I wish we didnt have so many screens. Or any screens. I think its making everyone depressed. Or maybe its just me. I want to go back to the forest. To sleep under the pines and feel the wind pass over my face. Now its all walls and ceilings. They are meant to keep us in. To separate civility from chaos. It makes us forget what we are. Be wary of the illusion. The ducks play in the water all day because they can.
In shivasana, I fall.
I don’t have a parachute and I don’t care.
My eyes are closed and my lips are smiling.
I fall through dimensions and I’m no longer a newspaper reporter and I don’t have to think about what I am covering tomorrow or who I am interviewing.
There is only the fall.
The others are falling too. Into their mats. We fall together in formation.
She walks among us. In her bare feet on the wooden floor.
She helps us fall. I can hear her step behind my head. Her hands press into my shoulders and I fall faster and I smile wider and I breathe deep and my bladder is near my eye.
The only god I worship is my yoga instructor.
—
In shivasana, I fall.
How can I fall today? How can I fall now?
I come straight from the city council meeting. My fake life is too vivid, too real, too fresh. It still occupies my head. How am I supposed to explain everything? There are experts on everything and I know nothing. All I know how to do is ask questions. There is just too much too much history that I walked in on too much I don’t know and I am supposed to be the gate keeper I have a duty a responsibility. All of my sources are sitting here all the people I quote and someone says my story wasn’t very clear but I did my best I can’t explain everything. Life is complicated.
I’m trying to fall. But I can’t connect. Can someone turn me off and then turn me back on again?
There is too much information to sift through and my head hurts.
My physical body fees rejuvenated. My legs are relaxed my shoulders are down but my head was left behind. Someone grab it for me. Screw it back on.
In shivasana, I am supposed to fall.
Why can’t I fall tonight?
Two-hundred-and-fifty-three miles to Des Moines.
It’s five AM and it’s dark and cold. I’m sipping burnt instant coffee out of the mug they gave away freshman year and eating porridge with tropical fruit trail mix out of the aluminum bowl I got a thrift store in New Zealand. I’m listening to a story on public radio about refuge children who went missing in Europe.
Please stop telling me how many miles to Des Moines. You just told me ten miles ago and that city means nothing to me. It is just a reminder that I’m still in Trump country and I still have a long, long way to go. It’s too early to be thinking about Des Moines.
An Irish immigration expert is talking about something but all I hear is her accent. She is from Dublin so she doesn’t talk like you. And then she says one word and I start to time travel.
“Stuck.”
I can imagine you saying that word exactly how the woman on the radio says it.
Maybe it was when we were cooking mushrooms, brown rice and lentils by the river and our family of mischievous ducks wouldn’t stop trying to steal our food.
Or maybe it was when walked through the forest with big bottles of beer and made up stories about the lives of trees and you told me all the things you never told anyone else.
No, it was when the status of our relationship was determined by the texture of peanut butter and the variety of jam in my sandwich.
It’s before dawn and I barely got any sleep and I’m idealizing women from my past again.
Ninety-eight miles to Des Moines and all I can see is corn.
Stop to look at the trees
Hear the cars and trucks
Hustle and bustle In the distance
Look down
The grass, it moves
Long stalks
Flowing
Blowing
Vibrating
Shaking
All of them in unison
In solidarity
If you walk by
In your own world
You don’t see the grass moving
I am the rock
I did not become smooth on my own
Time, elements, wind, fire, water, earth
Eased your pain
You were rough once, too
stories from a drifter 