Paths

I recently started taking yoga so forgive me if I tread the path of enlightenment for just a moment.
There’s a lot of meditation in the class. And also a lot of inversions (hanging upside down), and bendy exercises and pose-striking.

(note- I cannot do this).

But you know, it’s the meditating part I’ve been thinking on. *deep cleansing breath*
I believe that the life lesson I am supposed to be learning right now is PATIENCE.
Prior lessons have included LOVE, RESTRAINT, FLEXIBILITY and ACCEPTANCE.
My life has been fraught with lessons.
I have learned some, none, or bits and pieces of all of these. I am definitely a work in progress.
Sometimes I find myself saying (to no one in particular and in a slightly snappish tone) “OK, I get it! Please don’t make me learn that particular lesson!” Because it’s HARD!

Writers are masters of their own domain. To some extent.
And no, not in the Seinfeldian way.

We are the masters because we create the worlds within our books.
I, for one, enjoy this a lot.
I am a take charge, hands on kind of a person.
I am impatient.
But the thing I have had to realize is that I may, to some extent and excepting writer’s block and all the other events which interrupt a writerly flow, control my characters, their world and what happens, but I do not and cannot control all the other stuff to do with writing books. Like reviews, subsidiary deals, pitches, foreign rights…
Mainly the stuff my agent worries about.
How hard should it be to just throw up my hands and say, “Fine. You deal with it!”.
Not hard.
And I do.
But then I obsess about those wheels spinning out of my sight, and I wonder, and I imagine various outcomes, AND I eat too many jujubes.
I feel like I am on a cusp. And as you know, those of you have been balanced for any length of time, a cusp is not a comfortable place to be.
(This is what I imagine a cusp to look like).

Unfortunately yoga is just once a week.
And once a week I have to remind myself that I really really like it and I drag myself down to the class. Because in addition to being impatient, I am also lazy. And yeah, I did forget to add that one to the list above.

At home I practice my breathing but I’m not versed enough in all the postures to attempt them on my own yet, and besides the dogs stare and laugh at me when I’m in lotus.

This is a practice in patience (mine and YOURS).

Yes, I know it looks like a box.
It is a box.
It is a box from Scholastic Inc., New York and it contains a bunch of ARCS of ASHES, ASHES.
I am not going to open it yet.
*deep cleansing breath*