The Shala Daily

Connie is fifteen, suburban, and already fluent in the art of self-division. One version of herself for the house, one for the world outside it. Her mother sees the home version and finds her lacking. The outside version — the one that moves through malls and drive-ins with confidence — that one she keeps to herself. The split feels like survival. It is actually a trap.

One Sunday the family clears out and she’s alone with the radio. A gold jalopy pulls in. The driver calls himself Arnold Friend. He’s wearing the full costume — jeans, boots, the right slang, the right references — but none of it sits right on him. He’s older than he’s pretending to be. He knows her name, her friends, exactly where her family went. His sidekick Ellie sits in the car the whole time, radio going. The music doesn’t stop.

Arnold wants her to come for a ride. The longer it goes on, the clearer it becomes that the normal moves — run, call for help, say no and mean it — aren’t available to her. The story ends when she walks out the door toward him. Oates never tells you what that walk is. Surrender. Trance. Something she chose. The ambiguity is the whole point.

🎭 The Costume That Almost Works

Here’s what I keep coming back to: Arnold Friend is wearing a costume and the costume almost works. That’s not a horror-movie monster. That’s the Ashtanga authorization structure.

The hierarchy presents itself as lineage — ancient, earned, transmitted teacher to student across generations. And there’s something real in that. But what it actually runs on, functionally, is proximity to Mysore, stamps of approval from people who got their stamps from other people, and a social economy where legitimacy flows downhill from a very small number of sources. It’s a clout structure wearing a tradition costume. Once you see that, you can’t unsee the stuffed boots.

🪞 Both Connies

I’ve been doing both-Connies for a while. Nearing 15 years building The Yoga Club as a genuine community space — affordable, inclusive, structured around student autonomy rather than dependence — while also existing in a world that wants to measure that work by credentials I don’t particularly want and relationships I don’t particularly trust. The split is exhausting. More than that, it’s dishonest, and I’ve built my whole pedagogy on honesty being non-negotiable.

🔮 The Flattery of Recognition

The Arnold Friend move is always the same: he makes you feel known. The structure flatters you with recognition, implies you’re one of the real ones, almost in the circle. That feeling of being seen is load-bearing. It’s what keeps people oriented toward the approval of a center that doesn’t actually serve them.

📻 The Radio Never Stops

But here’s what Oates gives you that I find genuinely useful: the radio never stops. Ellie’s got it on in the car. Connie had it on before Arnold Friend showed up. The music isn’t his — he just uses it. The practice is the same. I’m not walking away from Ashtanga. The sequence, the breath, the counted method, 15 years of accumulated intelligence in that system — that’s not Arnold Friend’s. He just showed up in the driveway and acted like it was.

Walking out the door isn’t destruction. It might be the first honest move in a long time.

From Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1967). Study the philosophical underpinnings: satya (truthfulness), svadhyaya (self-study), ishvara pranidhana (surrender), dharma (individual uniqueness).