THE PRACTICE

Ingredients for this My Time: a yoga mat, a yoga membership, a summer heat, and low nights.

Oh Honey, I just LOVE working out. I mean YOGA. It's not EXERCISE, it's BECOMING A BETTER PERSON. Which can't happen when you jog. Duh. And how I LONG to become a better person.

So when each summer rolls around and I'm off from all my charity work in the Midwest, I travel to the West Coast of the United States and begin my PRACTICE. But alas, this summer, I've decided to stay in the Midwest for the summer, where I can just as easily do my PRACTICE and also not spend time with my mother, Empress Von ThighMaster. She's busy tanning, anyway.

But, ALAS, I realized that my understanding of a PRACTICE from my kooky, wordly ways in not the same as a PRACTICE in the Midwest. My Goddess Pose was NOT well received the first time I brought it out.

But alas, I think the wonderful Midwestern politeness has saved me, for no one has mentioned anything ever. And yet, Honey, because I'm a fucking rich cunt--so fucking rich--I can't understand a lot of the yoga I've experienced in the Midwest, and because (just a reminder) I'm such a fucking rich cunt, I can't help but gasp at what I'm experiencing.

Some things I hear while my face is bent over in my crotch:

"When I say the word 'prana,' THAT'S OKAY. If you're Christian, and I AM A CHRISTIAN, this word might make you uncomfortable. But it just means 'energy.' And Christian or non-Christian has energy."

"If you read old books you'll see that western medicine is wrong when it doesn't account for meridians. The east knows about meridians."

"The meaning of words is only possible in opposites. We would have no idea what 'hot' is or how it feels if we didn't know the word 'cold.' It's yin and yang."

"Twist to put your left elbow on your left knee."

"When the flies land on you during your PRACTICE here it's an opportunity to still your mind."

"I look toward the East."

Because the drugs have made me daft, I wonder, why don't the Christians have flies landing on them? And who made a trip to Tuesday Morning for all those amazing candle holders? If I clean my yoga mat with a natural antibacterial wipe, do they clean theirs with holy water? Can Christian Yoga ever encompass Kundalini Yoga i.e. can they RELEASE THE SNAKE?

Doing yoga in my small town outside of my fabulous mini-mansion is kind of like taking a vacation, Honey. I mean, with all the flies on me, it's like I'm in India without the dysentery. I mean, THE EAST (CUE FIREWORKS). And, forgive your little Daggy, but I do feel like a stranger in my home. Like a little runway muffin looking for a new path. I mean, PRACTICE. As I got excited to settle in this summer and strengthen relationships with friends and lovers in my town, IRONY happened, for in this summer heat I found a calm cold.

I AM A MUFFIN

You see, Honey, maybe it's because of the drugs, maybe it's because of the espionage, maybe it's because I left my heart along the way with RODRIGO in the 1980s while I was at Andelay's in Puerta Vallarta

                                              maybe it's because I'm a soul musketeer

                                          maybe it's because goddesses bring death, suffocating warmth, 
                                          and too many arms to hold the world which they always hold, maybe
                                          it's because of how here, running the charity committee I

                                                   instead of elsewhere, where I

                                         and maybe it's because how I think of myself, my
                                         power in the world, is changing from FUN shame

                                    to an older sureness of calm battle, a good cartoon fantasy,

but something is shifting around in here. The battles look different, and here I am, with my selenite orb, with my flourite orb, with my clay. Staring. Solid. Present tense. Crazy as ever. And leaving a lot of shit, a lot of people, a lot of strength behind. So here I am, in the Midwestern summer, freckled and pink from my Crunches with Christ, getting good work done and being alive. Maybe this Midwestern yoga is really working.

Something stirs here in the summer and I like it along with my stomach muscles and red wine spritzer.

A woman. An American Woman. In combat. It's called 'feminism.'

Ingredients for this My Time: equality, at least one functional vagina and womb, a bottle of champs, DIET gummy bears, and the world at large and your little lonely apartment.

Oh Honey, did you read THE NEWS? That's right, American ladies, we get to go to combat now along with our penisy counterparts! Oh, and did you hear?

"The move could open hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and elite commando jobs to women."

elite commando

FINALLY. A new stripper name I can get behind. And really, Honey, I get so sick of being rich and spending all my money on things other than preserving my virginity with knife skills, attendance to a despot who is the only leader in the middle east who doesn't disparage sub-Saharan Africans, and equal involvement in the politics of my country. Well, that despot is dead (the world sings in praise!) even though his death was a pretty hue distraction to real problems, and his despot level (don't worry, Honey, I'm making a chart) wasn't anywhere near despoto superior. I mean, he's as good as the USA is, right? He had an army full of WOMEN. See? EQUALITY.

Just look at that dude. He slept on roofs when he traveled to other countries. A roof in Paris. Because that was his tribe's tradition. Well, unless he's in the USA, because we have better ways of dealing with despots. Channels!


I mean, Honey, to be an American woman is to be polarizing. And to live in Missouri and be in the charity board business, looking for a tenured position in charity, is to experience this intensely and have less conversation about it. How do you know that?

A My Time Fun Game:

If you are a curvy, downright fat, sharp-faced, somehow not ideally attractive according to porn and/or MTV standards, repeat the two sentences above about polarization to your colleagues or the cool guys at the bars you hang out with who, you know, would never call you to hang out with them and the other cool guys, but are nice nonetheless and you all consider each other friends. Blink. Blink. Do it. Really. Or if you do fit into an ideal idea of beauty and piety for women, have a busty, chatty gal-pal do it instead. Here's you or that woman:

Now, if you're lucky, here's the best response you can get:

then he backs away into a corner with a Slim Jim

 But chances are you'll get some polite incomprehensible response that is akin to telling you to fuck off, if you were from the planet that could recognize that.

And ask a very petite, slender, quiet (and/or COY DEPENDING ON THE AMOUNT OF ALCOHOL) light-haired lady whose face looks smiley and voice is quiet to say the same sentences, but in the form of a question.  She wonders what they think! That might be you, so you can take this position. Here's this other lady, and the presumption is that you aren't one or the other type, but that if women are polarizing, society NEEDS SAFETY and types you for such occasions:

 Here's what she gets:

"I just like looking at you. You're nice. This other bitch told me her sure opinion on the matter and it was really offensive and unfair. I'm glad you're not like her. Look at my man brain-light head gear."

Girlfriends, compare notes over a bottle of Tattinger. If you're both straight, question what it will be like to have sex with a man again after your little experiment.

Or, maybe your vagina provides such polarizing pheromones into the air that you literally can't remember the last time a straight man tried to have straight sex with you.

That's ok, girl, that doesn't mean your opinion doesn't count. It might mean that you are highly unattractive to your polarizing community, EVEN IF you got laid a lot before. I mean, Honey, that was probably a different time and a different place, i.e. you were younger, hotter, less willing to speak your needs, and there were a lot more men in the cities you lived in. Don't worry, Babe, it'll happen. A lady has ways. Maybe you can enlist a girlfriend for help with this, too?

OH BUT WAIT. I forgot after getting all caught up in my story, Honey. YOU ARE EQUAL. YOU CAN FIGHT IN COMBAT WITH THE MEN. Let's forget that gay folks were allowed to do this before you even though they can't even get married in most US states, because that might remind us that the "right to combat" is actually a rhetorical gesture designed to put undesirables at risk while making them feel they are integrally a part of the physical, spiritual, and cultural essence of our nation. Drink that one away--another bottle of Tattinger, Doll! And let's forget that female people as well as those not in the one or other sex denomination our culture allows for do not en mass engage in war, rape, genocide, profit from them, or encourage them. BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE SEXIST YOU SEXIST LADY, YOU! Remember, sexism is simply stating the facts about the differences in the sexes. Blink. Blink. It's not actually instilling defamatory and destructive reactions to a biological sex or chosen gender. That's just fun!

Oh, am I a Bitter Betty? Er, a Downer Daggy? I'm sorry, Honey. Back to the topic at hand. You now have the right to combat. Women fought hard for this for you. Because female officers fought for that right, that means it is an award for women across this country. That's what feminism is. And you're welcome.

Before we all head off to combat, can we have one last drink? And honey, because it isn't said enough intelligently, the males we know have to deal with the exact same problems about presumptions that we do. But it is also worth saying that males are the ones that destroy the planet and humanity at large and yes, that's a polarizing opinion. But you know what, Honey? It's worth discussing, with men, women, and those whose chromosomes read across a spectrum of in-betweens and others. As you know, I love men. Too much.

THE THINGS I've done when they've asked.

THE THINGS they've done when I've asked!

So, for me, combat as equality makes sense. I fight with them. I die with them. I don't have to love them. I am one of them now. We have a common enemy. It's simple, easy, and I want to kill myself less when I think this way. I've finally found the answer to my suicide prevention: die at war. It is a good day indeed, Honey.

It's a win-win for the USA and women everywhere today!

champers on me,
Dagmar