It’s pretty funny. At least I think so. You should probably check it out. Plus, there’s a picture of me.

“A Higher Education,” By Nick Krieger

Lately, everyone has been asking me about the one thing I’d prefer not to talk about: my book. This is rather unfortunate because, well, what’s going on is I’m supposed to be telling everyone about it–self-promoting, social networking, publicity planning, tweeting (not gonna happen)–all of which makes me yearn for the good old days: my alarm would go off at 4:45am, I’d mumble, “Time to make the donuts,” then I’d put on the coffee and shower, eat three bowls of cereal while trying not to scare my housemate taking his middle-of-the-night piss, procrastinate on Facebook from 5:15 – 5:30am, and finally write for a solid three-and-a-half hours before going to work. It was simple. Routine. And even though the “What if this thing fucking sucks” fear plagued me often, the beauty of a crappy writing day is it’s still a writing day–you know, part of the process. For me writing is also meditative, calming, and now I’m feeling a little ungrounded without my regular writing practice.

I just can’t get into the rhythm of my new mornings. I get up closer to 6am now. At my desk, I open spreadsheets with lists of media outlets, and I look at the news trying to think of articles to pitch. I run through my contacts searching for a friend who has a sister who writes reviews for a major newspaper. I make notes for my new web site, new Facebook page, and organize my email list so I can blast the same information through all channels of communication. I think about marketing with integrity, my great desire to share my book and connect with people, my great fear of foisting it on people. That said..

You can pre-order the book through my publisher Beacon Press, or on Amazon, or through IndieBound.

I bumped into an old friend on the bus and she invited me to play pick-up basketball at our old gym. I started to consider. Then I remembered: Wait, I can’t, I don’t look like a girl. I have these gender “aha” moments often, like when I’m unprepared at a pool or hot tub and realize that it doesn’t matter what bra I’m wearing, because I’m not wearing one, and I can just go in my underwear. And although it may only be an infinitesimal pause, I still make one before entering every restroom, consciously aware of which one I should use.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about identity and the misconceptions people have about mine, the assumption that I identify as a man. I don’t. I identify as happy. I rarely think about what gender I am because I’m too focused on what gender you think I am. Like when a 16 year old girl bats her eyelashes at me, I just smile and keep my distance rather than pointing out that I once wore even more makeup than her. And when some guy, engages me in one of those awfully complicated hand-shake/back-pat routines and calls me “brother,” I just smile and nod in seeming acknowledgment.

Of all the corporeal options available to me, I embody the one that feels the most honest, comfortable, and joyful. But the longer I live like this, play along with other people’s perceptions of me, the more bizarre, farcical, and foreign this whole notion of gender seems to me. It’s like I can see all the rules to the game, and while others know there are rules, few people seem to realize it’s a game.

Often, talking to my yoga friends makes me feel like I’m at a breakfast buffet. One of them will inevitably turn to me after class and say, “Wasn’t that yummy?” Calming, challenging, expansive, breath-filled, heart-opening, healing, transformative–there’s a plethora of words and spiritual cliches to choose from. But I refrained from cracking jokes about all the food language, figuring there was nothing original about this humor. Thousands of people practice yoga which means surely, thousands of people must wonder how shoving the palms of their hands under the soles of their feet in a forward bend could be “juicy.”

I let the pressure of my confusion mount until a retreat, when a good friend of mine smacked her lips together and referred to a certain teacher as “delicious.” Did you lick him like an ice cream cone? I wanted to say. “What’s going on?” I said instead. “I’m into the chanting. I get the deity thing. But what’s up with all the ‘nom nom nom’ business?”

By her response, I could tell that my friend, who is a yoga instructor herself, clearly had never wondered how padahastasana could be “tasty”? “Well, what words do you use?” my friend asked.

“Cool. Awesome. Rad. Sick,” I said, rattling off every word from the surfer/skater/stoner lexicon in the tone of someone who has waited too long to have this conversation. “Sweet.”

“Sweet!” she said. “That’s a food word!” And it was. Apparently, I was fine using dessert descriptors as long as they were also used in the movie, “Dude, Where’s My Car?”

I was pleased with the outcome of our discussion, reminded of how completely literal I can be, and handed the retrospectively obvious conclusion that language is cultural, and the culture of yoga is well, “yum, yum.”

I think that being a bit skeptical when you join a cult is a good thing, and for as much as I am on this path, I’m not sure that I’ll ever speak of it as paved with donuts. Or maybe I haven’t practiced long enough, haven’t let go of all the bad food metaphors I’ve come across in erotic writing, porn, and sex. Please tell me you know what I’m talking about. Or are you, or is your you-know-what, hungry for more?

This morning on my commute, a guy in a pinstripe business suit took out his iPhone and made a shopping list of what I gathered were his staples:

• Coffee
• Chicken
• Frozen Veggies
• Protein Drinks
• Toothpaste

We were both inhaling stale air, underground in a train,  headed to the financial district to work 9-to-5 jobs. Even though I had on jeans, prefer my vegetables fresh, avoid meat, and find my protein in food, I saw myself in him, and I felt myself suffocating just a little.

I was told I need to write shorter blog posts. So people will actually read them. Come back. Visit regularly. I’m practicing now.

The End.