Jump On In

The river of life wants to take us where we want to go. So, jump on in. The water’s fine!

Help Yourself! (AKA: Irish Hospitality No. 2)

On September 21, 1995, it was reported that, just before dawn, a statue of Ganesh had drunk a Hindu worshiper’s offering of a spoonful of milk at a temple in New Delhi. Word of the phenomenon spread quickly and by morning’s end similar sightings were reported throughout India.

I found myself caught up in the excitement and, endeavoring to do my part, decided to offer one of my beloved statues of Ganesh the same.

But which Ganesh? Miniature dancing Ganesh? Tall elegant Ganesh? Ganesh with the fantastic Rat? Other Ganesh with the fantastic Rat? Hot pink Ganesh? Pale yellow harem pants Ganesh? Delicate hand-carved scholarly Thai Ganesh?

And what kind of milk? Low-fat? No-fat? Skim? Butter? Whole? Regular? Organic? Raw? Cream?

Organic cream? Raw organic cream?

And which bowl among bowls?

(Note: Spoon-feeding was never under consideration. Never. Let’s be real.)

And when to put out? How much to put out? When to discard? How often to refill? Would it be terribly wrong to simply top off?

Finally, all is decided.

I will reward my most gracefully pot-bellied Ganesh, a slender Shivaic bronze, with an offering of raw organic cream that I imagine to be delicious. The bowl I chose is gleaming; Scandinavian, beautiful and blue. Two days pass. Unable to determine if, in fact, my offering has been drunk or merely evaporated, and about to embark upon pouring fresh cream into the newly hand washed and meticulously dried holy Danish bowl, I begin to feel overwhelmed and burdened, and myself starting to obsess about what is, ultimately, ideal for Ganesh and most conducive for a miracle, when a perfect solution, or so I think, arises out of the white hot steam vaporizing in ever-quickening intensity in my overwrought brain-pan.

And I find myself, perched mid-flight upon the threshold that both separates and contains heaven and earth, where I pause ever so briefly to gaily inform all of my Ganeshes (Ganeshi?), as well as every embodiment of every Ganesh that ever was and ever will be, that “The cream is in the refrigerator. The bowls are in the cupboard. Help yourself!” before disappearing like a mythic libation into the welcome ethers beckoning me out once more into the simultaneously very real and magical world beyond my own front door.

The Yoga of Mistakes © 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Famous Men

Famous men are men, but worse.

The Yoga of Mistakes © 2011. All Rights Reserved.

This Is My Friend, Wang . . . No Offense!

Men tend to fall in love with their idea of you, and when you do not accept that as the role of a lifetime, they tend to get huffy.

The Yoga of Mistakes © 2011. All Rights Reserved.

The Formula for Misery

The sure-fire fastest way to misery is to preface anything with the thought, “This should not be happening.”

The Yoga of Mistakes © 2011. All Rights Reserved.

So There!

There is no possibility in defensiveness; no victory in being right about being wronged.

The Yoga of Mistakes © 2011. All Rights Reserved.

A Different Kind of Yogic Contribution

It is said that after all has been said, all there is really left to say is “I love you.”

I would have to add that, sometimes, even after all that, all that is truly left to say is “Fuck you, get out of my taxi.”

The Yoga of Mistakes © 2011. All Rights Reserved.