Mornings with Dinah (Or, Serenity WOW!)

 

• Dinah by Thelonious Monk

The song Dinah was named after -- it captures her little personality so well!

I try to do yoga every morning, and these days it has turned into quiet time with Dinah. When I first started, toward the end of my time in New Mexico, I still had all three dogs.  Even though I wanted them to hang out during yoga time, that proved an impossibility.  I don't know if you've ever tried to lay on the floor when dogs are in the room, but they lose their shit.  "Oh my Gawd, she's on the floor!  Let's go put our snoots in her face!"  Of course, this never happened when I wanted to sleep on the floor with them -- they'd trot off to their respective beds.  But if I got on the floor with any sense of purpose (crunches, yoga), it was like feeding time at the koi pond.

Anyway, I can still hear Dinah's little paws on the yoga mat.  They made this hollow sound that the other two dogs were too heavy to make.  When I'm doing my morning yoga routine, my mind usually wanders off to New Mexico and Dinah's paws.  It's a good way to start the day.

As serene as that sounds, my mind usually ends up in the land of wiener dog races, and I can't help but laugh.  You know how dogs get feisty sometimes and then sprint on an invented loop in the house for what seems like no reason?  Well, when Dinah did it, she'd hunker her rear end down like a motorboat.

• The Race (Remastered Club Mix) by Yello

If you know what's good for you, you'll press play while you read the next bit.

One day I came home from work when she and Rocky were in mid-chase.  Dinah came flying out of the hallway with the crazy-eye and her tongue flying, with Rocky right on her tail.  As they crossed the living room, I thought they would turn around in front of the coffee table. BUT NO!  Dinah leaped onto the table, over the bottom cushions of the couch, and then  -- turning her body in mid-air -- banked off the back cushions and ran back from whence she came!  EGADS! And Rocky, being more potato-y than Dinah, followed suit only without the acrobatics -- his paws clobbered every. single. surface.

Of course, Boots could see that this was lots of fun and wanted to join in.  But she was even bigger and more lumbering than Rocky. All she could manage was to bounce her front paws a few times in the direction the other two just ran before they turned and were headed back toward her. This effectively turned her back half into a pivot, and she just hopped her front half back and forth barking her head off as the other two dogs whizzed by. 

Suddenly, the claw marks on the coffee table made sense, and the mystery of how stacks of student papers ended up strewn all over the living room was solved.  OH MY GAWD, those dogs were so damn funny together.  They didn't do this very often when I was home -- I certainly never saw the ninja couch turn -- but they obviously spent a lot of their time alone entertaining themselves this way.  I miss them all!

Morning Tao

The last time I practiced with any purpose was in my last year or so living in New Mexico. Those were some wonderful times -- I'd read a verse from the Tao Te Ching and then ponder it for a 3-5 mile run. Actually, they weren't totally wonderful times. I found myself banging my head against walls at home and at work, and taoist meditation was the only way I could find peace through it all. Running through the desert provided some of my favorite memories of my last year or so in the southwest.

And so it is again.

I've managed to dig myself into yet another rut, trying to run out the clock until I can move away. Worse, I've gotten away from the physical activity that is so important to me and have reverted to my emotional-baking soda ways. Just like in the fridge, I soak up all the nasty flavors and aromas of what's going on around me -- which is just a schmancy way of saying that I have this terrible tendency to get wrapped up in whatever junk plagues my social world. So back to the taoism I go.

Tao Te Ching, a text upon which taoism is based, translates roughly to "The Book of the Virtuous Way." More on that a little later, but by way of introducing my relationship with taoism, I will just say that left to my own devices, I tend toward the exact opposite of the Tao. Perhaps at the end of (or more accurately, through) writing on this blog, I will find my virtuous way.

So the morning routine I'd like to establish is this:

1. wake up early
2. AM yoga
3. put the kettle on
4. sip a cup of green tea while I consult the I Ching and meditate on the day's lesson 
5. go about the rest of my day

I hope that by establishing this as a ritual I can prepare my bodymindspirit to meet the day in balance.