i love teaching yoga. i do. SO overwhelmingly grateful. and i think yoga loves me teaching it (sometimes, sometimes not), and i am filled with appreciation for my students, and they are amazing beings of light and goodness and blah blah blah but let me just state for the record that getting up at 7am every saturday morning for, esssssennnnntially the last 3 years, including on particular mornings when it is 20 degrees outside and i want to stay in my warm bed with my girlfriend and her even warmer skin, or read, or just watch her sleep or talk to her for two hours, or eat brunch at a leisurely pace… well OH MAN. 2012 resolution to not complain is hard 2012 resolution to not complain is hard 2012 resolution to not complain is hard.

I love yoga, I do. yoga is a core fibre in the fabric of my innermost collective. yoga has carried me, sobbing and writhing, through dark alleys and windowless prisons of my own making. it answers the questions that left me breathless and alone at the end of a long run, down a long boardwalk, straight to the water’s edge, at 6am, or 10:00 at night, or sometimes more than once a day. and in marrow of my bones I believe in it’s transformative power, in the people ive met through it who have become my family, closer than blood, and that I am and want to be a generous, kind and giving human being. blessed, blessed and thankful and ashamed of myself when I forget that.

but sometimes yoga does not help.

nights come where I do not want to calm my mind or evenly slow my breath. i want to be reminded of something dirtier and rougher than Shanti and Surya, i want to be reminded of the darker part of me that fucks and dreams and wants and is combative and beautifully ruthless and beautifully merciful and sometimes I need to be reminded that I am a fearless shit-stomping fucking animal. I want to bite, and I want to dance until my legs stop fighting gravity and just give. there is nothing that rolling my body in the dark can’t fix. and that feral-dog fight, that black-eyed, boot-wearing passion and drive and smoky laughter, that pulse pounding bass that brings me down to the floor, that’s just as much a part of me. maybe more.

trouble with motivation today.

maybe because all i want to do is burn everything around me to the goddamn ground.

let’s not forget ourselves good friend. i am flawed if i’m not free.

so.

some nights are easier than others. i used to crave this freedom; every bone and sinew rejected being tied to anything - but that was mostly back when love felt like chains. a year ago, when it was still my nature to resist anyone’s eyes or hands looking too closely or touching too softly. terrified to be tied down by obligation to anything but myself. so i consider that its for the best, this way. i work hard, go out and dance and swing from face to face, laughing and marveling at the reflection of the sun on miles of glass windows in the city sky. i live for only me. i know we were right about our need to change, to learn to find alone without the loneliness. i still have too many miles to run, i have too much to discover about my life, too many people to talk to in dark corners of bars, too many sunsets to see on other horizons. and i’m trying to make this sound pretty but the raw truth is hiding behind that, the hardest truth is about all the healing inside before anyone else can come in without triggering a richter-scale-tipping earthquake that smashes it all to dust. and you have it all to do too.

when i remember all that i can still sing along with the radio and everything is just a shade of lonely, a heartsick trace. i miss you profoundly, but not without hope. while i’m driving i think about you and your many sadnesses. about how after everything is said and done i pray you finally find the end to a thread in your knot of unhappiness and it all unravels into a forever of endless struggles for joy, all of which you win in a landslide. as i gun it through yellow lights i dream that one day you find me on the map and show up at my door and you’ve worked as hard as i am working now and my faith is not misplaced. i remind myself my faith is in you and not in us. my faith in you. but then i start to wonder what the right thing is to do… to just stay silent and wait (maybe forever, or maybe not at all), or to call you and try to reach for you, for your hand, even in some small way. so in a moment of struggle i write you a note (with no expectations i tell myself, no expectations) trying to remind you, asking you.

two milliseconds after i send it im pretty positive i’ve done the complete wrong thing, i’ve made the wrong choice. as the silence ticks by a realization wicks into the picture, that my job was to stay quiet and fade into the past, and not to love you, as you’re no longer employing for that position.

then suddenly i forget what i know and discover i’m in a night that’s far darker than before. so i go out and i smoke and i drink and i think about foolish girls who love against their will and believe too much in the best of people.

I can be alone, yeah, I can watch a sunset on my own. I can be alone, yeah, I can watch a sunset on my own. I can be alone. I can watch a sunset on my own. I can be alone, yeah, I can watch a sunset on my own. I can be alone, yeah, I can watch a sunset on my own. I can be alone. I can watch a sunset on my own. I can be alone, yeah, I can watch a sunset on my own. I can be alone, yeah, I can watch a sunset on my own. I can be alone. I can watch a sunset on my own.

.

well played. and fuck you as well.