uncertainty

human experience is interesting. right now i feel like i'm experiencing like the vast majority of human experience all at once. thank god no one is dead.

i feel like i'm losing my semblance of a writer's voice. i want to say my calves are really sore right now for no known reason. i haven't been doing any major exercise. just did two yoga classes and still kind of sore... but it seemed to help my upper body.

i want to say all kinds of things but have no idea where to start... has been my m.o. lately... a few things about today... liz had us do this whirling dervish thing to re-balance us... temporarily, i felt re-balanced... actually i'm getting re-balanced... re-oriented... re-aligned... the whirling dervish thing was cool... we spin around (to the right because the northern hemisphere is aligned as such) while staring at our thumbs... i was really spinning... i hardly remember anything liz said, but she was funny, and that's what happened. during shivasana, i was crying. i was processing things... i was remembering how i went to a & h on the last day of school last year and then found myself there again today on the first day of school. i was like (for ca audience, or for ne, i would say i thought or i said) where did the summer go?

some of my friends have commented that they were depressed making the transition after being on vacation. i think i'm having trouble separating out my feelings lately. my sister says i'm mourning my relationship with clint. there's some of that going on. she says i may also be mourning another relationship. maybe so. during yoga today i also had a burst of clarity about my parents. like really, really understanding my mom completely in a whole new way. i was very, very grateful for that. like, wow, if only i'd had this understanding when i was struggling to write my master's thesis. but it did come. i could thank the universe for that.

and then on to uncertainty. i decided to stay for a second yoga class, and krista started by asking "is anyone else going through some big changes?" i laughed and said yeah, big... so she led a class trying to help with that... at the end, she said, i know we'll be moving in november, and that's about it. she didn't know what date and what city. but i couldn't help but to think later, yeah, but you know who your husband is. you know what kind of work you'll be doing. i felt like she really didn't have that much uncertainty... but it's all relative... as i was feeling temporarily sorry for myself about my level of uncertainty, a girl who is younger than me unexpectedly told me to have a great day. she had compassion. she had handed me the bottle to spray my mat earlier. i wondered if, when we're older than someone, if we're always really surprised by their gestures. intergenerational interactions are endlessly fascinating to me. beautiful actually. michael baker was talking to me about "his generation" during our interview on the radio last night. i didn't feel so unsure or removed from that as before... i wondered if we really had that many differences.

one thing i am noticing, though, is the mr. rogers effect. michael said that his generation had captain kangaroo, which i said was virtually the same as mr. rogers, but michael said that he didn't focus on self-esteem. this idea of self-esteem is interesting. especially because in yoga we are trying to cultivate self-love.

the only other thing i have to say right now is that in addition to self-love, or maybe as part of it, it is so nice to be able to give. i was honored when, walking down the hallway of lincoln high before school started today, a nervous girl asked me to help her open her locker. i was back in her shoes, my shoes, remembering, okay we turn it to the right, then to the left past the first number, then back to the right. i remembered being in junior high asking a teacher to help me with that, and her narrating it out loud like old hat like i did today. it was such a simple way to help someone. and later, i realized that girl in high school in many ways is dealing with uncertainty even bigger than mine. or maybe she doesn't feel that. maybe we are always dealing with uncertainty, always trying to be in the moment, always wishing we had a good plan.