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| Dharma Mittra |
Dharma Mittra has no idea the hoops I needed to jump through
to get to his yoga class yesterday morning, and it was well worth it.
On Friday evening as I was about to leave for the Yoga Journal Conference
in Estes Park I saw that my ex-husband, Brian’s, house keeper was calling. And
this is how the conversation unfolded:
Me: “Hello.”
Other person: “Hi. I borrowed the housekeeper’s phone to
call you. This is the mail lady. Which woman is this?” (Brian got a good laugh
out of that remark. Since both of our daughters are in and out of his house, he
had a girlfriend for a while, I am often there, and recently his sister moved in, it's understandable that the mail lady has no idea who's who.)
Me: “This is the ex-wife, Jen.”
Mail Lady (ML): “Oh, hi! So, I found the cat.” I don't reply. (Jamie, Brian's sister, moved
into his house about a month ago and her cat, Brave Heart, ran away, but
after three weeks, happily, Brave Heart had found his way back home on Tuesday.)
ML continued: “So, I found the cat earlier today on someone’s porch down the street. It was sleeping in a chair. I brought it to Brian’s and a neighbor checked the front door. When we found it unlocked, we tossed the cat inside the house.”
ML continued: “So, I found the cat earlier today on someone’s porch down the street. It was sleeping in a chair. I brought it to Brian’s and a neighbor checked the front door. When we found it unlocked, we tossed the cat inside the house.”
Me: “You opened the door and threw a cat inside?”
ML: “Yes. Well, the neighbor opened the door. It was unlocked, and we
didn’t want the cat to get away again.”
Me: “That’s not our cat! Brave Heart came home two days ago.
So, you are telling me you tossed a strange cat inside the house when no one
was home?”
ML: “Oh-oh.”
Me: “Listen, I know you had good intentions. I was headed out
of town, but I will head over there right now and check it out.”
I knew that the housekeeper wasn't about to go looking for the fuzzy intruder, but I had visions of the cat eating my daughter’s rats
or killing Brave Heart. However, when I got to Brian’s house the gray striped imposter (who could very well have been Brave Heart's relative) was
curled up on a bed, purring, thoroughly happy to have found a home where it
could sleep inside, out of the cold, in a decent bed. It acted like it had lived there forever,
which caused me to wonder: Which cat was the original cat: the one on the bed
or the one on the couch? Fortunately, I remembered that Brian and Jamie had
placed a collar on Brave Heart, so this had to be the wrong cat. I called the
mail lady to get the address where she had found the imposter and I carried him
home. Sadly, as I approached his home, kitty grew increasingly tense and agitated.
I explained that we would really like to keep him, but we couldn’t take
on any other responsibility at this time.
So, I am on my way home to pick up my bags for Estes when my
intuition tells me to check my tires. One tire is down to 15 pounds. The first
station I go to the air pump has an “out of order” sign. When I put quarters in
the machine at the second air station, nothing happens. It is evidently also
out of order. At the third station: success! I decide that the leak must
be slow enough that I don’t have to worry driving an hour away and after
picking up my bags, at last, I set out to Estes Park. Evidently, I was intended
to leave two hours off schedule. I always trust those signs. I am happy to say I did remove the correct cat and my tire made it through the trip without further incident.
I slept well in a lovely, quiet, little room at the YMCA of the Rockies. In the morning I
decided to get to my yoga class 20 minutes early to set up my
mat and meditate, but when I got to the door and the young man checked my badge,
he informed me that I had signed up for FRIDAY classes and that I needed to go
down to Administration to change my class schedule. I asked him if I could do it
after the class, but evidently people have taken advantage of their system in
very un-yogi like behavior, and I was not to be trusted.
When I arrived at Administration, the line was quite long. I was
already put off by the Conference because they charge a nonrefundable fee of
$100 to cancel a day of classes and the day of classes cost quite a bit. I would have cancelled, because I had other
profession obligations related to graduate school, but there was no way I was going to
pay a $100 penalty. Evidently their system works, but it stills feels like big business
and somewhat unspiritual.
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| Dharma Mittra |
So I arrive in the registration line no longer feeling
yogi-like unless Yogi bear with a hungry stomach qualifies. I am feeling like
maybe I will bite someone’s head off, but to my credit having practiced enough yoga before I got to this moment in my life, while I am feeling rushed, I communicate my frustration (I think) quite graciously. I can’t
imagine how I signed up for Friday classes when I KNEW even back THEN, 3 months
ago, that Fridays are booked up. However, it has been a long time, so, evidently, I made a
mistake. It would have been helpful to receive an email confirmation of classes,
to which the blonde woman with henna-painted hands addressing me said: "You could have looked it up.” Why would I look it up if I
didn’t know anything was awry? At any rate, she is understanding
enough and instead of making me pay for a second day, all she charges me is a $10
change fee. But, she adds: “Oh, you are signed up for Dharma Mittra’s ‘Inviting
Grace into Your Life’ class. That will be perfect for you.” (Implying possibly my lack
of grace.) Instead of biting her head off, however, I thank her and jog out the
back door and back up the hill to the building.
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| Seane Corn |
Later in the day, I joined in the attempt to set a Guinness
Book of World records for the most people in a room doing yoga (and we did it! 255 people in a yoga chain). Also, I was fortunate to be able to take a yoga/hiking
class with renowned climber, Olivia Hsu, and a yoga class with goddess Seane Corn. A diminutive woman, when she takes the stage she transforms into a lioness with a mane... her deep voice and profound messages rock the room.
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