First World Alert in Everyday Ramblings

From our walk last weekend. We both remembered this house and I may have posted a similar picture three or four years ago, but this is fresh and shows the elevation and how some places are sited. It was blissfully quiet up there above the freeway noise.

One can walk to this place from my place, but we drove to the starting point. I won’t be doing that for a few weeks with this, whoosh, spike in Covid cases in the last week. I will only take the bus one way and walk the other to the grocery to minimize exposure. I may even order delivery if the case counts continue to rise.

Even though masks are required on public transportation there has been bad behavior lately. On Tuesday I was on a bus that had a few more people on it than I was comfortable with, and the driver is not going to enforce the mandate, they can’t.

I find this idea that many young people have that the risk for getting the illness is acceptable, baffling. Hasn’t anyone heard of Long Covid? Are you willing to lose both your grandmother and your sense of smell?

We were talking yesterday about the truly insane risks we took when we were young. I am not excluding myself from this behavior, but the difference is that we weren’t putting others at risk.

Unlike many of my neighbors I haven’t returned to the gym. I have kept human contact minimal, a food court for pickup but, no restaurants. Outside a coffeeshop. In the garden at the Sherlocks. I believe this is affecting me in deep ways that may not surface for a long while.

The online class I taught for United Airlines on Tuesday went well. The feedback was all positive and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity.

Afterwards I had a bit of an emotional crash. I went to the grocery and to the garden (picked that volunteer zucchini and the first ripe cherry tomatoes!) to help anchor me in the real world, but I don’t think I am going to pick up any interest in my classes. This feeling was exacerbated by the fact that no one has shown up for the morning Open Practice for four days in a row. Mrs. Sherlock says she will be there tomorrow and the folks that had been showing up are coming to the evening classes, but this is hard. I know it is a good idea, and I benefit from it.

While I am waiting for folks to (not) join, I am doing my own practice and that helps me feel better all day.

But because of attrition, and the unfolding of life I am losing students. Not that many, and I still have a firm base and we still enjoy each other (we got to meet a grand dog last night that was flown home all the way from Thailand named Milo), but I believe so strongly that what I share benefits people who participate I want to find those people.

Yoga is going through a major transformation here in the West right now. People are rethinking the model that has loosed an army of underqualified but earnest teachers on the world. I was watching a panel yesterday with the five super experienced older teachers I admire most in the world and the distance between their level of knowledge and mine (and the wonderful teachers I talk to every week) is immense.

I am trying to figure out how to reach a small select broader audience with my work. Without using social media. Social media is a trap, a hungry ghost that will eat a teacher alive. (She says writing this on a form of social media :).

It is such an awkward transitional time. This morning I found out that one of my students is in the hospital. They don’t know for sure, but the working hypothesis is that it is a crisis episode of Chron’s disease. Makes the heart hurt just contemplating it.

It can be managed but it takes acceptance, adaptation, and work. I should know as it is very similar to what Diego has. He mentioned having issues in this area about five years ago after class one day, so it has been developing.

Yoga can help him with maintenance going forward but that is then, and this is now and the whole thing sucks. And he has elderly parents that need care.

It all just reinforces to me the knowledge that we are all connected and need each other, and need to look out for each other in spite of those young folks that just haven’t gotten around to getting the vaccine (first world alert, where they are available) because it is a hassle.