I am a seeker. A question-asker. An inquiring mind. I always want to know the answer—answers—the truth, the whole story, the big picture . . . You get the idea. When I was a little girl, the grown-ups found it cute, endearing—somehow it meant that I was smart. It wasn't until I got older that those same people began to grow impatient with my incessant inquiries.
     "Iodine," my grandmother called me, after an incorrigible character from a 1950s comic strip. I learned to quiet it a bit for periods of time, but it always comes back. Lovers, like the adults of my childhood, find it so charming in the beginning, until the inevitable breaking point: "Do you really need to know if there is a God at 7 a.m.—I'm sleeping, and I have a meeting in two hours and I really need my rest and . . . " BUT I really need to know. Really. Right now. Because I'm JUST WONDERING. I'm Curious. But, really, I'm just so scared a lot and I need to know that there are some answers. To something. Anything. To God, or does my dog really miss me when I'm away, and does my math score really have to count on the IQ test? Leave me alone. I'm sleeping.
     Recently, I've had to spend a lot of time in Los Angeles. Which makes me particularly on edge—on the edge. There are auditions and meetings and agents and managers. My agents hate my manager and somebody thinks I need a publicist and I just want to go home. I miss my girlfriend. And my dog. And my mom.
     What my sleepy lovers fail to understand: I don't wake them up because I think it would be really interesting to know the answers to random questions; I wake them up because the Questions wake me and I do not want to hang out with them alone. Imagine your most annoying relatives, bringing up the most inappropriate topic at the most inopportune time—the kind that make you want to take up heroin—or take back heroin, as the case may be. And that would be even more cliché than the stupid questions.
     So I'm stuck. With them. Aunt Bertha, Uncle George, Gramma Dotty . . . And here we all are, and it's 4 a.m., and I'm in L.A., and there's no one to wake up, so it's just me and them. I get up, I walk around, I make tea. Its 4.30 a.m., and the question voices are fighting with the reason voices and I am fucked.

*           *           *

So, I took up yoga (which I'm not sure is less cliché than heroin, but at least it doesn't make you constipated). And it really was (kind of) just like that. It's 5 a.m., the Questions are going full-throttle, my legs dangle in the freezing cold swimming pool while I burn my mouth on a cup of Celestial Season's Tension Tamer tea and NOTHING'S WORKING. The tension will not be tamed. The Questions are demanding answers. And then, I remember a recent conversation with my dear friend, Gina, who also happens to be a yoga instructor-in-training. Yoga, she claimed, is the ANSWER, because, she advised, it would really "center me."
     "But, I've done yoga before, and it requires a level of patience that I just don't have," I told her. "Try it again," she replied. "Trust me."
     So, I do. And it's great. Wonderful. Gina was right. I just needed to give it another try. We breath, we chant, we hold our arms up in the air for 11 minutes at a time, which the teacher tells us will increase our willpower to astronomical levels. I leave relaxed, focused, and quiet-minded. I buy a ten-class pass, determined to develop a "practice." I go home feeling virtuous, and more importantly, like I’m going to sleep easy tonight. And I do. The next night is the same. But, life being life, and me being me, the following night is a mess, and I'm an anxious wreck for the day. But it's OK, because I have yoga, and I'm going tonight.
     "I am devoting tonight’s class to getting us all out of our brains," announces Gurmukh, my yoga teacher (actually to call her simply a "yoga teacher" is completely inadequate, because Gurmukh, as I would later find out, is a living legend, but that is another story entirely; so, for this purpose, she's a yoga teacher).
     "Great," I think. "That is exactly what I need— to get out of my head a bit. This is perfect."
     And on we go. I am trying to breathe myself out of my brain, when I start to feel really bad.
     As it turns out, my brain will not relinquish control without a fight, and the whole thing is putting me into a bit of a panic. I look around the room. Everyone else seems to be doing great. Gurmukh is nodding and smiling, and I think they're all a bunch of psychotic freaks and I can't believe I bought a ten-class pack to this strange L.A. cult, and I just feel awful.      Furthermore, I REALLY CANNOT believe I actually listened to my yoga-teacher-in-training-friend when I already knew that yoga was NOT for me. And now, not only is yoga not quieting the Questions in my head, IT’S CAUSING them, and I'm pissed. Class finally ends and I wonder if anyone notices that I have completely lost my mind in the process of trying stop using it quite so much. Nope. They haven't noticed. Because, they are drinking "yogi tea" and eating graham crackers, and are "so happy to be fully experiencing the intuitive part of my brain." I REALLY hate Los Angeles.
     So, I drive home to a bevy of wine and Camel Lights, vowing NEVER to take anyone's advice ever again. I'm not really angry—mostly, I'm just freaked out, because it appears that it's just me and the Questions again, and there will never really be answers. And that just sucks.
     I call Gina, in large part to blame, but also (in small part), because I need help. More advice, if you must know.
     "Do you think that yoga could hurt me?"
     Embarrassed Silence from Gina.
     "Not physically—I know that sounds dumb—but, like maybe it's just the wrong thing for the kind of person I am, and that I could, in fact, as a result, have an adverse reaction to it?"
     More Silence from Gina.
     I think, but I'm not completely sure, that she's laughing.
     "Are you laughing?"
     Laughter, now I am sure I hear laughter.
     "No, I am absolutely not laughing."
     "Good."
     "But, Rachael, I have to tell you that yoga can't hurt you . . . you were probably experiencing some pretty heavy things and you're just adjusting to them."
     "But it made me feel Bad." (A sentence I have not uttered since nursery school years.)
     "Well, sometimes that happens."
     We go back and forth like this for awhile, until finally I promise that I will go back to yoga, and that I understand that all of this has some kind of deeper meaning. Of course I do.
     In spite of how it may appear, I am no stranger to alternative methods of healing. It's just yoga- there has always been something about it that has been extraordinarily difficult for me. But I promised Gina that I will continue. That could be the end—I stick with it, have a great turn around with yoga, blah, blah, blah . . . And that probably would have been the end, if not for what happened to me the following day.

*           *           *

I'm driving home, at the wrong time, a different route than usual—you know the drill. And there's traffic. Lots of traffic. And I'm cursing myself for driving home at this time, this way. Finally, I get through the canyon, and am ready to make the turn that will bring me home when I hear honking. Shut the fuck up, I think. Loudly. Angrily, I look around to see who the culprit is, but I’m distracted by a swarm of people gathered at the intersection.
     Now, people do not just "gather" in Los Angeles. Anywhere. So this is, in itself, some cause for attention. Then, I saw their signs: "Say No to War in Iraq," "Healthcare not Warfare," "Honk for Peace."
     Oh, yeah . . .
     And I started to cry. In the interest of time (and the number of words I've been allotted here), I will not go into great detail about my feelings on this impending war. But I will tell you that it is one of the greatest sources of sadness, loneliness, and utter hopelessness to me in my lifetime and when I saw those people gathered there, I turned my car around, no questions asked, and I joined them. Not because I’m a really good person. Or an activist, even. I did it because I had to. It was a feeling I had never experienced before.
     And I don't care what your politics are, because this is not about politics . . . This is not about politics, or wars, or even about yoga, when you really get down to it . . . it's about my first lesson in intuition. Intuition, the antidote to crazy questions, the conqueror of bad advice . . . And I guess I did come to it through yoga. How L.A.

 

RACHAEL C. SMITH has been dominating New York City nightlife since she was in her training bra. You can find her every Thursday at Gloss, her weekly girlie party at Meow Mix, and monthly, at her burlesque soiree, "Bombshell!". Catch her in this month's Jane magazine giving advice on how to pick up chicks. She still hasn't invested in her own yoga mat.