LETTERS FROM HOME: CAPACITIES FOR DELIGHT AND DISCOMBOBULATION

Jan. 25, 1996

Dear Leslie,

In "the Artist's Way," Julia Cameron says she used to call the letters from her grandmother "Flora and fauna reports." "The roses are holding even in this heat... The sumac has turned and that little maple down by the mailbox..." Her grandmother had a difficult life with a rogue of a husband but stayed sane and married through the simple act of paying attention.

Cameron: "My grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her: Success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention."

I think of you doing your morning meditation and know you know the truth in these words. The ways to distract ourselves are legion and limitless -- alcohol, drugs, TV, food, promiscuity, gambling, all the usual and unusual addictions. All avenues to avoid some pain of the past when the only real refuge is in the holiness of right now.

About a month ago I started thinking about trying yoga. Not sure why. Guess I was feeling discombobulated, a little off-balance. I read that Sting does yoga for almost two hours every morning. And I thought more flexibility might even improve my golf swing. So I brought home a video called "Yoga for Beginners."

After sampling all kinds of other Eastern approaches to enlightenment through the years, now I know why I'd always avoided yoga.

There is no avoiding the pain of rigidity. Hamstrings cry out, the Dog Pose looks more like a humpbacked caterpillar.

But the thing yoga requires of you is to pay attention. The movements are so slow and the resistance in yourself to be overcome so great that you have no choice.

You find yourself trying to think of something else, but then your muscles and joints bring you back to the present moment.

These difficult movements are combined with softly meditative poses that bring your attention not to your body but inside, where you relax region by region, head to toes, until you are at the opposite end of the spectrum from the strain of the not-so Proud Warrior pose.

It is a cure for discombobulation. I'm waiting for it to become a source of delight.

DC is far too busy to get on the morning yoga bandwagon, but wonders if a session before bed might help her sleep. Last week she awoke me at 2 a.m. to say we had to nail down the windows in the back bedroom immediately because a storm was coming. The beeping message at the bottom of the TV screen said so.

The windows in the back bedroom have been under repair since summer. Believe me, replacing the swing weights in an old house is not a project for do-it-yourselfers.

So there we were, me half asleep in my underwear in a wintry room watching DC pounding on the walls in a deafening blur of carpentry that still seems like a dream. We went back to bed and the storm never came. Add insomnia to that list of addictions.

My grandmother Ruby turns 90 next week. She's had a tumultuous life at times, moving far and wee with a husband she lost decades ago to cancer. She has always maintained her sanity though, and an immaculate house with attention to every detail.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.