Powerless (squared), yoga and potato chips

At a volunteer meeting at work this week an older woman in her late sixties asked me "what can we do? I mean really. We march in all the marches. We go out and canvas for our favorite politicians. But it's still the same battle. We've been fighting this one for years. What can we do? Tell me what to do to change things." And honestly, in all of my optimism that I'm known for, I had no answer. I didn't know what to say to her because it my short life I've been to a bunch of marches, written letters to the editors, worked on campaigns and, she was right, none of it had worked. It always discourages me when people older than my parents say this - because they've seen more - they've lived thru more and if they think it's bad... So I felt powerless the rest of the week - as wars escalated and retaliations became childish, stupid and worse. The country I've always wanted to visit (and had plans to this spring) lost all of it's infrastructure. And I felt powerless. Squared.

And as much as this gloomy cloud followed me until the end of the week - I picked up the film script of a friend and started to get involved with his movie project. I went skating with another friend and her daughter (who I took down to the beach on Alki. We threw rocks in the water and she threw in my face leaving me with a nice bruise on my nose.) I also tried yoga for the first time in my life on Sunday. I had never done it before. (-well unless you count Acting 101 which I dropped because our professor had us do all these image based exercises and yoga. I, more of then not, felt like I was jacking off a giant falis and as a raging, directionless feminist in college, I knew I couldn't do this for 3 hours, twice a week so I dropped the class and hate anything 'new agey' after that.) I figured yoga would be too slow and I don't do slow but so many friends had done it. I had just finished reading the book dharma Punks and was feeling inspired so I went to a class at my gym - and of course - it turned out to be an excellent class and I'm completely sold on going again. I felt great afterwards - all my core muscles were stretched, my lower back felt the best it had in a long time. It was funny though, at one point when we were cooling down (some people were sleeping) I started thinking of potato chips. I really wanted potato chips - and I don't even like them that much. I'm pretty sure that's not what you're supposed to be thinking about. It made me laugh.