I have never owned curtains.  My grandmother would faint if she knew it, but I have always preferred the full frontal qualities of morning sun in the face to the dim, muted light behind discolored drapes.  Of course, curtainless, my little studio apartment has 8 very strategically placed windows, each magically inaccessible to all eyes but the Hubble's.  Even so, today I will consider the nature of revealing.

The two bare windows beside my bed look onto the roof of St. Boniface, that graceful ghost of a cathedral which stands guard over Eckhart Park in East Village.  Last night, I watched the moon rise over the roof and arch across the sky to touch the apex, scattering borrowed sunlight over the abandoned house of god.  It gave more light than I imagined it could hold, no longer a crescent, not yet full, and I realized how perfect a gibbous truly is.  How many times have I scrutinized the waxing moon, simply for the shadowed sliver, my eyes so anxious to complete it?  Was I somehow promised an amount of moon that isn't being rendered?  It seems that the simplest veil is enough to spin me out, and for that reason, I have always been bad at keeping secrets.

The waxing gibbous (and the staff at the burlesque dance studio) teaches me about the art of revelation.  I am learning to design proportions of light and shadow, the art of curtaining, how much to share, how much to save.  My lean is to offer too much, and hide too little.  Of course there are some that will admit they swing the other way, but I may not have understood my folly until an old roommate of mine took a class on the psychology of privacy.  She shared that while privacy is not ideally a two-way mirror*, it is in fact a two-way street.  The realm of the private is an inner circle of limited access which requires that both parties - the one inside the circle AND the one outside the circle - each agree to occupy together, which is why it isn't cool to drop your pants on the subway, or talk about you-know-what at work.

In yoga, we share our intensely physical and intimately sacred practice with one another semi-publicly, where the line of the private becomes blurry.  Most of us choose to look away from the occasional tank top fail out of courtesy and respect, but what about the occasional spill-o-ye-old-guts post-practice?  How do you say "OMG, TMI!  WTF?" with wisdom and compassion?  I don't know.  It is a style issue.  I personally recommend shooting up an energetic force field and listening for as long as it seems the gods require, but then, I am no expert on boundaries.  I am, true to my un-curtained windows, often the one doing the spilling.  What I am starting to understand is that those moments, not just the emo-wreck times, but the transcendent, glowing moments I want to share with the whole world, happen internally for a reason.  They are exclusive revelations for me, usually transmitted in code only I can decipher.  The thing I am coming to realize is that I can do harm by sending them out to play in the traffic of mis-perceptions, judgments, translation losses, criticisms and false recognitions that they will inevitably meet.

What is hidden is not protected needlessly, and this cover bears no semblance of deceit. Rather, I see the inching line between light and shadow, and embrace this boundary as the silence which creates rhythm, the mystery which inspires depth.  The full moon gives, but the gibbous invites me to reach, to ask another question. I stare with narrowed eyes, imagining that I can see the bulbous shape of light growing into perfection, and seek out that shadowed trace which completes it.  We ask of one another because we are each riddles, perfectly unbalanced, each complete and yet wanting.  Can we also seize the inspiration to reach into our obtuse, truncated lives and ask another question?  For me, the trick is to see my dissatisfaction as evidence of a call not yet answered, to meet my disappointment with further questions, to pass the ball back.  Right now, the ball is in my court, and it is a delightful discomfort, holding that charge.  I believe my next play will be window treatments.


P.S.: COME TO SOUND MIND YOGA THIS SATURDAY AT YOGA NOW GOLD COAST



*When I was very little, to foster a sense of privacy and protect me from embarrassment, my mother would interrupt my bath with the cover, "Close your eyes! I'm coming in!"  ...which works, totally, as a Family Circus cartoon.