 Well, I took my first calligraphy class yesterday, at Bay Arts, a place I like so much I bet I could live there pretty comfortably. Art, culture, nature…this place has it all. I had a charming sojourn to calligraphy class, first seeing a large outdoor sculpture of arms and hands rising up, which instantly reminded me of my future as a person learning calligraphy. So I snapped a pic of it. Then, I went up to someone at a desk in a lovely gallery and asked where the calligraphy class was being held, and she said, pointing behind me, “Go through that door and up the dark pink steps.”  Dark pink steps. Um, yes, please! See this photo and think "Pink Lotus" and you'll know what thrills me. Then I got to calligraphy class. Because I am left-handed--I'd emailed the teacher to let her know--I had a special seat at one of the large tables where I wouldn’t bump anyone. I am used to this. In a class of 13, the only other lefty was Shelly, who sat next to me and who shared with me throughout the practice session her difficulties. I shared mine with her. They were strikingly similar. Being a lefty scribe is no easy thing. In fact, our teacher had placed a handout on top of Shelly’s and my course books laying out the problems and solutions to being a lefty scribe. The biggest problem is that, the author says, pens are like people: they don’t like to be pushed. Nibs don’t like it, and ink has a life of its own, requiring drying time, so moving your hand as you scribe away from ink, from left to right, makes generally much less mess than drawing your left hand over the ink as you move from left to write with your left hand over the paper. Smudgeroo. I had ink on my fingers, calligraphy gloves, and I smudged ink on several of my exercise sheets by the end of the class. I even asked Shelly before I left if I had ink on my face. I know myself well. I didn't learn much about the 'solutions' part of being a left scribe. That's next week's class. I learned two other vital things in my first calligraphy class, which got me terrifically excited and looking forward to learning and not feeling so strange being a lefty once again in a righty world. The first—Oh Em Gee who KNEW?!—is that calligraphy is not writing. HHHWHAAA??? Yes, it is not. Our teacher told us calligraphy is not writing. But it’s not drawing, either, she said. It’s somewhere in between. Here’s the problem with that: My handwriting sucks. (It’s really, really bad.) And...I can’t draw. What chance do I stand to survive in Calligraphy City? No one can answer that yet. Just because I come to calligraphy with two strikes against me—left-handedness coupled with bad handwriting and very low drawing skill—does not mean I can’t scribe a nice note to a loved one or address wedding invitations should someone ask. I won’t know till I try where calligraphy and I will go together as a team. The second thing I learned yesterday—and Oh Em Gee who knew THIS, either?!—is that calligraphy has both a physical form and a meditative facet to it. My ears perked up when my teacher said that. Form and meditation! Sounds...like...YOGA!! Yay. First, she said, we do not scribe with our hands. We scribe with our bodies. OH I CAN GET DOWN WITH THAT! We have a posture to create for the health of our bodies as we sit hour after hour scribing. We have a posture that we create that we then position in relation to the paper and the table or surface upon which we are scribing. In particular, we scribe with our shoulders and arms. We need to gain muscle memory and forget our hands as tools for mere handwriting or (as in this case) mere click-click typing on a laptop keyboard. We are capable of so much more!!! Then--and this rocked my world completely--the only thing I really understood in our first three-hour lesson without jaw-dropping awe, is that--oh, and this part is meditation in motion!!—when we are moving the pen while scribing, we inhale on an upstroke and exhale on a downstroke. I was very good at that, despite smudges and my lack of slant due to poor pen positioning....so I left feeling inspired. Down the pink stairs, past the hands reaching upward like the trees... I have homework to do from now till next week, and I’ll do it! Yoga meets the ink.
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Yesterday, I lost a dear friend. I have been in a time muddle for a week since we got word that Jim was heading to hospice. He was diagnosed nearly three years ago, and about a month ago was hospitalized, which started him on the decline that would be his last. Still, a group of us, some of his many dear college friends, were in grief shock and able manage our schedules so we could travel to meet at his apartment in the glorious San Francisco's Castro district last weekend, to sit with him and talk with him one last time. It was beautiful. It was heart wrenching. The oceanside light and color of the Bay Area helped keep me from falling through the sidewalk cracks of grief as we left Jim for the last time on Sunday, May 27th, and cllimbed the hilly street to our car.
The day before yesterday, the day before Jim died, I had tea with a long-time local yoga friend/colleague named Dawn, and we discussed yoga and not much more, which seems to be the norm when I am with other yogis. We talked about our yoga paths as yogis and teachers. At one point, she said, "I remember you opened your yoga studio so that you could have more time to write." I said, instantly and quippishly, "Yeah. Well, that hasn't happened. Well, it has, a little. Well, nothing like I’d hoped.” I stopped my bumbling there, and sat for a moment processing what I had said. What does this have to do with my friend Jim? Jim was a poet, a philosopher, a scholar. As college friends, we were--the whole group of us--passionate, bold, carefree. Art meant absolutely everything to us so much so that all major doings—relationships, courses, dreams, jobs—revolved around that fiercely fiery sun known as the creative spirit. That spirit shines brightly still. I have carried that spirit with me all my life. I barely recall telling Dawn and other people that by opening a yoga studio, I would have time to write. But I trust her, and in fact it’s a likely thing for me to say. The next day, news of Jim's passing set something spinning in me that I want to address. In the last thirteen years, my artistic soul, and in the last six years career ’life’, has focused on yoga. Whereas for a long time I have regretted it, I see now that this was necessary. Yoga had to be my path so that I could get it together, begin to heal from long-held trauma, and use my renewed body-mind to continue to help myself and others. And as attestant to yoga's great ability, and my benefit, my yoga business has at times been highly creative work for me. But where is the artist in me precisely? I aim to find out: Enter the blog (title TBD!). As long as I can sustain it, this platform to share my voice (poems, art, yogaland ruminations, et al) is available to anyone who wants to take some in, just as how the mat all these years has been a platform available to anyone who wishes to experience what I can share about the complex world of yoga. The energy behind this blog is thus fourfold: It is my personal discipline to merge both yoga and writing in my life and thus myself in full in the name of self and community service. It stems from the very fact that I was an artist decades before I was a yogi. It’s a coming full circle, if you will. Second, it is a deep bow of gratitude to the ancient and always morphing human arenas of art and yoga, two facets of humankind essential to its survivorship. Third, it is an offering to whomever wants to engage. No chord of worry or anxiety is struck in my heart or head believing/expecting that words, like yoga, SHOULD do anything but BE. (Without much ego, I tread.) And, last, it is dedicated to my teachers in all walks of life, here and beyond, who have taught me so very much, who have loved me and encouraged me to keep going. Jim, this first post is dedicated to your big life. Big love, my friend and pen pal... And Death Shall Have No Dominion —Dylan Thomas And death shall have no dominion. Dead man naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily; Twisting on racks when sinews give way, Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through; Split all ends up they shan't crack; And death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; Though they be mad and dead as nails, Heads of the characters hammer through daisies; Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion. |
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