(Seriously, take a few minutes to watch this.  Tastefully done and totally hilarious.)

A friend was talking about this clever little ditty the other day, voiced out by a regular brah who’s hungry for a little time on the mat, so to speak.  And you know he’s not alone.

At first, it cracked me up.  We all know the yoga girl, the yoga butt, the yoga pants…if you’ve spent any amount of time with a heterosexual man on planet earth in the last ten years, chances are good the topic has come up once or twice.

So is this a matter of social conditioning?  Are we going that route?

Nah.

It’s about hot chicks in tight pants.  Plain and simple.  And you know what?  There’s nothing wrong with that.

Really.

I had my mind completely blown the other day, reading about a topic I’d never really considered.  We hear a ton about how the media portrays women, how it damages our self esteem, skews our definition of body image, the way the constant thrust of sexuality and scantily clad airbrushed limbs damage the psyche of every woman in America.  These things are true.  I’m a woman.  I know for sure that it’s real.

But here’s the deal, ya’ll.  Women are not the only ones who are broken.

Our media has also broken our men.

Twisted healthy biological desire into confusion and an ordinary cloud of frustration.  Laid shame like a dagger straight against the throat with such force, the words become defeated before they can even come out.  Biology will never move as quickly as technology.  The evolutions of humanity are just not drawn that way.  We are, at our core, mammals.  There’s no shame in that.

There is no shame in healthy, earthly desire.

As a matter of fact, it’s kind of a natural thing.   A man who’s earnestly drawn to the yoga girls is declaring one simple thing, though he may not necessarily make the connection.  It’s more than tight pants and carnal positions in rank and file.

It’s about wanting a woman who is healthy.  

Women who do yoga tend to be strong, sexy, and beautiful because yoga tends to be about opening yourself to beauty.  It’s as simple as that.  A strong woman has a strong radar for bullshit.  A strong woman knows that men (and women, for that matter) are completely imperfect.

You want a yoga girl?

Get on the mat.

Show up.  Watch your flaws surface, the negativity, the grime.  Observe it, watch it, change it, let it go.  Stretch.  Move. Build discipline.  Gently.  It’s not about strength, it’s about flexibility.  It’s about moving into the home that is your body.  YOUR body.

That’s step one.

(Tight pants not included.)

I like a very particular kind of pencil.  Yes, pencil.  I like to write in pencil.

I don’t like things to smear, so I use art pencils.  Ones with a hard lead but not so hard that it lightens the color of the lead.  Like most things, I choose the point in the middle.  HB.

ProArt HB pencils serve as my chariot of verse because they’re crazy cheap, allowing room for dozens of them lying around, ruminating in bags, holding attendance in single file rows on my desk, poking out of a back pocket whenever I’m on the move.

Soon they will sit on the dash of my truck, right beneath the speedometer.  Holding witness, joining forces, with the gauges that guide my speed and direction.  It’s been eight years since my pencils have ridden shotgun on the dash.  A little too long, I think.

No erasers.  I don’t believe in those.  You scratch it out, change the page, or allow the thought to breathe on its own, right or wrong.  Paper is the place of seed.

Computers are for work.  The crank of the machine, the run of the mill.

Presses of pulp are what hold the agony of my eruptions.

My thoughts, on paper, are pure.  Jagged, broken, split into races and time, spread over mountains of sketchbooks.  Chiseled in bad renderings of form.  Connected with lines, tape, sometimes pieces of gum.  When transitions of life hit really hard, I freak out.  I light them on fire.  I kiss them goodbye.  I watch the spirals turn into coils of sunshine orange, hot and molten under the coals.

I should hold on to these things.

But I let them go.

I unroll my words in bonfires, let the heat clear them away.  This year on Solstice.  Saying goodbye to the dark.

In preparation.

Plant new seeds.  Open the page.  Grab the trusty HB.

Some say one step forward, two steps back.  I say take one thing on, let two things go.

As my grandpa used to say in the blankets of pine, “There’s no use in running, little bird.  Smoke follows beauty.”