anti:freeze

Recently, I stopped my practice of crossing the street against the walk signal. I used to look both ways, glance over my shoulder for fast-turning SUVs, and scurry across. I walk fast. I move fast. I like to feel my hamstrings and calves burn as I race through the downtown grid. I like to hear my breath and feel my cheeks flush red with heat. Maneuver through crowded sidewalks like a video-game spaceship through an asteroid storm.

Now, I stand at each red light, breathing deep, imagining my spine stretching upward, the spaces between vertebrae expanding. I pull my shoulder blades back to open my chest, then release my trapezius muscles, allowing tense shoulders to relax - not an easy movement with backpack straps digging deep into flesh and bone. My metatarsals engage, and my body weight spreads evenly across the soles of my feet. This has always been my favorite yoga pose. Standing Mountain. From the outside, it looks so simple - stand up straight, breathe deep. But it is not merely mimetic. Your body is quite literally transformed - torso taller, foundation strong as rock. Muscles twitch like little seismic shifts. Blood flows warm and slow like lava. At each corner, I imagine Mt. Hood in the distance, and my facial muscles relax, lips soften. For one brief moment, I have escaped the city grid.

Fellow pedestrians flash unapproving looks my direction. Can't you see the street is empty? You're not going to get hit. Businessmen, in their navy wool suits and polished black wingtips, seem to pity my slow pace. Doesn't she have somewhere to be? Powerpoint slides to present? Phone messages? Memos to dictate? Email?

In choosing to follow the traffic laws, I have broken a social code. Move fast. Live fast. Have somewhere to be. Don't get distracted. Don't stand still. Don't pay attention. Just move. I refuse to split time into its smallest intervals - to count the minutes and seconds between point a and point b. I am willing to take a few moments to stand still. In this case, it is more subversive to follow the law than to break it. The humble intersection transforms into a kind of transgressive space. A real place.

In the intersection, my private stillness meets your public movement. Breathing in, the grid is the grid. Breathing out, the grid is not the grid. I am fast. I am not fast. I have a strong foundation. I no longer live in the same city as you.