When Things Move Fast
This is a picture of me doing yoga. Not at a fancy studio, not on a cushiony mat, but on the bare 100 year old cypress floor of my house during a listless Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer in New Orleans.
I’m finishing up my practice, touching my head to the earth, inhaling deeply, exhaling loudly. This is my favorite part. This is the picture that my boyfriend slithered on his belly across the living room to take.
You see I work in the tech space- internet marketing-- and it evolves at super lightening speed, at a pace that requires constant vigilance, constant apprehension of what happens next.
But when I touch my head to the earth I remember what hasn’t changed: the firmness of the ground, the solidness of my body, the constant taking in and giving out of breath.
As I feel the ground support my head, I can feel it supporting the foreheads of millions before me: in prayer, in supposition, in despair. I think of heads buried in hands, heads banged against desks, hands anointing foreheads. I’m reminded how old this is, this primordial bow.
And I love that. I love that I can do something all day at work that has never been done, and then do something has been done over and over, for millennia.
It reminds me that things change fast, but they never change.
It reminds me that I can fall hard and hurting on this unyielding ground.
But I will also stop falling.