first digression

As I squeegee my way underneath my truck to hone in on the hydraulic clutch cylinder soak-sheened in its own fluid, I'll take a short digression into a space that's still strange to me but a main part of the reason I began to think through this story in the first place - the whole question of the yoga-thing, the awareness-thing, the zen karma energy thing...  What's it all about?  Where do you explore it, find it, take it up, understand it, try to bring it into the space of your being?  And that's that all got to do with what people might call a loving relationship?

Because I happened upon a comment today that effectively distracted me from the memory of that day dealing with that hydraulic clutch cylinder - it was about yoga.  At this point, today, in February 2015, I cannot any more say that I'm at zero awareness of yoga, even though I can in fact still say that I have never been to a yoga session (except, possibly something within the whole spectrum of yoga, but I'll get to that).

The comment was about something that I have been working through for quite many years - ever since that day with the... (well, you'll hopefully see why I take that up as my starting point)

"The world is really only energy."  When I heard it, I felt a sense of enjoyment.  I really enjoy this idea.  I enjoy the way so many people explain it in so many creative ways, or just plan straightforward like this comment, or within so many wonderful stories, within so many contexts of people living their beliefs by example, and most of all, within all of the ways that so many people are trying to figure out what the heck that really means, maybe in some logical sense, maybe in some really way out mystical sense, maybe in some humble way of admitting that they really don't fully grasp anything they might call "meaning" but continue to work through it in their own way...  I have to admit that I like talking with that last group of people the most, probably because I'm one of them...

Actually what the comment made me think about is something someone had said a while back about yoga - it was one of those "I heard someone once say that someone once said" sort of comments, but the gist of it was that once someone was asked what they gain from Yoga and the person replied something like, "I don't think I get anything from yoga, but I lose a lot of things, like the fear of death..."

I guess it has to do with that sense that we are made up of energy, we move through this physical world as energetic beings doing the things we do within all of this physicality, the real, solid, tangible stuff of this physical world, like, for instance, hydraulic clutch cylinders...

that hydraulic clutch cylinder moment - second

I was in second gear, going up a hill and when I went to downshift... nothing happened.  When I stepped on the clutch it was like stepping on the brake peddle when all the brake fluid has drained from the lines (yeah, I know that feeling, but that's a different story...) - no pressure, only a dead, limp peddle.

I gunned the gas and made it up over the hill's crest, started down the other side, and had to maintain a pretty slow speed since pushing along in second gear got the truck whining pretty loud around 3400 RPM pretty fast.

I thought through various possibilities. I could just drive on, trying to keep from stalling going up who knows how many more inclines, and hope I could get "somewhere", or I could pull over and start thumbing to "somewhere".  I knew that that area of Oregon was pretty hilly, and I pretty much knew that somewhere up ahead there would be a hill that my truck would not be able to get over in second gear, so I slowly brought my little old truck to a halt along a fairly level stretch of road where there was a wide shoulder.  "To a halt" pretty much meant bucking through those last few agonizing turns of the crankshaft before all went quiet.

I took a deep breath, let out a sigh and opened the door to get out.  I was in the middle of nowhere.  Somewhere?  Where was somewhere?

"Well," I thought, "at least it's not raining."  I laid down, turned over on my back and inched my way underneath to have a look.

I'll start with that hydraulic clutch cylinder moment

Somewhere along a road in western Oregon.  About two decades ago.  Maybe three decades ago.

It was early afternoon, the sun was shining, the truck was purring along with a zen-like flow, everything was ok and there was absolutely no need to even think about the pistons, the brakes, the...

I was heading uphill when it happened.