Friday, September 18, 2015
Striking Poses
A boy, about sixteen, sits and plays the upright piano. A teacher sings along. Dream a little dream of me.... Imagine no possessions.... I'm surprised each week by the medley of vintage songs, the matter of fact way the boy sits on the bench and starts to play.
Near me, but not too close, a pretty girl sits silently on the threadbare sofa, staring straight ahead. She smiles when someone addresses her, but her eyes don't move. The rest of the kids -- there aren't that many who stay after school on Thursdays -- congregate on the drab couches across the room, airing their random thoughts to themselves and maybe to each other. They toss Pepperidge Farm goldfish into each others mouths. They seem to not notice me yet, across the divide of ratty orange carpet.
This is where some of them will remain, while the others disperse, for after school yoga, in a small high school devoted to teenagers who, for whatever reason, need a break from their "regular" schools. They would rather be somewhere else -- not just at this moment, but I think for most of the school day. They daydream out loud, about weekends with no plans, about returning, soon, to their "regular" schools, about going far away to college. I have been warned that they might be difficult. I have been assured dozens of times that a teacher who knows how to handle these kids is only a few doors away, down the hall. I suppose it's good to know. They are anything but difficult.
I think about the place where we stopped for tea on a mountainside in Japan in August, my son, my daughter, and I. Tiny, with rattan mats and silk cushions strewn on the floor, the air still but cooled somehow by the dense canopy of trees outside. We left our shoes outside the door and stayed for a while, happy to escape the intense heat. The view was both spectacular and calming. We didn't do any yoga, though there was a perfect space for it, right by the old bookshelves. Look up spiritual journey in the dictionary, and there's probably a picture of this little room.
I never know exactly what we will do in our hour and a half together at the "special" school, but once all the goldfish have been eaten the girls head to the large cardboard box filled with mats and yoga blocks and blankets and bolsters and select their props and line up on the ratty orange carpet, always in the same order, and we figure it out together. We cross the divide, and the big ugly space in the school for teenagers who need to be away from "regular" teenagers becomes a yoga studio. Not exactly a tiny room on a mountainside with a spectacular view, not quite worthy of a picture in a dictionary, but I like to think we're on a journey together, and that we all leave, somehow, altered.
The first day, one of them asked me what namaste means. I tell them what I think it means, that the teacher in me honors the teacher in you. That may or may not be accurate, but it rings true, so I'm happy to pass it on. I think kids forget, sometimes, how much they have to offer. There is a poet in the group, and a dancer. And much more, I'm sure. Dream a little dream. Imagine. We do it together in our makeshift yoga studio, once a week.
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