Yogis 4 Chewy

 I don’t know if it is true of children in Spain, but in Mexico, many male children are given the name Jesús. And equally as many are nicknamed Chewy. How one gets Chewy from Jesús is unclear, but in searching for an answer to this profound question, I find that Chewy is an incorrect spelling of the nickname and that therefore the title of this penetrating assay [sic] should be Yogis fer Chuy. But to spare anyone any confusion I have decided to leave the title as is and call this little foray into yoga, yogis, yoginis, two friends of mine and an imaginary son of an american family with hispanic heritage from Sacramento named Chuy, Yogis fer Chewy.

Well, that was not unlike a downward dog, and happens to be my first one of the day. Breaeathe. Nod your head “yes”; nod your head “no”. And “yes” again. I’m not sure why I have decided to personify my friendship with a wonderful yogini (feminine of yogi, or practitioner of yoga) and a wonderful gurvis (feminine for guru or teacher), into the vessel of a fictitious boy, but there it is, I have. Mostly, they are both my buddhys, that is, Buddhist buddies. I don’t find the languages pali or sannskrit on my google translator, but the hindi word for friend is ……. which is pronounced: dōst, hence: gurvina dost, my female guru friend, and yogini dost, my female yoga buddhy. Cow cat, ahh, cow cat ahh, breathe in with cow and out with cat; in with feline, out with bovine, at your own natural pace    and    again. Now, I could just refer to my gurvina dost as the exuder of blessings, and my yogini dost as the oozer of kindness, but in order to allay any confusion, I think i’ll just name them Cassandra and Dorreen, and collectively they are and will remain my buddhys.

I signed up for a yoga class when I was in my mid-fifties heeding advice to stay healthy by staying active. And while I remain flexible in my politics, i.e. liberal, open minded, leaning left, if not downright extremadamente iqauierdo, compared to some of my old friends who grow more and more conservative with every passing year and some even who seem to suffer from early-on-set rigor mortis, I knew that my aging body needed all the flexibility I could gather as I headed into older age.

Did I anticipate being surrounded by lovely women in leotards, not really, this was not taking place in a studio, but in a pleasant room at a local rec center. The sessions were described as meditation and yoga. Ahh good . . . still the mind; steel the body. I do recall walking into the room for my first class, and there was, whaddya know, a beautiful young women radiating such a kindly welcome, that I felt easy as I explained to her why I might need six or seven pillows to sit comfortably for even s few minutes of meditation. “As    many    as    you    need.” I was hooked. I was a yogi from the get go. Other people filed in, mostly older, some younger and one person who seemed far to young for what we were all about, but the gurvina hugged him as he entered, and then he walked directly over to me and looked at me as though I had done something wrong. He made a gesture that indicated I should move my sorry old ass over, and when I did he rolled out his mat, sat down in a lotus position, became very still and seemed to focus his eyes at a place on the floor a few feet in front of him. Then he seemed quite suddenly to evanesce,  to vanish, to disappear. Weird. The gurvina rang a bell indicating the end of the meditation. I looked over and the boy was sitting there smiling at me and introduced himself by saying, “I’m Chewy.” I was startled by all of this: his presence, his disappearance, his reappearance, and his being chewy. As I oriented myself in these new surroundings, I too reappeared and said, “?ah, Jesus?” at which he made a funny face, and doing a perfect impersonation of the cartoon character Speedy Gonzalez said, “Si Senor.” I learned later that this was Chuy’s response whenever an anglo tried to impress him with their knowledge of things Latinx. “Chuy? isn’t the Speedy Gonzales character a gross and negative and demeaning stereotype of latinx people?” “Si Senor, and we love him!” In fact, I learned later that, Disney had tried to cancel Speedy Gonzalez in order to move their woke-ometer, but the outcry and uproar from the Latino community was so noisy and vehement that Speedy lives on.

Over time, Chui and I became both buddhys and buddies. I’m a little ashamed to admit how bereft I felt on those days at yoga when Chewy didn’t appear. And on occasion his absence would go on for weeks, and then the day would come when he’d return, pad over near me on his overly large bare feet, roll out his matt, pretzel his legs, dim his eyes and evanesce for ten minutes or so. “Chewy! You’re back!” “Si senor.” He seemed not to want to talk about it, but I sensed there was something difficult for him in his family life. As his self-assigned big brother, I wanted to know about his family troubles and whether they had anything to do with his absences, but eventually I stopped inquiring There was no admittance to that territory of his life. I did discover that the reason he was attending the class of creaky old-timers was two part: he felt a deep closeness and acceptance with her holiness, our gurvina Cassandra, the exuder of blessings, and his sole aim in life, at the age of nine, was to become a contortionist for Cirque do Soleil, and so he was always working on building strength and flexibility. He could do a tree pose upside down on one arm, spreading his legs and feet like bamboo in a breeze; his warrior pose was right off a Grecian urn or a ching dynasty vase; he could do a slow somersault touching only his hands to the floor; he could make himself so small you would wonder where he had gone. He was an artist at nine-years-old, and he felt that cultivating meditation was just as important as building muscles.

My buddhy Dorreen, her holiness, the oozer of kindness, became a self-assigned big sister to Chuy. And whenever Dorreen and I would get together, we mostly talked about Chewy and how we admired him, wanted to be there for him, wanted to be like him and, well, loved him. During class, Dorren and I held long non-verbal conversations, using smirks and grimaces, athletic eyebrows and flexible facial expressions emoting everything from stupefaction to utter defeat while attempting a difficult asana, with an occasional chuckle escaping from one of us as suddenly and unexpectedly as a fart or a queef.

For many a year, the best I ever felt was right after meditation, yoga, and a hot shower. And then usually it was all down hill from there for the rest of my day, but a healthy dose of blessings and kindness were only a few days away, and then I’d get to spend another serene hour with my gurvina and my two buddhys. Life could, after all, be managed. Amen. Ahem.

It was in the fall as I recall, my yoga mat placed carefully upon the territory I had rested and won with seniority and determined squatter’s rights between the auspicious presence and mats of Chuy and Dorreen. Gurvina dost Cassandra was speaking quietly to the group of assembled yogis about the importance of accepting impermanence almost as though it was a foreshadowing of immanent events, a rare dark cloud over her countenance, and when she rang the bell to indicate the beginning of meditation. I had tried to meditate with my eyes softly open, but had given that up for the time being, and with that release of effort I passed into a meditative state unlike any I had experienced before, of utter ownership, not of possession, but its opposite: abandon without fear, of acceptance and of serenity. Ding and then Cassandra’s gossamer voice: “heart, mind, body and soul in perfect oneness and harmony our goal. May whatever benefits we derive from our practice be shared freely and widely ding I send my soul out with the sound of the bell. May hearers awaken and join us on a path away from suffering and toward mutual aid.” Ding.

An authentic smile engulfed me, and I turned to share it with Chewy, but he was not there, just his mat. I shared this unusual smile with Doreen the oozer of kindness and with Casandra the exuder of blessings.

Chuy never made it back to yoga. There was no word about why or where or how or how long or to where. Every class after that one, Chuy’s mat would already have been placed between Dorreen and me. Sometimes there would be a small object of some kind placed there a well: a marble, a classy toy car, a miniscule orange plastic buddha. When Dorreen and I would have coffee after he left, we hardly spoke of Chuy, not by agreement, but by something far more mysterious. I was reading the other day, some other blurb, one more verbose attempt to help western Anglos understand impermanence, something like: people don’t leave, they just change, and it’s sad, and it’s wondrous.