TheBanyanTree: laugh and sweat

[Julie Anna Teague]

A Sikh guru I sometimes listen to says one should laugh and sweat every
day. I can manage that, every day. There is always humor, and there is
always the dripping sweat of a workout that I have convinced myself I
need to survive, or fuck it, just walk outside in Indiana in July and
you sweat.

Laugh and sweat, and maybe cry. Why not cry every day? There is plenty
to cry about. I can cry just thinking about how many things there are
to cry about. How about some anger? Does it pay to have some righteous
anger in some part of every day, just get it out and let it go? Yes?
No? I don’t know. I get angry. I get over it. My partner says anger
kills him a little bit. Damages his immune system. But he means my
anger, not his anger. My occasional, explosive, Mt. Saint Helens anger
is bad bad, he says. I will kill him with this anger. His anger, on the
other hand, is something quiet and heavy that he’s carried on his
shoulders for so long he’s forgotten it’s there. That's what could be
killing him a little every day, but no doubt I seem more like the
guilty party to him, standing there with my occasional bloody knife of
a tongue. I'd say, skip the anger most days.

What else? What else does anyone need, every single day she gets up, to
have a real life? Joy, rest, bliss, calm, art, noise, son, homegrown
tomatoes? Today I jumped off the high diving platform at the swimming
pool. Sixteen feet. High enough to think about falling while falling.
Hit the water and go deep enough to wonder, for a second or two, how
deep will I go? Last time I did that I was maybe twelve years old.
Thirty seven years since I jumped off the high dive. I have no idea
what possessed me. A whim, a need. Tonight I drank good Italian wine,
ate delicious chewy bread with tomatoes and garlic, tuned the radio to
Latino music, and danced barefoot on the porch with my sweet thing. I
can’t remember the last time we did that and so it must’ve been a long
time ago. Does that call for laughing or crying? (I see them as
intimately related.) And sweating, of course, because it's July in
Indiana. And all of that seems enough
for today.

Julie


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