Just under one year ago, I found myself leaving Ananda Ashram minus the yoga teaching certificate I had come to earn: the state of New York had instituted a new law regulating yoga teacher certification programs, and there was no time for the Ashram to comply and continue the training. I was confused and disappointed as I flew to Oregon to visit my family, and I had a long, lonely train and plane ride to question myself. Do I want to be a teacher? Am I being told I shouldn't be a teacher right now? When your goals get roadblocked, is that the sign to hop over, or turn around?
Luckily someone on the other side of the blockade offered me a hand to climb over. Clayton Horton, a Greenpath Ashtangi in California, offered me to join his training, and I did. I left Oregon excited and nervous, early one morning in July. I hugged my mom, sleepy and teary-eyed, and my dad, who smiled as usual with his beautiful crooked-toothed grin, and they wished me the best.
Thirteen months later, halfway around the world, I remember that day and I can't stop smiling. I remember checking my e-mai one more time for the e-mail from a craiglist advertisement, and printing out a map of how to reach my ride-share's house. I remember my parents driving me to Eugene before the sun rose, and parking in the twilight to buy a tea and share a laughing moment with my mom. I remember being met by an unremarkable, but nice young man. Daniel was, in his khaki pants and t-shirt, my definition of a Eugene college student. I ran inside to use the bathroom, and when I got back, he had already loaded my things into his little sudan. And then we were driving south, sharing the road to California and a bag of Oregon cherries.
The ride was easy and seemed short, but when I arrived in Willits, I was happy to be out of the car, and I said good-bye with a kind of relieved shortness, lost in the anticipation of visiting my hometown. When my one-time chauffeur showed up at my door in Basel this week, I didn't recognize him. I couldn't connect his face to that of the man who drove me to Willits last year, someone whose company I enjoyed, but who seemed to share no lasting connection with me. The person standing before me now was an old friend from the moment I saw him. It seemed not to need any verbal communication. He came in, sat, and we started talking with the nonchalance of neighbors. I felt completely relaxed.
We spent that evening in the kitchen, slowly and lovingly creating a beautiful meal. He marveled at the sharpness of our new knife, and sliced the radishes painstakingly thin, eyes twinkling. I stirred, and adjusted, and stirred, and tweaked a salad dressing. And then he tried and we stirred and tweaked again. One of those collaborative projects that becomes art by virtue of the pure mutual focus instilled in it.
When we sat down to eat, it was on the balcony upstairs, in a paling cloudless evening with the last bit of sunset behind the Basel skyline at my back. I turned to watch it and when I turned back to my guest, he was already looking at me. I looked at him. I felt a jolt in my stomach and I looked away. I looked back. He was still looking. This time I held still and we observed each other, suddenly and fully. A flood of feelings came into me-
Joy: to share a long gaze with someone is something magical and connective, and i felt that connection strongly.
Fear: that gaze is something intimate, and can be easily perverted into a kind of dominating staring contest.
But it wasn't. We just looked. I found myself thinking, "If someone else looked at me for this long, I would label him a creep, awkwardly start talking, and avoid all eye contact. Why, exactly, is that not happening now?"
It was a question that flitted across my mind many times as the light seeped out of the sky above us. The space between us darkened and thickened. It seemed to amass itself into a breathing, pulsing substance, completely blurring the lines of matter and emptiness. I lost the outlines of his face against the wall behind him, and everything but his eyes become a mottled movement of dark hues. When I smiled, he smiled, and when I held still long enough to let his pupil become the focus of my gaze, I felt myself plummeting into it with a rush that caught my breath in my chest and left me teetering nervously before him. People came and went around us. The food sat uneaten, lights turned on and later off in the house. When something flicked my attention away for a moment, I saw it, but I always looked back.
I have no idea how long we sat there, but when we finally started eating, it was night and blood was rushing my ears. The food was perfect. My senses were sharp; I tasted each ingredient as it hit my palette, I spoke quietly and slowly. Everything I said felt like a joke. Daniel seemed to recognize the humor in trying to communicate with words, and we smiled with downcast eyes as after each sentence.
What is a decision? I am sitting here with the people I live with now, thinking of this short meeting with a friend who is already gone. I don't know when, or if, I will see him again. I don't know why he found me now. If he had come a week ago, would I have looked at him long enough to feel the world turning? There are many obvious decisions that brought him here, and another question is to whom they belong. Him, by contacting me after so long, so spontaneously? Me, by accepting despite my wish to stay here alone right now? How did I still my usual scattered attention long enough to look him in the eye?
I don't know if I had any say in the matter, but it brings me a smile knowing it started a long time ago, with a decision to drive to California in July; I can hardly hold the laughter knowing now that I decided then for a perfect evening one year later.
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