She's Writing a Novel

I've been taking up yoga again. It's obnoxious to be saying that, and it's even more obnoxious generally to be one of those people who is like "oh yes, i take yoga" and it's even MORE obnoxious to be a cute little twenty-something chick walking around a city with a yoga mat. As much as I am an aspiring urban yuppie, I do try to retain a certain amount of cynicism toward it all. Practicing yoga, and worse, referring to it as "practicing yoga" is like being a caricature of a cliche.

Nevertheless, I love yoga. I like the stretching and the breathing and feeling my own strength and being in my own mind. The gym is like boot camp; yoga is like a spa. It's a great workout, and also a great relaxing, meditative time for me. Almost healing. (I did the math, and an hour of yoga is cheaper than an hour of therapy. So yoga it is! Plus, therapy doesn't help you achieve toned triceps and killer abs.)

I've finally found a yoga teacher whose approach really works for me, and whose flows are a good match for where I'm at with my ability. Her class comes with only one liability. Well, two. First - there's some chanting. And second - there's a tone deaf guy in the class who really, really gets into the chanting.

I have nothing against the "Om" per se. It's a little weird for me, not my thing, but whatever. If she wants to open and close a session with three Oms, I can tolerate it. I grew up in schools that opened and closed with prayer, which is just as weird. And there is something almost soothing about a unison note being hummed in a room with hardwood floors; it resonates in a pleasing, centering kind of way. That is, if the the Om is actually chanted in unison.

I always assumed is was within the capacity of all humans to correctly produce a note to match a frequency they are hearing. Tuning forks, pitch pipes...I have only ever seen people use these with success. I was a choir nerd for years. I'd heard rumors that tone deaf people existed, but I had never met one, despite knowing dozens with perfect pitch. So you can imagine my shock and horror when an otherwise harmonious Om was hijacked. The kid in my yoga class was not just a little off; he was a full two steps on the scale off. Maybe her note is too high for him, and he doesn't know about octaves. Or maybe he doesn't know the Om is supposed to be produced in tonal harmony, and he thinks you just belt out an Om however you feel it.

Whatever his excuse is, he can't possibly be deaf to the fact that he sounds like a cow being slowly and sadistically slaughtered. Which is, you know, precisely the mental place I want to go at the beginning and end of my spirit-cleansing workout. Because nothing brings me more peace of mind personally than the thought of tortured cattle. See, and this is the problem with this kid producing auditory disharmony. It creates thoughts of disharmony. Such as the thought of me creeping up to his mat and strangling him with my yoga strap....it's not like his death throes would sound any different.

And here is where I would throw in a clever joke about Corpse pose if I weren't feeling suddenly lazy.

Everybody is talking about "going green." I twitch a little every time I hear this phrase, especially when it comes out of the mouths of celebrities. Although really, the media are the only ones talking about "going green." Most of the rest of us are preoccupied with "making green." i.e., the stuff that allows us to keep on paying rent, buying groceries, paying down loans, and saving up for the future.

There is nothing more insulting than some overpaid piece of celebrity trash masturbating his conscience by doing the good deed of imploring the common people to recycle, to turn off the lights in the other room, to ride a bike. I use less energy in my home in a year than the average Beverly Hills resident uses in a week heating and lighting their pool. I use less water in a year taking my long hot showers than the average Beverly Hills resident uses in one summer to water their lawn. When all of California has traded in their sprawling mansions for modest two bedroom apartments, I promise to give a shit about turning off the light in the other room.

Why would I listen to people flying in private gulf stream jets telling me to car pool? Why would I listen to people who wear an outfit only once telling me to recycle? Why would I listen to someone who is paid millions to play pretend for a camera telling me to give from my modest salary to save the earth?

People like me aren't resourceful because it's trendy, or because we are considerate of the earth. We're resourceful because dammit, it is cheaper and easier than being wasteful. When I could barely afford rent in my old apartment, I dilligently turned off lights and kept the heat low in winter. But it wasn't to save energy and therefore be more "green." It was so I could afford the electricity bill. Today, I'm not thinking about the planet when I resuse a plastic bag - I'm thinking about the fact that I don't have to buy another plastic bag. And who wants to spend money on plastics bags when you can spend it on martinis?

Speaking of plastic bags...there is this trendy little cloth tote going around which proclaims in ornate script "I am not a plastic bag." Oh, how clever! Now you can have a little snark with your smug when you go shopping at Whole Foods. It makes me want to go out and get a little tote of my own to go shopping with, except mine would read "I am not a self-satisfied tree-hugging hybrid-driving millionaire hippie douchebag."

It used to be that the only people I had to ignore on my walk home were the bums and the scientologists. Now I have to ignore bums, scientologists, and campaigners for the democrat party. I'm tuning out a litany of "Can I have a dollar?" and "Would you like a stress test?" and "Have you registered to vote?" The answer to everyone is "no." But at the end of the day I'm tired and I don't want to make eye contact and I don't have the energy to be polite when inside I'm snarling at them.

The state primary is coming up, and the democrats are hard at work devouring each other and trying to take as many people with them as they can. I dislike both candidates but not as much as I despise the people dispatched by legion on foot to my city park. They are literally swarming, these blue-shirted people carrying clip boards. These people who've found Obama are more annoying than the people who've found Jesus, although to listen to them you wouldn't know there was a difference. The lobotomized mania of the Barack campaigners is nicely offset by the twitchy urgency of the Hillary supporters, but all of them are starting to panic...just a little. They took for granted that a democrat would be elected in 2008, but they also took for granted that their party would not self-destruct in that same year. And suddenly, hating Bush isn't sufficiently rallying, and longing for universal healthcare isn't sufficiently unifying, and being a member of a "persecuted minority" isn't sufficiently inspiring, and day by day they are making it more inevitable that yet another rich old white man sweeps into the White House. Which is fine by me, because at least the rich old white men don't constantly yammer on about how they are rich old white men and thus, specially qualified to serve as commander-in-chief. (Although I would love it if they had the balls to say something along those lines.)

The Democrat party seems to view "diversity" as some kind of magical qualification. If you are in the minority, you are by virtue better than those in the majority. The only majority Democrats love is a majority vote...for a Democrat. In fact, if you were a blind wheelchair-bound Native American lesbian scholar of Islam, you could probably win the primary nomination just by showing up at the Democrat national convention.

The Russian lover and I were lying in bed the other night, wondering how March had gone by so fast. And then we remembered that this is our anniversary-ish time of year, and it was about this time three years ago that I tumbled into his bed for the first time. That night we both thought that maybe it would be the last time, as well. It turned out to be the longest one-night stand he's ever had and as for me, well, my first attempt at a one-night stand turned into a three-year love affair with no signs of stopping.

I wasn't looking for love when I met the Russian lover. I was looking for a distraction -- for fun, and sex. I was looking for a long break from the emotional abuse wrought by men who believe in grand things like destiny without having any concept of fundamental things like integrity. I craved superficial and reliable, a dildo with conversation skills and social graces. My expectations were low to nonexistant.

They were so low, in fact, that the first time I got off the phone with him I burst into tears. Because he told me he was going to call me at 11:30, and at 11:30 my phone rang. "I know it's late, but I made dinner. Come over." After spending the past year and a half being strung along like the shadow of an afterthought, I'd forgotten what it felt like to reach out to a man and have him be there. I'd forgotten what it felt like to be told "I will" by a man, and have those words be true.

The Russian lover does not make me any promises, and I don't care. He is the only man I have ever met in my life who doesn't need to.