Accidental alchemy

November 21, 2011

"Who's the President?" the EMT asked. I rolled my eyes.

"I'm a teacher, I know who the President is!" I insisted.

"Okay, then..." she smiled.

"Clinton."

Zero alarm showed in her face when she asked, "You wanna try that again?" It took me ten minutes to get to Obama. 

I had a concussion. I had broken my arm in two places. I had a broken eyesocket and a broken cheekbone. I had torn the outer casing of my spinal column. I had a badly dislocated jaw. I had a beautiful, but totally totaled almost new shiny red Aprilla scooter. It was bad.

The next thing I remember was being wheeled into the hospital on the gurney. I wasn't feeling pain, but I could tell by the bustle around me that things weren't going so well. I looked up at myself at a mirror in the hall and I saw my face covered with cuts and gravel, only just beginning to swell.

I did not consider the meaningfulness of my life or my relationship to divinity. I did not wonder whether I was going to die. I did not think about my loved ones. I did not think about my afterlife.

What I thought was, "Oh shit. I might not be pretty anymore."

That's right folks. When faced with the prospect of my mortality or potential disability, what was really important to me was whether I would still be hot or not.

To be fair, I looked bad. Really bad. My girlfriend almost fainted when she saw me. It only got worse. As my face swelled, it became clear that I was going to need a lot of stitches and would have significant scarring. On my face.

The doctors gave me just enough morphine to get me feeling philosophical. People flitted around me, concerned, but I was lost in my head. I wondered who I would be if I wasn't beautiful. I didn't know. What I did know was that there was something really fucked up about the line of thinking I was having. I spent three weeks at home in pink bunny pajamas feeling existential af. I couldn't eat solid food. Everything hurt.

My mom and girlfriend hovered around me ceaselessly. I spent most of that time simultaneously watching tv and trying to find a quiet place in my head where I could find a part of myself that I liked. The external wounds began their healing process, but I didn't know how to fix the broken thing that I found inside me. I decided to change my life.

I went skiing (with a still broken arm). I stopped cowtowing to my boss at work (she fired me). I stopped wearing make up. I did another yoga teacher teaching training. I ate hallucinogens. I went on a weird corporate protein shake health kick. I started running. I bought a motorcycle. I planted a garden. I asked my girlfriend to marry me. I decided to move to New Orleans. I was on a quest to find myself.

A year after the accident, I did my first handstand. It wasn’t enlightenment, but it felt like…something. Here’s why: Even though I had been practicing yoga for almost 15 years at that point, I had never even really tried to do a handstand. Honestly, I didn't try to do anything that I wasn't already sure that I could look good doing.

Before the accident, I thought I knew what I was good for: looking good in black leather, pithy cultural commentary, and being a really good time at parties. Afterwards, I had no idea what I was good for, but I really wanted to find out. That curiosity has fueled most of my life journey since then.

Breaking my face induced a breakdown that was really a breakthrough. I didn't actually know who I was, but I started to see the identity I had built up to protect myself from finding out. I saw the charming mirages of me-ness I made up so that people would like me and so that then I could like myself. But what about the me behind the mirage? Who are they? Can I find them through all these layers of cultural programming? Will I like them when or if I do? Are any of these questions even the right questions?

I am still breaking down the curated representations of me that are nice to show people and trying to uncover the truest parts of myself. I've learned a lot. And I’ve also learned that there are no forever answers and that my identities are slippery placeholders that do not much more than label the sparkling shards of divine experience I’m having in this incarnation on earth. Oh, was that too woo? How about this: ego-based identity is a social fiction we create so that culture can work efficiently and it’s totally provisional. That wasn’t much better. I’ll get back to you.

Here’s the point. Sometimes something seemingly beautiful has to break so that something truly beautiful can emerge. Like my face. Like late stage capitalism. Like all the things that are too big to fail. That breaking is a hard and painful moment. And it is the moment in which real possibility for change is created. As we look around this burning world, we can find the raw materials to build anew. This is alchemy.

I have learned how to do the work of finding breaking through by breaking down without having an actual breakdown (most of the time). Yoga is part of this alchemical process. It is a full frontal self-confrontation that demands your deepest inquiry. It can break you. On the mat, this may look like exhaustion. It may feel like, “I.cannot.” In this moment, you are lead. Lead feels like an end but it is a beginning. It is the moment in which you must ask, “now what?” What will you do will this broken you?

Yoga is the question and also the answer. It means to unite. Body and mind, yes. Spirit and self, yes. Also, unite all these broken shards of you, lead as they may seem, and smelt them into gold. On the mat, this may be as simple as breathing. You can breathe yourself into newness. Making more complicated shapes may take time. It’s okay. It’s too nice a job to rush. I think that every aligned posture makes you into a differently gilded tool for interconnection. Some people need hammers and some need nails and some need a whole golden workshop to do their work.

That accident smelted me into something new. It was so formational that I made what I learned in those few moments my life’s work. When people ask me what I do, I say, “I make shapes with words and bodies.” What I mean is that when I look at people, myself included, I see both the lead and the gold and the magick that needs to happen in between. Now when I look in the mirror, I do not ask myself what I am worth. Not most days, anyways. Most days I see that what and who I am is magick waiting to happen.

I see that in you, too.