Notes from the Thinnest Veil

There is bravery and wisdom in following the light.

This time of year, the sun begins to crawl away from my eyes around 2:30 in the afternoon, having never strayed too far from the southern horizon even at its highest point. With their departure, I feel my own desire to crawl under a thick quilt and simply stare into the soft glow of holiday lights: a sweet, holographic substitute for vital solar light.

I have known myself to rebel against this instinct to retreat to a restful pose in years and decades past. I have known myself to push through, squeezing out ideas and work in hours I now know are meant for marshmallow-fluff half-light daydreaming. The tension between the waning light and the enthusiasm of the sun in Sagittarius, I feel acutely in my collarbones. Can I harness this life-vigor into a project other than productivity?

And these may sound like serendipitous spider-spun stories of leisure. They might. Or they might be distillations of the practice moved forward not through an app that digests information on behalf of the student to record the data in some etherscape recorder of longing, but through the care that can only come through the visceral wisdom that there is no other way than together: past and present.

It’s not easy. No one said it would be easy to begin. But to live turned toward sunshine and with an eye to the map in the sky is to live a path that sustains rather than depletes, that renews rather than runs-down, that risks everything for everything.

So now I lie down, with legs propped on my enormous homemade cushion, looking east as the tiny, precious sun gives final glances toward my beloved Douglas Fir sentinel. The golden-hour green that reflects to my eyes is nothing short of miraculous.

This is my prayer.

Stay close to the elements. Let the earth lead you.

Here, now, yoga.

Om tat sat.