Try to love everything that gets in your way;

The Chinese women in flowered bathing caps

murmuring together in Mandarin and doing leg exercises in your lane

while you execute thirty-six furious laps,

one for every item on your to-do list.

The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water

like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and

whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.

Teachers all. Learn to be small

and swim past obstacles like a minnow,

without grudges or memory. Dart

toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,

is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl

lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:

Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,

in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.

Be glad she’ll have that to look at the rest of her life, and

keep going. Swim by an uncle

in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew

how to hold his breath underwater,

even though kids aren’t supposed

to be in the pool at this hour. Someday,

years from now, this boy

who is kicking and flailing in the exact place

you want to touch and turn

may be a young man at a wedding on a boat,

raising his champagne glass in a toast

when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.

He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,

but he’ll come up like a cork,

alive. So your moment

of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,

because if something is in your way, it is

going your way, the way

of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.

- Alison Luterman, published in The Sun – Jan 2010

I recently came across this poem by Alison Luterman, who found herself facing her obstacles, and having her inner ordeal, during her routine of swimming of laps in a local pool.   Her creative inner imaginings at play with her perception of obstacles found in the pool, for some reason, stayed with me.

I have just completed a week of providing and co-facilitating a week of intensive emotional and psychological embodiment training, in strong communal, cocoon-like container, in a quiet seaside town on Costa Brava, Spain. I am sleepily dropped off by my kind, familiar driver in the early morning light at a fresh, newly opened Air Terminal.  Strolled into the sea of humanity floating along.

Then in the next minute, I am stranded, due to the volcanic ash drifting over Spain and Portugal from Iceland, in the Barcelona airport.

The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water

like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and

whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.

Now I have my version of the heavy-bellied obstacle splashing big waves in my travel lane.  The plane that I was to board, I found as I get to the check in counter, was maybe still sitting in the US, maybe in the air.  Rocked from my course.

Teachers, all.

Maybe.  Talking to fellow travelers, I discover that others had the same problem the day before – and didn’t get to board the plane.  Here they were, attempting a departure again.  Oh.  Had the urge to check my email before leaving for the airport.  Didn’t.  Check my email by phone while in line.  Have four messages from the airline, each one lengthening the delay.

Learn to be small

and swim past obstacles like a minnow,

without grudges or memory.

Okay.  Practicing mindfulness, I see my plans have changed.   The ticket agent gives me a ticket for a connecting flight for the last flight out of Philadelphia.  Says maybe I could get this flight, maybe not.  No information.  Have a seat in the main terminal; check back in the late afternoon.  I am swimming along now, certainly feeling like a minnow in a large sea of air travelers.

Without grudges.

Well, okay.  Expect nothing, be ready for anything?  Fair enough.  Head for security.  Let’s take a look at the boarding pass, for gate info, before entering security for clearance.  Have somehow lost my boarding pass in the sea of humanity.  Back pocket was not a good idea.

Thinking, Obstacle, is another obstacle.

Back to the check in counter.  Feel how I am swimming at a faster pace in my lane now!  Miraculously to me, I explain my lostness, learning to be small, and they simply hand me another ticket.  This minnow thing seems to be working.

Going through security, my boarding pass does not pass the scanner. Keeps beeping and flashing red.  The security personnel, is saying something to me in Spanish and pointing to my ticket.  I stare at him blankly.  No comprende. He waves me on.  Swimming past obstacles like a minnow…

Try to love the teenage girl

lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:

Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,

in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.

Be glad she’ll have that to look at the rest of her life, and

keep going.

Spend hours on end in the Barcelona airport. Skype with a few dear friends and companions via the Internet, the beauty of the web, and finding technology providing me with spirit, and connection.  This is my life, it is happening now. This life is mine. Yes, it is.  I also get to feel into the people and the connections that I can be with, right now in my travel obstacle, people that I can look like for the rest of my life, I believe.  I know.  And keep going.

Find that Barcelona has an outdoor pavilion for it’s air travelers.  It is beautiful, and quiet.  This is not like the US airports, for sure.  I enjoy the quiet.  Next to me, a few young women, heavily tattooed, rest on the same section of the pavilion as me, lounging and quietly laughing with each other.  I wonder to myself, what will they think of all those tattoos, when they are older?   I remember my grandmother’s sister, when I was a young boy. She had a tattoo!   What a character she was!   Swimming through memories now….

Swim by an uncle

in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew

how to hold his breath underwater…

Arrive at my departure gate at the designated time.  There is no one there.  No representatives. A handful of travelers.  No announced delays.  I see that what appears to be our plane, is sitting on the tarmac, but is not pulling up to the gate.  Now I am holding my breath, again.

See an airport security person.  Ask them what is happening.  He is very friendly, and he is riding a Segway.  Wow, does that look fun!   He rides off to explore.  How strange, how minnowy.  I keep afloat with Skype, and good friends, and emails.  I stay swimming in my own lane this way.  The airport personnel are very friendly, very different from my experience in the Sates.   They all get interested in the matter.  No one really finds out anything of use, but their friendliness seems to override the lack of information.  We just keep swimming.

Someday,

years from now, this boy

who is kicking and flailing in the exact place

you want to touch and turn

may be a young man at a wedding on a boat

Perspective.  Kicking and flailing, all of us, at some point, in the uncertain waters of life.  Stop trying to get answers, start getting curious about the people in front of me.  Try looking more into their eyes.

Still no airline personnel.  Still no answers.  Go the friendly Segway guy again, he gets on a phone.  Says the plane is going to be departing today, most definitely at some point, and most likely, as far as he can tell.  Somehow, this is reassuring, and I am not kicking and flailing in the fluid like way he has of saying he really isn’t sure of anything.  I ask him instead about what it is like to ride the Segue.  He talks about how he really likes it.  I refrain from asking if I can have a ride.

when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.

He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,

but he’ll come up like a cork,

alive.

Many security personnel have arrived.  Lots of radio talk, and noise.  The passengers all seem content enough; no one is kicking and flailing for information.  There are announcements, from time to time, that we will be boarding soon.  We don’t.  We all seem to keep coming up like corks, with each delay.  Finally, we begin boarding.  No explanation about the delays, no splashing about by the passengers.  We prepare to board the plane.  Another delay, no explanations necessary now.  We all just wait, bobbing like corks, outside the door of the aircraft.  We sit a long time before departing.  Accepting what is.

On the flight home, we are re-routed over Iceland, right as the sun is setting there.  The pilot comes over the speakers that we can see the volcano pluming out the left hand side of the airplane.  I have a left side seat, and we all take turns watching it, and many of the passengers are snapping photos with their cameras and phones.  I am content to watch it live and flow.  My obstacle looks beautiful, and small, from up here.  We all partake in seat exchanges for the next half hour, as we pass over the country, and the light slowly fades from red-orange to the blue-grey of the night sky.

So your moment

of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,

because if something is in your way, it is

going your way, the way

of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.

Tired and worn by the time spent waiting and sitting and not exactly sleeping,

We arrive in Philadelphia, 1:00am.  New boarding passes for the next day, hotel and meal vouchers passed along quickly to each of us with connecting flights.  As I decided to travel lightly this trip, with only carry on luggage, I move quickly through customs, and to the airline representatives, who expedite my departure to the hotel.  I overhear them saying that they are not able to get the plane’s baggage doors open.  This one will not be my obstacle tonight.  Instead, I usher myself onto the airline crew’s shuttle to the hotel, and begin re-arranging my appointments for the next day.

Somehow, this makes everything feel like things are going my way.  I feel a part of the larger story of air travelers, and the even more acutely, a connection to the larger story of those with no option of travel, for they also are stranded in countries, in harsh poverty, in oppression, in circumstances where there are no such things as swimming pools, people blocking the lanes, air travel, volcanic ash disrupting flight patterns, providing opportunities for travelers to change their itineraries, spiritual pilgrims to change their perspective, and place in a larger story.

I am writing as I sit in seat 13C, and sitting on the tarmac, on the Philadelphia airport.  Waiting. Phila-delay-phia.  So again to become small like a minnow, bowing in service to stories larger than my own schedule, and plans.

Try to love everything that gets in your way…

because if something is in your way, it is

going your way, the way

of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.

I keep swimming back and forth between these passages.  They bookend this poem.  The latter passage of the poem is catalytic, it has impact, it turns the corner from dark to light.  Because if something is in my way, it is going my way, as well.  What if that could be, now?  What if that is?

This turn of perspective changes something for me. In me.  I am going the way of all beings: towards darkness, then towards the light, and then again, and again.  With each turn towards the dark – in solid form perhaps an obstacle, in essence the doorway to a larger sense of mystery, evoking possibility, wonder, awe.  And with each turn towards the light – more life, vitality; more of a felt sense of self, and then going beyond that, to the joy of light itself.  I am out of my own way. And life itself, goes towards me.  Is going my way.

Time to wrap this up this swim.  We are number two for departure.