Today is Day Two of the spring celebration of the festival
Navaratri, nine nights of the goddess.
It’s mostly a celebration of the goddess Durga, whose name comes from
the Sanskrit for ‘hard’ or ‘difficult’.
(Look at that hair in the picture of her in the 1 o'clock position!) She’s the promise that resides in all of us that we can be more, but
it’s going to be rough going. On
this very Day Two in my back yard, we’ve had just enough sunshine and just
enough rain to get my tulip blooms out.
They’ve been waiting since their last bloom, since I last
folded their leaves down, through the heat of a mosquitoed summer, through the
fall Navaratri, through the bare winter, creating and storing in their bulbs
the potency and potential of their short-lived blooms that will show in the
next few days. At the height of their
beauty, they’ll be visited by the bees, and then it will be a short step from
the bloomed tulip to a bare stem and exposed stamens and stigmas. She will have put on her best outfit,
only for it all to come off again, to be undone by her own beauty. For the sake of getting to do it again,
of reinvention, of fertilization, to make something more than was there before.
Every time the weather changes, I vow (vrata) to step up my fashion and beauty game. Yes, it is a sacred vow and worthy of
the Sanskrit word. So many women
must feel the same way, as the fashion weeks and 5-pound issues of Vogue arrive
in late February and August. These
are the times of the year when it’s easy for life to feel hard (dukha).
You’re either really cold and miserable and over it or you’re really hot
and sweaty and need some relief.
So, that first sunshiney day of about 75 degrees is cause for
celebration. We even have an
Argentinian friend who looks forward to El Dia de Pezon, the spring day when
ladies throw off their scarves and jackets and run around with just a couple of
flimsy layers on their top parts.
They are dressed perfectly in their nakedness.
Navaratri’s goddess celebration, for me, commemorates a
period of time when life shifts from feeling tough to feeling like a girl has
options, that she might choose to adorn herself and present herself in her best
light. Maybe she’s a little more
colorful, maybe a little more studious, but she looks and feels more
refined. No sooner do I get my
nails and hair done and my lips painted on that there will be packages to open
and wind blowing and the eating of lipstick (insert commercial for lip stuff
made from ingredients that you wouldn’t mind actually eating). This isn’t about trying to stay perfect
all the time, but rather about recognizing that lying barely underneath what
looks like the most beautiful and refined version of something is that very
thing’s hardship, its effort, its edginess and vices.
You see, it’s a short step from a yoga teacher who looks
strong and like she has it all together to a girl with an eating disorder who
was doing nothing more enlightened than looking for more time at the gym. It’s a short step from a sensitive,
giving friend to the scared person who wants to control those around her so
that they don’t leave. A short step
from loyalty and protection to being a holding tank for resentment. From our most outwardly presentable
selves to our most primal natures, those techniques that have preserved our
survival on the most raw level.