Blah-Blah-Blahg: Food For Nought

The ethos of uptight here on the east coast has infiltrated the most unlikely spaces - yoga studios. So I went to my first yoga class in Beantown and I got some very funny looks as I was setting up my mat. No, I wasn't facing the "wrong" direction - although many yogis were miffed about the fact that the studio had recently switched the orientation of all the classes. You have no idea how a 90˚ reorientation can completely fuck with people's inner harmony! I (being the crazy Californian that I am) love when teachers alternate the directions of their classes, but I guess creatures of habit that inhabit Boston can't handle that sort of spontaneity. I digress; I wanted to discuss the strange stares. I didn't have a massive booger stuck to my chin and I did shave my armpits... what they were in a huff about was that my mat was not lying within the boundaries of these perfectly-placed, annoying little strips of tape on the floor. Some poor bastard (not plagued with OCD himself but probably held on a very short leash by a type A individual) had created, with tape, an outline for each yoga mat. God forbid the idea of someone accidentally touching their neighbor or feeling the hot breath of a fellow yogi or, even worse, smelling another human's sweat! This initially felt like less of a yoga class and more of an exercise in staying in line. I was fully prepared to salute and give somebody twenty. I nearly ran out of the studio before beginning the class, so disturbed was I by the territorial urge to keep people under control, in their place, and out of yours. Namaste - no more stay.

On the subway home, I was relieved when a fellow commuter with a total disregard for personal space and propriety picked his nose with a sense of satisfaction that we generally get only when alone in the shower, inhibition-free. I wish he were in attendance at the yoga class. Perhaps he could have inspired a little bit of the light-heartedness that a good nose pick or even an acidental fart allows us to feel - knowing that after all, we are just humans doing our human thing.

This was my favorite poem on nose picking as a child and perhaps an east-coast-appropriate response to the tremendous hand-nose coordination that I bore witness to:

Warning

Inside everybody's nose
There lives a sharp-toothed snail.
So if you stick your finger in,
He may bite off your nail.
Stick it farther up inside,
And he may bite your ring off.
Stick it all the way, and he
May bite the whole darn thing off.

- Shel Silverstein