Author: rinavpritchard

S P A C E

It was yesterday when Facebook posts were either inner monologues or rib-tickling, witty remarks on a good day. I still look forward to Instagram captions that aren’t too far from diary entries, ones that do not yield to back-and-forth harangues in the comment section, but rather support, or better, no comments at all.

Just space.

But why can’t we just listen?

Holding space for others is not natural. Because while we itch and fidget with this relentless dire need to speak over listen, nothing, let alone effective, gets transmitted to the receiving end.

The ego merely does not exist, it pervades. It pools around. Bleeds.

How do we notice what’s unfolding when we are too preoccupied with overlooking? How do we ponder the mystery? Wistfully stare into questions?

I neither know how to feel nor know what to believe on most days. That’s okay. Not knowing is terrifying. But it allows for receiving. Committing is an uphill battle when you are often inspired by contradictory things, people even. I bop from one polarizing state to the other, from self-deprecation to self-idealization. I am a POS to those close to me and a saccharine joy the next. It’s paralyzing most times and I often do nothing, like almost not posting this. If I never knew how to commit to a 9-to-5 job or how I feel about today’s chaos, it was maybe my middle-of-the-road approach and my processing of information, that came at me in droves.

My neurosis can account for that.

But I’ll remember that it is words with which I involve myself; artists whom I aspire to, but am careful not to envy. And the illusory space I hope to find myself in with the fiction I write.

Pause. Quietude.

I am not different from most. I am neither special nor spectacular. I just am.

As I expose myself to new experiences, walk new paths, and condition new habits, I’ll hope to disempower older, useless ones. I will follow the conception of thought as it shifts and shapes into some matter that words, careless ones, will fail to capture.

We won’t always have the right words to express what’s inhabiting the mind through entries, captions or prayers.

I’ll stand back here with the posers.

by Rina Pritchard

I think some of us resist delighting in our accomplishments or even, simply, the good times. Maybe fearing they’ll end too soon or that we are undeserving of the joy of this magnitude, the success of such weight, or opportunities this wonderful, as though our self-esteem hasn’t yet caught up. So, we examine it, nearly pick it apart. We end up not sharing these fleeting moments and they become archived in this backlog of experiences, filed away in a hard drive of “Things that didn’t make it.”

We aren’t left with regrets, just recollections.

But that feeling of h i g h .

Have you ever reached a level of High that although yields excitement, it’s still vertigo?
That although you’re lifted by the hands and shoulders of others, you’re still afraid of heights.

But you dislike mosh pits, intentional collisions and skin too close to yours.
So, you get down.

In spite of the thrill, flattery, applause and the people flooding your space,
The noise got too loud
The space dwarfed in size
The air suffocating.

You get down and think you’re safe
That you can breathe
You can see the floor
Your feet making contact with the ground

But no one knows about you here.
Your name – unheard of.
Your sense of purpose is lost on you.

It wasn’t that you wanted to extinguish your light, but it was that you didn’t want to burn too brightly, only to burn out.

So, burn out.
Burn out, so you can find that spark.
Check out
Check out to check back in.

Maybe it’s essential for us to get a little bit of ourselves out as if we are emptying pockets of quarters, so we can move better or walk a bit faster.

We may feel lighter for a few moments before feeling bogged down again. But it’s important for us to release, to unclench our fists. It’s important for us to get out of our way.

But how can we come back?
Is there turbulence on the return flight home?
What are we truly made of?
How do we stay self-effacing?

I will continue to romanticize the underdogs
The otherness
The spaces in between
The gray areas
The forgotten writers
The overlooked ones
The deep cuts
The arrivals
The departures
The returns
The ones and things that don’t stay for long.
The increments
The measures over full doses
The ideas over the real thing.

Can we write, can we make anyway, despite the output?
Begin to stop identifying with the form and start identifying with the formless?
Continue to see the cracks in spaces but also fall into them?

Rather than embody our personalities, can we embody moments?

Are we romping in the world of art like we are children playing make-believe because there are no right or wrong answers? Or did we already delete that thought at our first encounter with defeat? If art has fueled us or given us a purpose, I hope we return after long seasons of dry spells.

Return, arrive, show up as you are — wordless, uninventive, bare, ordinary.

We might lose all senses, go mad, and find a detachment from a reality we’ve known too well. Whichever medium we use to demonstrate our passion, we all share an acute understanding of feelings and a lot of it.

We meet in the middle.

We exchange afflictions.

We look at each other and say, “I see you.”

We toast to bad habits.

We cheers to old flames.

We look at ourselves merely by looking at each other.

And arrives this literary progeny we’ve somehow birthed simply by losing it.

Be full, indulge. Then feel empty.

Restore.

Have your seasons and embrace the patterns.

You’ll trip over your own foot, smack your face on the pavement, curse like a sailor and lose your better judgment, but you’ll have created an art worthy of sharing with someone in dire need of a reality from the one they experience every day.

So, although the sound of our voices, the spotlight and the social realm make us cower, we should allow ourselves the chance to claim our space.

To claim without attachment.

My Vinyasa Practice was a Psycho-Spiritual Trip – Hold the Psychedelics!

by Rina Pritchard

​My inner critic was louder than my inner cheerleader.

In moments of disappointment and the circumstances that came shy of success, I had allowed the fault to rest in my hands.

I mean, wasn’t I in control? Wasn’t this my life?

“I,” “mine,” “me” — the ego speaks in volumes.  I was dragging around an ego with baggage of feelings. Then, I thought my perception was the only reality that I needed — to each, their own. As a writer, I run on feelings and thoughts. They were as real to me then as a wrench for a mechanic. If my feelings were efficacious enough to fictionalize characters with personalities and dramatized events, why would I discredit them?

It was when I chanced on ​​My Vinyasa Practice, my outlook began to shift.

Yoga Goes Beyond the Mat

Being under Michelle Young shaped my outlook on life. (Maybe the universe was happening for me, not to me!) Having practiced since 2009, yoga became for me what it translated for many people — a moment to escape to when we felt depleted; a time when we can work up a sweat and perfect a pose we saw on Instagram. However, these were only byproducts of the journey.

I knew I felt a deep sense of awareness in my body as I practiced. Yet, I wasn’t aware that my troubles dissipated as I struggled to hold Warrior 3, sweat cascading down my temples. It then had occurred to me in hindsight: my anxiety waned, everything is fine.

When you are knee-deep in a practice, you are transported. You are no longer there, but here. My body was tested and trained to become responsive rather than reactionary. That’s how powerful the asanas are. And it’s when I began to integrate that practice off of my mat, things really began to shift.

My practice taught me to keep still.

Often now, I feel as if I’m on the verge of waking up…

My Vinyasa Practice Has Deepened by Practice

In a sense, you can say my yoga practice started in 2010 when I took my first yoga class. In another, it began Feb. 2021 when I enrolled in the training.

Yoga teacher training has allowed me to grow and to see that the grass was always greener on this side. I was already whole. Satisfying this illusion of perfection was beyond the question. I grew to become more compassionate with myself, and what typically had me concerned or fearful dwarfed in size. I grew less concerned with the events unfolding around me and responded rather than reacted.

My Vinyasa Practice helped me understand that yoga and our practice off the mat do not look the same on everyone. The training cultivated this beauty of inclusivity, from our bodies and minds to our experience in the discipline. It has offered me the courage to access my own story, my material, and use it as a resource. It has granted me the tools to anatomically align my knee to my ankle in Anjaneyasana, as well as align my essential values with my engagement with the universe.

Now I unabashedly honor my boundaries. I allow my sensitivity. With all my humanness, “warts and all,” I’ve come to catch up with myself and say I am bigger than the ego; I am more than these samskaras. I am a being in a human experience.

Being a teacher has taught me that we are students first, a teacher second. We need to practice as much as we need to teach. We hold space for our practitioners and those around us to foster compassion and education. The training afforded me the knowledge, and that combined with my inner material rewarded me with wisdom.

Wholeness Over Perfection

Yoga is called a practice, and I practice yoga every day. I allow my tamasic state, the periods of reset and the moments of stumbling out of a posture to become part of the process.

Now, I embrace those dry spells as a writer.

I invite my pain for tea when it makes a surprising visitation.

Yoga teaches me the value of the journey rather than the output. To value Svadyaya, or self-study, and coexist with whatever arises. To be with myself.

WE DONT WANT TO LEAVE

It starts with your grin and then the rest follows

The moon hiding in your pupils has been the last thing I see at night before the evening tucks me in.

Your eyebrows are the friendliest pair just the right companion to suit your pronounced nose.

I fall into the depths of those depressions framing your mouth; after all, you smiled at my every quirk.

Your porcelain teeth, your fruitful lips where words come out to illuminate an entire city.

Everyone wants to listen, but you never gave them a chance to understand.

I can go on and on like ampersands.

I am drawn.

You drew me.

I don’t ever want to be erased.

YOU ARE THE LAST TAXI CAB ON 5TH AND BROADWAY

It’s mornings like this when I gaze outside my window

and take in nothing short of certainty,

Arriving at the most unnoticed truth

that there still lies beauty in this world

lingering in between the branches of the naked tree

settling in our retired, lovely bodies

quiet, in the cracks of the pavements

and you in between my white linens

gracing me with your modest and most insecure smile.

“That’s Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”

“That’s Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”

You never knew this, but I have missed you more than I would like to admit

Especially on weeks when you fly back home

We used to talk mindlessly on your balcony,

Your balcony on the 15th floor, constructed of glass and steel railings that overlooked the 55 Freeway

Where the sun knew to tuck itself behind that high-rise apartment

The one that looked like yours

I still recall how hot it felt when I’d rest my elbow listening to you speak

Your words, neither pat nor insincere

Sentences, words, letters would run down your chin

Depending on your mood, letters would drop off

And the vowels would collect at the corner of your mouth

We shared shots of gin – not my thing, but yours

Your comforters held creases from our bodies following late-night video games

Call of Duty: Black Ops, game controllers tainted by greasy fingerprints

Your balcony sliding door open

None of the lights were on but the television in your bedroom

As the traffic 15 floors below us died down

You were a friend in a scene full of actors

“Touch base this, reinvent the wheel that”

Were our lines until we were able to drop our roles and the superfluous office jargon and just be twentysomething-year-olds

As the CEO flirted with the new hires

And account managers failed to take accountability

We continued to shrug our shoulders, roll our eyes, take smoke breaks, and stare into the abyss that was the corporate parking lot

While half the sales floor team congregated near that plume of smoke near the ashtray

Our lofty ambitions and deferred dreams were scraps of paper collecting at the gutter of the curb – gum wrappers, old receipts and Coke bottle lids

I met you on a Wednesday; it had to be

Two years ago when the days were golden

You caught a train to California from the Midwest

And one of the first things you did was laugh at something I said

We joked about how the weekend went with no pants on

You becoming a directionless 27-year-old law graduate

And me, an interior decorator, whose marriage was tethered to the wrong person

A Marisa Tomei-type receiving more calls from angry wives of men than from my own mother

You’ve cared for me

Knew when to ask questions

Knew when to shut the hell up

And knew when to let me be because I’d had it

Don’t tell me that the only few interests that connected us

Were cigarettes, exhausted discussions about our exes and aversion to corporate gluttony

Were you scared when I sent you that lengthy text?

About how much I miss us and how we don’t say any more than five words to each other?

This was no romance, purely platonic, but a relationship nonetheless

While our clothes stayed on

My words ran off

My heart, worn on my sleeve

And you never reciprocated the same way

Or at all…

Were the telephone wires in the city undergoing maintenance?

Did I miss smoke signals in the sky?

Should I have tried harder?

Should you have tried at all?

How did I know that when happy hours with co-workers were miserable?

You would be the only one to notice me walk away?

Go ahead – walk the plank

Walk, no stumble, into the role that we often used to crap on

I’ll be here

Jill of all trades, master of none

A generalist in a specialized world

I hate that we’ve grown apart

I hate forced small talk,

Wanting to finish your sentences, but can’t anymore,

Yups and nods and hands in pockets

Eyes that drift toward the Sparkletts water machine

The air bubbles floating to the surface

As they respond for you

Monday morning exchanges were reduced to, How was your weekend?

But this time, the pants stayed on.

What should we do?

Should we sit down and talk around the point of concern until I’m proven right?

Would you help me pick a scab that won’t heal?

Trash this friendship and start a new one?

Tell you that I think you should leave?

I remember your hazel eye with that bit of orange

The scent of bergamot inside your car

The cracked leather of your Nissan Sentra

Your week-long absence because you got Shingles

and how you quit smoking before me.

What happened?

Do you know what happened?

Does the sales floor know?

Are we playing a game of hot and cold?

Are we walking in a straight line like 3rd graders?

Is the kid behind me stepping on the back of my shoe as my sneakers fall loose?

Why does it feel like my sock keeps rolling down into my shoe?

Do I have a dryer sheet clinging to my fleece sweater and nobody is telling me?

Does this DMV line truly wrap around this building?

I can still recall the touch of the hot metal railing of your balcony as I hear you speak

As time shoves its way into everything,

I wonder if words continue to pour out of your mouth
And if the vowels still collect at the corner of your lips.