A few months and about a thousand bucks later (self-employed with no health insurance) I had the results of an MRI which revealed:

• Partial torn labrum in my left hip joint (the labrum is the ring of cartilage around the hip socket)

• Osteoarthritis in my right hip joint

• Tears at the insertion points where both left and right glute medii muscles attach to the greater trochanters (the knobs on the outer thigh bones)

Prior to this, I’d experienced pain in the outer hips my primary care doctor and I ascribed to trochanteric bursitis, so I’d been adding to my own yoga practice - and my work with clients - postural and therapeutic exercises to help strengthen these upper/outer hip muscles. You may know these exercises as “clamshells” and other similar movements that bring that muscle into an abducting action.

With my MRI results showing glute medius tears, I thought to myself, “how could all of my work targeting these very muscles have resulted in torn attachments?!”

Well, let’s remember that I’m 58. I’m eight years into menopause. My tissues aren’t regenerating and repairing like they did when my estrogen content was copious. Prime example of normal “wear and tear.” What to do?

What I’m doing.

Infrared therapy. Light therapy reaches deep enough into cells to stimulate mitochondria that aid in tissue repair, as well as fibroblasts which build and organize collagen.

Massage therapy. I have an AMAZING massage therapist who works with my specific diagnoses and structural imbalances. If you’re in Dallas you can find her here.

Dietary adjustments. Increasing protein and calcium in my diet to maintain and build muscle and bone (while also learning here how my estrogen-absent body now processes the various elements of my diet).

Collagen supplementation. This is an experiment. General wisdom is to ensure protein, calcium and vitamin D are sufficient through diet. This collagen powder packs the 4 collagens clinically studied and proven to show modest gains in bone density. Hey, if it helps with my skin and hair, too? Bonus.

This joint supplementation. Also in experimental mode! It’s different in that it works on boosting the synovial fluid production in the joints.

Omega 3 supplementation. I was on a 6-month Accutane/isotretinoin treatment for my (estrogen-deprived) face, which can cause loss of joint lubrication and synovial fluid, along with the disruption of sebum production. Omega-3 is recommended to help offset that loss. Now that I’m finished with the treatment, I just figure it’s worth continuing for the anti-inflammatory benefits.

Yoga is not enough.

I’ve been practicing yoga for over 20 years. I used to think strength building from practicing postures came from supporting body weight; using your body’s weight as resistance. This is an obvious enough point in poses like plank, handstand and forearm stand. The more weight you stack over your joints against gravity, the more those muscles will have to work to keep you and your weight from falling over. But the rest are just doing what your body has been doing for you your whole life. Carrying your load. Postural practice will maintain existing strength, and perhaps add a bit here and there. But to really BUILD strength, to ADD muscle, you have to add load.

Targeted strength work. Wrist and ankle weights, resistance bands and actual hand weights or dumbbells are easily adaptable to lots of yoga poses. Bands provide a closed loop of resistance, giving the body the “push” and “pull” actions the standard postures don’t have. They don’t provide heavy resistance, but they’re a good place to start.

In addition, I now plonk down $60 a month to my neighborhood YMCA where I get on the circuit machines and really push some heavier weight through my feet, lift weight directly from my quads and hamstrings, as well as those pesky glute medii by abducting with more weight than just a resistance band.

My primary care doctor has an InBody scanner (so cool!) in her office. I got a complete reading that told me what I had somewhat suspected: I could stand to lose between 10-15 pounds (my Body Fat Mass number is higher than my Skeletal Muscle Mass number; should be the reverse), and my upper body is stronger than my lower body. All telling me I’m on the right track for building strength in my legs and hips.

The older I get the more I realize the importance of variety in daily movement. I can’t just keep doing the one thing I love, the one thing that got me out of my head and into my body in the first place 26 years ago. If you happen to be in that rut, and feeling the “stuck” or the wear and tear, start digging. I highly recommend getting an initial set of scans completed as a baseline. If you suspect joint and bone issues, x-rays. Soft tissue: CT or MRI. If you feel pretty good but want that InBody calculation and report, find a provider or test shop that offers one. Those results will give you a firm diagnosis and a place to start with either physical therapy or other exercise protocol.

Much of my private client work is this - working with a diagnosis and supplementing PT or gym work with yoga that also adds load. We are not practicing shapes for the sake of shapes. We’re practicing holding a posture under strain, under more load than body weight. The mind part doesn’t change: we are still examining how we - breathing bodies - respond to tension, to stress.

If you’d like to learn more, visit my website and contact me for an initial consultation.

How I got into it.

How long have I been at this, the yoga teacher thing? Believe it or not, next year will be 20 years. That can’t be right. But it is, because it happened the year I got married (I’d been a practicing yoga student since 2000). And though for a few years, Michael and I both mis-remembered our wedding year as 2008 and not 2007, I commented to him recently that our marriage was now the thing I’d spent more years on or in than anything else in my life. More years than growing up with my Mom and siblings, grade school, college and grad school, or any single job.

Except for this job.

That they go together in the chronology of our shared life isn’t something I’d realized or had considered to have had much corollary meaning until now. But I doubt I’d be a yoga teacher if I hadn’t married Michael. And I did not get to become a yoga teacher because I married a rich dude! I was a mid-level production manager for a small media company when we met and bought our house in 2005. Michael, a freelance photographer and marketing professional, was about to take a gig with a client that would give him a more predictable income. I was also an adjunct instructor for Dallas College, teaching Intro Anthropology classes to freshman. I badly wanted out of my corporate job - I had for years.

When I left after completing my yoga teacher training, I was earning about $60K/yr. As you might imagine, leaving did not smooth my path. The teaching gig became mainly administrative as the college moved more and more toward online instruction. My job was to setup the course shells, collect assignments and assign final grades. And this was in the years before Zoom. I never even saw these students’ faces. Less than inspiring work for a PhD. When my Dean declined to renew my contract (after ten years of service thank you very much/blessing in disguise), I had just started teaching yoga as both a public class teacher and a private instructor. A kids’ yoga class also led to a part-time job at the Montessori School that hosted the class. So I was cobbling together a living, while Michael went back to full-time freelance work, by now doing web design and dipping his toes into videography.

By the time I left the Montessori School job four years later, I’d calculated that I could carry my share of our financial obligations with just teaching yoga. My private client roster had grown to the point where I didn’t need to teach public classes unless I wanted to. Bonus money. If I could continue to grow my private client base to the point where I could weather a cancellation or a client leaving for whatever reason, I’d be - happy.

A happy worker. I’ve been a happy worker now for nearly two decades. I know I’m fortunate, if not more than a little privileged to be doing what I do, though I am nowhere near financially secure. I’m grateful every day not to be a cog in somebody else’s corporate wheel. I get to help people become at home in their bodies, to adapt to what happens to their bodies getting older, and I’m doing this as my own body gets older.

Where I’ve come to and the ethics of practice.

But I was talking with my friend Jessica the other day, also a yoga teacher, though what she teaches now in private classes in her own home is more somatic awareness and Body-Mind Centering approach. She came up in the Iyengar Yoga system and had been teaching in the Dallas Yoga Center’s teacher training programs for a few years when she started questioning herself about “what it was she was doing as a yoga teacher.” And why. Why are we teaching people shapes?1 It made me think about how my own interests as a teacher and a practitioner have changed over the course of the last 20 years.

My path toward teaching led me from the Iyengar system (or lineage) to eclectic, flow-inspired public classes, to teacher training with Ashtangis (different system/lineage2), graduating to teaching in fitness centers, rec centers, a couple of studios, a few corporate classes, a kids’ class (not my best teacher self!), and lots of private clients and classes. I’ve trained to teach yoga to veterans and deeply value my training that demonstrates yoga’s effectiveness in helping manage trauma/PTSD.

Yoga, unlike most physical or fitness regimens, has an ethical framework that was conceived by its creators as part and parcel of its practice. This aspect it shares with other spiritual systems such as Buddhism and even Christianity. It is what many students or practitioners of yoga know sets it apart from “fitness” and it is this aspect that draws many adherents to it (though they may only be vaguely aware of the details of this foundation). Every Yoga Teacher Training program imparts the details of this information, but few teach how to teach that to others in the context of a standard yoga class.

Do I practice Patanjali’s yoga (known in the 8-Limb system as the yamas and niyamas)? The ethical precepts as taught in many if not all western Yoga Teacher Training programs? I don’t practice them overtly (see footnote) or explicitly teach them very often at all - alas, those who come to my classes or come to work with me privately are not coming for the lessons in the ethical precepts - but I would say that I try to practice them as part of being a human in the world: be non-violent in your thoughts, speech and actions. Keep yourself and your habits tidy. Be truthful. Don’t covet or steal, but practice contentment with what you have right now. Know yourself, but also perhaps contemplate a power higher than yourself.

And I’m lucky to have students and clients who I know are good people. Because we are in a relationship with one another (the plus side of working one on one) and we know each others’ lives, I know they have ethical orientations to the world. We can have conversations about values, about the right thing to do in any particular circumstance, and I can point to the diagram on my wall of the 8 limbs, but I feel for the most part that I don’t need to. I can honestly say this is a big part of the reason I look forward to working with every single one of my clients and students. If it doesn’t feel right, it usually doesn’t last.

And what about the shapes? Why teach shapes?

Because they work on many different levels. We teach shapes because we know so much now about the importance of functional movement in our everyday lives. Humans have evolved to move in quite specific ways, walking prime among them; but also squatting, standing up and sitting down, looking behind us, reaching, and bending and twisting. We also age and with age comes all the expected degradation, the wear and tear on our tissues. The “shapes” or postures/asanas help us build strength to support movement, flexibility to support mobility. Balancing helps the joints respond to movements through and against gravity.

They also teach the ability to hold tension, strain and effort without becoming overwhelmed by any of these discomforts. This is the “inner awareness” piece of the practice, perhaps the component that sets it apart from “fitness.” The inner awareness is also key to developing intero- and proprioception - the subtle awareness of ourselves internally and as part of the environment immediately around us. This awareness helps us develop the capacity to respond rather than react life’s circumstances and relationships off the mat.

Years of practice also give us something sustainable, something we can craft, adapt, commit to, and develop daily or weekly discipline around.

Where I am on the spectrum of “Yoga Teacher”

So, in answer to my own question in the subtitle, I would say '“yes,” - I think. But Yoga is no longer the whole of what I do in an hour with a private client or a class. Therapeutics, somatic awareness, movement education, strength work with weights and resistance bands all have a well-integrated place now in what I do as a teacher, along with “shapes.”

Breathwork I teach to a lesser degree as a standalone practice. “Breathing” is however, integral to teaching postures in as much as I teach to the breath and not to a count of minutes or repetitions. I also teach the iRest (Integrative Restoration/Yoga Nidra Meditation) protocol twice a month in a class setting and with a private client on a fairly regular basis, a system which contains an explicit pranayama/breathing layer component.

This “eclecticism” in my teaching absolutely reflects how I’m moving through my own life at 58. I have known for years now that yoga is not a panacea or cure-all. I have never been a 24/7 yogini and I have never had any desire to follow the path of the renunciate, or change my name (though I’d love the chance to light out to a mountain retreat for a week or so sometime). But yoga as I’ve come to practice it, teach it and understand it over the last 20+ years offers value to the whole organicity of my life, along with the love in my relationships, my response to beauty in the world, and my desire to understand myself because it is a practice that brings me back to myself, over and over again.

Yoga and yoga teaching bring me to ground, to seeing with clarity, to acting with compassion as well as dispassion because it helps guide me to respond rather than react in the world. I could say this orientation is part and parcel an expression of Patanjali’s ideas of self-study (svadhyaya), contentment (santosha), and acting with restraint (brachmacharya) and non-harming (ahimsa). I think when we have practiced and put our practice into the world as teachers we come to embody the deeper teachings and those teaching become expressions of our outward personalities and our inward deep knowing, or “soulscapes” (I think I just made up that word), regardless of whether we are teaching Patanjali directly or not.

“Being a yoga teacher” is to exist on a spectrum. The world puts a generation of new yoga teachers into the world every day. Wobbly colts off to find opportunities to put what they’ve learned to the test. To see their experience as students from the other side of the room, to begin developing their own distinctive voices and relationships. I was thirsty for a particular kind of experience as a seeker and a teacher that I found by returning to my interest in psychology, Jungian studies, and the research being done that addresses the link between neuroscience and yoga. That led me to trauma studies, embodied or somatic work, and teaching to communities of veterans. My private clients (and my own aging body) have brought me into the world of therapeutics and strength training. This is my unique purview as a teacher after 20+ years of practice and (happy) work. I hope to continue this happy work for at least another 20.

Peace ya’ll.

Here’s the text of the memorial speech I wrote for my brother:

I did something I hardly ever do anymore - I got up in the middle of the night to start to put down some words for this. It’s been a year since William Paul disappeared and then was found six weeks later, and we all got the call from the Dallas County Coroner’s office. We knew then that we wanted to do something to remember him and honor his life, but the right time and the right place just didn’t happen in the immediate afterwards of his death. So thank all of you for being here, for reaching out over the last year, for helping us put this together.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Carl Jung’s “Spirit of the Times” and the “Spirit of the Depths.”1 My brother only late in his life found his way to the former, in that he’d finally found his place - a place from which he could contribute, give back, do his part as we all do to move life forward. He had security, he had purpose. He had his own apartment! He was saved. He literally found salvation in Christian works.

The “Spirit of the Times” - where we all live 98% percent of our lives - we’re born into a family, culture and society, we get educated, we work, we follow our faith, we create, we have families of our own, we participate in community, we move life forward in all the thousands of minuscule things we do every day - this was not Will’s life for the majority of the years many of us knew him.

Jung’s “Spirit of the Depths” is the yin to that yang - the unconscious, the dark to the light, and the instinct to know the unconscious, the impulse in us that needs to know the how and the why of who we are inside - that’s called to know our own soul, or God. When Paul - Paul - started using drugs and got the glimpse into this - the “Spirit of the Depths” that heroic doses of hallucinogens will often give us - he wanted to stay there. And spent the better part of his adulthood trying his damnedest to avoid having to get in line with the rest of us.

If you know his history, and I’m not sure how many of you do; how many times he’d cycled through attempts at recovery: Reconciliation Outreach, Salvation Army, Dallas Life Foundation, back to Reconciliation and the Ministry. Jail, homelessness. I tried, as the documentarian I try to be, to get the chronology down and at one point just had to give up. I couldn’t keep it all straight in my memory. And even then, it had only been a few years. It wasn’t like I was trying to remember events from thirty years ago. He went through so much in such a short amount of time.

I certainly don’t fault my brother for his attitude toward life, his will to keep himself apart, to have gone against what we, his family, thought he should have been. He was the oldest child, the prodigal perhaps - fated not to follow in the footsteps of his forbears. He was subversive, he was counter. He was not dutiful or all that protective. He was seeking something - perhaps always to get back to that place where he’d traveled when he was using, those landscapes of the inner mind.

He was not ultimately, a man of very many words. Ever. We don’t know much about how he felt, or what he may have been going through - he was not open with us, his immediate family, especially in the last year before he vanished. We try to make sense of his disappearance going only on what little time we had with of him and our memories of and stories about his life. We could not have predicted this, his death. We are still bewildered.

We take some solace in the fact of those last 10-plus years where Will had purpose, stability and community. He had his health. And we have so many of you here to thank for that, his family at the Ministry and the 24. In whatever way Will or Paul affected your life, we hope you’ll share a memory or some thoughts with us today.

The photo of him above I’d never seen until last weekend. It makes me want to weep - the serenity in his face, the unworried brow, his smile. I have no idea who took it or when it was taken.

We made a digital slide show, as one does these days for memorial services and celebrations, with several scans of old snapshots from when we were all kids, to more recent photos of Will from the Ministry and graduation from the Salvation Army. Not many from the long years in between when the circumstances of his life were far more tenuous.

Setting out his certificates of completion from Reconciliation Outreach, looking at the photos of him in his late 50s in his red cap and gown, I’d had the terrifying thought that my brother vanished because something awful, something shameful had happened to him, something he would never be able to speak about. Or that he himself had done something he would never be able to confess or atone for. My brother changed his name, preferring to be known as Will rather than Paul, and didn’t like revisiting Paul’s past. What could have convinced him that his only recourse was to leave his entire existence behind?

I think of the importance Jung placed on integration; we can’t live only in the light, in the good. Psychological wholeness requires integrating all of our selves, past and present, good and bad, light and dark. Living with the tension of our opposites. We have to hold it all with compassion for the aspects we might otherwise reject, repress, or project onto others. I can’t help my own tendency to psychologize in the grasp for some explanation. That something about the way my brother split his good from his bad may have been part of his own reasoning for abandoning all of himself.

*****

And our afternoon of remembrance of him was so sweet - friends from childhood and middle school came. My little brother and I both spoke, his friend Andrew from high school and his best friend Mike recalled much of those days of “exploration” and experimentation. Our friend Marsha Williamson from the Dallas 24 spoke of how highly regarded he was at both the 24 and the Ministry. How he always, always showed up. We knew this of course, but to have Marsha and others from his work come to share in our collective remembrances seemed to close the circle on Will’s life, in the best way.

There was SO much food, but also much laughter, re-connection, remembering and in this, a way to help process how our lives continue even in the face of terrible, unexplainable loss. If you were there and are reading this, thank you again for your presence, for your gifts of food and memory, and flowers and plants. I am so glad we did this for Will. That for Mom, my sister Camille and my brother Sean, for those who’ve always felt a closeness or a fondness for him we had the chance to come together again in once place. That’s what Mom kept remarking on the next day - how wonderful it was to have all of those people together in the same room.

Andrew asked me later if there was a grave marker he might visit from time to time - I had to share that we’d had Will cremated, and his ashes were currently residing with our brother Sean. William Paul is the first of our immediate family to die; there is no family plot, aside from that of a few elderly relatives on our father’s side (two of whom oddly, aren’t buried in the same cemetery, even though they were brother and sister, Mammie and our Great Uncle Bob.)2 I don’t know that we have plans for his remains beyond where they rest in this moment. We don’t know what he would have wanted. He left no directives. Death is surely a testament to the uncertainty and unpredictability of our lives with others, and to how those qualities continue on with us afterward. My brother is literally still with us, out at my brother’s new house in East Texas. And in psyche, as love and conflict and memory inside those he left behind.

Maybe I’ll just start with a bunch of the tabs that are open in my browser:

Weird one to start with, but I will only because it’s the one furthest to the left of all the tabs, the documentary about Jeff Smith, also known as The Frugal Gourmet. If you remember watching The Frugal Gourmet on PBS in the late 80’s and early 90’s you’ll also recall the sad ending to his career. I haven’t watched this yet, but both want and need to. I was a regular watcher of his show and had a couple of his cookbooks. Truly sad.

Another Postcards to Voters initiative, this one in support of Shawn Harris, who is running to fill the seat left vacant by Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia.

Gil Hedley’s Integral Anatomy videos are excellent, fascinating and instructive. I’ve got this one, the Muscle Layer, cued up and ready to watch.

Leanne Whitney is a Depth Psychologist and Transformational Coach who wrote “Consciousness in Jung and Patanjali.” Her website offers these free short guided meditations I’m eager to try.

Lasater Yoga, whose Experiential Anatomy 2.0 training I completed last fall, is offering a free online course called “Menobelly,” an “intelligent, physiology-based approach to building core stability and pelvic floor support in perimenopause, menopause, and beyond.” Interesting!

Jenna Park writes a beautiful Substack about midlife. This post was especially inspiring.

I love, love Tom Eaton’s ambient music. These one hour environments are perfect for slow, restorative, iRest/Yoga Nidra classes.

I’ve been following this Instagram account for a little while now and just the other day tracked this teacher, Sarah Costanza, over to YouTube, where she has some amazing strength, breath, and mobility focused yoga tutorials. What a great name, too - Body Architectura.

Edith Pageaud is a very young French acoustic guitar artist who’ll be playing in Plano on May 12th. You will not believe the beauty. Listen to her playing Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# Minor here.

Finally, I’m barreling through the “Salome” podcast, co-hosted by Psychotherapist Satya Doyle Byock and Astrologer Carol Ferris, which they began as an online “salon” at the beginning of the COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocol. It’s a deep dive into Carl Jung’s “Red Book” integrated with an astrological purview. I can’t stop.

Have a great week/Spring/time!

Out the upstairs sunroom window I could see the utility crew back at work tearing up my street to replace the water mains. Five more months of back-up beeps and constant dust and dirt caking the front yard. And the weather doesn’t help. It’ll be 80 degrees today, but with the pale skies and barren trees of February. A bit apocalyptic. But in the end, there’ll be a newly paved street, for which I will be ever so grateful. It’s the potholes people!

Splashed water on my face and turned to the magnifying mirror to apply another new lash serum, trying not to notice so much the red, the scars, the blemishes - the menopausal acne. sigh. (But dermatologist appointment on Monday!) Plucked the two thin and tiny chin hairs and did the moisturizer and the sunscreen. Deodorant, dressed, hair pinned back so I can go to Y for a solid hour (not my usual 30-40 minutes) before my haircut. Excited! I’m going long pixie again, but this time with a bit of an 80’s extreme side part. Maybe. Shorter nonetheless. I’m going through the angst of trying to find the perfect style for my increasingly finer, thinner but still curly/sorta mouse brown and silver hair, without veering toward shapeless old lady helmet.

Downstairs for coffee refill and joint supplements, and biotin because who knows? Maybe I am one in 60,000 women whose hair loss is related to a loss of biotin. And it’s cheap.

(Pause while I answer some more birthday texts.)

I’ll work with one client later this afternoon, then have dinner at my Mom’s with Michael and Ivy. Couldn’t ask for a nicer Wednesday. Still can’t believe it’s 58. It was only just the 50th, with the darkest of dark chocolate cakes from the Cake Bar. A friend just wished me a good piece of cake. Where o where will it come from?!

We’ll see Aimee Mann Friday night at the Longhorn Ballroom. Music’s always a fine way to celebrate one’s birthday. Another Substack I subscribe to had a commenter post this Spotify list, put together by her 85 year old Dad, ever the musical magpie. It’s good! You can check it out here.

I hope you have a fantastic day, with something beautiful and fine to highlight it.

The rest of the page reads:

I SPECIALIZE IN THE THERAPEUTIC APPLICATION OF YOGA IN SUPPORTING:

Cancer/post-cancer treatment losses including bone and muscle strength

Injury recovery/PT companion

Healthy aging

Neurological health

Osteopenia/Osteoporosis

Scoliosis/Hyperlordosis/Hyperkyphosis

Spine, hip, shoulder and other joint issues

My one-on-one sessions have evolved over the last fews years toward a more - as noted above - therapeutic partnership with clients. There is no standard repertoire of postures. I start with the person in front of me, with what they want to get out of a yoga practice. We assess their functional mobility, range of motion, balance, and stability. In addition, we get a sense of their awareness of their own body - their capacity to literally sense - the soles of their feet, the weight of their limbs, the feeling of their breath moving, and their heart beating.

Props are ESSENTIAL. In addition to the regular array of mat, strap, blocks, blankets, bolster, chair, and sandbags (and the wall!), there are free weights, balance balls, aerobic steps and resistance bands. Bones need stress and to reach a point of fatigue (or failure) in order to make more bone tissue. Same with muscle (though the two are actually in relationship where building strength is concerned). The weight of the body can provide more or less resistance, but I’ve found it’s helpful to add load where we can.

I help my clients develop a practice that becomes one tool in their toolbox of health and wellness modalities. They might be using physical therapy after an injury or accident, and we often incorporate some of the things they’re picking up in that setting in our ongoing work. Or we work in “homework” they’ve been given by a massage therapist or chiropractor. Another client has a very physical martial arts routine, and for a while now has benefited from a quiet iRest Yoga Nidra Meditation.

If you think this way of working with a teacher might benefit you and your health, please reach out. You might like to try a group Zoom class that I offer on Monday evenings at 5:30 and Thursday evenings at 6:15 (CST) to get a feel for how I teach, or we can schedule a private Zoom or an in-person assessment here in Dallas.

My website has a contact form at the bottom of the home page. Fill that out and I’ll get back to you!

The weather began Friday, when during my 9am downtown yoga class the temp began to drop from the low 50s downward, together with a steady rain. After my class I hit the wholesale-open-to-the-public produce market south of downtown and stocked up on all kinds of citrus - pink grapefruit, navel oranges, blood oranges, lemons and limes (and a bag of salted, roasted in the shell peanuts! SNACKS.). Friday night was sleety, Saturday was in the 20s with more sleet and then snow, and Sunday we were just stuck in it all. In the teens.

I’ve managed to keep some kind of busy, indoors. The kitchen is a never-ending chore, what with the constant boil of the kettle for coffee and tea. I put the guest bed back together after a recent house guest departure. Did loads of laundry. Kept the bed made. Vacuumed the rugs after eating a bowl of those peanuts last night watching TV. I even Zoomed into a talk about a recently published yoga ethnography (which was interesting enough for me to buy the book afterwards). Zoomed a client Saturday morning, and my regular Monday evening class. (Remember the world before Zoom? Me neither.) Mostly I’ve been here on the couch, under the blankets, in socks and leg warmers and fleece. I’m scrolling this infernal app like my old Twitter dooming, and checking Instagram every now and again. And of course, endless rounds of the stupid phone game.

Michael planned for meals better than I would have, and crafted two excellent dinners that fed us for four nights: a roast chicken in Marsala gravy and a beef stew, made from our very own beef stock.

He’s now just returned from a quick trek to the Trader Joe’s, where he bought the very last bag of any kind of snack chip. They’re also out of pasta and sparkling water (sad face). People shop like we’ve been invaded by aliens.

I’ve been thinking about Dallas a lot lately. How in relation to the city I live in, I am a mere blip on its radar. The city was here long before me, and will long outlast me, like some vast, immortal being. It will continue its sprawl ever outward. The demographic changes, the real estate changes, the gentrification, the increasingly glaring economic and educational disparities - all are part of a never-ending oceanic wave of “progress” - and I, we average citizens of the behemoth, are but tiny plankton and barnacles.

Outside of college and graduate school relocations, I’ve lived here my whole life, and have witnessed this never ending growth, the unstoppable density. I’ve observed myself growing older here, and can recall with sometimes shining clarity the days of my youth - loving the novelty of parts of the city that were new to me then. Getting my driver’s license and leaving North Dallas with my friends (which felt like the suburbs back then; now it’s called “Preston Hollow”) to head for Greenville Avenue - the old Granada Theater showed indie films back then and we could eat raw oysters across the street at Aw Shucks (and still can because it’s still there). Or further to the very nascent Deep Ellum or Cafe 500 in what is now Exposition Park. How “small town” it all seems in retrospect, though it wasn’t, even then; not by any measure.

Now in my late 50’s, I see how we’ve intentionally circumscribed our orbit here to a roughly 10-mile radius for work, family and leisure. East Dallasites joke about never needing to cross Mockingbird Lane to get north or I75 to get West. Michael loves living here best because we can walk to places. But I’ve always been eager to drive outward, still with the novelty of the as-yet unexplored. I can see myself in the position of delivery driver of some flavor, if I ever have to stop teaching yoga. I worked as a substitute teacher for a couple of years, which turned out to be the perfect opportunity to get way out and about and still be within the bounds of Dallas County. It is undeniable how much Dallas continues to grow when seen from the perspective of how far flung the schools that compose the district actually are, and the bulk of the traffic that must be muscled through to get to many of them. What must it take, to run a school district? A city?

I read the local press, I keep up with the workings of city government to some degree, though my interaction with it is probably limited to reporting the odd Code Compliance violation. Current rumblings pit our quite unpopular Mayor and the local real estate development cohort against architects and historic preservationists about whether to repair and maintain our current City Hall, or bulldoze it to make way for yet another tax-payer funded sports complex, with all the attendant retail/commercial/ entertainment options it would undoubtedly spur. I am pro-architectural significance and preservation, and not unconditionally. And Dallas City Hall is a modern/Brutalist style building designed by world-renowned architect I. M. Pei; you might understandably love it or hate it.

But its design was intended to mark the beginning of a new era for Dallas following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was meant to help the city throw off its moniker as the “City of Hate.” It’s front plaza and (empty) pool is the sight where citizens come together both to celebrate and demonstrate. It is our physical and symbolic town square. Move city government operations to some anonymous empty high rise office tower more in the central core of downtown? We’ll celebrate or protest in the building’s lobby I guess.

Dallas could do a very Dallas thing and sell it off, or tear it down. Or it could surprise us all and make good on the building’s promise.

I’ve spent some time during our ice-in contacting our congressional representatives and governor about that other ICE and the brutal and unnecessary killings happening in Minneapolis. And this is super disturbing - a report out from December from ACLU Texas and Human Rights Watch about sexual abuse and torture at our very own Ft. Bliss detention center in El Paso:

https://www.aclutx.org/press-releases/aclu-texas-human-rights-groups-reveal-abusive-and-sexual-contact-other-inhumane/

Perhaps Governor Abbott would do well to clean up this mess before scolding Minneapolis about its handling of citizens who are well within their full rights to protest federal government overreach. #shoeonotherfoot

Being iced in makes you feel as if there’s still less you can do to help, but if you have the means to give, there are plenty of organizations and needs in Minnesota here. Bombard our elected ones with calls, emails, letters and protests.

I hope if it is freezing where you are that you are warm, fed and safe.

I’ve been doing a lot of “continuing education.” Let me give you the high points:

1. Could the way we breathe affect the health of our bones? Breath as Medicine: Yogic Breathing for Vital Aging (Doug Keller - Yoga U Online)

This 3-part webinar presented some of the science behind breathing and the breath’s relationship to bone health and bone disease, together with detailed, practical demonstration of traditional yogic breathing techniques and explanation of how they affect our physiology.

We looked at the current postural boogeyman resulting from digital culture, the “tech neck” or “forward head” and how it interferes with optimal breathing. Compromised breathing leads to a cascade of symptoms and syndromes including increased cortisol levels (stress hormone), calcium depletion/bone loss, and the host of symptoms associated with chronic inflammatory disease.

Optimal breathing also goes hand in hand with posture. Fun fact: We typically lose 40% of our breathing capacity by age 65. But we can work to fortify and strengthen the muscles that support optimal spinal alignment to bring the breathing apparatus into a more commodious and expansive capacity.

The importance of the body’s production of Nitric Oxide is also critical piece of the pie: it helps to regulate blood flow throughout the body, as a component of the lining the epithelial cells. However, its production also declines dramatically as we age. We can get Nitric Oxide from eating plenty of dark, leafy greens; and specific yogic breathing techniques actually help to boost Nitric Oxide production. Keller lists the many benefits of having an optimal level of NO in the body, from regulating and/or reducing high blood pressure, protecting bones from osteoporosis, improving sleep, protecting skin, and many others.

2. Tias Little/Prajna Yoga - Yoga, Brain & Dementia

In addition to “forward head” syndrome and menopause, I’ve probably seen no other issue covered as widely in the current health media as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Does yoga have a role to play in helping mitigate some of the factors that lead to neurological decline?

In the spirit of all of Tias Little’s teachings, he began by reminding us of one of the foundations of Buddhist thought - that suffering is part of the human condition:

“Bearing witness to the many losses of dementia inspires empathy and compassion. Dementia is a real teacher. In this light, do not look for reasons why dementia came about, nor look for ways to reconcile its effects, but to be heart-felt and tender toward a disease that is so crippling. In the practice of metta, loving kindness, we turn adversity into wisdom.”

Why the dramatic rise in cases of dementia and Alzheimer’s? Multiple factors: poor sleep, lack of access to healthy food, stress, dependency on screens, lack of exercise and sub-optimal breathing patterns, exposure to environmental toxins - any and all affect body, brain and nervous system.

This discussion reminded us that yoga practices not only move the body and the breath, they target the nervous system intentionally and directly by stimulating the flow of lymph and supporting vagal health.

Drawing on Ayurvedic thought (food as medicine), Tias highlighted aging and dementia as a condition of increased vata, which is governed by the element air:

“When vata is aggravated, it moves upward into the head and neck. It has the quality of spaciness, confusion, being ungrounded, feeling scattered, losing touch and forgetfulness. In Ayurveda, an aggravated vata dosha is a precursor for dementia coupled with bone loss, sleeplessness, lack of appetite, weight loss, loss of proprioceptive awareness and balance, cognitive disorientation and hearing loss.”

He went on the describe how a wide variety of yoga practices influence brain health, from breath work and postural practice, to meditation, mantra/chant, and mudra (hand postures that are said to “influence the synaptic function of the cerebral nerve centers”).

Of course we had the opportunity for hands-on practice as well. And part two of the course focused on the components and benefits of a yogic diet, emphasizing the interplay of healthy, organic (free of harmful chemicals) foods with optimal cellular function. He further recommended increasing our intake of omega 3 fatty acids, curcumin/turmeric (anti-inflammatory), vitamins C and B12, magnesium, coenzyme Q, a probiotic, and lion’s mane mushroom.

3. Lastly, I am in the midst of a 6-week online intensive with Judith Hanson Lasater, her daughter and yoga teacher Lizzie Lasater and Mary Richards (lots of letters behind her name) exploring Experiential Anatomy 2.0: Yoga Therapeutics.

The last few years have brought an increase in my private client work that calls on me to work in a more therapeutic vein. This course is a re-introduction to anatomical fundamentals presented in Experiential Anatomy 1.0, with an additional live Q&A component for yoga teachers. It’s a chance to work directly with the wealth of knowledge and experience these three teachers have gathered together over the last decade or more. Judith Lasater is known around the world for her teaching and writing and is probably best known for pioneering the practice of Restorative Yoga. She is nearing 80, so this opportunity to learn from her again comes at a fortuitous time for me as she nears the end of a long, fruitful career.

The course is divided into four over-arching segments addressing the anatomy and kinesiology of standing, sitting, walking and “integrating” (which I presume will tie a lot of threads together for overall healthy functional movement and living). Each two-and-a-half hour session allows for participants to ask questions and have the hosts work on specific postures with students, and on issues that arise in the classroom or in one-on-one private work.

Hyperkyphosis, osteoporosis, scoliosis - issues that evolve out of the overall health of our pelvis and spine are so far the main areas of “dysfunction” we’ve been looking at. In addition to familiar postures or asanas, we’re learning a variety of “therapeutics” to apply as these issues come up with our students. I’m not a Physical Therapist or a Personal Trainer, but I’m being called on to provide aspects of both modalities with clients, in addition to what I can teach within the scope of Yoga. This course is validating the way I’ve been working with clients and classes for the last several years - integrating strength building, mobility and stability that makes postural work more accessible and comfortable.

I love all of these cutting edge trainings that bring recent scientific inquiry to bear on what yoga has espoused for centuries. I’ll continue to add these arrows to my teaching quiver in the years to come.

In the meantime, come see me at any of the following or message me about one-on-one work:

MONDAY (Zoom) Warriors at Ease Chair Yoga - 12pm This is a 30 minute adapted class for military, veterans, first responders and their families. (no fee)

(Zoom) Stability, Strength, Ease - 5:30pm Slightly longer savasana and short seated meditation.

THURSDAY (Zoom) Somatics, Hatha & Deep Stretch - 6:15pm Somatic movement, classic yoga asana, & deep stretch.

FRIDAY (In person) Yoga LAB - 9am V12 Yoga - Very much like the Monday evening Zoom class in format and effort. Please join by registering in advance here: https://v12yoga.com/schedule/ and scroll down to my class, “Yoga Lab” and click on the class to register and pay in advance. $20 drop-in and other options available.

2nd & 4th SUNDAYS (In person) iRest Yoga Nidra Meditation 12:30pm V12 Yoga

Still. WTF Will? As my friend Brenda said yesterday, “LEAVE A NOTE!” We drive past the site where his body was found at least once a week. I joined the local YMCA which sits a scant quarter mile from it. Our granddaughter Ivy’s school takes us over the spillway and the White Rock Creek overpass. I can’t not think about him every single time. That he was right here the whole time he was “missing.”

*****

WE WENT OUT OF TOWN in early August. Our first getaway of the summer. I think? We started talking about this trip back in May, when we discovered my brother had died, and Camille and my cousin Troy came to Dallas so we could all be together. My cousins Donald and Troy are my Mom’s sister’s sons. Troy lives in Montpellier, in the south of France, and plans an annual trip to the States every August to visit family and friends in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, where he also researches family history. My cousins are distant kin (on their father Marion’s side) to the 16th century Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto1.

They grew up in north Louisiana and southern Arkansas, where my uncle worked in the paper mills. I remember road trips to visit them in the little town of Bastrop just north of Shreveport when we were all very little, the landscape shifting slowly from our North Texas blackland prairie to piney woods. After my Aunt Lynn died suddenly at 27 (I think I must have been 5 or 6 years old), Uncle Marion remarried and his new family resettled in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. We saw them, newly blended with stepsisters and Linda, their stepmother, once again, maybe twice. And then not again until we were all grown and into our adult lives.

Troy’s yearly visits usually get him to Dallas, too, to spend a few days with us here, but we thought it would be a nice change of habit this time for us all to join up somewhere that wasn’t Dallas. It’s August, it’s hot, we don’t do anything that involves being outdoors. Which is limiting. So we landed on Natchitoches (which would also be hot and humid in August, but it’s also very much not Dallas). We’ve all been through the little town on the way to and from New Orleans, where my Mom and Aunt Lynn grew up. But none of us aside from Troy had spent any considerable time there. (Actually, Mom recalled a college trip once with her roommate.) But aside from the fact that the movie “Steel Magnolias” was filmed there 1988, we didn’t know diddly about this charming town or its history.

Troy began sending AirBnB options in June, and we were set by early July. He and the rest of his party - his son David and daughter Sarah and daughter’s beau Engin would arrive a week or so earlier and bunk up in Fort Smith with their Uncle Don and Aunt Kelly for a few days, Troy would get down to Natchitoches for some research, and we’d gather on Friday for the weekend. The DeSotos would proceed onwards for more DeSoto family time in Pinewood down near Alexandria, and we’d return to Dallas.

Since we were potentially going to be 13 people, we reserved two AirBnBs. The Perrault House (ca. 1911) was formerly part of a pecan plantation. It’s a true anachronism, situated in an east side neighborhood of low-slung, single-story Louisiana ranch homes from the 1960’s and 70’s. An old historic farmhouse in the middle of some very neo-colonial suburban vibes. Don and Kelly, Sarah, Engin, David, Michael and I stayed here.

Holy moly.

If you’re ever planning a trip to sweet little Natchitoches, know that this house sleeps ten, divided amongst 3 ground floor king sized bedrooms and a renovated attic suite. The kitchen and all 4(!) en suite baths are beautifully up to date. Bed linens totally 5-star hotel. The whole place was more “Fine Boutique Hotels of the World” than “AirBnB” (or at least more so than a few of those we’ve stayed in). Some “comes with” highlights: history books, cookbooks, photography books, stacks of magazines, an upright piano with music books to choose from, wraparound screened porch with a massive daybed-cum porch swing, full coffee/tea service (drip, Keurig, French Press or Chemex?), and a chef’s kitchen stocked to the nines. There was an old pie safe stocked with all the mini flatware and tiny plates one would need for serving hors d'oeuvres to a wedding party. Indeed, I’m sure the house can host any manner of special event.

Am I a walking PR professional for this place or what? Troy, Mom, and my brother Sean and his wife Casey stayed in a little updated Tudor on Washington St., right in the middle of the old town and right on the water. Also? Super charming. Who are these owners?! My Mom rode down with Michael and I, so we stopped at her digs first and met up with Troy, who’d just arrived. We found some glasses and shared some warm Chardonnay (after finding and filling the empty ice trays) and planned out the rest of the evening. We found a Super 1 Foods out on the east side and filled a grocery cart with everything we thought we’d need for hamburgers, along with a few breakfast staples, odds and ends of fruit, snacks and beverages.

When was the last time this many of our tiny, tiny family were all together? Without even my sister able to be there, not to mention our recently deceased brother. It still feels weird to say that, “deceased brother.” If Don was in town, it was with Kelly but not Troy, or Troy but not Kelly. Or if Troy was in town, it might only be with David, but not Sarah. Michael had never met Kelly. That speaks to how infrequently we had been in each other’s lives until now. This trip was planned as hopefully, the first of many more gatherings of our small southern-ish clan.

We unloaded provisions, Don and Kelly arrived with Sarah, Engin and David, and then Troy went back to the Tudor with Mom to meet Sean and Casey. Then everyone returned for dinner. Hamburgers (and a really good hickory smoked sausage from Alabama called Conecuh that we brought from Dallas - go figure), and drinks, followed by all of us chatting comfortably about plans for the next day. David in the background on the piano, playing Chopin fantasies by heart.

I was first to rise Saturday morning. Made the coffee (drip, French Market - sans chicory), and wandered around taking phone videos of the house for my ladies back home, trying to avoid the creaks in the floors. Parked myself on the screen porch in a big rocker and then Engin joined me for a bit. Rain was in the forecast, so the overcast morning meant we were not yet consumed by the heat and humidity.

This was true leisure time. Aren’t we so lucky to have it?

There was a 10am walking tour of the historic core of the old town. Troy and my Mom arrived early, since all the breakfast food ended up staying with us. More coffee, Sean and Casey arrived, and six of us go over the river for the tour. Natchitoches is a National Landmark Historic District and its Development Commission collaborates with the Cane River National Heritage Area to provide free walking tours. It covers, as per its website, “the Cane River region prior to European contact; the French & Spanish colonial period; antebellum plantation culture and period; Reconstruction and tenant farming; architectural history; and Creole and Catholic culture, history, and customs.”2

Here is something about its geography I didn’t know: The Red River, which to me has always simply been where Texas borders Oklahoma in the northeast of our state (the annual “Red River Shootout” is what we call the entire weekend of the UT Austin/OU football game), also flows through Louisiana where it joins the Mississippi River to empty into the Gulf of Mexico. In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, a 160-mile long log jam, also known as the “Great Raft” on this upper portion of the Red River made it practically unnavigable3. Multiple efforts to clear the log jam, or “rafts” resulted in a shift in the river’s course that led it away from Natchitoches. What remained is an “oxbow” lake, called Cane River Lake (that still looks like a river).

We soldiered on through the swampy heat of the morning, and returned home for eggs, bacon and biscuits, courtesy of Michael and Kelly, and had a little lying around time until our short drive out for our “plantation tour.” I was not particularly keen on the this excursion, though I think on the whole these tours have become more attuned to talking about the experiences of enslaved people. Used to be they were simply woven into the fabric of the romanticized plantation narrative, as part of the furniture as it were, voiceless, nameless. Some began including enslaved peoples’ quarters in the tours of the grounds. The Whitney Plantation tour in Louisiana describes plantation life solely from the perspective of slaves, not plantation owners.

The Melrose Plantation (which FYI, wasn’t named “Melrose” until its final period of ownership; what was it called before then?) was built by Henry Metoyer, one of the ten sons of the French colonist Claude Metoyer and Marie Thérèse Coincoin, an enslaved woman who Claude “leased” from Louis de St. Denis, the founder of Nachitoches. Metoyer purchased her freedom and gave her a parcel of land, to which she added through land grants and purchases. Her son Henry built the original, still-standing but modest two-room cottage. The Metoyers grew the plantation into a thriving business and the family ran the plantation true to its Creole heritage and environs, as free people of color, owning slaves themselves.

The subsequent owners, the wealthy Hertzog family from the neighboring Magnolia plantation, and their sister Fanny expanded the original building to its eight room footprint, and during Reconstruction established the Freedmen school at the Melrose, providing education to former enslaved people.

The Joseph Henry family were the last owners, from 1884-1970. Joseph’s son Henry and his wife “Cammie” oversaw more extensive additions to the big house, restoration of existing buildings, and brought log cabins and other historic structures from around the region to the plantation grounds. Cammie was a preservationist and arts and literature enthusiast, hosting writers and artists retreats at the Melrose during the Southern Renaissance of the early 20th century.

The Melrose is perhaps best known for the work of the folk artist Clementine Hunter, daughter of a sharecropper and later cook in the Henry house’s kitchen. With materials left behind by workers, she taught herself to paint, documenting life on the plantation from her point of view and that of the community of workers surrounding it. When she died at 101 years of age, she left behind thousands of works of art. Northwestern University in Natchitoches awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Fine Art in 1986 and her work can be viewed at the Plantation, and in galleries and museums all over the United States4.

A rare August downpour fell throughout the afternoon. There would be no wandering the grounds, or exploring any of the other outbuildings. We caravanned home to get ready for river touring and dinner. We teased Troy about his “Julie Your Cruise Director” talents, but he really did plan this immersion well, without any pressure to do any of it. We simply had options. Our boat captain led us up and down a portion of Cane Lake, occasionally pointing out a landmark of interest, including the enormous rusty cotton mill buildings we could see from our AirBnB.

Dinner in town was quickly out of the question - a brief power outage led many restaurants to close early, and the only open option couldn’t accommodate our party of 11. So we drove back out toward the Melrose Plantation and had dinner on the patio at Cane River Commissary. Tiny old tin farm building turned bar and restaurant. Standard Louisiana fare of fried shrimp and crawfish, jambalaya and etouffee, gumbo, and meat pies. The ambience after sundown: very “Trueblood”:

When my cousin Don was stationed for a time at Fort Hood/Fort Cavazos in Texas back in the late 1980s, he drove down to visit me and my roommate Arielle in Austin a couple of times. I didn’t (still don’t) consider myself all that musically literate about most commercial rock and pop music, despite having been a musician. There’s just too much. So back then, I remember being a little bit in awe of Don’s love of R.E.M. and The Alarm, bands I’d heard of, but whose music I wasn’t familiar with at all. I guess I’ve always relied on friends and their interests in the old and the new musics to discover stuff new to me. That’s how it usually works, right? That and old-school radio? After dinner back on the screen porch, we got to catch up and remembered those visits.

Our Sunday morning was coffee, pack up and clean up before 11am check-out. Troy had reserved a jazz brunch for us on Front St. in the historic district. But so odd: we were the only customers. The space is a special events venue that had hosted a big party the night before, but does this brunch service every Sunday. Maybe we were the pre-church crowd. Hands down the best shrimp and grits I’ve ever had, apologies to Susan Spicer’s recipe.5

Our short drive back to the Interstate meant stopping for gas at the French Market Express, a Cajun grocery, bakery, wine and souvenir shop inside your normal gas station convenience store. We bought frozen crawfish meat pies, pork and crawfish boudin and some andouille sausage. Troy pointed out what is apparently a local sweet specialty, yam cake. Fortified once more, we said our goodbyes a second time and hit the road.

Over the weekend, I’d thought about, and then mentioned on the drive home how out of place my brother would have felt on this trip. How far removed he was from enjoying the pleasure of his own family’s company. How isolated he’d become, not just in his own world of work and that routine, but in himself. How awkward he may felt. When we were all together for family dinners, he would mostly just sit quietly, and listen to whoever was talking and whatever any of us were talking about. In the last few years, he often had something to contribute. He seemed much more present and clear. Able to articulate his thoughts well and participate with some ease.

And then he just went dark. Removed himself from social media, and stopped replying to calls and texts. He stopped participating. I don’t know why.

I will never be able to grasp how he must have felt - walking away from his life. Or what his isolation must have felt like to him: I imagine it was profoundly sad. Unconnected. Unseen. Unloved. Even though those who worked around him and knew him didn’t see him this way at all. How could he have been both seen, appreciated, and valued and yet unable to express to those around him this deep wound? I’m so sorry for that. How could I have seen it when he removed himself from view? I’ll never not think that I should have probed, insinuated myself in his life somehow.

Wish you were here William Paul.

And after the coursework and the fieldwork and the dissertation, the opportunity to forge a career in my chosen field also was not going to be in those cards. Not in academia, not in the public sector. And not for lack of trying, that’s for sure. Their loss. Looking at the state of contemporary academia, I don’t think you could pay me a high enough salary to work in it today.

So I did other things and ended up teaching yoga, mostly privately, plus a few classes. In 2023, two former UCLA colleagues announced they were co-editing an issue of Western Folklore, the journal of the Western Folklore Society. Its format would broaden to accept contributions other than the standard academic journal article, AND its theme would be two fold: encompassing reflections on the UCLA Folklore and Mythology Program itself, and honoring one of its last students to graduate from the program before it was dis-established, Denise Kozikowski, who’d recently passed away from cancer. I thought I’d have a fitting contribution to make. This is what I wrote:

Wise Old Man, Wounded Healer, and a Dream of Wayland Hand

Shannon L Thornton, PhD

Yoga Teacher and Independent Scholar, Dallas, TX

ABSTRACT

A graduate’s dream of Wayland Hand inspires both personal reflection and the hypothesis that Hand, the UCLA Folklore & Mythology Program, and this issue’s festschrift honoree, Denise Kosikowski constitute an archetypal triptych that symbolizes the life of the Program itself. KEYWORDS: Psychology, Archetype, C. G. Jung, Wayland Hand, Denise Kozikowski.

About eight years ago, I had a dream about Wayland Hand. I’m at a party that is also a book signing for another folklorist. I think it might be Burt Feintuch. The setting seems to be the time just before Wayland Hand died. The people at this party are not my contemporaries. Maybe they’re in their forties and fifties, but 50 or 60 years ago. And unlike the many dreams I’ve had where I'm trying to teach a yoga class and can't get anyone focused or interested, where my authority and self-confidence are tested, in this dream I am actively listened to, my expertise appreciated. In the dream, I’ve just taught a yoga class to this group.

At this dream party, Wayland Hand and I are in an intense discussion; he’s interested in my work as a yoga teacher. In the dream he also has some business with the body; in fact, he’s a spine specialist. But we talk about the importance of our academic perspective - from the social sciences, from anthropology — on our work in teaching about the spine. He is also carrying a book on Irish or Celtic cookery and folklore. It is his wife’s, or a gift from her.

Of course I wondered, “Why Wayland Hand? A man I never met? A scholar whose influence in my life even at the time I was a graduate student was at best peripheral, at worst, irrelevant?” But dreams are the perfect repository for the unexpected and quixotic; for a population of figures and events that seize the attention of the dreamer precisely because they are novel and unusual. I think the dream was both a personal reconciliation, and a commentary on the life of the Folklore and Mythology program itself.

Wayland D. Hand came to UCLA in 1940, and taught Folklore for twenty years before he instituted the Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore and Mythology in 1961. He was on his way to the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society when he died in 1986. I was a senior in high school that year. My closest reference to Folklore was probably the badge for it I never earned as a Girl Scout. And although I went on to major in Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, where I took a course in British Folklore with Roger Renwick, I applied to the UCLA Folklore & Mythology program and others more because of my interest in Irish music and culture, and less for any specific interest in Folklore. At Professor Renwick’s suggestion I began reading Henry Glassie’s Passing the Time in Ballymenone, borrowed from the Dallas Public Library, as preparation for my impending studies, never sure I would fit the mold of “Folklorist.”

I would finish the program with a doctoral degree, return to Dallas, and begin applying for the few scant jobs open to us newly minted Doctors of Folklore. I did eventually earn some teaching credentials, as an adjunct instructor in both Communications and Social Sciences at a local community college. Following a decade or so of that, which offered very little in the way of compensation or career mobility, and without the personal or financial means or opportunity to continue research, I set aside academic aspirations.

I had in the intervening years become a student of yoga, and my inner academic was drawn to both the historical and philosophical foundations of the practice, as well as the burgeoning critical analysis of its history and the often dangerous and misplaced pedestaling of gurus in more recent times. I started writing, carving out publishing space on my website to write about topics that interested me. My yoga practice helped revive my interest in Jungian psychology and pointed me toward his analysis of the esoteric practice of Kundalini, as well as other scholars’ criticism of his entire approach to the Eastern contemplative traditions.

Of course Jung was also a student and teacher of the dream. Jungian analysis is defined by the relationship between analyst and analysand, and their work together in deciphering dream contents for clues to the individuation process. Dream analysis, like any textual analysis, is a process of meaning-making. Images, events, places and people are read as symbols and interpreted as relative to the dreamer’s present circumstances.

A personal read on my dream would see it as compensatory; in folklore parlance, “lack fulfilled.” As I often don’t have much in the way of a mentor in my work as a yoga teacher - to this day I work largely on my own with private clients and a few classes - what I’m perhaps lacking in waking life in terms of professional feedback and support was then fulfilled by the dream, where I was praised and encouraged to apply more of my academic skills and knowledge to my work. I'm trying to bring references from psychology, depth psychology and the humanities to my work as a yoga teacher and writer, and the dream suggests there’s something too from the social sciences; and not just in the anatomical studies from physical anthropology, but in say, beliefs about the spine. Indeed, British yoga and functional movement teacher Peter Blackaby has argued for more anthropological studies of movement.

But the dream might also offer a commentary on the Folklore & Mythology Program itself. During my time in the Program, one thing that seemed to unite hearts and minds was the esteem with which we held the memory of Wayland Hand. It seemed a bit peculiar or quaint to me at first, but the sentiment was both sincere and reverential. And as the force behind what we were privileged to be doing, his legacy was a felt thing, his name on the Folklore Library, his framed photo on the wall. His early background as a German language scholar was part of the reason why all degree candidates had to have German as one of two foreign language requirements.

There is also the aspect of the dream’s setting in time. I, the dreamer, was dreaming in Wayland Hand’s time. It seemed like what might have been the nadir of his career as a folklorist. His appearance was that of the same photograph that graced the walls of the program offices and his published works. The others at this dream party also seemed to mark this time as before my own, appearing in distinctively late 1960’s-early 1970’s American fashions. The period of the dream might have marked the time of the Center’s flowering; ten years or so into its forty-year life span. My own years, from 1992-1999 through to Denise Kozikowski’s completion of her work in 2001 would mark the program’s end, as it was absorbed into UCLA’s World Arts and Cultures program.

And then, too there is the aspect of the dream’s merging of generations, mine and that of earlier Folklore pioneers, as well as of disciplines: Folklore, social sciences, biology and yoga. Wayland Hand is carrying a book on Irish cookery, two of my own interests merged into one. In a way, the dream presents the Folklore & Mythology Program as whole or unified in a way it could not have been under the pressure of administration demands as well as the culture at large outside the university. The dream presents perhaps a greater potential for the program than it was able to reach in real life.

In the early 1990s for example, the program voiced an at times explicit directive to maintain a bulwark between it, as defined by its rigorous academic scholarship, and what was happening in the cultural mainstream. Inside the bulwark were the canonical categories of Folklore: Myth, Legend, Folktale, and the performative and material categories of Folksong and music, Folk Art and dress, and Foodways. But of course there were leaks and influences, and novel uses of folklore that demanded examination, and either a healthy embrace or critique. The intersections of folklore with popular culture, urban culture, technology and globalism were all areas of research where I felt most at home.

One of the unique features of Folklore studies is its spectrum of diverse cultures, forms, and overlap with other disciplines (historically Folklore was the foundational field of those that would evolve out of it, Cultural Anthropology being one example). Indeed, while researching my dissertation, I worried about my “disciplinary schizophrenia” in the text of my dissertation itself. What was I doing? Folklore? Ethnomusicology? Anthropology? Sociology of Music? All of them? Or none of them in any serious way? I was always riding that tension between what the Folklore scholarship modeled and what was happening across the disciplines with which it shared research interests.

Readers might also recall the PBS juggernaut that was the “Power of Myth,” the television series hosted by Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell. When I arrived at UCLA, I saw that the series had created an avalanche of interest in the Folklore & Mythology Program and a perhaps unprecedented number of graduate applications. But if you’d made the mistake of thinking there was any sympathetic interest in a PBS program as the foundation of your aspirations toward a Folklore degree, you were quietly rejected. I happen to have brought with me to Los Angeles a personal interest in analytical psychology and dream analysis, that pioneered by the psychologist Carl Jung and expanded upon by James Hillman and Marion Woodman (and to some degree that self-same Joseph Campbell). Our first semester in Mythology seminar put the lid back on that Pandora’s box after I watched the class debunk Jung’s contribution to Alan Dundes’ Sacred Narrative, arguing against its usefulness because, well, “cultural universals” and “archetypes.”

But Jung’s notion of archetype was grounded in established cross-cultural research, that compared the languages, mythologies and religious observances of cultures through time and across space, much like Stith Thompson’s “motifs” in folklore. As Ruth Bottigheimer puts it in her review of Garry’s Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature: A Handbook,

“The term, Archetypes from the title of the book, is borrowed from C. G. Jung, who noted similarities among different cultures' written narrative traditions. … In response to the evident existence of parallel and sometimes identical narrative episodes and images that he had encountered in his reading, Jung came to believe that human psyches—even in vastly different cultures—responded to archetypal situations by developing indwelling cultural images that he called "archetypes." Jung applied the term archetype to his analyses of modern narrative as well as to ancient mythologies. … Nineteenth- and twentieth-century folklorists confirmed Jung's ideas when they encountered analogies to European narrative episodes and imagery in non-European cultures. This, in turn, supported the idea of cross-cultural universals. … the Thompson Motif Index imagines that individual motifs could have arisen independently (xx) (i.e., polygenesis in those same cultures)” (Bottigheimer 2006: 265).

Let’s look at the Folklore & Mythology program in terms of its own life arc, Wayland Hand being one bookend to the program, and Denise Kozikowski the other. In a Jungian or Depth Psychology worldview, Hand embodies the archetype of the “Wise Old Man.” He is the sage, the teacher of teachers, or philosopher. And of course the Program was born of this spirit, and was known in its early years by the work of its other “wise old men”: D. K. Wilgus and Jaan Puhvel, Robert Georges, James Porter and Nazir Jairazbhoy.

Denise Kozikowski embodies the archetype of the “Wounded Healer,” which describes a therapist who must address her own psychological wounds as she simultaneously works with others to heal theirs. As a graduate student, Denise studied folk healing, specifically, according to her husband Jakob, “superstition among physicians and alternative health care utilization among women with breast cancer in the Czech Republic.” She went on to become a student advisor and later a mindfulness coach, coupling her folkloristic skills in deep listening with her desire to guide people toward their own healing through contemplative practice.

In this light, the formation of the program is constellated around an archetypal idea that indicates hard-earned wisdom or knowledge. In an individual psyche, the idea is associated with mid-life or old age, or symbolizes an aspect of the individual’s psyche coming into prominence or in need of development. The Wise Old Man is also a man, and as such, symbolic of patriarchal institutions, established canons and methods by which we come to know and practice the dominant paths that expand the knowledge base. The Wise Old Man was charged with establishing boundaries around this particular store of knowledge called Folklore, and through his work, helped to shore up that firmament for those who would follow.

If we see the end of the program embodied in the Wounded Healer idea, we also see its literal dissolution, as the program’s resources and faculty were absorbed into other departments. Its graduates would embark on careers not only in folklore and its related core academic disciplines such as anthropology, ethnomusicology, various language and literature programs, religious studies and the arts, but also in applied work in many types of organizations dedicated to preserving and celebrating folk traditions and communities. As importantly, many of us chose lateral paths out of academia altogether into seemingly unrelated professions. From folklore to psychology, as in yoga, we’ve taken the spirit of humanistic inquiry with a reverence for the interpersonal journey toward psychological wholeness.

Again in this sense, perhaps the dream is more than a commentary on what the program could have been. The program’s full flourishing was constrained by the time and space in which it existed. On the other hand, the lived experiences of its alumni, and the impact their work has had on far reaching communities of people across countless disciplines, is the promise of the dream fulfilled. Similarly, if this volume of Western Folklore pays tribute to both Denise Kozikowski and the Folklore Program - it is itself a kind of “meta-commentary” on the Program that allows for a variety of non-traditional formats; it is a celebration of what Folklore studies and folklorists have become in our era.

Works Cited

Bottigheimer, Ruth B. 2006. Review of Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature: A Handbook. The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 30 no. 2: 265-267. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/uni.2006.0015.

Dundes, Alan. 1984. Sacred Narrative, Readings in the Theory of Myth. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Glassie, Henry. 1982. Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community. United States: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Konner, Joan, et al. 2010[1988]. Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. Silver Spring, MD, Athena. DVD.

Thursday, April 24th 2025

We each got a call yesterday afternoon from the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s office. I read the transcript of the voice mail on my phone when I got home and returned the call immediately, knowing what I was about to hear. That my brother is dead.

Natalie explained that he’d been found near or on White Rock Creek near Garland Road. I’d just driven past it on my way to sub this morning. How many times have I been through that intersection in the last six weeks? She also said there were no marks on his body that would indicate foul play, but she did not give a cause of death. She asked about drug abuse, which I explained, and she told me toxicology results could be several weeks out. In the meantime, his body was ready to be released to a funeral home.

I went upstairs to tell Michael, and I texted my Mom, who replied that Sean was on his way to her house, and could I come? Michael and I went up to be with her - she was okay, she looked a little small, but she was not overcome, and had just gotten off the phone with Camille. We talked about Paul: the likelihood or not of his relapsing. His distance from us over the last year. The effects on his mind from his long years of abuse. His stability over the last several years and the strength of work ethic and relationships with those around him in his small recovery community.

How could this have happened? And what do we do with his body?

Sean left a message for the detective who was on the scene and who may have more details on Paul’s case. We haven’t heard back as of this morning.

Camille will come in this weekend, and possibly my cousins, too, as Troy was already in the country from France with his son David, visiting his brother Donald and and his wife Kelly up in Arkansas.

*****

Late Thursday Afternoon. No call back yet from the Detective. We’ve all left messages.

I took a late morning nap, after telling Joan, one of my clients, and cancelling her yoga session. I could have done it, maybe. I was just so tired all of the sudden. Went to the ortho doctor about my hips, came home and taught another client. Responded to texts, listened to voice mails. Don’t want to call anyone back yet really. But I will text. And I will call people tomorrow at some point.

I remembered again about Paul’s bible. It has an embossed leather cover with a zipper, and I kept meaning to look inside it again for any note or clue. Nothing there. There was also a small spiral notebook with a pen, where he’d kept his Facebook and email passwords, numbers for temp agencies, his family’s phone numbers, and a few receipts from having paid off some court costs. Nothing else. Paul was not a writer. And there was the photo of him with the men’s group from Reconciliation Outreach. Standing in the back of the group with his arms up - victory.

Why is he dead?

*****

Mom spoke again with the Medical Examiner’s office, who told her they’d found creek water in his stomach, but not his lungs. A kayaker had discovered the body and called 9-1-1. He was found Friday, 4/18. We got the calls five days later, after they were able to identify him through fingerprints. He has a police record.

Camille arrived Friday afternoon and she and Sean visited Dallas police headquarters to see if they could find out anything more. The DPD hasn’t received the medical examiner’s report yet. Toxicology could take up to 9 weeks, backlogged and understaffed. So, nothing gained. We’d like to be able to access his phone and bank records soon - some clue as to his whereabouts over the last 8 weeks. Troy arrived late Friday night after seeing David off from Atlanta. We all met for breakfast Saturday - I’d cancelled all my work for the day - and we spent the rest of the day together with friends and family.

*****

So we have only a piece of this puzzle in, an important piece, but not solved. We don’t know why he disappeared. We don’t know where he was between the time he left and the day he was found dead in the water. We don’t know whether he took his own life, or whether his death was an accident. We don’t know if he’d relapsed. The picture is still fragmented and incomplete.

*****

I got out all of my photo albums Saturday. Lots of old, faded snapshots of the four of us together as littles. A smiling and laughing Paul - a rarity - from fifty years ago. Hair as blond as blond hair can be. At some point, Mom stopped taking them and my albums are of photos of my life that I’ve taken over the years. I have very few photos of Paul - one or two from random Thanksgivings or Christmases in our twenties and later. One shot of the four of us with Mom. He was working nights for years, and living alone in the apartment on Harvest Hill. Trying to piece together his chronology after that is a confusing exercise. A step forward, a step back. Over and over and over again.

It’s hard to remember Paul as an adult and not have the feeling of wanting desperately for him to be safe, present, and secure. It was a little over twenty years ago when I wrote to him in jail and the letter I got back was not what I’d hoped, as I recall. I’ll have to see if I still have it. He reiterated his distance. I guess I was hoping for contrition, a new clarity after forced sobriety of several months. But he seemed embittered.

Reflecting over the weekend with my siblings, my Mom and my friends helped me to recall some of what I’ve conveniently forgotten about him. He was “cool” in late elementary and middle school - girls liked him. He was cute, for a “druggie.” As the oldest male sibling, he could also be the bully. He once yanked Camille’s hair so hard he pulled a big wad of it out of her scalp. Middle school into high school, he did what he wanted, took what he wanted without consideration. Stole Mom’s sterling silver flatware and pawned it, money from her wallet, cigarettes and cabinet liquor. Cranked his music from the far back bedroom loud enough to turn my Mom into a force of raging, fuming anger.

As I started trying to follow in his footsteps, the hoped-for relationship with him as my “big brother” - that Paul would feel the need to make sure I was safe, that he might assume the role of protector in the absence of my father, never happened. I never understood why. There was a kind of selfishness in Paul during that time. I thought as I tried to do what he was doing that he would see me as comrade, confidante. I think I was either a convenience, or an inconvenience. He was not interested in being a role model. He was interested in his own experiences.

And this was before his multiple and heavily dosed LSD and Ecstasy trips. I believe those experiences took him someplace from which part of his psyche never returned. And those trips left us the Paul of our more recent memory. A little hobbled socially, emotionally. He kept to himself, no friends or significant other. He could work a job, keep an apartment, and then simply stop showing up. Eventually forced to move out. He became the person in the dynamic of the family who was either a burden and responsibility, or an obligation - as in, “would you go pick up Paul for Thanksgiving if I give him a ride home?”

That he kept this last job and his stable, safe place in life for so long was a miracle. He’d changed his life to the point where he wanted to be called a different name. Will. Perhaps we’d begun to take that change in him for granted.

But surely he did not?

The experience of radically altered consciousness - 10 hits of Ecstasy or LSD in one go was not uncommon for him in his twenties - stays with you. Not only in the physical effects of an altered brain chemistry and brain function (some scientific studies indicate definite neurotoxicity with that kind of MDMA abuse), but as a kind of transcendent existence that normal waking life can’t possibly compete with. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since his death. In my mind, it’s one of the only things that makes sense about having to guess what happened to him. Maybe he wanted that back, to get back to that. To rejoin the friend he lost to those experiences.

My brother’s life had meaningful work, and purpose, but no real meaningful relationships, or close, emotional relatability. Despite how he must have appeared to the outside world, he may likely have been depressed and lonely, with no way or means to express how he felt. About a year and a half ago, he deactivated his social media accounts, and stopped answering our phone calls and texts.

But he kept going to work, kept showing up to help out wherever he was needed at the 24. His co-workers and neighbors described him as sweet, caring and helpful. He was seen, respected, and appreciated. He was loved. Was this not enough? Or was it too much? We might never know.

We love our brother - William Paul - so much, and we miss him.

Yesterday I helped Mom box and and bag up the rest of my brother’s belongings. His landlord needs to get the apartment rented and we made quick work of it. Mom had been there the day before and had made three trips up and down to her car with bags. What was left we boxed up as a random assortment of office supplies, tools, dishes, plastic storage, books and clothes.

For someone who was fairly meticulous about his person and what went into his body, apparently he had no eye for dust. Everything we touched was covered in a thick layer of almost puffy, white dust. As though he’d abandoned his apartment a year ago, rather than a month. We filled trash and recycling bins, left his headboard and bed frame next to them and carted the rest to the Goodwill drop off just down the street.

Sean and Casey showed up a little later and took what they could - a barstool, an office chair. I decided to hold onto a bit of his artwork, a couple of certificates he’d been awarded from the ministry, a library shelf, an old walking stick, a raspberry colored rolling suitcase in decent shape, and a wall mirror (of which he oddly had 3). I wanted a few things to remember him by, and was also thinking of things he might appreciate having or seeing again if ever appears. Oh, and his like-new and well-protected queen size mattress and box springs will replace my 25+ year old set.

Surely he anticipated that we would be doing what we had to do yesterday. Or did he think we’d leave it to the landlord to toss his belongings into a pile on the street? We don’t know. Why does somebody disappear and leave everything behind?

It breaks our hearts that he’s gone. We’re all likely dealing with conflicting thoughts and feelings around grief, but the specific, suspended form of grief that also has to allow for the fact that he is just as likely alive somewhere as dead. He’s just not alive to us in the way we took for granted. Angry that he left us to take care of getting rid of his things. Bereft at wondering whether we simply didn’t care enough to know what he was planning to do. Anxious about having to contact the morgue every week for the foreseeable future. He’s forgotten, or doesn’t understand that we love him.

As unlikely as Will’s having relapsed seems, there is always - has always been - the possibility. Addicts live with that knowledge every waking moment (though “Paul” would have been the last person to describe himself as an addict).

Did he join a commune or a cult? Did he fall prey to some scheme to extort him? He could be gullible like that - once withdrawing a substantial sum from the bank to help “a woman in Africa in need of financial assistance.” He left with very little in his possession. Wallet and cell phone, and perhaps the clothes on his back and the shoes on his feet. Was he going to meet his maker? Walking off into oblivion? Living on the streets? Begging for alms like a holy man? His daily life was bound entirely to his work, and his work was with a Christian ministry. Was he not comforted there? Did he not have the spiritual and psychic support he needed?

He was missing something, evidently. And the answer is in this new void, this empty, silent place with his face on it. I just hope he’s safe. I hope he’s healthy. I hope he’s not suffering.

Paul also advised me on my first album purchase - Rush’s A Farewell to Kings, and a few to follow (I usually had money when he didn’t). We attended rock concerts together as kids, and made each other walk to the nearby shopping center gas station to buy cartons of Marlboro reds, which we’d split. Our adolescence was a bit of a reckless ride. For as long as I needed my older brother as a rebel role model, he served. When I switched trains in high school, our seemingly close paths split. He would end up with a GED, while I went on to earn a PhD.

The intervening years for Paul were, to put it mildly, fraught. Long runs of stability (stability as a grocery store night shift worker with days devoted to drinking and smoking in order to sleep), followed by injury, relapse, eviction, incarceration. Release, relapse, rehab, release, relapse, rehab. Always there to provide some kind of landing, both my parents (who divorced when I was 3 or 4), tried. In later years I tried. We all tried again and again, knowing there was only so much we could do with an addict.

But after another decade or so, of cycling through a few different rehab programs, something started working. I don’t know what it was. It might have been God, seeing that “godly” shine in people’s eyes who wanted him to get better and succeed. It may have been the chance to tag along on neighborhood outreach visits with the ministry folks who were trying to help him get better. The same ones who ultimately hired him to work for them. It may have been his weekly walk to the Catholic cathedral downtown for Sunday mass. It may have been his body healing, his understanding of his own capacity to help his body heal. Whatever it was, maybe it made him want to change his name. To leave behind his own internal associations with “Paul” and have the world know him from whatever day that was onward as “Will.” God’s Will. Thy Will be done.

Sober for over 15 years. Dependable. Reliable. A knowing, experienced voice when my younger brother fell victim to addiction. My older brother, present in a way I’d never known him as an adult. Still a little odd - the quantities of drugs and alcohol he’d consumed had certainly affected his relational skills. Oblique, sometimes esoteric or occult references sprinkled in casual conversation. But he was mercifully, finally stable in a way that felt like a massive relief to all of us.

I saw my Mom’s call come through Tuesday morning while I was in the middle of a hand of mobile mahjong. I didn’t answer immediately, wanting to wait the one minute it would take me to finish, recalling her recent illness and need for prescription pick ups. I hoped she wasn’t sick again. Of course I’d get up and go, but I wasn’t ready to jump just yet. Feeling a little guilty, I read the transcription of her voice mail about Will and the 241. She picked me up and we went over to his apartment together.

Our first dreadful thoughts were that he was either 1. incapacitated and unable to get help, or 2. dead. Stroke, heart attack, or as unlikely as it was, relapsed and overdosed.

We pulled up, got out of the car and introduced ourselves to a man who turned out to be Will’s neighbor, Lafayette, who kindly let us in the front door of their small apartment building. We went up to #4 where Mom rang the bell and banged on the door and called out for him. Silence.

We went back to the car and called Sean. Close to tears, Sean made a plan to come down, while my Mom and I left to start the process of opening a missing persons file. Sean arrived a little later and kicked the door in to find the apartment empty.

We called all the hospitals, the morgue and the jail.

All we knew after 24 hours was that he’d left his work keys and name tag on the pastor’s desk the previous Monday morning. This presumably after he didn’t show up for his regular Monday volunteer duties with the 24 to make the Sam’s and Costco runs, to take in the Trader Joe’s donation and open the meeting room. That’s when my younger brother, Sean got the call from Will’s 24 counterpart that my brother hadn’t shown up that morning.

They’d tried calling and texting and got no answer. Calls went to voice mail. His boss at the ministry told the 24 he hadn’t shown for work there either. Will’s neighbor, Lafayette, who also works for the ministry, told my Mom and me that he hadn’t seen Will in about a week. He told us he typically sees him every day.

Nothing seemed out of place at Will’s apartment, a small, neat, sparsely furnished one bedroom across the street from his work on Peak St. It’s a humble abode: several bibles, his clothes, a few pieces of furniture, and only plain Topo Chico in the refrigerator, along with some uncooked oatmeal and barley, a can of Folger’s coffee. There were apartment and mailbox keys on a hook by the front door.

Will had not been returning calls or texts with us, his immediate family, for nearly a year. He’d asked Mom to stop including him in family invites if they were always going to revolve around food. His self-imposed dietary restrictions meant he wouldn’t partake of whatever we’d planned, and he’d be resigned to bringing his own meal (the aforementioned oatmeal or barley with steamed vegetables). Forget meeting out at a restaurant. The last I’d heard from him was around May of last year. I’d asked him about the recently deceased father of a mutual friend of ours from childhood. Wasn’t he one of your soccer coaches on the Stingrays? No, that was Fred’s dad. Then I texted him on his birthday, December 4, and got no reply. Part of me expected not to, but I was still concerned, knowing he was intentionally distancing.

I’d been meaning to plan a museum day with him, but hadn’t gotten around to it. He loved art and was a gifted artist himself, though he’d stopped drawing when he got clean for the last time.

And now he is simply gone.

Will of the past several years was settled and stable. He worked hard and was proud of a job where he was appreciated and valued. And though he was quiet, reserved to the point of seeming ascetic, he was part of a community of recovery professionals, clergy and laypeople who knew what he’d been through and cared about him. Sean told us that one of his 24 friends had had a conversation with Will a couple of months ago about beginning a new chapter in his life. Perhaps a job that wouldn’t take such a toll on his body, especially in the brutal heat of the Texas summers. He mentioned the possibility of some companies that might have indoor positions for Will. Did that conversation inspire him to simply vacate this life for some thing he couldn’t tell anyone about?

It seems from what little evidence there is that he’d made a plan to leave, and to do it without telling anyone, even those who saw and depended on him every day. When you plan to leave a job, you give notice. And after 15+ years of stability and sobriety, I assumed my brother would have a sense of the conventional order of such things.

Sean talked to the detective assigned to Will’s case last week. She told him that because there is no sign of foul play, he’s not a minor or elderly, and because he’s not in breach of any court imposed restrictions, we cannot trace his phone or bank account. As we’ve grown to suspect, his disappearance was his plan and assuming that’s the truth, he has a right to privacy around that plan. Though there is also zero evidence that he’d started using again, it’s the same thing with trying to find out if he’s relapsed and checked himself into one of the facilities where he’s spent time before. Those organizations have a responsibility to protect the privacy of their clients.

This weekend we’ll have to look at what he left behind in his apartment, and move out and store what we can. When Sean texted him to let him know (we’ve continued to text and leave voice mails), he got an automated reply that his number had been blocked. Again, we don’t know - whether that means Will personally blocked Sean’s number, or that he hasn’t paid his phone bill, as he hadn’t paid his March rent.

I sent Will another text, and haven’t received the automated reply. Yet another mystery.