YOGA GETS ON GREGOR’S NIRVANA
As told at Feathered Pipe Ranch, July 6, 2007.
By Barry S. Willdorf
Some of you may recall that for 5 years, I updated you on the adventures of Gregor the Lotus who lived in his home in Muddy Waters Pond. Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you that Gregor will not be with us this year.
I just received an email from him. It reads as follows:
“Greetings Vertabrate:” (Gregor has something of a complex about being a vegetable. You might say he has low self-esteem.)
“By the time you get this message, you will have learned that I sold Muddy Water’s Pond and have moved on. The decision was a surprisingly easy one for me. Yoga is not what it once was, especially if you’re a lotus.
“I made the decision a few months ago, after I picked up a copy of a new ultra-slick Yoga monthly, “Yoga Today”. Perhaps you’ve seen it. It was the one with the article on “In Utero Yoga – Putting the Yogi within you ahead of the curve.” Well, I needn’t tell you that an article like that has no relevance to a plant.
“On the very next page was an article called “The Blanket, Your Baby’s First Prop.” Below it was an ad for a line of high end yoga outfits for kids, called ‘Downward Facing Doggies.’
“A few pages later I came upon a full-page ad for Antarctic Yoga Expeditions. You leave from Tasmania and fly to the South Pole, the only place in the world apparently where you can be in total karmic balance. They claim that you can’t call yourself a practitioner of yoga until you perform their forty-seven ritualized, fully patented and completely trademarked, asanas, in minus 70 degrees and 80 mile per hour hurricane-force winds. Hot yoga, they claim, is for sissies. Their motto, if you can believe it, is “Live Like the Krill, At Home Under the Ross Ice Shelf.” Talk about knock-offs.
“After that I was treated to an interview with Lester Trochanter, the 16-year old Extreme Yoga Champion for 2007. Lester won this year’s award for performing a artachandrassana 600 feet up the south wall of El Capitan in Yosemite with only his big toe attached to the rock face by a carabiner. Here’s some of the interview:
Yoga Today: “Lester, you’ve done El Capitan, what’s next?
LT: “I’m planning to go to South America in a few months to attempt deep meditation in the Parana River. I want to challenge my powers of concentration.”
Yoga Today: “Do you attend school?”
LT: “I quit this spring when I signed with ‘Environmental Yoga Designs’ to do a new line of Hybrid sticky mats. They’re for the environmentally conscious. You know, like green and all that.”
YT: “What are your plans for the future?”
LT: “Well, I’m in negotiations now with Halliburton to bring extreme yoga to Abu Graib. I understand that Muslims spread their mats five times a day. When I get really old, like twenty or something, I want to be an actuary.”
“So you can imagine my state of mind when my daughter Tibia breezed by on her way to the other side of the pond and mentioned that I had a phone call.
“Who?” I asked her.
“Hey um,” she said.
“Hey um’s no way to address your father, young lady,” I said.
She looked back over her leaf and said “no, Heyam’s his name,” and she gave me the number:
“Heyam, Dukham and Nagatam,” the receptionist announced when I called it.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“We’re the law firm, Hayam, Dukham and Nagatam,” she replied.
“I’d like to speak with Mr. Hayam,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “he’s busy at the moment nonviolently communicating.”
“Okay, Mr. Dukham, then,” I said.
“Oh, Mr. Dukham is unavailable at the moment,” she sniffed. “He’s out avoiding the suffering that is to come.”
“Wow, this is some full-service law firm,” I said to myself. “Can I talk to Mr. Nagatam?” I asked.
“I’ll see if Ms. Nagatam is available,” she said and put me on hold.
While I was delighted to learn, repeatedly, that my call was very important to them, there was nothing to do but take a long slow breath in and a long slow breath out.
After a time, Ms. Nagatam got on the line. “We represent Colonel McYogi, the multi-pond yoga conglomerate,” she began. “And we’d like to make you an offer for Muddy Waters.”
“That’s my home,” I protested.
“They have some very nice condos in town,” she said. “Even Howard Levin is moving there. You should listen to our offer.”
Well, if Howard was moving to town…
And then I was reminded of Lester Trochanter. What did I know of the yoga that is to come? The handwriting, I began to think, was on the wall especially for us old folks who began doing yoga when the mats were made out of mastodon hides.
So, to make a very long story shorter (for Howard’s peace of mind), Ms. Nagatam persuaded me to sell the pond. I’ve rolled up my leaf.
The very first thing I did with the money was invest in First Metatarsal, a company that they say is well-grounded. While I was down town, I decided it might be a good idea, now that I had cash, to see the world, so I went to the station and bought a one-way ticket to Nirvana on the Chataranga cho cho. The train wasn’t leaving for a while so I went into a nearby diner. Just after I got there a rowdy family of four came in, took up a booth and started eating some fried onion rings. Then….
At that point I got an error message: “Server Is Bored and Has Decided that it is time to Meditate. You will now lose all unsaved data. Don’t forget, your business is very important to us. Contact your Internet Service Provider for appropriate obscenity mantra.(signed) Your friends at Microsoft.”
