The Act of Inverting

I am in a new town, having finally made the first move of my life: 2,500 miles north to a place very different from what I’ve always called home.

On an old, oiled, well-marked wood floor, I practice a different style of yoga with a new teacher (although she has the same first name as my longtime teacher in the south). The studio is on the second story of a downtown office building that originally housed a hardware store. I position my mat in front of a window onto an alley, through which I can see a brick wall with beautiful patterns in it, a sky that is sometimes  blue and cloud-filled, sometimes gray and spitting, and a church spire. Crows remark upon my practice from the opposite gutter.

Today I lie on my back with my legs above me, against the wall. Now the window is on my right. This is the asana (or pose) called Viparita Karani, upside-down seal or “the action of inverting.” It is supposed to help with stress, headaches, and cramped or tired legs or feet, among other things. Today I am not particularly stricken with any of these maladies; I am simply following my teacher. But I have been here before. I close my eyes.

Five years ago: I am lying in legs-up-the-wall pose on the same yoga mat on a different and much newer wood floor, of lighter-colored wood, also on the second story, but in a newer building on a wide, busy street in Houston, Texas. Two walls of the studio are floor-to-ceiling glass, and earlier in summer and later in winter I watch the sun rise from this room at least one morning a week, in angry rain or transcendent color or pale haze. This class is very full; we are all very close to our neighbors. I brush hands with the woman on my left, turn my head in her direction, and smile. We clasp hands. Kristi now lives in Australia, and has a new baby I have not met. I miss her every time I practice yoga.

Three years ago: I am lying on a bed in a mid-rate hotel in Alexandria, Minnesota, with my legs up the wall. I have removed the pillow so that I can get right up against the bedframe, still not as close to the wall as I’d like, but close enough. I am wearing compression socks up to my knees after having just raced 100 miles on hilly gravel roads on my bicycle. It is my first bike race since knee surgery and I’ve done better than expected: it was a scenic ride, with friendly people, and I am blissful, transcendent. Superlatively drained and equally ecstatic, I hum with happy exhaustion. My husband lies to the left of me, in the same position. Our shoulders are touching. Soon we will get up and break down our bikes and pack them in boxes for the flight home, then go out for more food and celebratory beers. I will take a picture of the process, of the bike boxes open on the hotel bed, and comment that we have done this in more cheap hotels across the country than I can easily count.

Today I am in a new place, and I am lonely. I put my legs up the wall.

*   *   *   *   *

DSC_2393“The Act of Inverting” is by Julia Jenkins. Julia is a book reviewer, librarian, beer drinker, dog lover, mountain biker and native Texan now residing in Bellingham, Washington. She thinks a lot about concepts of place and home. Her favorite color is green.

A brief personal history of an extrovert, alone

I am nine, and I’m standing at the kitchen sink washing the dinner dishes, utterly alone.

The dishes are my job every other evening, which means every other evening I feel a sense of abandonment and despair—the most acute embodiment of “woe is me” that a middle class American child can experience.

It is fall and getting dark earlier, so when I stare mournfully out the kitchen window toward the backyard, hoping for a bit of beauty or distraction, only the vague silhouettes of bare trees and my own sad reflection are there to keep me company.

I’ve finished washing the glasses and silverware, but the piles of tomato-sauce-glazed plates and—worst of all—pots and pans still loom large. In the next room I hear my dad complain about a referee call in the game he’s watching on TV. I hear my mom cheerfully greet Sasha, our dog, as she lets her in from the back yard. My brother passes through purposefully on his way to get a schoolbook from his bedroom. And I am alone with these dishes.

Of course, I’m not really alone. The rest of my family is within reach, but they seem emotionally out of touch. So from an early age this becomes my definition of alone. And I hate it.

*   *   *   *

I am 16 and in the backyard reading Pride and Prejudice for the fourth or fifth time.

It’s spring break. My boyfriend is off on a trip to North Carolina with his best friend, and all of my closest girl friends are somewhere warm with their families. But surprisingly I don’t feel sorry for myself for being stuck at home with nothing to do. Instead, I’m getting a start on my tan, enjoying the rare early-April warmth and indulging in a week of reading books, old and new.

Suddenly it’s easy to remember why reading had been my favorite pastime as a younger child, before it had gotten lost in the mix of boyfriends, tennis practice, school clubs, and a part-time job. On this April day, I’m happily reacquainting myself with my love for books, and also with the warmth of the sun after a long Michigan winter.

I am completely alone but it doesn’t occur to me that I’m alone, because I am completely content.

*   *   *   *

I am 20, a junior in college, and I am falling in love with someone who seems, in at least one important way, to be not like me: I am falling in love with someone who loves to be alone.

He shares an apartment with a group of guys across the hall from where I live with my friends, and an open door policy has been established. As his roommates watch TV before dinner, I watch him take a cup of tea and a book out to the hammock he strung up on the balcony. As my friends and I talk and goof around before bed, I see him walking home alone after several hours in his painting studio.

Suddenly I am certain that “alone” is something I’m not good at, and I see that as a flaw—the result of insecurity and a sign of shallowness. It has not occurred to me that my love for being surrounded by people—for being in the thick of conversation and debates, silliness and laughter—is a product of who I am, how I’m wired.

Likewise, as I’m falling in love with him I see his ability to be alone as something admirable, deep, and brave—not as a product of who he is, how he’s wired.

I’m hopeful I can learn from him.

 *   *   *   *

I am 30 and married to the painter—for eight years already. Our toddler and infant are both tucked in their beds for the night, and I am sitting alone on the loveseat in my cozy sunroom, an issue of The New Yorker open on my lap.

As an exhausted young mother, this moment should feel more delicious than it does. The house is quiet, and within the realm of these walls I have the freedom to do whatever I want. But what I want most is companionship, conversation. A look of recognition and understanding, a dose of empathy for whatever small trials the day brought. Someone to help me laugh.

I flip to the magazine’s table of contents, hoping to find something with the right mix of intellect and heart—the sort of piece that engages both my mind and emotions the way a good conversation might.

It is fall, and mostly dark outside the row of tall windows to my right. But in the back corner of our yard a bright square of light shines from the old one-car garage, now a wood shop and studio where my husband works each night on an art project he is preparing for an upcoming show. After this show is installed, there will be another show to prepare.

A lover of logic, I turn to it, hoping to find comfort: My husband teaches all day and needs every hour he can spare to create the art that drives his career. I get that.

My head is able to reason out my aloneness, but that doesn’t make it feel OK anywhere else.

*   *   *   *

I am 34, and I am alone.

My two busy daughters, now four and six, are in bed for the night, their questions and negotiations, stories and songs silenced by sleep.

photo (4)I brew a cup of tea then sink gratefully into the sofa to work on a sweater I’m knitting. Remnants of the busy day are scattered here and there throughout the house—a Playmobil scene carefully arranged on the coffee table, too many pairs of shoes and rain boots by the front door, a small stack of dinner dishes in the kitchen sink. But it’s OK, I’ll get to them later.

Since my divorce, I’ve been able to let go of the unhelpful sense that it’s someone’s job to keep me company. I’ve also been able to quiet the inner nag insisting that it’s my job to keep the house clean. When you’re alone, the consequences of waking up to a messy kitchen are also yours alone. Maybe it’s time to teach the girls how to wash the dishes, I think, as I pick up my knitting.

For now, I’m just sitting on my sofa, alone, and it is good. It’s good because I’ve finally learned that alone and lonely are two different things. I’ve learned that being someone who derives energy and ideas from interactions with others is a part of me to embrace and nurture, not to fight. And I’ve learned that savoring time alone allows me to process and express all that I’ve soaked in from being with others.

Now I can see that “alone” has always been important to me, and I’ve even been good at it, in my own way. Finally I’m able to call it what it is—just “alone,” apart from lonely—and embrace it for what it is: a gift of respite and reflection, and nothing to fear.

*   *   *   *

Q&Sdishes

 (No one should ever do dishes alone.)

Talking on the Train

I had lunch with a stranger once in the crowded food court of Union Station in D.C. There were no empty tables and only a few empty seats. When I saw a woman sitting by herself at a table, I asked if I could join her. She readily agreed.

I was in between trains, a Chicago-to-D.C. leg behind me and the rest of the journey home to Philadelphia ahead. Asking to join a stranger at their table is not within my standard mode of operation. Perhaps it was the 17 hours I had just spent on the train that inspired my unusual behavior.

On long-haul trains, if you go to the dining car you sit with people. And if, like me, you enjoy passing the hours of train travel in the observation car watching the country roll by, then you sit with people there too. On a long-haul train, you chat and really listen to the answers because you have all of the time and none of the cell signal. This slow-paced, low-pressure atmosphere makes my people-loving introvert-self bloom.

Between the trip out to Chicago and the ride back East, I spent almost 40 hours there-and-back talking to strangers. I met a man in the midst of his journey home from Thailand. He told me about an ex-wife and a child in Peru—how his world travels introduced him to people, but pulled them away too. He bought me a drink and we talked for hours as the view of the countryside gave way to midnight blackness. Eventually he asked me, “Are you happy?” I told him I was, mostly. He nodded, leaned back in his chair, and stared off into the darkness outside. His eyes had said more: that being happy was something he didn’t quite understand.

One morning after a few bumpy hours of sleep as the train chugged through Ohio and into Pennsylvania, I went to breakfast and was seated at a table with a woman. She asked me about my life. I asked her about hers. We lingered over our coffee as she told me about working with Catholic Social Justice groups in her teens, trying to end capital punishment. The fact that people still fight for the same thing today gave her mixed emotions. I told her about my Christian Social Ethics coursework—what I was learning about inequality and how the church participates. I told her it was encouraging to meet her. She said the same of meeting me.

Amtrak observationSeven-hundred miles of steel track is enough space for strangers to share many years of memories. You can settle in with wine or coffee. You can relax into the seat. The scenery of fields and small towns is buffer enough for the natural pauses. There is no hurry; your stop is likely states away.

After joining fellow travelers for those many miles, to join a woman sitting at a table alone in a crowded food court seemed natural. As she told me about how she spends her days, the realization that she was homeless began to dawn on me. I took a second look at the food she had in front of her—one small order of fries. I told her I was finished eating and asked if she would like any of my leftovers. I think if I had thought about that a bit more, I would not have asked for fear of insulting her. She took my offer though and gladly ate what I did not. I eventually wished her a good day and a safe walk back to her night shelter, thanked her for allowing me to join her table, and went to board my train to Philadelphia.

This second-to-last last part of my journey was on a regional Amtrak train, which means smaller seats and less room to move about. My seat-mate told me about his job in the banking industry, seeming proud of his achievements as a district manager. Before long he had his laptop out, taking advantage of the Wi-Fi.

In Philadelphia, I switched from Amtrak to regional rail for the journey out to the suburbs, choosing a seat next to a woman who had on head-phones. The train car was silent but for the noise of the tracks and the intermittent stop announcements.

The transition was stark. Our day-to-day lives are not built for long chats and shared meals with strangers. Yet, people’s complicated lives exist even when we are just commuting home to the suburbs. Homeless people, lonely people, overlooked people. People who are on a journey to somewhere—people who fight for equality and people who wonder if it’s really possible to be happy—these people are always next to me.

It is of course easier to say that I want to engage than to actually engage. The meeting and eating and talking together requires intentionality on the part of all the participants. When I can remember that the people around me have stories of lives lived full of heartbreak and hope, then I am more willing to keep my eyes open for ways I can give. Even if what I have to give in the moment is only a listening ear or my not-yet-finished lunch.

*    *    *    *    *

fall“Talking on the Train” was written by Nicole Morgan. Nicole’s first long-distance train trip involved Thanksgiving dinner with a dining-car table full of strangers. She booked a sleeper-car once and loved it for all its nostalgic charm, but much prefers coach class where there’s plenty of time and room to meet her traveling neighbors. Nicole writes about bodies, theology, and community at jnicolemorgan.com  and tweets away @jnicolemorgan