Thursday, June 21, 2012

Suddenly, Soulfully Summer



Several thousand New Yorkers calmly invaded Times Square Wednesday, transforming it into an immense outdoor yoga class to salute the arrival of summer. Some 1,500 yoga mats were distributed free for the occasion, and pedestrian spaces in New York's most frenetic crossroads were completely covered. All day, thousands of yogis, beginners and veterans alike, dutifully sweated in the heat, following directions broadcast over loudspeakers. The first of the free short courses began at 7:30 am, and the last was scheduled for 8:30 pm, to the delight of tourists.

This solstice I feel as though there are so many seedlings about to burst into well-rooted, many-leaved established life.

The road behind me hasn't been the smoothest in the couple years, and at times in the last six months alone I have thought seriously about cutting bait and just giving up. Even if nothing works out as I had planned or imagined, I'm glad I didn't give up. Matters of housing and home, finances and family, boundaries, borders, growth and reward have all been nurtured over the past two years, seeming to come to fruition all at once, poetically, this summer, creating a veritable garden of nurtured hopes and ideas.

Even my recent dreams are fraught with a sense of the die-for-Hollins final, last-hurrah of effort, at times snatching victory (or safety, or certainty) from the closing jaws of defeat. [My dreams are quite cinematographic.]

Nothing is done; the race is not yet over; now is the time for anything but rest.

But I can see it from here.