12/1/10 So much for meditation

I close the door and face the chair east, set the timer and close my eyes. I begin to repeat the word on the in-breath and out-breath, hoping to clear my mind and let in whatever grace might be granted someone like me.

There's a settling as the unconscious tensions I've been carrying in my muscles relax and unwind, and I find myself sinking into the chair, less rigid, more fluid, my whole body filling up with wet sand.

I'm asleep in under a minute.

11/10/10 Contrasts

I sit on the mat in the half-light before the sun comes up, and breathe deeply. My mat faces roughly east, as it has in almost every apartment I've ever lived that suited me at all, and I can see out the windows on the front of our building clouds lit from below by the rising sun shading from a vivid pink to a brilliant gold against a gray sky.

My wedding ring clicks on the wood floor as I shift to a new position in my routine. I never take it off.

11-3-10 Wake up in the morning feeling like P-diddy

I've gradually set my alarm 5 minutes earlier each week, over the last few weeks, in an attempt to get back into doing a full session of yoga in the morning. This is probably the worst time to do this, since the mornings are getting darker and darker as we edge closer to winter.

This morning I wake up in the darkness, sit up, and Katie rolls over and asks me if I had weird dreams.

I tell her I think I did and wonder out loud why she asks, to which she replies, "Because you talked a lot!"