Around the block blog
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Jenny From the Yoga Block
The part of you that is human seeks lust--long walks on the beach, six pack abs, white picket fence, two point three children, dog, Mercedes Benz. You swipe right after there is nothing left. Lost in the cliche, you call it love, pair it with a diamond, the American Dream...
"We have the same color eyes," he said as he stared into hers. "Did you notice that?" She had but the fact that he had pointed it out made her bow her head. Reflection...
It wasn't the sex I missed. It was touch. I missed touching her–breathing in the air she recycled from her mouth and making it mine. I missed waking up in the middle of the night to smell the hair on the top of her head right where the part divided her skull into two hemispheres...
We made a song when we played together.
Dear Billy,
I fell in love with you the first day of kindergarten. We rarely spoke but we told our friends secretly in the cafeteria that we were spoken for. I wasn't sure if you loved me back until that time we were partnered for stations. We sat there across the table like adults sipping fine wine on a first date in a foreign country if we had met in an art museum + didn't speak the same language. We took turns pushing the rainbowed, wooden beads across the stiff, metal lines of the abacus imagining we knew how to add + pretending like we were actually doing anything other than getting lost in each other's eyes through the myriad of color, the wall that provided just enough separation to comfort us...
"Excuse me, Miss," the black man with the salt and pepper beard directed my way. "Excuse me." He caught my eyes. I knew he'd ask for money. That's how all of these conversations start. And he did...
"Jenny, come here. I need to teach you something," Coach Ray said as he called me over to the side of the practice footballfield. Earlier, I told him about how after games when the team lined up to shake hands and high five the opposing team as an action of respect, some of the guys on the other teams refused to shake my hand or throw out a high five when they got to me. Instead, they'd take my hand tightly and hold it. "It's the girl," they'd whisper to the guys behind them. I wasn't complaining to Coach. I honestly thought their reactions were amusing. I understood there would be some strangeness when molds were broken. But he took note.
Some time while I was in college (those days are a bit of a blur now that I'm the big 3-0), my pops ordered an American flag out of some sort of alt-hippie catalogue that sold rainbow patches and We-can-do-it tees. Only, this American flag didn't have any stars. In place of the 50 five-pointers was a white peace sign.
The first time I was in the news was because I had lost a tooth. It was average news, at best, for a five-year-old. I had been playing house with my baby sis in the playhouse my Pepa had built for us. "I was drinking a glass of milk and it just fell out," I told the reporter when my grandma handed me the phone trailed by a long, winding cord.
She came to America because she felt like God was telling her to go. Her home was at war. Buildings within sight from her window were bombed by the Nazis. Her people were devastated. They were the living among the dead. Others were missing. They just seemed to vanish. Her own cousin ventured out of his home and never came back.
So Jenny disappeared too. She boarded a plane with a one-way ticket to New York City where she would meet and marry a man she met by chance seven years prior in an orchard near her home in Belgium.
The mountain beside us combusted. What was just minutes ago lush, green and full of life suddenly exploded. Neon red glowed like the cherry end of a cigarette. Just like that. Smoke rose from the tip of the peak. Everyone stopped to watch this piece of the earth fall.
Wheaties are no longer the breakfast of champions. If you've fumbled through your Instagram feed in the past year, you've already seen cereal's new replacement and you've probably double-tapped for the like because this new organic, gluten-free, vegan breakfast fad is oh, so pretty. (Insert emoji with hearts for eyes here.) O-M-CHIA pudding! It's what's for breakfast.
Everyone knows Felicia. She's always creepin' + always screwin' up the game plan. Felicia trippin'. And if we don't tell her "Bye," Felicia will have us trippin' too.
Is normal shit your shit? Hey, good for you. But when you get bored...walk toward the edge. Trust me (even if you don't know me). Livin' on the edge is something one of my yoga teachers taught me a while ago (you know who you are!). Sure, it got him in trouble—a lot. But living on the edge is simply more fun than the alternative so it's worth most repercussions. Not to mention, the view is better the higher you climb.
"Wilkes has written 20-some books about religion. He said he hopes to live some sort of life that reflects that, but once in a while, he said, doors are pushed open and like Wilkes said of Wilmington, 'This is the place. This is the place, where if I concentrate on it I can make an impact on this little girl’s life. I can help her. I can’t save the world but I can help her and the girls she lives with.'"
