20-Minute Monday: Unprepared

Tonight I was all set to go to yoga at 7:00 .... until, at 6:42, standing in the locker room, stripped down to change, finding that what I thought was a pair of red shorts was actually a red tank top. And since it isn't exactly practical or in any good taste to do a standing split (or nearly any other pose) while wearing a knee-lenth Ann Taylor professional-line skirt, my plans rightly had to change. So instead I just rode for 60 minutes on the elliptical machine ... wearing the red tank top, my blue Asics and the green-flowered Ann Taylor professional-line (and now sweat-soaked) skirt.

Oh, to ever feel properly prepared. To have pulled together my yoga clothes last night instead of just before running out the door this morning. To have, maybe, even unfolded the red tank top enough to notice it wasn't something with a waistband. Or, to keep tank tops and shorts not in the same drawer so the odds of mixing them up might decrease.

What if. Perhaps if I were prepared I wouldn't be sitting here in the bucolic Boston Public Library courtyard, with its arched columns and lighted fountain resembling that of an ancient Greek tycoon's weekend home,

Here I sit.
(Copyright Tom Christiansen, 2001)

wearing the blue Asics, the green-flowered skirt, and the red, sweaty tank top covered with plum cardigan, college backpack at my feet, looking for all the world (particularly to the woman walking by right now in a, yes, Ann Taylor skirt with a blouse and heels) like a vagabond camp-out, rather than who I really am, which is an unprepared yogi with procrastination issues and only a minor sense of style but, perhaps, also enough chutzpah to not care about either presentation.

Monday, August 29, 2011 (8:31-8:51 p.m.)

Boston Public Library