like me from a distance. For the first time, I balanced myself on my arms and shoulders. I didn't get up so high. I like to think my butt is smaller. Maybe it isn't. I know it isn't a flattering posture. But, hey, you try it.

It's called Crane Pose. It's vital to breath while perched in this position. Thought I'd share just in case you're in a rut. Complacency. Since the 17th century.

Henrietta's Headstand

Mr. Cash sent Henrietta and her little brother to live in an orphanage after his wife died. Henrietta's brother went into the military at 18, she became a novice at a nearby convent. But after the end of the first year, it was agreed that she would leave, so she became a housekeeper for a family in Pasadena, California. Over the next several years, she put herself through night school and obtained a degree in mathematics. She never married. 

"Life is lived by virtue of the dollar," Henrietta Cash taught her students at the local high school. "It's all about the math. Easy enough if you keep track. House of cards if you don't ."

Every time she said this, she heard her father's baritone voice counseling her. 

"Henrietta," he'd say, "debtors are the poor unfortunate of the earth. Don't owe anyone anything and you will lead a good Christian life."

He'd kept his accounts within a $.50 error margin. One of his ledger's, yellowed and brittle now, perched upright, half open, on her bedside table. The fastidiously organized austere columns entered in an exacting  hand with neither a smear nor blot reassured her that an orderly life has meaning. 

"If I can't pay for it on the spot," she has said a hundred times if she has said it once, "then I won't buy it." 

Henrietta has lived by the numbers for 60 plus years now. She know that if something costs $9.99 it really costs $10.82 when Los Angeles County tax of 8.25 percent is included. Some time back, the bank sent her a debit card. She stuck it in a drawer.

Semi-retired, Henrietta runs statistical data for a research lab from her computer at home from 4 AM until 10 AM, five days a week, earning a tidy sum of money, which she does not disclose to anyone. Until 10 years ago, her hobby was knitting, but the doctor convinced Henrietta to take up yoga after she gained 50 pounds and her joints ached. She lost weight and her bones stopped aching.

"It's the best thing I've ever done," she says. "At my age, I can do a headstand?" Her father would not have approved.

Then one day she came home from a yoga class and there were four phone messages for her. The first one was from the fraud department of her bank. The second, third and fourth were as well, each leaving the same message with the same number for her to call. 

Still in her yoga clothes  she returned the call but hung up as soon as the computer voice asked for the last four digits of her social security number. 

Finally, Henrietta decided that four messages meant it was serious business. She wound her way through the menus until a live person answered on the other end of the line.

"Why are you calling me?" she asked the female voice. 

"There is a charge for $705.00 on your debit card for gasoline at a station in Bakersfield," the female voice said, monotone and robot-like, although it was a real woman. "Did you make that purchase?"

"NO," Henrietta answered, her voice so high-pitched it hurt her throat, "No, I did not." 

"Did you make a purchase for $792.38 at the same station a few minutes later?" the female voice asked, again monotone and robot-like. 

"Why would I do that?" Henrietta shreiked,  her rib cage clamped so tightly around her chest that she had to remind herself to breath."

"Ma-am," the female voice said, "I realize this is upsetting, but we need to ask. Did you make this purchase?"

"I spend $45.00 on gasoline when the tank is empty, or $34.00 when I have half a quarter of a tank left. I can't imagine $700.00 worth of gasoline?" Henrietta said. She sank back against the wall. "Did the charges go through? Exactly how much money do I owe?" Henrietta practiced breathing in for four counts, holding her breath for four counts and breathing out for four counts.

"I don't know," the female voice said. "The charges will not show up on your account if they were declined. I'm sorry I cannot tell you more right now."

Henrietta stopped counting. Her voice and the female voice continued speaking to each other briefly while a single thought reverberated through her mind. At least $700 is a round even amount.

She sat down at the computer to check her accounts and noticed the bamboo stalks on the screen saver. They were very pretty, fresh, crisp, green, jumbled together one over the other. She did not count them. Her heart thumped in her chest but she did not count the beats. 

She lined up the pencils by length, the pens by brand, the paper clips by color, and two quarters along the edge of the smooth glossy walnut finished wood desk. She fanned out the legal pads like a deck of cards. She piled the pads of post-it notes one on top of the other, in even piles on each side of the fan of legal pads. 

Henrietta admired the symmetry of it all then reached out with both hands as though about to play the piano and suddenly mushed them around, the legal pads falling off the desk, the paper clips sliding beneath the edge of the computer keyboard. Pencils, pens, quarters this way and that.    

Next, Henrietta leaned down and opened the lower left file drawer and removed each hanging folder one by one placing them in stacks near her feet. By the time they had all been removed the files themselves and the papers inside had fallen askew. When the air-conditioner came on, receipts and old post-its that had long since lost their stickiness blew like feathers landing wherever they fell. She opened the top file drawer and pulled the files out in handfuls, tossing them this way and that, their papers flying in every direction. She emptied everything.  

Within the hour, the room appeared to have been ransacked. Henrietta sat down in the middle of the room, smoothing a seat among her stuff, lifting her butt-cheeks side to side until she felt balanced. Her legs crossed in lotus position, she closed her eyes, lifted her arms above her head, brought her hands together in prayer position and lowered them to the crown of her head. She visualized a bamboo stalk in her mind's eye, and allowed her breathing to even out. 

Then Henrietta lowered her hands to her third eye right between her eyebrows, and relaxed her face and jaw, then she lowered her hands to her throat and blew a soft long breath over her fingertips. Finally, she brought her hands to her heart and bowed her head. 

She prayed: I am a strong, secure, successful woman. I will put my office into a new order. I want a playful perspective on life and to align my internal needs with my external life. A little voice, said, this is a work-in-progress.

Henrietta sat up taller lifting the sides of her chest longer and lighter. She took a deep breath and lifted her head and opened her eyes. The darkness of the room broken only by moonlight. Pushing the stuff of her life aside, she placed her head on the rug, her hands behind her neck, her arms on the floor supporting her head and slowly lifted her legs above her head. 

Observing the mess from a new perspective, it crossed Henrietta's mind that a credit card might be very useful. It could cut down on paper. She could call herself Heni on the card... there really wasn't anyone to object. 

Well, maybe she'd be Heni. Henrietta would have to think about that tomorrow.

What do you think?  

Henrietta's Headstand

Mr. Cash sent Henrietta and her little brother to live in an orphanage after his wife died. Henrietta's brother went into the military at 18, she became a novice at a nearby convent. But after the end of the first year, it was agreed that she would leave, so she became a housekeeper for a family in Pasadena, California. Over the next several years, she put herself through night school and obtained a degree in mathematics. She never married. 

"Life is lived by virtue of the dollar," Henrietta Cash taught her students at the local high school. "It's all about the math. Easy enough if you keep track. House of cards if you don't ."

Every time she said this, she heard her father's baritone voice counseling her. 

"Henrietta," he'd say, "debtors are the poor unfortunate of the earth. Don't owe anyone anything and you will lead a good Christian life."

He'd kept his accounts within a $.50 error margin. One of his ledger's, yellowed and brittle now, perched upright, half open, on her bedside table. The fastidiously organized austere columns entered in an exacting  hand with neither a smear nor blot reassured her that an orderly life has meaning. 

"If I can't pay for it on the spot," she has said a hundred times if she has said it once, "then I won't buy it." 

Henrietta has lived by the numbers for 60 plus years now. She know that if something costs $9.99 it really costs $10.82 when Los Angeles County tax of 8.25 percent is included. Some time back, the bank sent her a debit card. She stuck it in a drawer.

Semi-retired, Henrietta runs statistical data for a research lab from her computer at home from 4 AM until 10 AM, five days a week, earning a tidy sum of money, which she does not disclose to anyone. Until 10 years ago, her hobby was knitting, but the doctor convinced Henrietta to take up yoga after she gained 50 pounds and her joints ached. She lost weight and her bones stopped aching.

"It's the best thing I've ever done," she says. "At my age, I can do a headstand?" Her father would not have approved.

Then one day she came home from a yoga class and there were four phone messages for her. The first one was from the fraud department of her bank. The second, third and fourth were as well, each leaving the same message with the same number for her to call. 

Still in her yoga clothes  she returned the call but hung up as soon as the computer voice asked for the last four digits of her social security number. 

Finally, Henrietta decided that four messages meant it was serious business. She wound her way through the menus until a live person answered on the other end of the line.

"Why are you calling me?" she asked the female voice. 

"There is a charge for $705.00 on your debit card for gasoline at a station in Bakersfield," the female voice said, monotone and robot-like, although it was a real woman. "Did you make that purchase?"

"NO," Henrietta answered, her voice so high-pitched it hurt her throat, "No, I did not." 

"Did you make a purchase for $792.38 at the same station a few minutes later?" the female voice asked, again monotone and robot-like. 

"Why would I do that?" Henrietta shreiked,  her rib cage clamped so tightly around her chest that she had to remind herself to breath."

"Ma-am," the female voice said, "I realize this is upsetting, but we need to ask. Did you make this purchase?"

"I spend $45.00 on gasoline when the tank is empty, or $34.00 when I have half a quarter of a tank left. I can't imagine $700.00 worth of gasoline?" Henrietta said. She sank back against the wall. "Did the charges go through? Exactly how much money do I owe?" Henrietta practiced breathing in for four counts, holding her breath for four counts and breathing out for four counts.

"I don't know," the female voice said. "The charges will not show up on your account if they were declined. I'm sorry I cannot tell you more right now."

Henrietta stopped counting. Her voice and the female voice continued speaking to each other briefly while a single thought reverberated through her mind. At least $700 is a round even amount.

She sat down at the computer to check her accounts and noticed the bamboo stalks on the screen saver. They were very pretty, fresh, crisp, green, jumbled together one over the other. She did not count them. Her heart thumped in her chest but she did not count the beats. 

She lined up the pencils by length, the pens by brand, the paper clips by color, and two quarters along the edge of the smooth glossy walnut finished wood desk. She fanned out the legal pads like a deck of cards. She piled the pads of post-it notes one on top of the other, in even piles on each side of the fan of legal pads. 

Henrietta admired the symmetry of it all then reached out with both hands as though about to play the piano and suddenly mushed them around, the legal pads falling off the desk, the paper clips sliding beneath the edge of the computer keyboard. Pencils, pens, quarters this way and that.    

Next, Henrietta leaned down and opened the lower left file drawer and removed each hanging folder one by one placing them in stacks near her feet. By the time they had all been removed the files themselves and the papers inside had fallen askew. When the air-conditioner came on, receipts and old post-its that had long since lost their stickiness blew like feathers landing wherever they fell. She opened the top file drawer and pulled the files out in handfuls, tossing them this way and that, their papers flying in every direction. She emptied everything.  

Within the hour, the room appeared to have been ransacked. Henrietta sat down in the middle of the room, smoothing a seat among her stuff, lifting her butt-cheeks side to side until she felt balanced. Her legs crossed in lotus position, she closed her eyes, lifted her arms above her head, brought her hands together in prayer position and lowered them to the crown of her head. She visualized a bamboo stalk in her mind's eye, and allowed her breathing to even out. 

Then Henrietta lowered her hands to her third eye right between her eyebrows, and relaxed her face and jaw, then she lowered her hands to her throat and blew a soft long breath over her fingertips. Finally, she brought her hands to her heart and bowed her head. 

She prayed: I am a strong, secure, successful woman. I will put my office into a new order. I want a playful perspective on life and to align my internal needs with my external life. A little voice, said, this is a work-in-progress.

Henrietta sat up taller lifting the sides of her chest longer and lighter. She took a deep breath and lifted her head and opened her eyes. The darkness of the room broken only by moonlight. Pushing the stuff of her life aside, she placed her head on the rug, her hands behind her neck, her arms on the floor supporting her head and slowly lifted her legs above her head. 

Observing the mess from a new perspective, it crossed Henrietta's mind that a credit card might be very useful. It could cut down on paper. She could call herself Heni on the card... there really wasn't anyone to object. 

Well, maybe she'd be Heni. Henrietta would have to think about that tomorrow.

What do you think?