THE CRYPTOLOGY OF YOGA

DOWNWARD FACING DOG

This is a pose that I use often when I am on a luxury cruise liner and I am trying to spell out the ‘v’ in “I LOVE YOU” to someone on shore before the ship travels far beyond the horizon. When I am spelling the ‘v’ in I LOVE YOU with my DOWNWARD FACING DOG position–a real easy letter to do–it relaxes me. It’s important that I relax with DOWNWARD FACING DOG because I know that soon I will have to gather my strength for ‘e’which is a terrifically difficult letter to produce even with a yogi body. Almost impossible. So much so that I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to die trying to achieve the ‘e’ in ‘I LOVE YOU’ on a cruise ship someday. Still, I know in my heart, with my soon to be lifeless body, that whoever sees my attempt to achieve ‘e’ in I LOVE YOU will understand, if nothing else, that I love something, I lov something, either way, really, and that I was willing to risk everything for it, whatever it happened to be. They don’t have to actually know what it is. I don’t mind at all if they guess.

THUNDERBOLT POSE

Kids love to dream that they will grow up to be rocket ships bursting through the air and that’s why they giggle with joy when they strike the Thunderbolt Pose in yoga class because it is almost as though they are about to take off from the launch pad, although they could explode on the launch pad, and they realize that because it does happen although not a lot. If it happened more than it did, kids would grow up much too quickly. They would become cynical. They would be nihilists. Tiny little nihilists. You could fit them all on the head of a pin or they could pass through the eye of a needle or whathaveyou.

CRESCENT LUNGE

The romance of the morning air and the dewy hills belies the deadly violence of anything shaped like a crescent, including such favorites as the crescent-shaped knife or the crescent-shaped pistol or the crescent-shaped machete or the crescent-shaped bayonet.

The light dapples upon the ocean on a warm summer night. It seems like the perfect time to steal a kiss. When was the last time you did that?

Anyway, the important thing is, the easiest way to disarm an assailant holding a crescent shaped knife or pistol or machete or bayonet is by executing a crescent lunge.

Once disarmed, you can exchange pleasantries, and soft cooing and such moonlighty things until you grow old and, one day, expire. Peacefully, under the moonlight, holding hands.

HALF PIGEON

A useless item to own, although, if used on a regular basis, it can improve the pedal stroke.

FORWARD PLANK

I’ve skipped way ahead to the end now because I don’t have the patience for RECLINE HANDS TO TOE or UNSUPPORTED MARCHING. Although, the more I think about it ...

UNSUPPORTED MARCHING

The best kind. Sometimes, when I have trouble falling asleep, I imagine that I am a scarecrow in a field of cucumbers. Someone asks me, “Don’t you mean a ‘field of melons?’” “No, of course not,” I say. “I mean a field of cucumbers.”

Really, the way to fall asleep doesn’t depend so much on whether or not the scarecrow is in a field of cucumbers or a field of melons. What matters most is with whom you are arguing about it. It has to be a pretty girl, trying to talk about any kind of food, really. She has to be sweet and kind. The food doesn’t matter. Really, I like cucumbers and I like melons. It’s not like I like one more than the other. And I don’t think a scarecrow cares that much either. And even the scarecrow, whether its there or not, doesn’t matter that much. It's all about the pretty girl.

all artwork, including monsters but not old timey photographs,
® mr. crispy flotilla, 2007