'SNO DREAM

This morning I was having a fabulous dream where I was slaying rattlesnakes and trying to come up with an antivenum serum. Then I realized I was dreaming. The thought, If this is a dream then you've probably overslept entered my mind and I began to paw my way to consciousness, much like a dog paddling in water towards shore and just about as slow.

Sure enough, when the eyes finally came unstuck the alarm clock said 6:10. Which meant that my first class had already started. WIthout me.

Oops.

I stumbled out of bed, called the health club and asked them to tell the students I'd be in at 6:30, and to warm up until I got there.

When I arrived they were there on their mats, doing yoga.

Without a teacher.

Some were doing vinyasas. One woman was in the classical version of Ardha Chandrasana (the standing side stretch) and another was on her back doing a hip opener. The rest were a blur.

Of course they all were all sneaking looks at the two massive mirrors that span the room.

Still, they were doing yoga on their own.

And well on their way to developing a home practice.

Which would be the half-full part of the equation.

And this on a day when, after the second class, it snowed like crazy while I drove my oversleeping arse to class number three in the integrated suburban enclave of Oak Park -- the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway .

Hemingway left Oak Park at 18 and never looked back, famously dismissing it as "broad lawns and narrow minds."

Nonetheless the moms there are tough, and do all their vinyasas without complaint.

And one suspects they won't end up offing themselves while "cleaning their shotgun(s)".*


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*Many members of Hemingway's immediate family also committed suicide, including his father, Clarence Hemingway, and his siblings Ursula and Leicester.....Hemingway donated his entire Cuban estate to Fidel Castro. He is interred in the Ketchum Cemetery in Ketchum, Idaho. The local public elementary school there is named in his honor. In 1996, his granddaughter, actress Margaux Hemingway, would take her own life; she is interred in the same cemetery. (From All Experts)