Inafunk

Well, it has been a while since my blog was hacked and I lost a lot of precious material. I have written a lot online, so not backing up is my fault. However, I wonder if the jackass that hacked me will ever know how disappointing it is to lose some of the stories of my life like that. 

Since we last talked - I’ve been battling diabetes which I have to say - is a tough road. I’m incredibly disciplined when it comes to eating but I’ve been so busy that the exercise portion of the program is in fits and starts. I have ups and downs - periods of success and some failures. I’m still stunned that this has happened to me and pray that one day - I won’t have to deal with it anymore. 

My relationship with my wife has never been better. In fact, it was never bad. It has been a glorious and loving run of many years now. We are trying to have a child. I hope that it happens, but realize the miracle that it can be. So, fingers crossed. 

My work is boring but I’ve had some successes. I’m hopeful that things pick up there and that I can get back to creating things as I have in the past. In the end, I have to remember that writing is freedom. 

So, that is an update - the stories and essays will start again. I look out on the landscape of America and it feels like a different place from the one that I used to write about. I think that the true colors of our neighbors have revealed themselves. I’m hopeful but angry. 

Glad to be back. Talk to you more regularly. Check in and see. 

A dog moved in next door. Ok, a couple of girls with a dog moved in next door. If it was an actual family of dogs that moved in, it would have been even more concerning. However, when I signed my lease for this apartment, it was under the condition that there were no dogs allowed. So, if I’m considering moving out, does this make me a bad person? I have a complicated relationship with the concept of pets. Maybe that is why my sanctuary’s borders feel violated. 



I had gerbils when I was younger. They are awful little creatures that currently have a stigma attached to them that seems undeserved. The concept of gerbils crawling up a rectum as pleasurable seems more urban myth than fact. Actually, gerbils are quite horrible. Nocturnal creatures that turd every few seconds and make an ungodly amount of noise while humans sleep. I can not recall why I subjected myself to this torture, but I consider it my moment of self-loathing as a youth. A gerbil as a pet is the equivalent of decorating your house in garbage – it is your own damn fault if it depresses you. 



By the end of my gerbil period, I had witnessed the carnage of dozens of gerbils involved in cannibalistic activities. It was my fault. When you place the gerbil cages in the bathroom because gerbils apparently don’t believe in family planning, trouble ensues. They hump so often that they quickly turn into a village before you have a chance to relate to one. In an embarrassing display of pet ownership, I had forgotten that I had gerbils while I tried to get some sleep. No more running around on the wheel, no more rattling the water bottle, and no more scratching endlessly in the corner of the urine-soaked, cedar shaving lined aquarium. The reason was unflattering. I had accidentally turned my gerbil nation into a killing field because I needed more REM sleep. It wasn’t purposeful, it was accidental. It made me feel like a bad person. Animals need lots of attention. And you need to give it to them 24 hours a day – even while you should be sleeping. 



Cole was a funny little dog. Light on personality, but extremely good looking. For much of his life, he slept on my bed on my size 12 feet. I found that cute at first and then quickly grew tired of the interruption to my sleep patterns. When I started to push Cole off of my futon bed, he would pee on the floor. In fact, Cole would pee and poop on the floor a lot. A skittish dog purchased from a pet store that never really seemed to get over the horrors of that store. A thunderstorm meant instant evacuation. A strong wind might result in a pee. The sound of a truck backing up might result in vomit. Suddenly, my cute little buddy seemed like a walking pot of bodily fluids splashing around with every move. I would wake up to a surprise every morning. Cole was like a grandpa that needed to pee in the middle of night, but somehow couldn’t open the bathroom door with his paws. 



When I went golfing, it would be a 6 hour stretch away from home on a Saturday. If I had a beer afterwards, it could turn into 10 hours really quickly. Imagine not going to the bathroom for 10 hours. Ouch. That is a tester for any man – especially after those beers. I would return to my house to the pained expression of a terrorized dog and a pile of poo that would grow every few hours. I would feel like a bad person – especially if I had sliced into the woods on the 15th hole and submarined my round because I was concerned about the prospects of my return home. 

There is no better example that we learn about the cycle of life than pet ownership. So many pets breeze through our lives and they become markers of the passage of time. From Anka to Dax to Kai to birdie to kitten to the turtles, gerbils, guinea pigs, tropical fish, and the lizards – I have experienced them all. Each fish stuck in the filter floating upside down with one eye plucked out felt like a personal attack on my sensitivities. Can you imagine seeing a family friend die choking on a potato? I did. That guinea pig didn’t last very long when my Dad decided to feed it leftovers. My poor little friend Cole died of a rectal tumor. During the final weeks, it was a bloody mess that was the equivalent of witnessing a Manson murder. I had a tropical fish in college that ate every fish that I would put into the tank. In fact, I would buy fish that I had to feed this fish. It was hard for me – I don’t love seeing fish ripping apart fish. It is not my idea of a good time. Then again, some people like Monster truck races – so maybe I just can’t relate. After feeding that fish hundreds of fish, it grew to the size of a salmon. Then one day, it jumped out of the tank and died on the floor. It was so big that I couldn’t flush it down the toilet. I couldn’t even find a place in West Philadelphia to properly bury it. It ended up in the trash – much like a spoiled fish that you’d get from Reading Terminal Market. All of that effort for such an ungracious ending. 



We had a dog named Kai. An enormous black German shepherd that seems out of step with the rest of the world. Maybe Kai was complicated or maybe Kai was better suited for the job as guard at a concentration camp – either way, it was the scariest figure of my youth. Wake up in the morning, walk down stairs for breakfast, get attacked by family dog, clean wounds, go down back stairs to sneak out of the house, and leave house shaking. I remember seeing Kai chase our little annoying French neighbor across the yard. She could run pretty fast for a 70 year old lady. Kai had an amazing knack for making even the largest and most intimidating person melt with fear. Seeing our post man hiding on top of our car cornered by that dog was funny at the time. It was no way to live. 



Kai made me question whether or not animals could really grow to love humans, or whether it was all about the food. If a shark keeps coming around and trying to get some attention from me, I wouldn’t really question his motivation. However, dogs have this manipulative way of appearing sweet and innocent while they are begging for food that we can’t resist. Head on the lap. The eyes of sweet innocence. Give me a Snausage, please. When the gravy train appears to have stopped running, the dog is asleep and farting in the corner without a care in the world. I hope that my houseguests at my next dinner party don’t behave this way after the meal. The dog ends up getting the food. They always do. In the wild, a wolf doesn’t wait for dinnertime to kill the rabbit. It is an all day affair. We think that a wolf is a grumpy dog. But maybe a domesticated dog is just a smoother operator. He doesn’t have to chase the prey through the forest. He licks your face and gets satisfied. The end result is the same. It is an economic arrangement that the wolf never figured out. 



When my need to have a pet chameleon was satisfied, the allure lasted a day. A lizard is a cool looking animal. When I went the St. Barth’s and realized that a gecko was something that you wanted to beat with a broom, I looked back at my experience with the chameleons with bewilderment. I would take earthworms with tweezers and feed them to the lazy little creature. This was not the economy of dog ownership. After indulging in the earthworm, the chameleon would disappear under a rock never to be seen again until the next session. It felt a bit like throwing a quarter to a homeless guy so that he could buy another bottle of Wild Turkey and hide in the shadows. I remember less about the chameleon than the earthworms. I spent more time with them – as I pushed them from the plank. If the earthworm had a pink tongue and more visible eyes would I let him sleep on my futon at my feet. It seems so random. While I don’t want to see the guy walking his earthworm around Rittenhouse Square, I’d like to know why waking up every morning to pick up my animal’s poop off of the sidewalk is any more satisfying than briefly saying hello to a wriggling pet on a tweezers about to be eaten by his slothful counterpart. 



I walk through the city amazed at the dogs that I see. Imagine a city apartment with a Great Dane? A pit bull? I cross the street when I see them. Tell me that it is the dog, not the owner over and over again. My leg looks like a chicken wing to the dog either way. In the same way that I won’t overanalyze a potential mugger’s early upbringing while I’m trying to escape, the nature vs. nurture argument seems meaningless while I’m trying to pry my leg out of Rover’s mouth. And let’s not forget those little sweaters and hats that people like to put on their pets. No offense, but if humiliation is part of the economic arrangement between dogs and man, I submit that we should just set them free. When I pass the pet store on 13th street and see that array of sweaters, funny collars, etc. I’m reminded that Paris Hilton’s pets are just purses with a pulse. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s had their digestive systems surgically removed because you can’t mess up the Bentley because of a shitting purse. It is amazing how we will judge another human being by the way that they look. How on earth can someone wear white shoes after Labor day? At the same time, your Chihuahua looks so cute dressed up like a leprechaun seems normal. Even Cinco de Mayo isn’t a good excuse to humiliate your pets. 



It is amazing how often people talk about their pets. I’m never at a loss for conversation. The potential for conversation seems endless. And yet, I find myself in an endless number of conversations about pets and I don’t have one. It feels like a crutch. It has all of the appeal of asking about the weather when there is an awkward pause in conversation. And the stories seems so amazing or heroic to the owner, but seem so silly to me. If every story about our pets was true, then we have a subculture of superheroes amongst us. Maybe people want to believe in something so badly that they’ll assign amazing feats to their pets that never really happen. “My dog jumped up and alerted us to the incident across the street and saved our lives.” I’m a light sleeper too but I never get away with pooping on the floor. “Fluffy can sense that we are going on vacation, isn’t it amazing how they know?” Yes, when you are busily preparing for your trip and haven’t fed the dog all day, they get a little Kreskin on you. “When grandma died, the only person that understood my pain was my Pekinese.” Crying and screaming at your pet can result in another turd or the feeling like some extra portions are coming with the next meal. 



My brother has had a long history of owning parrots. I have had a hate-hate relationship with them. They are loud, dirty, and over-rated as companions. We think that a parrot is a smart animal. “Polly wants a cracker” can be achieved by endlessly torturing your parrot by repeating the same words to it for years. We wouldn’t treat the criminally insane this way. Parrots are given the same respect as Manuel Noriega as we drove him insane with heavy metal music pumped into his compound. How smart can a parrot be when it ends up stuck in a cage only three times its size and sits on a pole all day while crapping on the newspaper. I’ll admit that dogs have created a smarter economic arrangement. But birds are a classic example of our inconsistency when it comes to pets. Pigeons are universally loathed by most people. Rats with wings, they say. You can throw a bottle cap at a pigeon and it will take a few minutes for it to realize that it isn’t food. However, if you put a pigeon in a cage and hand fed it – most owners would say that they have a brilliant pigeon and understand that loving gesture of being given a prison like home environment with a mirror, a cuttle stone, and a water dish filled with poo. On my ride to work when the pigeon that I was about to run over flew up and hit me in the face, I didn’t scream back at the bird and tell him how brilliant he was. 



Birds are just birds. A glorious part of the chain. A chain so brilliantly conceived that we revel in its wonders each day. For some reason, I don’t think that ownership of animals was part of the magical layout. While I’m sure that examples exist, my dog never owned a pet squirrel. You won’t see most animals in the wild with pets. They tend to eat them. Even the little fish that swims under the shark seems more nuisance than pet. The shark never even considers dressing that fish up like a leprechaun. It is an arrangement. You eat stuff off of me and I don’t kill you. It is a simple version of the Human-Pet arrangement. Every night on the local news, you’ll hear a story of a guy who stuffs a woman in his basement and never lets her out. When guests used to come to my house as a kid, we put the dog away because it couldn’t be trusted with the new people. My gerbils wanted out. I know that they did. If gerbils could speak, they would have unionized. Or felt like they needed to be freedom fighters. It was no way to sleep. Prisoners are given a gym and a meal. My gerbils were prisoners with an exercise wheel, pellets, a water bowl, and the joy of sleeping in their own feces. I closed my own Guantanemo one day while I was younger and have resisted opening a new one ever since. But I have, it is a pressure in our society. Ghandi said that we are measured by how we treat our animals, they say. But am I a bad person if I want the animals to live as they were intended to be. Maybe mine is the more humane view. After all, I don’t drink out of a water bowl filled with my own poo and I never exercise on a wheel to nowhere. 



I love animals. Animal planet is fun to watch. I’ve always been fascinated by seeing a great animal in the wild. On TV of course, because I get rashes easily in the bush. And who the heck has time for all of that hiking. But I’ve never had the need to be squirted on by a killer whale. In fact, I’ve been on a personal crusade to keep people from spitting in Market East, so the thought of going on vacation to have a large sea mammal spit on me is obscene. How many trainers need to die while teaching Shamu to be cute before we understand that it is the same as driving your parrot insane so that you can giggle with friends about him dropping the F-bomb at a dinner party. Essentially, we are dressing Shamu up like a leprechaun and raising him in a pool to slowly go insane like the rest of our pets. 



Man has this thing about mastering his domain. We move to the country and try to make it look like the city. We plant flowers and then shoot deer for eating them. We revel in the crazy cuts of meat that we can ingest but complain to the neighbors when their dog pees on our sod. We will hunt down wild game with our rifles and then sue the neighbors when their dog chases our cat into the street. We cut our grass and neuter our pets. Taming the wild is so much fun that we never consider how awful the life of a spitting Killer Whale might be. When Howard Hughes never left his apartment, he was saving urine in bottles and going completely mad. But we never consider that a killer whale subjected to the torture and humiliation of a regular job entertaining us might be cruel beyond imagination. This is one of the kings of the ocean. It has few enemies. It roams freely at will much like a human being on land. How important to science is it that know that a Killer Whale can be humiliated to the point of being a pigeon in the park trying to eat a bottle cap. 



I don’t believe that owning a pet is like having a child. I can’t wait to have children. Changing a diaper does not scare me because I know that it will eventually stop. It is a complicated business to raise a child. Every day will unfold with a new worry and a new travail. The satisfaction of bringing a child into this world and watching them do great, not-so-great, and forgettable things is exciting. Putting on a plastic glove each day for the entire life of a dog countless times to pick up their poop reminds me of chasing a tail that you never catch. In an insane asylum. Relationships are more complex than a one-sided arrangement where you get it all. The pet-owner relationship is on tilt. The parrot looks for the open window even if you buy it a new mirror. When you give your dog to the SPCA, it is either killed or finds a new owner. It will love them too. Especially if they feed them the good stuff. It isn’t really unconditional love as much as unconditional hunger. The killer whale kills the trainer because he’s big, trapped, and hungry. You can try to unlock the puzzle, but it doesn’t matter. He’s right and we are wrong. His behavior is as it should be. A crazy person who writes on the walls with crayons with his toes is easily forgiven and not scolded for being insane. They are just insane with the hand that they are dealt. My gerbils ate one another because they were hungry. They didn’t care if I could sleep or not because they were in a cage and behavior like they would in the chain. Nocturnal creatures creates have a tendency to stay up late. It is just one of those things. 



I saw a turtle the other day in a store. It was being sold as a pet. Down the street, I saw a basket of turtles sitting near an exhaust pipe on the sidewalk in Chinatown ready to be eaten. Pets aren’t like kids. We don’t eat our kids. That was one lucky turtle that was kept from that fate. What a fine line it is between the joys of petdom and being an appetizer. For some reason, I look at a canary in a pet shop and the image of a Chicken McNugget flashes in my mind. I’m a vegetarian now but I did always love McNuggets. Please don’t think of your kids as McDonalds products. It isn’t healthy. By nature, we are similar to the shark – we are looking for food all day. We consume a lot of things. Pets are part of that need to consume or attain. I want to show off my pet and will endure making it miserable so that I can show him off. In the end, it is never about the pet’s life. Sitting in a basket on the curb and sitting in an aquarium are much the same in the pet world. But what is in it for the turtle? 



As I sit in my chair and hear the barking of the dog next door, I can’t help but think of Cole. He sat alone for 10 hours with the threat of being scolded for going to the bathroom on the floor. He shivered and quaked whenever a truck would go down the street. His natural instinct to eat at will was molded to my schedule. I would leave and he was sitting at the door. I would come back and see him sitting in the window waiting for my return. It seemed sweet at the time. But he was really hungry and needed to take a shit, and I was keeping him from it with my ridiculous regime of mind-bending rules and regulations. We aren’t rational with our pets. We are tyrants. Sick of being controlled in our own lives, so that we can squire over something. Anything. Even a turtle. We rail against the man, the government, and foreign influences. But we think nothing of putting a ferret in a cage and wondering why is so jumpy. 



The dog across the hall is making my life less sane. We are going down together. I feel great empathy for him. I’m sure that life isn’t easy when you can’t pee at will. But you know-that madness wasn’t part of my lease. I didn’t sign up for this. So it is time to renegotiate. This economic arrangement isn’t working for me. I need a new mirror in my cage. 

I was so proud of the weight-loss. It was a project that I’ve worked on diligently for years. Eating more vegetables and swearing off of meat took some time, but the lifestyle had finally hit home. It took great discipline to push aside the plates and give up the burgers. Perhaps I slipped a time or two, but eating had become a discipline.  I have always been a bit of a stress eater, and my work is all about stress. So, if I had slipped – it was with soda, iced tea, and ridiculous snacking at work – where I never seem to get a proper lunch break. The pounds were shedding fast as the summer wore on. It was amazing. Why now? Why has all of the hard work finally paid off. And I wasn’t even exercising.

Mirrors can be deceiving. I hate looking into them. They tell me the unvarnished truth about aging that I never really want to believe. When I think of myself, I have visions of that young kid who was always posing for pictures. Forearms the size of twigs. Too skinny and wondering when the weight would come on. It took years of watching the face melt, the hair fall out, and the worry-lines grow to learn the art of mirror avoidance. I would look into a mirror and never make eye contact. It was less personal then. That wasn’t me. I took notice of my weight loss this summer. My eyes starting moving up the mirror. I was reconnecting with my former self.

The summer was filled with stress. A new showroom. A lot of pressure. No tennis because my bum shoulder was making it impossible. The summer seemed to rush by without a moment to pause and soak in the sun. Saturdays were now business days. The rest of the world was basking in the glow of a sun that I wasn’t seeing. It was only in the reflected tanned faces of my many clients that I realized that the summer was slipping away and fall would be barking at my heels. I hate the winter. The snow days of my youth were great for missing school and sledding down the neighbor’s hill. Winter as an adult is more of a pain in the ass. Expensive holidays, bothersome weather, and a perpetually runny nose make me dream of the summer to come – which I seemed to miss out on last summer. I have always looked at the winter as a time-out from summer. It was like a punishment for being too happy in the sun.

I never know what to wear for work. Too casual or too formal. Too hot or too cold. White in winter? Belts, shoes, and whatever else to match? I have had a lot of clothes in my day, but I never seem to be comfortable in any of it. My pants were starting to fall. I was swimming in a sea of shirt, pant, and belt that wouldn’t cinch.  I felt like that skinny kid again. The rubberband man with the athlete’s body. He was great at finding the game or sport and working it until he got good. He would out hustle the competition. The hardest worker on the court. But this time, it was a miracle how I was shedding the pounds, and didn’t have work that hard to do it. Sure, I was working harder than ever in my job, but losing weight used to mean working out and eating less. Now, it was as if the gods were conspiring for a bit of luck to come my way. I was getting young again.

Getting up every night became a ritual. Sleep was hard to come by. I had visions of adjustable beds and problem clients buzzing in and out of my dreams. It isn’t that interesting for a guy that used to dream about beaches and running in slow motion in the surf while saving lives. I was getting up multiple times at night to pee. How could this be? That is an old man’s disorder. Don’t they know that I’m getting younger? Each morning I would wake up so dry. Drinking water like I remembered. As a kid, I used to hang my head below the faucet and drink water until it was coming out of my gills. I always assumed that it was one of the reasons that I was so skinny. No room for food when you are water-logged. Maybe this is why I was seeing my toes again and standing taller. I was shrinking. I was well-known to be the size of a “shrunk” as my mother would say. Now, it was as if the real me was emerging as the ice cap was melting. I looked into the mirror in early September and hoped that it would stop. The compliments from friends and strangers weren’t enough. The truth behind the results were that the results didn’t make sense. I was starting to get concerned. I have two things that make me leap out of my skin – sharks and cancer. My work worries were now being compounded because I was starting to worry about cancer. Sharks are really just glorified fish and I don’t really need to be where they are. Cancer lives in the shadows within. It is far scarier.

Under the mask of my contented gaze into the mirror, a voice was growing. “You don’t get something for nothing in this world”. I know this better than anyone as I try to convince each client of the merits of spending twice the normal rate for a bed. Each day – I must list the features and benefits to countless would-be clients. I see the face of disappointment when I lay out the price to someone who can’t afford the product. If you want the best, it will cost you. I feel for those that would benefit from it but can’t afford it.. If I could give the relief away for free, I would. It is a tough society that puts a price on relief. I started looking in the mirror and wondering what price I was paying to see my cheekbones again, to lose my chin, and start to see the faint hint of a rib for the first time in years. I was never fat. I was just big. Hot, sweaty, and big. A bundle of stress and nerves, and Pop Tarts. A great athlete who forgot what it was like to be exhausted from exercise and not the daily grind of the work day.

I took in all the compliments. “Amazing. Wow. You are really looking good.” It feels good to hear that again. I used to hear it a lot when I was younger. I think that everyone hits that point in life when those words start to fade and people act like you should be happy that you are still kicking. People were going to the picture books and saying – “Look at how handsome you were”. That never feels great because I don’t live in the ‘were’ anymore and each day when I brush my teeth, I have to look in the mirror – below my chin. I had heard enough. The fruit that was being picked here was not earned. It felt like stealing an apple from a neighbor’s tree. I didn’t deserve the accolades because I know that the ride is long. In my life, I had only lost weight in a dramatic fashion once before and it was because of heartbreak. This time – heartbreak wasn’t the culprit. I have never felt so ‘in-love’ and loved at the same time. My stress was only the anxiety that comes from self-imposed pressure to succeed at work. My personal life has never been so complete and thoroughly satisfying. I started to worry mostly because I feared that I would impose on my personal life by being sick. It was becoming obsessive. I was quietly churning up inside because I was thinking the worst about a now that had never been this good. I looked in the mirror one last time and had to acknowledge that seeing myself as a teen was scary. Something was wrong. While I miss that guy’s body, I don’t miss his angst and worry and self-conscious ways – I have grown into myself and become more confident, talkative, interesting, and most of all, happy. The guy that I was seeing in the mirror was starting to look unhealthy and pathetic. Like a guy wearing clothing that was too youthful for his age. Or a guy trying to pretend that he doesn’t have a concern in the world when the truth is staring at him in the face. I was afraid to tell my wife. I know that she was holding out hope that it was just the healthy lifestyle that was kicking in. But I knew my body, and how hard it resisted change while exercising obsessively in my 30’s. I wasn’t earning this. It was time to pay the piper. It was time for the guy in the mirror to speak. So, I went to the doctor.

Sitting alone in my showroom at work thinking about my blood test results was tough. My mind was racing as I was selling relief to the people that came into the place. I wasn’t feeling relief. With every drink of water and each moment that I felt my energy draining, the only one in that showroom not getting relief was me. He called. “Everything is fine with your blood…well, except one thing –  you have Diabetes.” Oh, ok. Diabetes means that I’m going to die, right? What did I know about Diabetes? Bobby Clarke and Mary Tyler Moore have it. She’s dead. I think. Or maybe she isn’t.  I was speechless. I didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t on my radar. I locked the door of my showroom and stood in front of the mirror on the side and cried. It was a cry for that young man who worried so much and had so much promise – and now had to confront the problems of adulthood square on. I saw a glimpse of that kid, but now my gaze into the mirror was an affirmation that you don’t get anything for free. Seeing him again was a warning. A great sign that slipping back to him was a warning about remaining true to myself. Being the “me” that I am now.

Being pricked in the fingertips countless times starts to whittle away at your nerve endings. At first, checking my glucose levels was an imposition. Now, it is an unnerving part of my day – three times a day. With every prick of my finger, I feel like I lose a bit of myself as the days pass with a new reality. But feeling sorry for myself is an old paradigm. This is a new day. Like living in center city, your life can be defined by the little inconveniences and nuisances of the daily grind. Or you can remember the bigger picture. The rich life that every day contains. The balance shifts to the positives rather than the petty inconveniences. So, I decided almost instantly that my diabetes would be reversed. I don’t even know if that is scientifically possible.  It would require my most disciplined self. And it would require a sacrifice of those things that I hold dear – like a baguette and Brie. Oh, how I miss that. I was going to remind my pancreas to perform. My body was confused and it was time to help it to remember.

So, it is March. I’m a half-year old as a Type 2 - Diabetic. My wife has made this easier than it would be for anyone else. Her selfless actions and sacrifice remind me that I’m luckier than most with this diagnosis. I’m not overweight or eating at McDonalds. My ridiculous past of eating like a 13 year old left a long time ago. But, each day as I prick my finger and forgo the things that I loved to eat – I’m reminded that I’m not in a quest to recapture the image of the boy in the reflection. I need to look in the mirror and remember all that I’ve become. All of those things that I’m lucky to have created in my life. Or maybe better yet, all of those things that are yet to come. I will one day look back at October 2010 knowing that it showed off what was really coursing around in my veins. It was more than just high glucose levels – it was the spirit to tackle the future and to discipline myself enough that the major goals can be realized. It was a wake up call. A reminder that aging is in the mind and it is time to embrace the real me. It is time to look in the mirror and stare directly into my own eyes. This is the moment to see who I really am and what I’m made of. The hardest working guy on the basketball court still exists – only this time – the game is being played in a more important venue. 

For the first time in my life, I’m practicing yoga with my wife. We are taking the Beginners class. In fact, it seems as if they have to emphasize the fact that it is a beginner’s class by calling it the “Brand New Beginners” class. I think that they do this because they want to keep the collective eyes of the world off of this class ….”Enter at your own risk”. This is not an activity that I’ve ever considered on the radar that is my own life. The mumbo jumbo of pseudo-religious mantra-invoking mind-bending gobble-dee-gook has been something that I’ve been exposed to and railed against throughout much of my life. The thought of hearing someone say, “now find your energy within” makes my toes curl. Like weird wizardy wunderkinds, the new age types always gave me the creeps. Hey, it isn’t that easy to defy gravity, sir. And you don’t tend to do it after a visit to a health food store manned by a kid who likes to read and has a nose ring. Yes, I shop at Whole Foods - it doesn’t mean that I’ve swallowed the whole concept. So, I embarked upon the great adventure of figuring out what namaste means while figuring out why I have such a tough time touching my toes. 

After a shocking entrance into the room, the class seemed to have formed just beyond the threshold of the door in a shabby little shack in Fairmount, I was confronted with the rag tag collection of Yoga wannabes that must inhabit every absolute beginners class. There was the typical group of absolute non-beginners who apparently like to make others look inflexible or non-athletic. There were a collection of chubby and desperate folks looking to make a change that was much more complicated than just ‘not eating a box of ring dings’. There were a few keeners that looked like they have recently purchased the entire outfit just for today. This included the guy in the knit cap with the scrappy facial hair that fancied himself hitting nirvana while looking as if he had never gone further east than Fishtown. And there was a collection of well-meaning ladies who were a bit behind the times and trying to catch up to the Yoga revolution. With lululemon receipts in hand, these were the people who would soon become flexible pretzel-people able to stick their heel behind their heads and continue to pay the $20 per class into the cosmic future. And then there was me. 

I wasn’t the worst in the class. I knew this before we even started. Basic geometry would be on my side. My belly has gone down and my diabetics diet would keep me in good stead. However, for a competitive guy, the thought that I’d have 7 weeks ahead being near the bottom of a ladder of incompetence was daunting. I had to hope that the two really, really fat chicks stayed in the class or I was going to be the least flexible, most awkward, and sweatiest guy in the room. 

And so we began. The instructor is a perky and well-meaning girl with incredible flexibility and a Kathy Lee Gifford level of contrived or natural optimism and friendliness. As her words about the origins of Yoga and the meanings of the various skribbles on the wall numbed my cerebrum, I learned that my most flexible body part was my eyes as they nearly rolled out of my skull. How did I end up in the Deepak world that I’d so often loathed. Well, it is simple. I did it for my wife. And she was doing it for me. A modern day gift of the Magi - although the gift for me was to be a stress relieving activity that would conversely reduce her worry from a 6 month fault shift in our lives. I love her for it. I didn’t realize that it would be in the form of smelling a stranger’s tushy sweat every Sunday morning. 

It became apparent to me quite early that two things would impair my session. A germ freakishness and sweat. While borrowing the slightly damp blankets and eye pillows from the community enlightened equipment rack, my squeamish ways took the floor as I tried to figure out my route to the least skin exposure to the remnants of the previous classmates sweaty ass resins. Eye pillow, foam block, blankets, straps - I felt almost infantile as I set up my area with my brand spanking new yoga mat. A yoga mat, by the way, is a fun finish on a floor. It isn’t thick enough to matter for a big guy like me. Our friends in the class who are very large people also looked like Wookies about to go into battle against the Light forces of the enlightened world. I was hoping that they were as bad as I knew that I would be. If this was recess, I was going to be the last pick. And that never happened to me before. 

As the class began, it was a swirl of instructions spoken in a language so flowery that I couldn’t follow the analogies. Lift your heart to the sky means many things to many people. To me, it means - disregard the instruction and try not to let on that this hurts a little. As we went through the series of poses, I could almost hear my weary joints crackling. I have spent a lifetime hunching over and shrugging my shoulders - so I could almost feel the bad habit melting away. These were new places to be. It was a journey to the edges of my range of motion…and one click beyond. 

I have had  few more humbling experiences than the 3 yoga classes that I’ve had so far. It doesn’t seem like exercise to me. More like a reality check, as I become acquainted to a body that I’ve underused. You realize how little potential movement that you’ve used in your life. As I looked around the room, I could clearly say that the two fat girls were better at this than me. I was the worst. In my mind’s eye with the god force within me, I knew that I really sucked at yoga. I was the sweatiest guy in the room, but this has always been a problem for me. My shirt was riding up and my pants were falling down as I twisted and turned into positions that made me regret decades of neglect. 

As the class proceeded, a brand new beginner transformed into a ….well….. a sore brand new beginner. “Curl your toes underneath”, she said. I thought that I was curling my toes, but when I looked back - my toes looked like a mangled mess of non-curling nastiness. “Arch your back”, she said. Oh, I wasn’t. “Sit down into your heels” - what the hell does that mean? “Extend yourself through your center” - I’m not sure that she said that, but for some reason, I did try and fail to do that. After a surprising ability to maintain the Tree pose, I started to understand the talk a bit. It took one explanation of the “olm” or a description of “my inner whatever she said” to again take me down to earth. I found myself dreading each next position because my third eye was watching me and having a hell of a laugh. 

Finally, as the class wound down, we all went into a position on our back. And we were told to relax and maintain a peaceful position. Now this was something that I could do. I’m a champion at this one. “let your tongue loose” - I never realized that I was holding tension in my tongue. She was right. For 5 blissful minutes, all of this mumbo jumbo suddenly formed beneath me and created a feathery bed as I was reminded in an amazing way that I never allow myself the moments of physical and mental relaxation necessary to keep the glucose levels down and the blood pressure in neutral. For a brief moment, I forgave Deepak for having an expensive gift shop in his compound, and my father for endlessly talking to me about the ‘light’ and the vortex in Sedona. I was transformed to a person that would talk to his body and take note of the signs. A person who would stretch to his limits and take it one step further. A person who might for once relax his tongue and think about nothing for a few moments a day. 

As I sheepishly rolled up my mat and let my Western sensibilities return, like the fear that someone saw this seal-like display of pretzeling. I knew that I sucked at this and my pretzel was a bit more puffed up than most. I was almost embarrassed to discuss that day’s activity with anyone because I knew deep, down that I was doing a different activity than most. It was like a golfer playing minature golf and telling the real golfers….did you see the way that I hit that one shot….into the windmill between the monkeys legs and into the hole. They might nod, but they were on the real course and a real course doesn’t allow monkeys on the fairway. 

So, it is now a few sessions into my Brand New beginners yoga class and I feel like a brand new beginner still. We purchased a DVD and I realized that we have barely scratched the surface of this activity. My wife is a ringer and looks like a natural while doing this. This is a nice thing for me. I’ll leave it at that. But for me, my toes did curl while practicing yoga as expected. Just not enough. I never expected my feet to be so stiff. My eye roll has tightened up a bit. We’ll see where this goes. But for now, I’m happy to be a brand new beginner at something. Perhaps that is the biggest lesson in all of this. Paradigm shift is good. Staying in the same position too long can make you stiff. The world has room to move and stretch inside of it, even if it makes you feel like a downward dog at times. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8NZa9wYZ_U

Hi Folks - 

So, my inafunk.com site got hacked again. So, I lost more of my writings. Seems strange that this happens so often to a little site that talks about me, glucose levels, and people who spit on the street. Oh well. So, I’m now clinging to the bosom of tumblr and hoping that this will be a  safer place for me and my kind.