P o c k e t CT

I drove home having to physically lift my left leg on to the clutch. I was that exhausted, that sore. But I am not worn out but rather blissful and invigorated. Donna calls Kripalu – “crippleyou” and a laugh and think of how my driving style now supports her affectionate nickname.

Friday we are expecting a foot of snow, work is canceled and I have it in my head to leave early for the Berkshires and beat the storm. The morning was delicious for lingering and Christopher’s alarm clock was flashing 8:34 from a power cut. All this conspired at me leaving just as the snow was starting to fly. The roads in Vermont were dry blowing snow and easy fare. The Mass border with the addition of salt made for slush that progressively got worse. The turnpike was slippery and the back roads when I finally got to them at twilight were deep and the snow was sticking to the windshield making it hard to see. I tried four times to make it up the hill to the parking lot and was scolded by the plow driver and told to park anywhere. It was snowing so hard and fast that I was covered with the short walk in. I checked in and thought about what to do. I was told there is a yoga class I can make but I didn’t know what the workshop would be for the evening so I didn’t know if I needed to conserve energy. I went to my room choose my bed, explored a bit and opted for dinner. Walking around I felt out of place and a little shy so I popped on headphones and escaped into a genius mix starting with Darkness Darkness by Solas – fitting for solstice weekend. Dinner was fabulous making it hard to eat lightly, something good to do right before yoga.

The room had about twenty pink cushions on the floor, mirrors on two sides of the and a few people seated. Rouben started by asking us for introductions, to talk about why we were there, and what are expectations for the weekend were. Already feeling a bit shy I heard a few phrases that made me feel even more out of place: senior yoga teachers, nationally presenting instruction, lululemons (I didn’t know what that was but it sounded chichi) when you pose for yoga journal. It isn’t that I was feeling outclassed by the yogis but it was feeling very New York City and I am very woodchuck. So as the introductions progressed I contemplated not saying why I ended up there. People at work bought me the gift certificate, it was on my desk the first day back to work after my mom died. They intended it to be a weekend to heal and grieve. I picked now dreading the holidays without her and also because the workshop seemed like it would be just my style. So I mentioned the intention to come for a while, the darkness, holiday avoidance and glossed over the intention of the gift. Rouben honed right in on it. “Why did they send you here Christine?” Well I could see that my shy evasion wasn’t going to fly here and explained that after my mom died I had a daily practice that kept me sane and about the intention of the gift. He then pointed to a picture in the center of the circle. It was of a man – could it be a young photo of some guru? Rouben said that it was his father and that he taught him more about yoga than anyone else could, even though he wasn’t a practitioner. He invited me to put a photo of my mom on the alter for the duration of the workshop. The only photo I could produce would be from online, and would be on my phone.

“I can not put my iPhone on the alter”

He said that it was fine but knowing my practically worshiping attachment I have to my phone I thought not to give it that due. I will draw one and put that there and then he went on to the next person for introductions.

Friday night was an anatomy lesson. Lots of things I had no idea about. There are apparently a subculture of muscles under the ones that you can see flexing below your skin. The idea this weekend was to engage some of them. This proved difficult mentally to feel if I had it right, well until Sunday driving back when I could really feel the muscles every time I shifted or turned. Rouben wanted to inspire wisdom in the practice, do not get length in one area by compressing another. He talked about how habits turn into posture eventually and we did some neat tricks to figure our which hip is more forward, which side of the neck is tighter.

On Saturday I woke ate and drew the picture of my mom. I am trying to focus on the part of her that I got (her smiling twinkle in her eyes) and not that it doesn’t look much like her as I put it up with Ganesha and Hanuman. A woman arrived crying, set her mat next to me, couldn’t introduce herself and I handed her a box of tissues. Rouben turns and says this is for you and starts the practice cranking I am What I am remix of Gloria Gaynor. This is the quintessential gay anthem and I am thinking that I sure am going to like this as we start sun salutations. Alternately heating us up and focusing on the inner muscles and specifics of the basic poses the day progressed. The afternoon included a new understanding of forearm stand and handstand so that I wanted to play with the balance of it over and over.

Before lunch there was a strong recommendation to go to yoga dance. This had five drummers and a lead with a microphone. Very playful very high energy. This woman was a master liberator who could make event the shyest or rigid person jump into the center of the circle and throw their arms around. Through five or so sets of drum beats she led different highly charged improve dances. “find your feet find your feet now let the drums tell them what you need” Unfortunately for my experience of this, every time she asked what my body needed it was lunch or rest.

Saturday night was a choice of a concert of holiday music or a do your own practice with Rouben to his music. I ditched the holiday fare and we studied handstand scorpion to Madonna music. I also did a bunch of poses I don’t like much or are hard for me because the music was so lovely I had a fine time in all of them. Then I took a long sauna-cool shower-whirlpool set and hit the hay.

Sunday morning was the last yoga practice together and we lost a few more people trying to get home to eat the second storm that was coming. The first ten minutes of vinyasa almost wiped me out. Some small changes added a lot to the physical challenge. Who knew holding your right leg out to the right in a down dog would be so exhausting? The idea was to add some arm balances to the sequencing of the flow that are often tucked in their own little section. He put a forearm stand from a down dog for a short hold. The really interesting one was to do eagle then drop the arms off to the side and fall into a scissor arm balance. All the while Rouben kept up the joyful attentive city-gay-boy banter to keep us on track and inspired. “Nathan you have a lovely butt but why are you sending it to Lenox? Put that tailbone down!” “Girl your face is so much prettier with your chin not flying off it” “No laying down babe the PRANA is ON” (that last one was to me when I was collapsing.) The harder he pushed the more I adored him. Then it was over and we took a few group pictures and exchanged big hugs and contact information.

I am adding a contemplation to my practice that goes with putting the drawing of my mom on the alter. Can she teach me more now? About yoga? Well definitely about wisdom and acceptance. We’ll see how that goes and feels like a good path and I am thankful for it.

If you have a chance to take a workshop or a class with Rouben I recommend it! He is in Connecticut on Sundays and goes to LA for part of the winter.

Dark Flow

This last week I had a dream about my mom. I am a little sketchy about the exacts of it, basically she was telling me that she was going to go to Europe for a month. I was happy for her plans. I was so incredibly glad to see her. When I woke I wanted to crawl back into my dream to a place where the missing her can hold off for a bit. It is the same place where I am not dreading the aspect of having the holidays come and figuring out how to have them without her there.

The next morning Christopher was telling me of his dream which was of him driving a bus and having a cat which he decided to stick on top of the bus in a straw nest he made. Then he lost the cat, which held some heightened dream significance. The dreams have merged in my head. The bus is now one of those touristy double-decker jobs and my mom is out looking for the cat for him. I hope she finds it because then even if it is only a dream mash up I can say “hey Mom this is Christopher, he is really neat, reminds me a lot of you actually” and “Christopher, this is my Mom, she is awesome.”

About a month ago a coworker sent me the following article from American Psychological Association – Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

It is worth a perusal if only for the story of the bank robbing moron who thought that lemon juice would hide his face from surveillance cameras. The gist for those of you who might not want to click through is in the header paragraph

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

In a nutshell if you are really really bad at something you lack the part of the brains to know that you are really bad at it.

Well it all makes perfect sense but I have never thought about it before. I am hoping that this information now nested in my brain will mitigate the frustration I have with the incredibly dumb. Specifically the ones that delusionally think they are irreplaceable and brilliant. Instead of spinning my wheels making new similes to express their profound ineptitude like this person is dumb as a fence post or that person has the IQ of a protozoa, I can be more empathetic. When I receive the crass mass email from my brother that it titled “Fw: Politically accurate joke SAD, BUT TRUE!!!” and has the following anecdote that he believes wholeheartedly has merit, I will be kinder in my head.

A Russian arrives in NYC as a new immigrant to the United States. He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, “Thank you, Mr. American, for letting me in this country, giving me housing, food stamps, free medical care, and free education!”

The passerby says, “You are mistaken, I am Mexican.”
The man goes on and encounters another passerby. “Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in America!”
The person says, “I not American, I Vietnamese.”
The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand and says, “Thank you for the wonderful America!”
That person puts up his hand and says, “I am from Middle East. I am not American!”
He finally sees a nice lady and asks, “Are you an American?”
She says, “No, I am from Africa!”
Puzzled, he asks her, “Where are all the Americans?”
The lady checks her watch and says…”Probably at work.”
IF YOU DON’T PASS THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, TOMORROW AT 11:30 AM YOU WILL RECEIVE THREE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ABSOLUTELY FREE.

Kinder. It would do no good to talk about the statistics of working hours of first generation Americans vs third (which we both are.) I think that a correction on this assumption that immigrants don’t work would be received with the thought that I obviously haven’t a clue. Academically he couldn’t be more wrong, but hasn’t got a speck of capability to assess that. Now instead of thinking wow my brother is a total idiot, I can think poor guy he can’t even realize how stupid he is showing himself to be.

I get email forwards from him regularly that make me groan. Racist, mean, sexist here is another one that he thought that his single, independent, feminist sister would get a big kick out of.

One day, long, long ago…….
there lived a woman who did not nag or bitch.
But this was a long time ago…….
and it was just that one day.

The End

I got disparaging cartoons about Obama the day I donated to his campaign. If I can’t be entirely kind about it, at least the emails have some positive effect.

Since this study looked at four different aspects of assessment: grammar, humor, and logic, I am wondering if this is compartmentalized. What things that I think I am stellar at where in reality I totally suck? There are only a few things I think I am really good at so hopefully this doesn’t apply. But there is probably some skill that I am so bad at I would have not an inkling of my ineptitude. I am wondering what it is and will I believe you when you tell me?

Commenters: keep in mind that I can make fun of my brother but I might be sensitive if you do. After all he is my brother – so be nice even if I am not.

This weekend I got a message from the most awesome Delmer inquiring the origins of my last name.

Hello Christine,

Sorry to bother you, but I’m curious about your last name.

It’s a new one to me and each time I see it I find I’m spending hours and hours trying to sort out where it originated. Sometimes an afternoon will pass and I’ll realize that while I’ve glazed through six episodes of a “Sex In the City” marathon I’m no closer to sorting out where “Texiera” might have come from; I’ll typically spend the rest of the marathon puzzling over the surname “Avitable” and how it is Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda always have the correct change when getting out of a cab.

(By the way, and as Dave Barry might say, “Texiera” would be a great name for a band. Come to thing of it a Ford too.)

Anyway, I had a moment and thought I’d fire off a long-winded e-mail asking you about it. I’m leaning toward Irish (based on the red hair even though I know very few Irish people have red hair and, you know, I could have red hair if I wanted it.)

In closing, I should point out that as a “Delmer” I’m in no way saying anything unkind about Texiera.

I hope all is well and that you’ve found something fun to do with your economic stimulus money.

Delmer

I laugh reading this on my phone, Jan say what so I show her. When we were finished gushing about how great Delmer is, I started thinking on my last name and how it came to be like it is.

When I lived in Italy a friend kept calling me “Cristina Tessitura” and when I asked him over and over again why, he would say flatly “It is your name.” I thought he was renaming me, something I wasn’t keen on. It took several iterations to discover that what he meant was that my name in Italian was Tessitura. This means Weaver. When I was a kid I strung a loom on to the dowels of a deacons bench and would pull one up and one down and stuff a scratchy acrylic ball of yarn in between. I would then give the uneven lump to my mom. I saw camel hair blanket weavers in Morocco and was obsessed for a while. I looked into a loom, too big, too expensive. Maybe my fascination is all about my name. Unknown to me it had been casting a spell on me for years. Perhaps I come from a long line of cloth creators and could use this as my prime excuse to spend the space and the bucks. Apparently, I am destined to weave; my name means weaver. As an aside from prattling along about my name I did get to try weaving and am in love with the actually weaving process but didn’t much like threading up the five gazillion strings through the loom, bent over for hours killed my back. I am good at untangling the mess that was indubitably created half the time I was dressing the thing but who wants to spend so much time undoing birds nests of thread? It turned out – not me. If anyone loves these things we should chat. I have the loom getting dusty in the basement.

So the name means weaver it is Portuguese and is misspelled. Teixeira is the proper spelling but my grandmother spoke very little English when she was having all her babies she would say tesh-air-a teshaira – in Portuguese the “e” softens the x to a shhhh and the r is rolled. The nurses all guessed. All my uncles have a different spelling. Uncle Joe is the one who has it spelled properly and is proud of this. He would bring this up as a arguing point at various times – your name is misspelled. I like this. That my name is a little off is a reminder that I come from immigrant stock, working the Lowell textile mills not being entirely understood.

My name is pronounced in the US TEX-AIR-A. It is cringe style horrible to hear it TEXT-TARE-A. My brothers were all nicknamed TEX, I never was. Except that one friend calls me TEXMEX and I love her enough to let her get away with it. My sister had a boyfriend who gave her a keychain with script that said “sexy texy” and one day I had to bring her keys to jr. high school. I was teased relentlessly and for years after about my huge ego. Geeze, the nerve of someone to think they are sexy! There is a fairly famous comic artist and a baseball player with my name (spelled properly.) I think they are both Marks

So Delmer, my red hair comes from a box titled L’oreal not by dna. Without chemical assistance and a lot of sun it would end up a coppery-orange abused mass of brown. It is about as Irish as firecrackers. Although I may have a smidge of Irish in the maternal half of me that didn’t lead to a surname. That side is half Quebecois and half total mutt. If you want this red hair I can get you the color name. It is Auburn something and has a hot woman with long hair on the box. Maybe I picked it for how sexy the model was. Isn’t that funny?

I hope your Sex in the City cab fare mysteries have worked themselves out. I can not help you a lick there.

As a band name I am imagining an 80s big hair band like Styx or White Snake as a Ford I am imagining a little moped zipping slowly between cars.

So now tell me everyone… what’s up with your name?