When we chatted last week, I hesitated to ask you a favor.

The favor was for you to write to me once or twice.  I hesitated, because I wasn’t sure how well that would serve either of us, and because the time for asking favors ran out.  If I were to do what I hesitated to ask of you, it would go like this.

Since the last time we’ve talked, many small events happened.

The teaching practice on Wednesday night was wonderful!  One of my classmates teaches fire dancing (!).  Five of us yoga teachers in training met at his studio.  At first we took turns teaching each other short sequences, for warm up: one person teaches, everyone else follows instruction.  Then, for assisting practice, we took turns modelling poses: one person models, everyone else observes the model and assists.  That was super useful, because we had diverse bodies and practices within our little group, but there weren’t so many of us so as to make it overwhelming.

The fire dancing studio was pretty neat.  You go to the basement of a sketchy looking mall, and there it is, behind one of many inconspicuous doors.  OK, there were pictures of fire dancing next to that particular door, but apart from that, inconspicuous.

Thursday was odd.  It rained.  I had debilitating anxiety during the work hours.   In the evening, I had a haircut followed by a tango private, both for the first time since before my mom’s visit.  I was sort of looking forward to both.

But.  Steven and dot were in weird moods.  Talkative usually, that night, they barely talked to me for the first twenty minutes of the respective appointments, apart from the hellos, and they didn’t serve me well.

I had to …uhm… improve the haircut after I got home (the rogue eye-poking spike is still there, worry not).  Halfway through the tango lesson I asked dot to maybe teach with words, and he got almost defensive, but complied – reluctantly.  There was even less talking at the previous lesson; then, he didn’t charge me it was so unproductive.

Hypothetically, it could have been me, since I was the common ingredient, but no, it was them.  Could have been the rain: it rained pitchforks.

I might be not going back to either though.  Not so much because they worked poorly that night: they are human, could have been going through life things and all.  It’s just that Steven’s schedule got inconvenient, on top of that.  And with dot, we seem to have reached the unfortunate point where there is nothing he can teach me any more; even though, to state the obvious, he is a more accomplished dancer.  Either he reached the limit as a teacher or I, as his student.

If I don’t go back, both sets of parting rituals were sadly insignificant compared to the significance of both relationships.  “Thanks.  Have a good night.  Happy holidays.”  On the other hand, there is pleasant symmetry in that the beginnings often appear likewise insignificant.

I don’t remember meeting you for the first time.

Friday was a good day at work.  No anxiety, lots of good writing. Technical writing, but still.

As I waited for the N-Judah train at the Civic Center station, on my way to the philosophy class, I spotted a blond head on a passing train; that reminded me of the Kid.  The train passed.  The next train arrived; the Kid walked out of the door and towards me.  We chatted a bit.  He left.  The N-Judah train arrived and took me to Stanyan.  As I pulled my phone out to turn it off before the class, there was a Signal message informing me that the Kid used Signal, inviting me to say hi to him. I did; asked if the message had anything to do with us running into each other earlier.  “Nope”, he replied, “just a random chance.”  “Nice to see you too.”  I enjoy random chance coincidences.

I remember the first time I saw the Kid.  I didn’t like him much: he looked detached, arrogant even, and so much older than his age.  Besides, I was a bit jealous, because Mayumi introduced him at Abrazo as the new transplant, as she did so many others; never introduced me a couple of months earlier.  Turned out, he was just a kid going through a major difficult transition with his back straight.  Mayumi was one of maybe two people he had known in town.  So much for first impressions.

The philosophy class could have been more profound.  But then again, I figured, I didn’t need to focus on telling the truth as much as on owning it; that was helpful.  Then I spent 5 hours at the yoga studio both Saturday and Sunday, business as usual.  Went to Mark Morford’s class for the first time on Sunday.  Do you know Mark personally?  He will teach us teachers in training January weekends!

Sean’s opening stories for the teacher training were not as mind blowing as three weeks ago (I’d like for you to listen to the other one of those!), but there were plenty of  neat moments.

A good one from Saturday was this, in the picture: Sean showed us how to do an assist and got carried away a bit.  The best part, the woman whom he was assisting had no idea he did an arm balance on top of her thighs until I posted the picture on Facebook later in the evening.

On Sunday, we learned, among other things, two cool ways to assist students getting into handstands, and several of us got into handstands for the first time ever.  So happy for them!

Saturday evening, I went to a pretty mild house party at one of the classmate’s.  It could have been mild, because I left just when guests began arriving in crowds and/or getting to second and third drinks; business as usual :-).

On Sunday, I was tired in the evening, and there was no early tango train to make up for that, so I skipped  1924 again.  Which doesn’t mean the evening was uneventful!  After yoga, I walked from the Castro to the Mission with my classmate Mary (I told you about her).  One thing led to another, and I ended up getting a tattoo, Mary watched.  The tattoo is essentially the word “now” in Sanskrit.  I had planned to have it done later, maybe around the training graduation.  Mary argued that, considering what it was, now would be a good time for it.  So there.

If you were around I might have told you some of this.  If I were to write a letter, this is how it would go.  As both possibilities are purely hypothetical, I’ll leave this here.  For now.