The headstand and the question of desire

The most impressive of my yoga exercises, at least for me, is the headstand. It took a couple of weeks of practice before I was able to maintain this upside-down posture for more than a few seconds without toppling over in the sand. Now I’m doing it every day for two or three minutes and am quite pleased with myself. Using the top of the head and underside of the forearms as a foundation, this position inverts gravity and recirculates the blood.

Moreover, according to my yoga book, the headstand can alleviate such physical maladies as headaches, sore throats, insomnia, indigestion, constipation, varicose veins, disorders of the ears, eyes, nose and throat, and even sexual weakness, whatever that may be. The headstand is also said to calm the mind. To be sure, that’s asking a lot of one yoga pose. I’ll settle for just the mind-calming and the illumination of taking a different perspective on the world. Maybe as I grow older, I’ll hope for some of the other purported benefits.

But, since the matter of sex has arisen, I do have a few words to say on that subject. In general, I’m a fan, but preferably when it’s with the right person and is mutually desired. For most of my adolescent and adult life, when in the presence of attractive and nubile females, the thought of sex has quite often entered my mind. Here in the gorge, away from other humans, there’s a noticeable change. Somewhat to my surprise, I haven’t given much thought to sex at all. It’s as though, I’ve taken a hiatus or vacation away from this very primary impulse, along with its concomitant pleasures and not infrequent complications.

Yes, over the past months, I have thought about women I’ve been with, but more in terms of the relationships we’ve had, where we’ve been happy together, where we’ve had fun, as well as where we might have hurt each other or things gone awry. Is this shift of focus because my sex drive has diminished or am I beginning to view the opposite sex in a more expansive way? Or is it simply because, here in the gorge, there are no females to arouse me and definitely no magazine covers or billboards featuring scantily clad women with beckoning eyes? For the past 10 or 15 years I’ve feasted on a steady diet of such commercial titillation. In fact, it’s been impossible to avoid. Here, there is none of that.

Another question that arises is what woman in this wide world might be the right one for me to spend my life with? And, of course, what woman might find me to be a suitable mate, lover, and friend? These questions remain unanswered.

Decades before New Zealand-born Keith Stewart landed on his 88-acre farm in Orange County, NY, where he would grow organic vegetables and herbs for 34 years and teach up-and-coming farmers, his personal pilgrimage included a Thoreauvian stretch living solo in the sparsely populated Australian outback. Now retired from farming, Stewart has been cleaning up a roughly scribbled journal he kept during that formative stretch in 1972, thinking he might turn it into a book. Meanwhile, his wife, artist Flavia Bacarella, is working on woodcuts to accompany the journal. They have invited ‘Dirt’ to publish excerpts of ‘The Alone Trip’ serially. This is the fourth part.