Imperial

Namaste

56 namaste The slender, balding fellow walking out of the yoga center with his neatly rolled up yoga mat and seraphic, post-yoga glow probably thinks he is superior to me as I clump down the sidewalk with my poor posture and relatively limited spinal flexibility, my failure to think deeply, if at all, about my breathing. Which is fine. He’s entitled to his opinion. However, what he doesn’t realize is that I live on the same street as he does and I happen to know, from walking past his house on garbage day, that he makes no effort whatsoever to recycle. Newspapers, bottles, plastic containers— the things you’re supposed to put in the blue bag— he just sticks in the white bag, along with the coffee grounds and cantaloupe halves and the rest of the so-called wet trash. Even beer cans are in there (a cheap, off-brand beer, I might add). I guess saving the planet isn’t that important to him, compared with mastering down dog or up dog or whatever. So here he is feeling superior to me, whereas in fact I am the more evolved being, and I give him a glance of cool, skeptical appraisal which I hope conveys this. ...