Taste the Rainbow

Geoff Johns' run on Green Lantern is done.  My first thought is, FINALLY.  Even those of us who loved his run and have defended Johns against the slings and arrows must concede that GL has been truly awful ever since Blackest Night, with the exception of the first few issues of The Nu 52.

In his final issue, Johns all but acknowledges that fact.  Green Lantern 20 is a real-time act of revisionist history, with Johns celebrating the defining features of his run by literally bringing almost all of them back for an encore.  The first thing we see is a future keeper of the Book of Oa using five pages to recap Rebirth, The Sinestro Corps War, the War of Light, and Blackest Night as more or less the complete story of Hal Jordan's time as a Green Lantern.  There is no mention of War of the Green Lanterns or The Rise of the Third Army, which is appropriate, since those things never existed and I never wasted real currency on them.

The rest of the issue proceeds around a flimsy, insignificant plot device--there's an all-powerful threat! he's really bad!--to get the band back together.  The Green Lanterns attack.  The Red Lanterns spit fire.  Kyle Rayner shows up with the rest of the Care Bear Crew, because God forbid Kyle Rayner ever get to do anything that isn't incredibly stupid and pointless.  Our old friend Parallax shows up.  Hal Jordan brings back the Black Lanterns and Nekron (no, really), saves the day, and gets rebirthed again.  It's best you don't ask about that last thing.

But let's go back to those first five pages.  Those who accuse Geoff Johns of being obsessed with the past are laughing their asses off and/or breaking things right now, but, like, I'm not sure that summary is entirely incorrect.  My impression is that with the exception of a couple amazing Alan Moore one offs and Emerald Twilight, there weren't any classic Green Lantern stories prior to Johns's run.  Whatever its faults, Johns's run did expand the GL universe and expand the possibilities open to future writers.

Especially with Sinestro.  When I read old GL comics, Sinestro is a fairly generic creepy, slimy villain type with no identity.  If Johns' run has one unequivocal triumph, it's that he gave Sinestro depth.  Johns took a simple concept--if green rings require overcoming fear, yellow rings require its mastery--and used it to inform every aspect of Sinestro's character and history.  In Johns's world, Sinestro's evil came from a desire to use fear to provide the universe order and stability (Sinestro as neocon?).  Johns let this motivation make Sinestro seem alternately nobly misguided and insane.  He took the old notion of Sinestro as tragic hero undone by his need to preserve order to heights never before imagined.  Johns got Sinestro and used him to drive his entire run.  When future writers approach Green Lantern, they'll have a villain worthy of a Justice Leaguer to play with.

Finally, Green Lantern 20 reminds us that most of Johns's run was big, dumb fun, but it was fun.  Parts of Johns's multicolored Lantern saga (Sinestro Corps War) were better written than others (Blackest Night), but the stakes were always high and the action was always beautifully drawn.  All comics writers rely on their artists, but one wonders how we'd look at Johns's GL run if he had had to work with average artists instead of geniuses like Ethan Van Sciver, Ivan Reis, and Doug Mahnke. To Johns's credit, he put those guys in situations where they could draw huge space action scenes in primary colors, and they knocked it out of the park.  If a reader could buy into the story just enough to care, Green Lantern delivered the best action on the shelves.

I'll always owe Geoff Johns a debt, because his Green Lantern was the first book that got me going to the comics shop weekly.  Since then, I've encountered scores of better books and better sagas, but Johns's GL was the gateway drug.  Judging by the sales numbers, other people felt the same way I did.  No one should mistake Johns's run with art, but he delivered the cheap, pulpy, grade B thrills comics used to be known for by the truckload.

The Yoga of Public Speaking

Imagine providing information to over 100 proud professionals that, at first glance, could be taken as a sign that they were not doing their job.  Last week, I presented some data to some employees that seemed to indicate, at first blush, that they had not entered data correctly into one of our systems.

Before I get fired, let me be very clear: this group of employees care about their jobs and do them well. That pride may have sparked the initial reception I received, which was that I should get the fuck out of here.  I was told in no uncertain terms that my numbers were inaccurate and that they resented any attempt to use those numbers to evaluate them or their programs.

Remember, all of this is happening as I stand in front of 100 people.  My natural reaction in such situations is fight or flight.  You call me out on something, and I want to either get out of dodge or immediately crush you.  That defensiveness has gotten me into trouble in the past, specifically in professional settings.

Fortunately, that's not what I did .  I admitted that this system was still in its infancy, which meant we were still working out its kinks.  I acknowledged the very real possibility that some people had entered the data and that the system was, for whatever reason, just not showing it.  I agreed that any attempt to use this data for evaluation immediately was wildly premature and promised I would do my best to stop any attempt to do so.  I made a point to show where the data showed instances of success, and specifically successes where an employee had overcome the technical difficulties and learning curve to get information into the system during the past month.  What I was most interested in, I said, was getting this data right, so that, in the future, the employees could use this tool to approach their supervisor to begin a conversation about how to solve problems.  We ended up using the time to diagnose problems with the system, so that our team can fix them.  At the end, I got a nice round of applause, and everything was all good.

Yes, this situation makes me think about yoga. One of the things yoga can teach us is that we're not going to be perfect or right at every moment.  Sometimes, everything just comes apart.  Sometimes, you don't have all the answers.  Sometimes, you will fall on your ass.

Over the past year I've gotten much, much better about acknowledging where my body is in the moment I am practicing, as opposed to where I think it should be.  I've accepted the situations where I can't get into poses that normally pose no challenges.  Today I couldn't stick an eagle pose to save my life, and I smiled through my wobbling.

Eagle Claw don't need no reason

"Your life becomes your practice, and your practice becomes your life."  Quite right.  As I've been able to accept a yoga practice that is imperfect, I've learned how to accept imperfections elsewhere in my life.  Now, when I report out a finding, I'm keenly aware that I need feedback to determine how valid it is, or whether I need to go back to the drawing board work with other people to make it better.  Now, criticism isn't an attack on my person.  Now, criticism is a chance to make a good thing better.

Almost everyone can accept that.  I'd like to think that the professionals to whom I presented saw someone who wasn't defensive and who wanted their help to achieve a common goal.  I find that people can forgive almost any screw up so long as I own it.

Just One Fix

There may come a day when I'm mad that only one person shows up for my yoga class, but that day is not here yet.

After no one showed up for my first 4 (!) classes, I realized I needed to let go of my ego as quickly as possible, lest I spend every Monday night curled up in the fetal position and sobbing in my closet.  But over the past two months, I've had pretty consistent turnout, until tonight.  At 6:58, I thought I might get the night off, until I got my first and only student for the night.  Keep in mind that I was tired and feeling somewhat bloated from my very yogic lunch of pancakes and a milkshake.

It might have been the most fun I've had teaching a class yet.  Small classes are the shit, and to be one on one with a student, particularly someone just getting into yoga, is to really get to chance to, well, teach.  I could watch her every move.  I could see where the potential injuries lurked and move her away from them.  I could see which words connected with her and which didn't.  I could even do about half the practice with her, because, like, a dude just staring at you and barking instructions sounds creepy.

Speaking of injuries, please, for the love of your ligaments, don't let the knee get in front of the ankle.

The best part is that I could both push her and offer support, because I could be there for every move. With just the slightest assist, my student got into textbook Dekasana and Urdhva Dhanurasana.  I'm not even sure she realized how cool it was that she was so new to yoga and still rocking those poses so hard, but I did, and I told her, and it felt great.

Someday, I may teach at the big studios.  Someday, I may experience the uncompromising joy of headset yoga.  In this moment, I'm immensely grateful for the students I get and the lessons they teach me.

I Am A Yoga Teacher

What does a yoga teacher do, and why do I want to be one?

I’m embarrassed to say that I gave the question very little thought prior to signing up for teacher training.  The answer I gave to the public was that I had practiced yoga for so many years that I was curious about teaching and deepening my own practice.  In one of my more honest moments, you probably could have gotten me to admit that I harbor dreams of owning a studio or otherwise making my way as a full-time teacher at some point.

Neither my public nor my private answer do much more than beg the question.  Yeah, I practice yoga a lot, but why?  I want to do and teach yoga all the time, but why?

A couple weeks ago, the Cleveland Yoga Teacher Trainees Class of 2013 were seriously lagging in energy.  Fearless Leader responded exactly as one would expect: by teaching a spur of the moment two hour inversion workshop.  Fearless Leader thinks nothing cures a case of tired faster than more, bigger, harder.  That Saturday, she was right.  All that blood and adrenaline rushing to our heads got us buzzing and moving and feeling alive once again.

We assisted one another, and I was paired with my friend Nicole.  We rocked our way through various pincha assists, before we moved on to handstand.  Nicole used my assist to kick up.  I walked her leg over her hips and told her to look at her belly, and VOILA!  For about five seconds, Nicole was in the best looking handstand you could imagine.  Her feet and her hands were in one line.  Her feet were flexed.  I knew she was in the pose because I could feel the point where her alignment allowed her to try less.  She got lighter.  When she came down, she popped right off the ground and, with the purest expression of joy I have seen in the longest time, immediately gave my sweaty ass the biggest hug.

And I learned why I wanted to be a yoga teacher.

After all the teaching I’ve done in my various roles, I am surprised at how much the bullshit teacher/student hierarchical narrative influences the way I view things, including yoga.  Now that I’ve finished teacher training, I can confirm that yoga teachers are not on a different plane than the rest of us.  A yoga teacher is just someone whose life has been touched by something pure and wonderful and perfect and who dreams that s/he might learn enough to share that feeling.

As I sit here on the first weekend of the rest of my life, I'm a little heartbroken that teacher training is over.  My PASC peeps will know what I mean when I say that I never thought I'd be in a color group again, but that's what this was.  A group with nothing in common but a fierce devotion to one perfect thing came together, and their shared love of that one perfect thing bonded them forever, if only in their minds.  With the program over, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel the loss.

That said, more than anything else, I'm ready to try to share what little I know in the hopes that someone else finds this practice and this practice elevates them as it has elevated me.  Really, all a yoga teacher needs to do is get out of the way and let the practitioner and practice bond, stepping in only when the practitioner waivers to nudge them back on the path.  That's it.  As long as I remember that I am not the star but a passenger in the backseat who can read the directions and point out the right place to turn, I have a chance of being a halfway decent yoga teacher.

Thanks, Nicole.  Thanks, TTs.