Is “cockadoddledo” the sign?
When I got up this morning I was completely blank about what to do on today’s blog. Most weeks I have an idea tucked back in the corner of my brain usually even a photo that I’d taken before and set aside to inspire me later. I looked through those photos before walking the dog in the dawn half-light but nothing moved me. So as I stepped outside clad in fleece and rubber boots against the damp and the chill I thought to myself “I’ll just wait for a sign” I hadn’t walked 10 yards before a rooster called from across the valley, it made me laugh out loud… is this my sign? I had been hoping to see the great horned owl swooping to it’s nesting tree by my house after a long nights wake, or even the mourning dove that I often hear when walking out at first light. Just as I was thinking these thoughts the rooster announced himself again as if to say “You asked for a sign, here it is, COCKADOODLEDO”. And so it is, I asked and the rooster spoke.
I typed out that first paragraph but Monday morning does not allow lingering. Wolfing down breakfast and prodding by fourteen year-old to keep moving I donned my yoga clothes for my weekly yoga class. I have been going to yoga for about ten years, there was a time I did it more intensely going 2-3 times a weeks, then due to work changes and priority changes I didn’t do much yoga at all for 3 years. But along with making a commitment to art last year I made a commitment to go to yoga on Mondays. Now as any of you out there who do yoga knows, doing yoga once a week is not enough, going once a week just reminds me how tight and weak I am and never advances me much farther. But still it is with a slight sense of superiority at getting myself there on a Monday morning that I roll out my yoga mat and sit crossed legged breathing deeply. Marie, my wonderful yoga teacher, who manages to exude both incredible strength and deep gentleness; pushes the class towards ever more impossible poses some of my sense of superiority slips. While in Down Dog she reminds us not to DO the pose but BE the pose, I ponder this idea for a while until I realize I am supposed to stop thinking. As the poses and postures come faster and harder it becomes easier to stop thinking and just do. As the class winds down we do the Dead Bug pose and I think “this may be the closest I come to BEing, the pose” and wouldn’t you know it, it’s the Dead Bug. From there we move into Savasana the Corpse pose. Now you would think that the corpse pose is one I could BE easily, wouldn’t you, just lay there right? But one must clear one minds and BE empty. This is a pose I only catch small glimpses of. So any bit of superiority still clinging to me slips quickly to humbleness. And while my mind should be blank, I ponder the rooster. Does he too feel a sense of superiority each morning for showing up and being the loudest to proclaim the day? Is that swagger and huff, humbled at all by the sunrise he called into being? Does he feel his feet on the ground and wonder at the vastness of the earth? As the new rays of morning light illuminate his world does he feel humbled by its glow? Perhaps, and to shore up his courage and to give proof of his grandness he crows again just to remind himself and us he is there. So this week I will ponder the Rooster, perhaps even BE the Rooster. Check back on Friday, in the mean time crow a little see how it feels.
Rooster photo from the website: Republic Domain http://www.republicdomain.com/photos/wallpaper/Rooster-Walk/