Mythos & Marginalia

2015 – 2025: a decade of days

  • Yoga: a quest of questions

    Can you find salvation on a yoga mat?
      Can you strengthen the body while loosening the mind and arrive at this place of freedom everyone talks about? Well not everyone, not the doubtful or the disbelievers (as I was, and perhaps still am) but someone, somewhere (in fact, a lot of someones) said it was an option.
      An option was all I could afford. There was little left of me, and even less of what I could believe in. I had placed my faith in the unknown before, and every time I had come back raw.
      I was searching for salvation, or redemption. I was looking for a path, any path, away from the deceit and self-deprecation I had settled into. I wanted to believe in something. I wanted to, again, believe in myself; if that basic tenet is not there, is there anything at all? 
      Could yoga be that one thing that could lead me away, or take me further, from just existing to a place of existence? Could I be enlightened?
      Could yoga heal the heart, can it take away the shackles, could it make me complete? Would it better prepare me for this race we call human? Could I even qualify for the race if I didn’t feel I fit into the category?
      I was scarred, I was scared, and, more than that, I was skeptical. How could a discipline that required no ego deal with one as tarnished as mine? How could I commit to daily practice when it was a fear of commitment that led to my unraveling? (Did I just say that?) 
      So I didn’t commit, I just went. I didn’t ask. I didn’t question my undetermined ulterior motives and I ignored my emotional consolidation. I just went; it was better that way. If you fill your head with expectations, it leaves room for little else.
      I went and I kept going. Repetition, the same 26 postures every class. The aches and pains outside began to equal those I held within. How could I say I liked it when it changed daily, as did I? Sometimes the dialogue sounded like nagging, other days it was poetry. It spoke to me. I heard more, and listened more. I could feel something (a lot of things), I could breathe, I could bend, and I could suddenly find stillness. A wandering mind is not easy to tame.
      Or had I been fooled? Now eight months in, have I been trapped? Was I beginning to believe in something I could not believe in? How could I so easily be convinced this was the hardest thing I had ever done? Were these even changes, or was I just delusional? Yoga could do that. Yoga could make you dizzy. Yoga could play with your emotions (whether you wanted it to or not) as endorphins engaged and oxygen began to reach memories and mayhem in unused corners of the mind. 
      Coming out of Camel, was that sweat in my eyes, or were those tears? Had my sweat become blood? Had my blood turned from rust, as my heart, as my soul, as my entire being, drained its toxins and spewed out the negative thoughts? Yoga indeed removed your ego, silenced your id and seduced your entire ethos as if to remind you how powerless you were. In so many ways Yoga was like life itself; it comes at you hard, it devours your mind, body, and spirit until there’s nothing left. Then it truly begins. 
      Yoga uncovered my faults. What else could spill from this body? 
      I was beginning to feel my body was now what I owned. Before it only seemed leased. It was a place that took in anything: bad food, good wine, misused words and misplaced love. I soaked it up. I held onto anything, clung to the anger, the unrest and torrential anguish until it made me a person even I didn’t want to be with. 
      All I had left were years of words and emotions I could not deal with, and decades of strife, and hurt, and confusion. It covered up anything worthwhile and would continue to eat away at all I had become until I could let it go. All I wanted was to be a better person.
      Some find alcohol, or religion, or any other pay-as-you-go vice. I chose hot yoga or rather it chose me. I still don’t know why. Nor could I label it a calling, for you have to be weak to be called, and I (not then, not now) could ever admit to being weak.
      I could never admit the truth, but I could seek it. I could search for some sort of salvation, even absolution. Yoga seemed easier than religion. It was cheaper than therapy. It seemed available, in the now.
      Yoga was a match, for me. It made no promises and there were no guarantees.
      I could give even less.
      Still yoga for all it is worth became a solution to most of what I had been dealing with, a cure for issues I didn’t even know I had, and protection against future troubles certain to slip under my door.
      So did I need salvation and did I find it, if that’s what this is? Could I render myself powerless to something where only you have the power to transform? Was giving in to yourself, the same thing as giving up completely? Is it truly spiritual when your spirit was not always there?
      If yoga is salvation then it is also a contradiction. To be saved you must have beliefs, and to believe in yoga is to believe in oneself. Can you find salvation on a yoga mat? If you can come to find yourself when nothing was there, how could you reply to that question honestly?
      As much as yoga may be the answer, it remains very much a question.


    © 2013 j.g. lewis

    “Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable, 
    there we also stand already quite near its transformation.” 
                                                                       – Rainer Maria Rilke

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  • there is no explanation

    We try to hold on a little longer to the remains of a crappy day, to those blue jeans that no longer fit (and likely never will again), or that crumpled letter that is more than a reminder of the person you’d like nothing more than to forget.
    These, among so many other things, clutter the mind.
    These are the shadows that taint the lucidity of the life you’ve managed thus far.
    These are the smudges that block your vision.
    There is no explanation to what we emotionally hoard.
    We know, deep down, there is little value in the things we hold onto. We have also learned by trial and error that if you let go of some stuff you won’t release the pain. You will simply free up space for some other worthless memento.
    There will always be reminders. 
    It is our nature, like it or not, to hang on to memories.
    Embrace those that serve you well and let others fall by the wayside.
    You will find something else to take its place.
    You always do.

    © 2021 j.g. lewis

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  • so much more

      So much more than flesh and tissue, 
    the human heart, of intricate design, responsible naturally 
    for each second time allows. A complicated array of vessels 
    and ventricles of immodest proportion, 
    its importance need not be reinforced. A vital organ. 
    A muscle; strong, steady. Purposeful. With the lungs 
    it functions, beneath ribs woven 
    to shield us from life’s catastrophes. If we should say 
    the heart is more important than the brain, we would 
    then again, have to think of how it functions, 
    or when it faults. 
       Humans are complicated, from the start. 
       Do we lead with our head, or follow the heart? 
    Secure in its biological habitat.    Protected.    And we, 
    as we grow, endeavor to understand emotions, and feelings, 
    and complications, as blood rushes through our veins, 
    as we learn to live, or love, in pain. 
          Heartbeat.      Heart break.      Heart ache. 
    Trusting less in the function, less of the body, 
    we build walls, a facade, to hide behind. 
    Having lost before, or even since then,
    we protect our self. 
        So much more than function or folly, 
    a human’s heart; the complicated array of flesh and veins, 
    of sordid pasts and rumpled pain. Strength we can find, 
    a purpose of which to remind. 
    If the heart is more important than the brain, 
    we shall learn to try, and will love again.

    © 2018 j.g. lewis

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  • no warmth no welcome

    Eyes wide open 

    in the dark, blood rushing, pounding heart. Still I cannot see. 

    Can you believe, will you find relief 

    walking down once-familiar streets? 

    Before light to the darkness of the dream, or the dawn, 

    or the dread,

    now only streetlights. I wake. I walk, I wonder.

    Halogen hum overhead, the only sound, above scorched earth 

    or snow-covered ground.

    Only one reason for being here, everything else

    is gone.

    Let me sleep. 

    Let dreams whisper. I’ve got thoughts, which must come out,

    I shouldn’t need to shout. I cannot listen.

    Below a moonlight serenade, the homeless search

    for shelter and sustenance, while new lover’s trade 

    secrets

    behind the door. Promises not shared before. 

    Not with each other.

    I wander. These were once streets, bursting with kindness. 

    The sidewalks, now, little more than foreign, there is no welcome here.

    Not in the way it was, as I left it.

    Do you take 

    what is there, take the care, or do you wait to lay your heart 

    before the soul who once listened to all you know, 

    and found comfort. In my voice there was enough, 

    yet now it is torn with edges 

    rough. 

    What was still is. Or is it? There is value in a thought.

    A struggle with contempt

    of dreams I might have spent, but not wisely.

    There is no warmth. I will go back from where I came,

    my presence will remain.

    © 2016 j.g. lewis

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  • more lost than found

    Lifeless mitten lays in wait. Abandoned, stiff
    atop a crunchy snow bank. The sidewalk
    passes by, unknowing. Throbbing red fingers,
    a child’s frostbitten hand, shiver beneath a
    coat sleeve. Somewhere. Seeking warmth,
    comfort against winter’s harsh reality.

    Unclaimed. A mitten separated from its
    purpose. We all, young and older, leave
    pieces of ourselves scattered throughout time.
    Paperbacks, pens, sunglasses, yoga mats,
    carelessly or accidentally discarded.
    A laundromat sock with no mate.

    Possessions or promises, more lost
    than found. Feelings, emotions cast
    astray. Hopelessly lost. A lone mitten,
    pieces of ourselves. Where do we
    go when a bit of us is missing, when
    our purpose is unrealized?

    Where then, when we seek warmth.
    are we? Waiting to be reunited with
    missing parts? Another hand to hold?
    Another day. Our fingers still numb, the
    lone mitten still there. The sidewalk
    passes by. We remain incomplete.

    © 2015 j.g. lewis

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