2) Sloths are cute.

3) Do I really need to write anything else?

4) No.

ps I’m done pimping out my sloth pictures now.  There are a few more, but I’m saving them for a rainy day.

I could tell you about my trip to Puerto Viejo.  It’s a small town on the Eastern coast of Costa Rica, and it is the most chaotic, crazy party town I’ve ever been to. Passing a tattooed gangsta-type who was teaching his two-year-old how to long-board down the town highway’s main road… Being offered weed by a rastafarian on a bike as we walked to our hostel… Riding our bikes down the hotel’s hallway to our room…

The town is also as sleepy and casual a place as you can imagine. It’s not all night clubs and beaches. Eating freshly cut coconuts on the side of the road; stopping for breakfast at a combination hostel / yoga studio / chocolate factory—basically, the place of someone’s dreams, and now of mine, too

But that isn’t even 10% of the story.

I came here in order to visit the Sloth Sanctuary. Not because I love sloths, but because my close friend does, and coming to it would be so much vicarious fun for her. I have loved having adventures for that sort of nonsensical reason: driving to the most South-Westerly point in Ireland, for example, or visiting a mushroom museum in France because my mom Loves Mushrooms.

The sloth place was amazing, and on the way to the sloth place, I discovered another place, equally dear to me: the Jaguar Rescue Center, filled some of the most amazing animals I’ve seen—and Luis suggested we bike-ride there, as it was only 2 km out of town.

But wait, that’s barely 25% of the story! Who’s Luis?

Luis is a 25-year-old staff member of YWAMSJ, who is from this area and offered to come with me.. or, kind of actually was volunteered to accompany me, by Tony, the base’s hospitality and tourism expert. So Luis and I have been hanging out all weekend; which has really only been a day and a half.

Luis is half Afro-Caribbean and half native Costa Rican, and comes from a family of about 10 brothers and sisters, and about another 10 half-brothers and half-sisters. He’s the youngest, or one of, and has has some amazing challenges in his life that he really ought to have is own blog about. He currently works on the base helping to build homes for others, volunteering his time. He’s trying to learn English more gooder—and the weekend has been a great big long practice session for him.

He used to live and work in Puerto Viejo, and knows so many people we pass here on the street; I have gotten “local” rates twice, including the aforementioned coconuts; and we got a special tour of the jaguar center because he knew someone working there.

Unfortunately, Luis’ magic connections did not go so far as to get us a bed at the town’s good hostel, Pagalú Hostel, so we ended up in as low-grade an accommodation as I’ve been in since I slept in an abandoned truck in Denmark. The room we’re in has two beds, two mattresses, two pillows, two sheets, a side table three empty shelves, a lightbulb in the ceiling, and a fan bolted to the wall.

No hooks, no trash can, no bathroom of course, and the walls are thin enough that I can hear the headphones of the person in the next room.

We could have stayed at the town’s big hostel, Rocking J’s.  Rocking J’s is.. well, it’s rocking. It’s loud, and you can sleep in a hammock or bring your own, or stay in a tent, or get a dorm room. We didn’t stay there because you don’t get much sleep there. We did, however, meet Sydney there, because that’s where Sydney was staying.

Ah yes, the story unfolds! Who is Sydney?

She’s a woman from Hornby Island, just a small distance from Vancouver.  She ended up in Costa Rica on a vacation that turned sour, and she’s old friends with someone on the YWAM base. So when it turned out that she was going to be in Puerto Viejo this weekend, her friend asked Luis and I if we’d meet up with her and help her have a decent time.  We said yes, of course.

Though it turns out, there’s not a lot we could do to improve her experience… because she drank the water. And is sick as a person who drinks the water in Puerto Viejo. Poor thing. She had white rice and off-white banana for dinner. And white coconut meat and coconut water for lunch, and nothing for breakfast.  Seems like she’s slowly, slowly introducing colored foods back into her diet.

Meanwhile, Luis and I have been continuing our conversations about God and faith and how hard it would be to start a mission out here, where clearly the Rastafarians and yogis and, frankly, the hedonists and college students could use a little missionarying.

Well, if you’re Luis, you start with a piece of land. Which he has.  Then you get some materials. Which he has. And a plan. Also, has. Check! Then you have to know how to build houses. He’s getting that. Then… you need volunteers and some money. And that’s where we are today. Anyone want to build Luis’ mission?

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to spending tonight in my hammock, because Sydney is in Luis’ bed, and Luis is in mine, and I’d much rather sleep in the hammock than spend another night in the nook-sized room listening to the fan clang and bang all night.

Oh, and did I tell you I had a Costa Rican empanada? It’s made of corn meal, stuffed with chicken, fried in oil, and then sprinkled with the ground-up wings of fairies or unicorn horn or I don’t know what but it’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. Seriously. So good. Maybe I was just hungry.

Oh, and did I tell you that I’m coming back on Tuesday?

Oh, and did I mention that we almost didn’t catch the proper connecting bus in Limòn and almost got stranded there overnight? And that Luis reminds me so, so clearly of my elementary school best friend Alan? Or that I saw a dead horse beside the road? Or that I played frisbee with some street kids?

Or that I swam in the Atlantic, and did yoga in the jungle in the rain? And had an omelette?

And of course, I haven’t even mentioned last weekend, when I went to minister to some of truly young children in a poor, neglected area of San Jose, where we held an impromptu Sunday School with lessons and songs and teachings and parables and prizes and toys.. Such a strange experience.

Well anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to, and I guess I should just start writing about it. But it’s late, and I’m covered in sweat—and have been for two days ever since I came over to the Caribbean side. I don’t think I’ll ever be dry again, it’s that humid. And so I’m heading to bed/hammock.

Good night.

Well, I went in the ocean today and I came up with a way better metaphor.

Your Life, you see, is totally like the ocean.

It’s big and wide and there are lots of them but they all join together, and it is shallow in parts and deep in others, but mostly deep, actually.

And sometimes you can walk in the ocean and sometimes you have to swim, or you’re trying to walk and then you stub your foot on some coral and you stumble and you suddenly try to swim but you bash your palm on some more coral and then you realize there’s coral everywhere and damn it hurts and will you need stitches?

And you wish you were standing up because now you’re swimming in 2 feet of water and that doesn’t work good. And then you get a mouth full of ocean water and that’s not good at all. But somehow you’re still having fun, except you know you only have 30 minutes until the bus leaves to San José and you don’t even want to leave this ocean that’s hurting you, and you have to get out of the ocean which would be easy if only you could stand up, which you can’t, and you think you are probably going to lure a shark to you with all these coral scratches oozing blood and is that the undertoad pulling you out to sea?

Except there isn’t any such thing as an undertoad, and it’s not a sea, even, it’s an ocean, but it doesn’t matter because the ocean kills everything eventually one way or another, it’s a metaphor for life, remember, and it’ll eat you or drown you or starve you or I don’t know, some other ocean death mechanism.. Poison? Hit by a cruise ship?

So yeah, you can fill in the rest yourself but I thought it worked pretty well at the time.

* For the first time, I just saw two people here get mad at each other. Voices were raised! I knew they weren’t perfect!

* Time flies when you’re having fun.

* Just because people don’t necessarily look that organized, doesn’t mean they’re wasting time or moving slow. They might be getting a heck of a lot done. A heck of a lot more than ME, in fact.

* You don’t get as hungry when it’s hot all the time. Or perhaps it’s the regular meal times— whatever the reason, I don’t get hungry until the meal time, and then I really do. Not that that has stopped me from snacking on peanuts in the meanwhile.

* On that note: It’s really nice to eat at a regular time.

* Standing in line (like for food) or sitting next to people at dinner, you learn a lot about them and what they’re doing. It’s a casual social lubricant and glue. Except when no one sits next to you. Then it’s much worse than sitting on your awesome couch watching your favorite show. But mostly that hasn’t happened, especially thanks to Nina, who seems to take a certain pleasure in making sure no one sits alone.

* I don’t look as old as I am.  In fact, some people here simply don’t believe me when I tell them. That’s probably because the bulk of volunteers here are from 18-21, with the standard deviation range probably 17-24, and the staff from mid 20s to mid 30s.  I’m the old guy, and I’m really glad I don’t stand out more.

* I feel like an anthropologist, or how I imagine one would feel. And I love it. I am experiencing such different behaviors, beliefs, vocabulary, actions, attitudes, living structures, social norms, conversations, relationships, and hearing people’s life stories… Fantastic. And such a learning time. New ideas. New visions. New possibilities. Yeah, I’m kind of rambling here and being vague… I’d give more detail if I could see it, but I can’t yet.

* Costa Rica has a store called PriceSmart that is a clone, as direct clone as a stormtrooper, of Costco. From the huge warehouse down to the cheap hot dogs at the front, the air tubes that take the cash from the registers, the guy at the door who checks receipts, the free samples,... it’s surreal.

* (U.S. President) Obama came to town Friday, and the capital SHUT DOWN for the visit. Kids got the day off school, government workers had the day off, huge parts of downtown were pedestrian-only. He was meeting with the Costa Rican prez and the heads of many other Latin American countries. Ticos (Costa Ricans call themselves Ticos) cleaned the highway and cleared it of traffic for his trip into town, and shut down all air traffic over the country for an hour before and after Air Force One’s arrival. Pretty cool, and a bit overblown, and shows you how people treat the importance of the U.S. down here.

* Costa Rican coins are STUPID. Every denomination is just about exactly the same size and the same color and the same design. Like, were you THAT pressed for time and low on creativity? Gosh. Jeez. I have twice tried to pay for things and ended up in a bit of a suspicious confrontation with a vendor because I short-changed them, and both times I’d been really careful beforehand to have my money ready but I’d ended up with the wrong coin—and once, I got given back the wrong change and I’m positive it was an accident again caused by the coinage.

* This base has a small store called El Chinamo, or what I’d call a tuck store. The store sells chocolate bars, microwave popcorn, raisins, ice cream, and the staff is trilingual, English, Spanish and German. You also get change here for the laundry; the washing machine takes only U.S. quarters, which are hard to come by otherwise. I thought the store’s name was a corruption of the Chinaman, which is what corner stores were called in Western Canada but apparently that’s not the case.

* Meals here look like this:

Things you get: beans, and rice, and a bit of meat (chunks of chicken or pork with extra mushrooms thrown in as decoys), and a salad of lettuce and tomatoes, some pasta or a legume like a boiled-then-fried potato or a weird South American gourd like an albino pumpkin or something.  Things you don’t get: cheese. dessert. bacon. beer. berries. beef. seconds if you’re slow.

* I’ve been working on the Web site here, but the internet connection is spotty. It’s fine for email, and if you’re not in critical need of a connection, a little outage here and there isn’t bad.  But if you need to FTP files or backup a database, and you don’t want to have it fail in the middle.. or if you want to get into a good groove of editing, testing, modifying, reloading, reading docs, trying code… you have to stop and pause all the time like you’re hitting speed bumps—or a wall.. it’s tough. Quite tough.

* Once a week, this YWAM base has Intercession, in which everyone on base gathers and prays for certain things. This week, it was for a few things: it was for success for the teams that were out on missions, it was for skilled staff to come to fill certain needs of the base, and it was for wisdom for the leadership team to be able to lead the base in the direction that God wanted.

Intercession was a new concept for me—or rather, a new word and a clarity of understanding for something I hadn’t really understood before. There are different types of prayer, and intercession, alongside adoration, confession and thanksgiving, is a type of prayer for ‘others’, however that’s defined by the group. Wikipedia says “In so doing, [intercession prayer] both appeals to, and seeks to embody, God’s own love for the world.” Cool stuff.

* Another concept that’s been made clearer to me by being here is about good works and being good. It turns out, that being a good person, and doing good things, is not critical for being saved or getting into heaven. Christians don’t do (or perhaps I should say “shouldn’t do”) good things in order to get into heaven. Rather, if you are filled with Holy Spirit, you are naturally inclined to want to do good things, and you help others because you are moved to do so, not because you HAVE to do so—or so goes Christian theory. Meanwhile, you don’t do bad things either, because you stop wanting to, not because you’re afraid of the consequences..

I find this pretty interesting because it explains to me the muddling of why Christians have a hard time believing that atheists would or could do good or avoid evil without believing in a religion. For Christians, good behavior comes from a wellspring within powered by God; I can see why, if you had a belief in that source of all energy for goodness, you wouldn’t believe that there could be other methods to power good behavior—it’s like a gasoline-based society having a hard time believing that electric car engines will ever work. 

At the same time, atheists (some atheists, but it’s just be polemic for efficiency’s sake) see Christians as being rule makers and followers—“do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the signs”—and then criticize them for not following all the rules of the Bible, but seem not to understand that Christians take it on faith (natch) that…

if the first step of accepting Jesus into one’s heart is done well and properly, the behaviors that stem from that will (with guidance and well-meaning and correctable error) be naturally good, and that studying the bible simply helps you hear what your (heart, God, conscience) is telling you is right. Righteousness and activism, selflessness and smugness, facets of the same internal jewel of Christians.

Which I think is too bad and disappointing, because I was planning to rob about three liquor stores when I got back on all the goodwill I stored up on this trip, but apparently it doesn’t work that way. Alas.

* Watching people try to lead, and try to follow here, is so educational. Ways that you can get people motivated. Ways that you can help people to achieve their own goals, or bring them together for common goals. Ways to minimize interpersonal conflict when you have tons of people living in a communal space, sharing limited resources. It’s so interesting.

One thing I love is the way the occasional outages bring the base together—water off for an hour and suddenly you have shared hardship and support. The almost-completely trouble-free nature of North American living means that we don’t turn to each other as often, we don’t commiserate as much, we don’t share limited resources in a supportive sense, and I think we are the poorer for it, at all levels.

Yes, it’s nice that the power in my office in Gastown is stable as helium and doesn’t flickr on and off every few days. But when it does that here, we all look around and go “we’re all in this together, aren’t we” and that creates a different kind of wondrous energy that can then be used to bring people into sync and give progress in other ways.

* I have too much stuff. It’s clear that, if I can bring one backpack full of things to this place and think to myself that I have too many pairs of socks.. that I don’t need the additional 15 pairs I have back in Vancouver And let’s not even get started on my crepe maker.

* A regular bedtime is nice, and it’s good for me, and I like it… but there is absolutely no way I’m going to be able to keep that up when I go back. For instance, I stayed up blogging this… heh.

See you all soon!

The point is, I like metaphors. So when I was sitting on this bus just now and a metaphor suddenly hit me hard out of nowhere like a headlight-less bus full of ninjas, I was pretty darn excited, let me tell you.

No, really. Let me tell you.

You see, your life is a bus. It is. And you are on that bus right now, your life bus. But, and here’s the really important bit: you are not the driver. You just think you are.

When you take the bus, you do it because you want to get to X; the bus is going to X; and so you feel like you are in charge of making yourself go to X. But you aren’t. The driver is.

And if you have a good driver, you will get there without incident. Most drivers are good. Or good enough. They might be severe. Or new and uncertain. But they do the job and you arrive and you don’t think much of it.

I’ve been in buses, though, that got lost. Yes, lost. Or that ran behind schedule. And then decided not to pick up any more passengers or stop in order to make up time. Which isn’t good bus driver behavior. And when that happens to your life, it makes people think your life is out of control or lost or on the wrong road. But really.. it’s just not under the control of a good driver.

So not every driver is good. But who are these drivers? Am I trying to talk about gods, kismet, (a or the) God? Your own lizard brain trying to pass on its alleles? Where are you taking this metaphor, Trav? Don’t worry.. we’ll get there.

Yes, I’m talking all these, but also more. Sometimes the driver is addiction. Or pride. Or habit. Sometimes the driver is someone else’s needs, or expectations.

Sometimes the driver is anger or hope. And the thing is, we don’t get to drive the bus .. but we get to choose the driver. We get to put something in that seat. It’s hard work to change a driver, but it happens. So choose that driver well, and protect a good driver.

Metaphor continuing… the driver is never luck or chance or a random event… Luck is what happens outside the bus, not what drives it.

Chance can have a big effect on the bus. It can delay it, derail it, destroy it. It can guide it or rescue it. Mostly, though, random events tend to be bad for the bus. Just because there are more bad random things than good ones.

Now, on this bus, are the people in your life. (they Are on their own buses, too, but lets not go all “Inception” here, ok?)

And you have them on your bus for a while, but you don’t control where they get on or get off.  And you sit next to some of them and further away from others.  And for a lot of your life, there’s someone sitting beside you—next to you.  That’s how most people sit. On a few buses, there are 3 seats across, or single seats down in front, and some people sit there, but most people sit with a partner, and talk to the people near them.

You can have a big bus or a small one, but you can’t fit more people on the bus than a certain number.  If it’s full, no one can get on.  If it’s empty, people don’t talk to each other. You should fill your bus comfortably, not overfull, not empty, regardless of how big your bus is.

And what happens is, as your life goes along from the beginning of your route to the end, is your bus starts off empty, with people who live near the end of the route, and then it fills up and changes as it goes through different neighbourhoods: childhood, school, work, family building. And it starts to empty as people get off, and if you don’t keep it full, it gets emptier and emptier. As it approaches the end of the route, there are fewer people left, unless you did a good job of filling it.

Some buses are party buses. Some are shuttle buses. Some are luxury buses and some are custom remodels and some are run down and spitting fumes but full of spirit.  Some buses never leave town, just go around and around and around.  Other buses go across the country, cross borders, and a few buses belong to bands or teams and go wherever they want to go, never settling in one place for too long.

=-=-=

However, this is the best part of the metaphor (and I have stretched this metaphor like silly putty at this point, but bear with me): Imagine that you are sitting in a window seat of this bus, your life, and you’re looking out the window.

If you try to look straight ahead, you can’t see very well. Things are squished, and hard to focus on, and they rush towards you, get large, then disappear past your vision almost as soon as they appear. If you focus entirely on your future, you don’t get a very good perspective on things, and you actually don’t see much.

If you look back; same thing. You suddenly have big interesting objects to look at, but just their back side, and they dwindle and shrink and eventually disappear and leave you wondering what they were and where they went.

But if you look directly out, at where you are now, not just the side of the road but the horizon, you see the view, the wilderness, the city, the present moment, all slowly shifting with parallax effect. You see a calmer now, you understand the place you’re at, and you get a sense of where you’re going and where you’ve been, but you don’t need to worry about that; it’ll arrive momentarily, and then you’ll get a chance to look at it.

Yes, if your life is a bus, you’d do best to know where the bus is going but not spend all your time straining to see it before you get there. It’ll get there, assuming you have a good driver, as I said. Enjoy the ride, and take in the view, and let what’s past stay in the past.

=-=-=

Because the final truth is, the bus is just a vehicle.  Your life is just a shell.  And what happens on that bus depends entirely on who you fill the bus with, and who the driver is.  With a good driver, you can have some amazing adventures, and with a good set of passengers, the ride can be as joyful as you can imagine.

All aboard.

Comments: 1

I did the embarrassing tourist thing of WAY over-offering money to the ticket guy (I thought he said 13,000 colón (CR dollars) for the ticket, when really it was 3,300—but to be fair, that means my bus ticket to a city four hours drive away was only $6.60—less than a ride from the airport to downtown by skytrain in Vancouver!)

And the bus I was on, you would NOT believe it.. double decker, assigned seats, air conditioned, HUGE, amazing, comfortable and it totally did not plunge off a single mountain road!

Four hours later, I signaled the bus drive to pull over at the drop-off in Bagaces, and was greeted by this:

A deserted road, a no-name gas station, a town of 4,000 people near a national park, no one speaking English, and I was 30 minutes early for the fellow, William, who was going to pick me up, maybe at the gas station, maybe at the center of town, maybe.

But everything worked out, and I was soon miles up a winding highway at their farm—not what we’d recognize that way in Canada. William introduced me to Angie, and the two of them fed me fajitas and rice and hot sauce made by a neighbour from peppers he grows in his yard.

Their farm is less about rows of crops, and more about planting trees in a loose orchard. The trees grow so quickly here; in just a few years or less to huge heights and drop fruit like santa drops gifts down a chimney.

They have lemon (multiple types) lime (ditto) grapefruits, guava, mango, guanavana (which they didn’t just make up, I swear), avocados, basically, anything they eat, they save some seeds, grow a shoot form it, plant it, and are soon eating it anew. It’s awesome.

They’re also successfully growing a nut here called Jatropha which can be pressed for its oil and that oil then used in converted diesel engines. So yes, they are growing their own car fuel (though they currently lack a press).

They have dogs, a goat, a horse, chickens (which were delicious for lunch!) and a cat named Kitty. They use solar power to pump water from their well into their pond, which they stock with tilapia. And they recycle everything.

The whole place is astounding; a beautiful combination of rustic and modern, of the endless piles of broken gear and ongoing projects of a working farm, combined with a structure and tidiness of a zen garden. It’s clearly a labour of love and a work in progress, and through the outdoor bathroom (there are indoor ones too) you get a 50km view down the valley as you sit on your throne and think… this is the life.

They moved here from the U.S. about 6 years ago, and in that time went from a single house on the land to the multiple structures and gardens and nursery and chicken coops that they showed me today.

Downsides? Oh, there’s a bit of a problem with vampire bats biting the horse at night, so they had to create a bat-proof stable with chicken wire… And the poisonous snake that took out the eye of one of their dogs was a bad day .. but the vet did save the dog’s life.

The winds can be quite strong at certain times of the year, and the rainy season makes a heavy Vancouver shower look like that misting spray that supermarkets use to keep vegetables moist. Rain here means: the kind of water falling from the sky that might be mistaken for a shattered aquarium tank falling on you; look out for sharks from above.

I’m only here for two days, and while I don’t think *I* could handle running a property like this, the attraction of it is simple and undeniable. With an Internet connection and a few visitors a year, you could have a quiet slice of paradise and tropical fruit for breakfast every day of the year—at a price that’s far, far less than what I’m paying for my place in Vancouver.

And if the tradeoff is just that it’s harder to order from Amazon.com… I think that’s not a bad exchange.

I’ve been given a small, minimal room with a shared bathroom, a bed, a chair, some clothes hangers, a bench, an alarm clock, two towels, a candle and some matches.

It’s quiet time from 10 p.m. onwards, and the wifi is turned off at 11 p.m. Breakfast is at 6:30 a.m. and so far I’ve made it up every day for fresh pineapple, guava, toast and jam, burnt coffee, and the oddest breakfast cereal I’ve ever seen.

The plan is to stay here until mid-May, volunteering. Mostly on the Web site but also on other tasks that need doing.

You might be wondering, what the hel—heck I mean, what the heck I’m doing here.  Good question.

I’m not Christian.  I’m not religious at all, really, and though I describe myself as having Taoist philosophies, I’m an atheist. And yet here I am, sitting next to a fellow at lunch who just got back from distributing Bibles along the western coast of the country, as part of an audacious project to put a bible into every house in Costa Rica.

Well, here’s the story.

About two months ago, I decided I needed to get out of Vancouver, and my own head, and soon. I wanted to do something positive, something for other people, some volunteer project. I looked at some of the tourist volunteer programs, but nothing seemed to match, nor to be affordable, either. I also wanted a personal connection to the charity work in some way.

It happens that several friends of mine in Vancouver were or are affiliated with an organization called YWAM, which is a loose but huge network of “international, inter-denominational, non-profit Christian, short-term” missions around the world.  My friends in Vancouver recommended that I come to this base, because a) it had good Internet, which I need because of Hop Studios, b) it was far enough away to be a new headspace, but close enough that a short stay (three weeks) was worth the travel and not TOO expensive to fly to, and c) they needed the skills I had there.

Which isn’t to say, I disagree with what they do—or even why they’re doing it—just that I’m not on the same page with some of their beliefs around, you know, God and stuff. However, this mission is involved in a number of worthy causes. They help bring medical and dental services to some of the poorest areas of San Jose. They build homes for those who are in need; they are also involved with exposing and challenging some of the human trafficking going on in San Jose.

And while I have been an atheist most of my life, there’s a reason I’m questioning some of my rather big base assumptions lately, as you might know. I think this is a healthy process—a scientific process, in fact, to revisit established truths and re-verify what you think you know. The last time I went to church regularly was back in the 20th century, and it’s entirely possible I will look at it differently now.

In preparation for this trip, I’ve gone several times to a gospel-centric, Mennonite-based, new urban church in Vancouver. The church itself is a recent “planting”—it’s been around only about 5 years—and it’s significantly different from the United Church I went to as a kid. I’ll explain how in another post, though, this is already getting long.

But in the mean time—I’m breathing tropical air in a very quiet and still room tonight, preparing to experience something brand new with a group of people that seem pretty darn happy to have me here.  I’m really looking forward to it.

At the bottom of that hill, past the hamburger stand with the sign erected in the ‘70s, past the store selling sex toys and kink supplies, past the ramen noodle restaurant and the “corner store” that made 93% of its revenue from selling cheap alcohol, past douche-magnet Mexican restaurant Diablo (actual slogan: Urban Taco Fabricator) , is Urth Yoga.

Urth had a fantastic $39 introductory special for all the yoga you could do for a month. Which I signed up for, and then did yoga every day I was there, doing yoga, in fact, 13 times in 12 days.

I could say this was a transformative experience, that it opened my eyes, changed my life.

It didn’t.

But it did calm me, strengthen me, and get me through a few days that I couldn’t have reached the end of without it. By the end of the two weeks, I couldn’t imagine NOT going to class, and I tried classes at 7 a.m., 9 p.m., and every time in between. I tried restorative yoga, flow yoga, hatha yoga, open yoga and basic yoga (which has nothing in common with basic D&D, to my disappointment.)

My favorite teacher was Stephen, but don’t try going there just to learn from him, he’s gone.  It turns out my first class with him was two weeks before his last class. He’s now sold his house and gone on a two-year bike ride around Europe and Asia with his wife.

Sold all his things, basically, too. He was from Canada, lived in L.A. for a bunch of years. Fell into yoga, I think, and now he’s falling out of Los Angeles. I went to several of his last classes—last “open” class, last Thursday class, etc.—and I saw he inspired and healed and educated a lot of students who were damn sad to see him go.

Except they weren’t sad, really; hardly any of them were actually sad. Wistful and not wanting to have to say goodbye, yes, but they were happy to see him head off into a new adventure, into a new place, a new pattern, to see him doing what he wanted to do, to have a dream and make it real.

Maybe by supporting that, by being happy for Stephen, they could feel happy themselves; maybe that joy counteracted their own sadness.

Or maybe Urth has a lot of good yoga instructors and they were going to be just fine.  That’s true, too.

But it made me think a lot about who is happy or sad for me—and whether I should be happy or sad for myself.

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As a belated Valentine’s gift, Sarah gave me a t-shirt she had custom made. It is a yoga joke she made up and drew herself:

Coincidentally, she does yoga all the time too, and it does wonderful things for her. She even knows the names of all the poses, which I don’t know, other than the one that means “bend over”—and I think they all end in -asana.

Yoga is all around me these days. Laura introduced me to it and it did good things for her, at a time she needed it, and yoga classes were her Christmas present to me. Lululemon’s headquarters are in Vancouver, which is even nicknamed Lotusland.

And yoga is deeply facinating. It’s a personal challenge, a calming influence, a way of keeping fit and gaining flexibility. I wrote about meditation recently because I’ve been doing that in yoga classes, and that reminded of my start.

Yoga is a religion, a philosophy, a culture, an exercise routine and a type of clothing.  It’s associated tightly with Vancouver and as I get involved in it, I see the intertwining of Vancouver and yogic thought and actions.  But the most telilng thing about yoga for me right now, is this one line from Wikipedia: “Generally put, yoga is a disciplined method utilized for attaining a goal.”

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Yoga ties in to big questions I’m interested in right now: two of them, actually. Its philosophy and opportunity for introspection help me have the time and space to ponder these questions.

First of all, and most importantly: Is there something, you know, bigger in the world than what I have been focusing on—not just “does god exist,” or “what is the purpose of life,” but rather holistically, “how should (my, or one’s) existence as a living, thinking, growing person actually work”?

And the second one, if I start to think about that first question, is “What does that mean I should do in practice?”

More on that in the future.  For now, I’m going to see if I can touch my toes.

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She’d zonk out and I’d try to stay awake until the end of the show, and then when it was time to go to bed she’d anticipate and lurch awkwardly, stumblingly up the stairs in front of me, and beat me to bed. By the time I was done brushing my teeth, she’d already be asleep again, curled up in a ball on my pillow.

On nights that I was already asleep in bed, kitty would come and curl up beside me or on top of me, and I’d be warmer, and she’d purr and sometimes I’d rest my hand on her and feel her breathe. When she slept somewhere else, I’d sleep deeply like a log, and when she slept in my bed, I’d sleep contentedly and lightly. And both were good.

I miss the way she wouldn’t let me be alone with my thoughts, especially when they weighed too much. When I came home from a hard day, if she was there, I couldn’t just be grumpy and turn on the tv or surf the Web—right away she’d be all over me, up in my face, telling me how her day was and how much she missed me and how bored she was and how other cats had annoyed her that day. And if she was hungry, that couldn’t wait; that was a crisis, it had to be dealt with.

When I’d be quietly worrying about tomorrow, she’d be right there in my face reminding me that it was not tomorrow, it was NOW.  I’d be drawn into the present moment, and then she’d nudge me and blink at me until I gave her some of my drink or a nibble of cheese or morsel of popcorn. When ever she was around me, I lived more in the moment, in the present, and I was attentive and happier.

My kitty loved to play, to make everything a game. I could chase her in circles around the house all day and she’d run away, and then stop and look back and make sure I was following, and then dodge away again.  She loved to misbehave in these obvious, “clumsy” ways—knocking things out of my hand or knock something over or off the couch. That was the only time she was ever klutzy, when she thought it would make me chase her more—the rest of the time she was graceful and sleek as a gazelle.

And she was so hard to catch when she didn’t want to be caught, always just out of reach, and so easy to be caught when she was ready. I’d lift her up and nuzzle her.

I know she loved being bad, loved thinking she was being bad. Except she wasn’t, really. She just wanted to run, to run as fast as she could from time to time, to make me be out of breath chasing her. She just wanted to feel like a badass kitty, I think.  But she was really a good kitty, by any measure.

She loved to be outside, in the sun, in the grass. Vancouver’s rain got to her and made her hissy; in the summer she was happiest. It was hard to keep her inside when the weather was good.

I loved people’s reaction to meeting her. She was funny as hell, wasn’t she? I loved telling them stories about her antics and adventures. She just made an impression on everyone, and she never strolled through a room without making sure you noticed her being there. She wasn’t shy, even if she was sometimes uncertain about certain people, new people.

And she was beautiful, elegant, smooth, always well-groomed. She loved the collar I bought her, and I don’t think I was just imagining that it made her happy to wear it. She wasn’t a perfect show cat. Instead, she had something about the way she moved, some spark that people always noticed and remarked on. She photographed beautifully—she seemed to always know when a camera was on her, and the lens loved her—and I so wish I’d taken more photographs and shared them on Instagram.  You always think there’ll be time, but you don’t know, you never really know.

My place isn’t the same without her. I keep finding little traces and toys. And since the end, my heart is a little bit different shaped now.  I just miss her, it’s that simple.  But that’s the way it is with kitties.  You give them love, they return it unconditionally, and then one day too soon you are left with good memories to cherish—and little balls of hair under the couch to remember them by.

I had drama class twice a week with Ms. Bolton.  She was older, probably between 30 and 60—because to an 11-year-old, all adults are just, you know, older. She had blonde hair, possibly dyed, and a voice that projected well.

She taught acting things, I’m sure, though I remember almost nothing about the class, other than that it was down the hall from the woodwork shop, whose drills and lathes echoed whiningly down the hallway, and it had an area that was raised about 8 inches in one corner; that was the stage we used, I think.

To the left of the main door as you entered, there was a huge (again, to an 11-year-old) pile of rectangular floor mats. They were red vinyl, like bus seat material, like they’d skilled the red rubber balls they use for dodge ball and tanned it and made it into sleeping pads.  The mats had a white cotton handle stitched to one end, and when you came bouncing into class, laughing and pushing and talking loudly, the way kids do between classes, you reached out as you passed and grabbed a mat, and dragged it to an open space on the floor.

You put your backpack against the wall (mine was oversized and orange and full of books), and head back to your mat and settle down on it.

Then she’d darken the room, and we’d all lie on our backs, willy-nilly, hands at our side, and she’d tell us to close our eyes. At first you’d whisper a bit to each other but she’d have none of that, she would start out very strict, and silence would be immediate—once everyone had a mat.

And then her voice would soften and she’d talk to us, and tell us to breathe through our noses down the back of our throat, and out through our mouths in a big soft puff while we counted in to 4, and then held it for 2, then exhaled for 6, and held it for 2 more. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

I remember so many of the exercises. I remember being told to imagine I was at the sea shore, in warm sunlight, listening to waves crashing slowly. I remember being in the forest, in a green emerald twilight, in a sun-dappled meadow with tall trees around and wind blowing gently through them.

We didn’t know we were meditating. We didn’t know that we were in Savasana pose.

I remember being asked to imagine that I was on a white escalator, going down through layers of color, counting down 8 floors, to reach a state of calmness. I remember thinking about time passing, and slowing it down, and thinking about each second as it passed, watching them flit by.

I remember being told to clear my mind, to picture a wrinkled piece of paper with shadows but no writing, with no pattern, with endless crinkles, and to just let my eyes roam, slowly, across an endless horizon.

She’d also play white noise, or sometimes a tape of someone suggesting how to relax.  There were elements of self-hypnosis in there, visualization exercises, picturing the future, picturing positive outcomes, feeling good and positive and optimistic.

After we were calm and breathing gently in unison, then there’d be a short time of quiet, and I’d be alone with my thoughts, or my lack of thoughts, probably the only time in my life up to that point that I’d tried to experience that state of simply being, not thinking, not worrying, not imagining.

I used those techniques she taught to help myself fall asleep at night, and still do, when my mind is whirring. I use the breathing to calm myself before I do a presentation, or have a scary conversation, or when I’m just feeling tense and suddenly notice it.

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And then she’d tell us to open our eyes, sit up, and get ready to do some drama, and she had a class that was focused, rested, and way more attentive than the wrestling bear cubs that tumbled through her door five minutes earlier.  The time she used on meditation probably made the rest of the class so much more productive it was a net gain in useable time.

What did we do after that? Improv, monologues, maybe some dance? I forget what all. That part never did stick with me. Sorry Ms. Bolton. But what you taught me about the inside of my mind and how to control it stays with me every day.

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When do they imitate the trip back?

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“Only the person who has learned Continual Love coming from a heart of Gratitude/Worship can effectively deal with the problem of loneliness.”

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“Le plus je vis, la plus belle la vie devient.”

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“Burn it down till the embers smoke on the ground / And start new when your heart is an empty room”

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“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

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“I saw that you were perfect and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect and I loved you even more.”

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“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

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“If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”

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“Sucks to be us sometimes”

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“It is not your responsibility to know the answers, but it is your responsibility to know and to ask the right questions over and over.”

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