Not a Joiner: 3 days at a yoga ashram

Not a Joiner: 3 days at a yoga ashram


I was supposed to stay until Friday but on Wednesday afternoon while everyone was in class, I quietly packed my bags and left.

I volunteered my services as an interpreter for a yoga teacher-training course at an ashram. It’s my fault, really. I didn't fully comprehend what I was signing up for. I thought I was going to a yoga retreat (read: no frills spa). What I went to was a yoga retreat (read: cult).

I've yet to look it up in the dictionary but apparently ashram means some kind of monastery for guilty Caucasian people needing of penance in the form of busy work and journal writing. Every morning the mission bell rang across the compound at 5:30am. Folks went off half-asleep to sit cross-legged on the floor and be half-asleep with the others for 30 minutes (well, fine call it meditation if you have to). Twice a day folks did "karma yoga" which were glorified chores such as washing dishes or folding laundry. The chores reminded you that no one was above anyone else. Did I mention the cross-legged sitting on hardwood floors? One computer to share with 60 others with limited hours of operation?

Once I got there and got the picture of Freakville I thought ‘well at least I can take yoga class everyday and get a buff workout’. Even that was a surprising disappointment. Their version of yoga is more holistic incorporating the karmic yoga chores, the meditation, the singing and chanting nightly. The one yoga class they did offer each day didn’t have the exercise flow I was looking for and was mostly lying on the floor breathing.

But here's the best part. Only I could go to a yoga ashram and find someone to dislike so greatly that I wanted to punch this person in the face and then publicly flog them. This place where strangers offered me chocolate. This person was an instructor (a swami). I remembered her instantly. A real deaf wannabe. This person actually went out with me and a group and refused to use her ability to hear and speak, so greatly did she "identify with being deaf". She was there, and everything about her reeked of self promotion in the worst way, that kind of overly helpful and nice do unto others way that was so obviously to stroke her own ego but in a way that she couldn't see but I so easily could. I wasn't being utilized as an interpreter very much because this person took over and I ended up sitting there (on the hardwood floor!) wondering just what I was doing there. I know I cannot describe in words the degree to which I hated this woman, hated all people of this nature, so fucking clueless and manipulative and skilled at enshrouding themselves in phony bliss. She felt my opposite energy and it sent me out of there.

I had come to interpret, to help out, to do something specific, and leave. If it were compared to helping someone move, it would be to help you move a couch and only the couch because it requires two people, and not to stick around and load boxes in the car. I didn't join in the singing, the meditation, the chores, and didn't get up at 5:30am. They couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that I was just there to interpret. That I wasn't a joiner: that any group activities, especially those centered around praise, honor and devotion to a speaker, monk, teacher, rabbi or guru send me the other way just like a reflex action.

Why can't I see the good that can be derived from motivational speakers? I always detest the inspiration that others feel and it makes me blacken inside. A 96-year old rabbi came to preach peace and love and forgiveness. People cried and thanked him for coming. All I could think was, "Who the fuck does he think he is?"

I didn't enjoy the yoga plus I was cold since I'd gotten there, and I wasn't being paid. After I told the whack job girl "You're patronizing. Do you know that?" to which she replied, "it's all in your mind", I had to double back and take a breath. I left anyhow, but even before I was back in the real world, I knew she touched a nerve that was partially true.

This place was nutty but she made a point. And this is my never have Paris. This is my thing never meant to be. How much is me and how much is them? Much more than others I end up apologizing to people and backtracking, fast tracking, smoothing over, clarifying, retouching, what I meant was-ing, I'm sorry it came out that way-ing for all kinds on interactions, conversations, altercations, confrontations, interceptions, first impressions, and looks that went the wrong way.

I do something to people. I set them on edge. I give them the look. I can't go with the flow. Or it’s the opposite. I have great energy. We make a connection right away. We like each other instantly and have nothing but complete trust. Everyone is like this but for turning the knob feels out of my control and happens externally.

Some people have lemons and make lemonade. Some maybe just sigh, too tired to make lemonade, and go to Dunkin' Donuts for an iced coffee. Me, I run to the nearest person, finger already pointed, screaming, "Do you see this? What the FUCK am I supposed to do with lemons?" I somehow need to prove to anyone within earshot that I saw thru the plot.

I feel guilty because I tire out good friends who know how small my comfort level is. And yet to strangers I come off as laid back and ‘go with the flow’.

The ashram was on 77 acres of land and you couldn't hear the cars from the road. At two days before I turn 37, I have to wonder what happened to the person I was who could sleep on a stranger's floor and go away for a weekend with a toothbrush, a single pair of underwear and an unwrapped bagel stuffed in a backpack.

New York Closed: read the schedule

More fun interactions with the NYC Rec Department. After bashing them in repeated postings over their pool personnel at the Sheltering Arms Pool, in a moment of spontaneous ignorance, actually joined for a year's membership. Ask me how often the pools are actually open.

reminded of good 'almost dying' in France stories

I don't believe I have ever sat down and done much to chronicle the more interesting moments of my devil-may-care days living in Ireland from July to December 1996. The trip seems far-fetched to most people, so I'd stopped sharing the stories of my time there. Half of which was spend living in Galway, working under the table in a cafe, writing songs and recording a full 9-song 'album' with a put together band of mostly cafe employees, and half of that was spent hitch-hiking around Ireland including 2 weeks in Bretagne, or Brittany, the Celtic influenced Northwest of France. This story is about that trip.

I'm at the monthly "Where Have You Been?" event at Bluestockings, and arrive at the moment that a story teller is describing his being violently ill in France ( really it was Africa) and meeting up with a 18-year old French-speaking rapper. I quickly identified: 'hey, I was in France, couldn't speak the language and thought I might die there, too'.

I had met an accordion player (box player, for slang) in the memorable town of Kenmare. As I had been doing for 1 month, traveling south and west, I found pubs having open evening sessions, quietly joined the circle, and waited for tunes I knew to join on or started one of my own. I got into traditional Irish tunes (very randomly) after moving to Portland, learned to play tin whistle and in 18 months time was better than peers twice my age at my local tavern. Padraig was his name, and he was a young, hot shit. He would start a string and dominate it for like 7 or 8 tunes in a row, and he would look down in concentration, sweating and pounding the rhythm out with both feet. He told me he was going to Lorient for the annual 2-week Inter Celtique Festival of trad music, and I took the ferry with him and followed him there. After some time, at one of the many many private upstart sessions, I had met a French man named Gerald. He was adorable, almost sprite-like. He spoke proudly of his home in Brest and had invited me there. At this time, I went off with nearly any man in the name of music so after a few days I set out, hitch-hiking to Brest. Not speaking French, I wrote "Brest" on a cardboard sign to be sure I could get in the right car. I arrived at his apartment.

Being a gentleman, he offered me a separate bed; being married, I accepted. (Yep, I went off on this trip married. Naturally Padraig assumed he was traveling with a single American woman and was going to get some, and when I told him I was married, as did all men at that time, he couldn't wrap his head around it. "You're married? What are ya doin' here?" but it is so much better with the proper Irish accent). Why I hitch-hiked and went off with foreign men while only recently married in America is another story. So Gerald pointed me to the extra bed. In fact, I would have gladly shared a bed with him, but in fact, he had borrowed a roll-out couch from a neighbor down the hall. We laid down in separate beds after a little affectionate touching that promised that the next night we probably would not need the extra bed. But there was to be no extra night.

Because that night, after a few hours, I woke with a start. I couldn't breathe well. My nose was stuffed, but worse, my lungs were tight. I didn't know what the problem was. I had learned recently that I was allergic to cats, but Gerald had no cats. I was more embarrassed at my coughing and honking than aware that I was truly fucked and couldn't breathe. I opened a window. I politely coughed again. I walked around the room. That's when it hit me: I really, really couldn't breathe and I didn't know why. I was in France. I didn't speak French. I didn't even really know where I was or what I should be doing. I wondered if a hospital was a good idea when Gerald asked me if everything was OK. He rubbed my back and was generally taking the situation well, and I probably passed out from lack of oxygen.

He then told me that the person he borrowed the couch from did have cats, years ago. So, I am that allergic. The next day, he went to work and some friends of his that spoke less English than he did took me around. It was a sunny day, they made picnic lunches. I remember trying to politely not die and look appreciative, interesting, un-American. They implored me to return home and tell my friends that the French are nice people. And they were.

This was the summer of 1996.

RENEGADE CRAFT FAIR MCCARREN POOL SATURDAY

I'm very excited! I'm finally going to be doing Renegade! That's because Karin and Naomi understand and love me anyways. They did the application and got the tent and planned it and are letting my lazy, lazy ass in anyhow! God love them!

I will be there Saturday only, so come then! 11am-7pm McCarren Pool, Brooklyn. This is the finest, but hottest, craft fair ever. Buy a bunch of stuff and then go swimming (somewhere).

Renegade
BetterThanJam