Not one but two phones in the room kept pinging the other day during a class, despite the teacher asking for whoever had their phones on to turn them off. Finally, the phone next to me actually rang, and while frustrated and trying to twist into some unreachable shape I snapped at the owner to turn it off.
There’s always something in the room that is going to drive you nuts, or that you will deliberately work to not let drive you nuts. Here is a small selection of what I have been driven nuts by during various practices (as a student, not teacher):
A teacher’s voice/choice of words/accent/clothes/location in the room/fidgeting/decision to open or close a door/decision to turn on or off heaters/savasana timings/posture timings/style of corrections/over-corrections/under-corrections/crappy attitude/lack of connection/blindness/hairstyle.
A student's clothes/mat position (blocking the mirror for someone else)/loud breathing/overwhelming perfume/lack of towel to soak up sweat puddle/fidgeting/inability to listen/refusal to bring a towel or mat into the room despite being told they should/inability to turn their phone off/hairstyle.
In a way, I think this is why I like practising with a group: the distraction. It’s just easier to practice with some things to be distracted by and to get angry and riled up about. I think I like to be irritated by the new person who keeps cracking their back, or the teacher not noticing one of the doors is still open, or the regular student who fidgets continuously throughout the class. They are like the family you rebel and push against, so that when you go out into the real world, you behave properly. When I’ve exhausted all my irritation on the idiots in the room* it means that when I leave the room, I can be calm. I can respond rather than react to all the other real irritants in my life. (I won’t list them.)
The room is a crucible, a pressure cooker, a safe environment for controlled explosions. My theory, or hope, is that these over-reactions are fantastic for everyone insofar as they stop us all from being as horrible outside the room (at least some of the time) as we might otherwise be.
But seriously though, don’t bring your phone into the room! Jesus.
* Present company excepted, naturally.
Reading
I’m not really an obsessive worrier, but this piece provides a good insight into why some people are;
A beautiful piece on literacy, class and public spaces;
I’m still reading the The Yellow Notebook — this is a lovely examination of Helen Garner and “the quagmire of the fictionalized self”;
I’m listening to Butterfly Man, but this is the first audio book I’ve listened to since I don’t know when, and I’m not very good at “reading” this way—I’m missing too much.
Watching
Soulmates — how come Sarah Snook could do this but not Succession Season Three? This will do in the mean time. Loved her episode (one), second episode not so great (but with David Costabile from Billions), now trying to find episode three…