I haven't gotten sick very often lately. I chalk that up to the yoga I do regularly. But last night my stomach just went crazy, and I am not sure how I am going to get out of the house to the market to buy Lomotil so I can go to work this afternoon. Yoga class, the only one I will have managed to get to this week because of doctor's appointments I have to take my mom to, seems out of the question. Even if I get there without having to go to the bathroom urgently, I don't see how a vigorous 1 1/2 hour yoga class could be good for me in this condition, so I will do restorative yoga at home.
Yesterday, I was supposed to have gone to Costa Mesa for yoga class in the morning, but I got mixed up and went to Costa Mesa, where there was no yoga class I wanted to go to. So I went home and did yoga there. Even yesterday my stomach was messed up. I think eating rich food late in the evening is not good for my IBS. I have no temperature, and definitely have to work this afternoon. Yuck.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Just Like Home, Only Better
I have been feeling good lately because Passover is my favorite holiday, and I was invited to Michelle's house for seder last night. Michelle is a sometime reader of this blog, so if she is visiting, I thank her again enthusiastically for inducing a feeling of well-being with her wonderful food, company, and fellow-feeling about the holiday.
There are all different ways to do Passover, and I can say that I have done many of them. I have been to Orthodox seders as a child that lasted till midnight and were all in Hebrew (dull), Chassidic seders as a young woman where I was sent to the kitchen to peel onions when I wanted to engage in Torah commentary with the men (maddening), seders of all stripes that I myself organized (Jewish Palestinian seders, Jewish black seders, seders where I was the only Jewish person, seders with lots of kids (fun)). For a few years I did a seder almost every day, between home and all the political groups I belonged to.
But in the past years, since Jeremy has grown up and refused to take part, and Richard has balked, sedered out from a lifetime of these long evenings outside of his own tradition, I've been at loose seder ends. So every year, like Elijah, I scout around for an open door, a place left empty for me to occupy, potluck dish in hand.
That is why I am so happy about going to Michelle's house. Michelle leads the Torah group at the synagogue that I am part of, and I thank her for that all year long by going to the meetings and trying to take part as whole-heartedly as I can, no matter what else is happening in my life.
I have known Michelle and her family for a long time. Her sons are a bit older than mine, and when I was a graduate student at UCI for many years we saw them around the neighborhood. But this is the first time I have been to her house.
Last year I was invited to an extremely wealthy person's house for seder, and I felt uncomfortable. Though she was a professor at the University, she really didn't care about the seder and that was plain by the way the family merely tolerated the ancient words and rituals. They were not interested in discussing them, in singing the songs, in luxuriating in the ancient questions.
But last night, in a group composed of Michelle and her husband, their good friends, Indian professors who live down the street and are very close friends of the family, and an elderly father of another neighbor without a seder to attend, I truly felt as if I were home, with a group that appreciated the holiday and the ritual in the same sort of curious, interested way I do, who truly loved all of it, the food, the waiting for the food, the songs.
And it didn't hurt that the food was first rate--a vegetable soup with matzo balls that was the equal of any soup I've ever eaten, a rack of lamb (such a profusion of lamb I've never seen!)--perfectly cooked, roasted fingerling potatoes so hot they scorched the roof of my mouth (and I've finally seen how purple a purple potato can be!), roasted brussel sprouts with pine nuts, and my melange of roasted vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, red onions, butternut squash, asparagus, garlic, and multicolored peppers), which were unfortunately unevenly roasted. Then we had macaroons and macerated strawberries with whipped cream available if we wanted it and tea. Wonderful!
The house was full of animals, a lovely dog who visited me repeatedly during the meal, a curious abyssinian cat who knocked everything down off the mantel, including my purse, and another, shyer cat, who never came to investigate the new visitor.
I thank Michelle for her invitation this year and her standing invitation to come whenever I want for seder.
There are all different ways to do Passover, and I can say that I have done many of them. I have been to Orthodox seders as a child that lasted till midnight and were all in Hebrew (dull), Chassidic seders as a young woman where I was sent to the kitchen to peel onions when I wanted to engage in Torah commentary with the men (maddening), seders of all stripes that I myself organized (Jewish Palestinian seders, Jewish black seders, seders where I was the only Jewish person, seders with lots of kids (fun)). For a few years I did a seder almost every day, between home and all the political groups I belonged to.
But in the past years, since Jeremy has grown up and refused to take part, and Richard has balked, sedered out from a lifetime of these long evenings outside of his own tradition, I've been at loose seder ends. So every year, like Elijah, I scout around for an open door, a place left empty for me to occupy, potluck dish in hand.
That is why I am so happy about going to Michelle's house. Michelle leads the Torah group at the synagogue that I am part of, and I thank her for that all year long by going to the meetings and trying to take part as whole-heartedly as I can, no matter what else is happening in my life.
I have known Michelle and her family for a long time. Her sons are a bit older than mine, and when I was a graduate student at UCI for many years we saw them around the neighborhood. But this is the first time I have been to her house.
Last year I was invited to an extremely wealthy person's house for seder, and I felt uncomfortable. Though she was a professor at the University, she really didn't care about the seder and that was plain by the way the family merely tolerated the ancient words and rituals. They were not interested in discussing them, in singing the songs, in luxuriating in the ancient questions.
But last night, in a group composed of Michelle and her husband, their good friends, Indian professors who live down the street and are very close friends of the family, and an elderly father of another neighbor without a seder to attend, I truly felt as if I were home, with a group that appreciated the holiday and the ritual in the same sort of curious, interested way I do, who truly loved all of it, the food, the waiting for the food, the songs.
And it didn't hurt that the food was first rate--a vegetable soup with matzo balls that was the equal of any soup I've ever eaten, a rack of lamb (such a profusion of lamb I've never seen!)--perfectly cooked, roasted fingerling potatoes so hot they scorched the roof of my mouth (and I've finally seen how purple a purple potato can be!), roasted brussel sprouts with pine nuts, and my melange of roasted vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, red onions, butternut squash, asparagus, garlic, and multicolored peppers), which were unfortunately unevenly roasted. Then we had macaroons and macerated strawberries with whipped cream available if we wanted it and tea. Wonderful!
The house was full of animals, a lovely dog who visited me repeatedly during the meal, a curious abyssinian cat who knocked everything down off the mantel, including my purse, and another, shyer cat, who never came to investigate the new visitor.
I thank Michelle for her invitation this year and her standing invitation to come whenever I want for seder.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
A Clockwork Orange
Last night I showed another film in the series of adapted movies. No one showed. However, I showed it anyhow, and I was impressed by the film, which has aged extremely well, probably because it is set in a mish-mash of a dystopia, which makes the echoes of the period's actual clothing and decor seem more natural and less dated.
It made me realize how much I admire Kubrick as a director, and I wondered if I could manage to teach that film, which is sure to shock and offend students who will object to being made to watch it over and over in order to write about it. I would feel almost like those torturers in the prison who subject the main character to torture by forcing him to watch movies. Yet I find the violence and other offensive behavior in the film entirely justified by what it is saying. I would love to teach it in a class I would call "Crime and Punishment." Perhaps Dostoevski's work by that name would be in the class also, as would material about the Milgram experiments. It would be interesting. It's just that I don't know if people would be able to stomach it.
It made me realize how much I admire Kubrick as a director, and I wondered if I could manage to teach that film, which is sure to shock and offend students who will object to being made to watch it over and over in order to write about it. I would feel almost like those torturers in the prison who subject the main character to torture by forcing him to watch movies. Yet I find the violence and other offensive behavior in the film entirely justified by what it is saying. I would love to teach it in a class I would call "Crime and Punishment." Perhaps Dostoevski's work by that name would be in the class also, as would material about the Milgram experiments. It would be interesting. It's just that I don't know if people would be able to stomach it.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
The Hike That Didn't Happen
I signed up for a wilderness writing workshop hike this morning to the most lovely of the locations from last year--Fremont Station. I thought it was last week, but noted it wasn't, and even though the choir performed last night at a trifecta of a service (the AME church choir, a representative of the mosque in town, and us, with the choir singing a suitably peaceable song)and I got out late, I got up at 5:30 and made my way up toward Irvine Park. Only it wasn't where I thought it was. I ended up calling Richard, who told me I was on the wrong road! One more street up Jamboree, there was the correct turn. So I found the entrance, paid my fee, and asked the people at the booth where parking lot 15 was.
Now I am not noted for my sense of direction. I get lost going around the block, and that is almost not an exaggeration! So I followed their directions. The ones I got from the workshop leader were on the floor of the car, where they had fallen, out of reach. I kept on the bumpy path, seeing the numbers of the parking lots climb... 9, 10, 13, 16. Nothing between 13 and 16! Parking lot 15 was nowhere to be seen. I drove around the place 4 times, and then asked again, also asking if they could contact the workshop leader, but they didn't have her number. Neither did I. So I gave up, and went to yoga class in Costa Mesa.
When I told my classmate at yoga what happened, she said that showed good mental health. I didn't let frustration stop me; I reconfigured my plans, and went on with the day.
That's true. And oh, I stopped at Steinmart, where a giant sale was going on. When I couldn't find my coupons ($10. off till noon today!), the community of shoppers provided some. It restored my faith in human beings!
Now I am not noted for my sense of direction. I get lost going around the block, and that is almost not an exaggeration! So I followed their directions. The ones I got from the workshop leader were on the floor of the car, where they had fallen, out of reach. I kept on the bumpy path, seeing the numbers of the parking lots climb... 9, 10, 13, 16. Nothing between 13 and 16! Parking lot 15 was nowhere to be seen. I drove around the place 4 times, and then asked again, also asking if they could contact the workshop leader, but they didn't have her number. Neither did I. So I gave up, and went to yoga class in Costa Mesa.
When I told my classmate at yoga what happened, she said that showed good mental health. I didn't let frustration stop me; I reconfigured my plans, and went on with the day.
That's true. And oh, I stopped at Steinmart, where a giant sale was going on. When I couldn't find my coupons ($10. off till noon today!), the community of shoppers provided some. It restored my faith in human beings!
Friday, March 26, 2010
Yoga Poem is up on Qarrtsiluni!
Go and check it out. Though I don't think I did a great job of reading it, it is there with a sound file!
http://qarrtsiluni.com/2010/03/26/salamba-sirsasana-1-headstand/
http://qarrtsiluni.com/2010/03/26/salamba-sirsasana-1-headstand/
Yoga Essay
I decided to send a short essay about the writing of the yoga series to the Iyengar newsletter. Here it is, below.
I am a yoga student and a writer. These are both activities that occupy me for some part of every day, but despite efforts to connect them, until this past December, I was unable to do it. I would look forlornly out of the studio window at the waving palm trees and think that surely this, as much as any of the other activities that took up my day, could be the subject for poetry, but nothing emerged from the hazy slate of my mind, as stubbornly unproductive as an unplugged computer or a cracked crystal ball.
This pattern continued, the two poles of my life occupying their own, utterly separate spheres, until my teacher, Denise Thibault, taught several classes in a row based on Mr. Iyengar’s Emotional Stability Sequence, which had an immediate, profound effect on me.
I should say that I originally began doing yoga about two decades or more ago to help me deal with my fractured neurology. My family exhibits a spectacular array of neurological conditions, from Tourette Syndrome and OCD to bipolar disorder, ADHD, learning disabilities, and depression. My own little share of this neurological bonanza is occupied by GAD, generalized anxiety disorder, a disability that kept me from driving till late in my 40s and otherwise hampered my physical as well as mental well-being.
Regular yoga, along with cognitive behavioral therapy and mild medication, had quelled the worst effects of this disorder. Though I still don’t drive on freeways, my life proceeds on a much smoother, less fearful course than ever before, and my physical health is excellent.
But this particular series, even foreshortened as it was into 1 ½ hour classes, had a definite effect, inducing a further calm and sense of well-being I had only rarely experienced. I was suffused with gratitude and energy, a warm feeling, as though I was standing before a blazing bonfire, enough to fuel a poem.
That afternoon, a fortuitous summons beckoned: an online journal in which I had several times published, Qarrtsiluni, was planning an issue on the theme of health. Maybe I could write a poem about yoga for this issue? That is what began a flurry of writing the like of which I had never before experienced.
I looked up the particulars of the sequence, which contains 15 asanas, many of them variations on shoulder stand, and stared at the diagrams for a while. Then I wrote “Salamba Sirsasana—Headstand,” which I submitted to the journal, where it was accepted but has not yet appeared. The itch did not abate. I was not finished with this project.
The poems poured out over a two month period so that by the end, I was producing several a week, a feat unheard of in my snail-paced past. I followed up on the events in my blog, Shadow Knows (http:// robbi-shadowknows.blogspot.com), where my few followers checked in daily for the latest updates, revisions, and ruminations on the series.
The lines, the images flowed effortlessly, emerging from the same fount that fuels the asanas themselves. I felt as Keats described himself: like an explorer facing an immense and long-sought sea. It was as though it had been there all the time, waiting for me to turn a corner one day, when it would be revealed, all at once.
I hope to publish this series as a collection, but that will require the aid of an able artist who can accompany the poems with fluid renderings of the asanas’ shape for those unfamiliar with yoga. On my blog, I used photographs from the Internet, but I want something less detailed and realistic for the book.
It is with this in mind that I turn to you, the Iyengar community, hoping that someone wants to join me in this endeavor. I cannot promises riches—poetry is not lucrative—but I think that with the help of these drawings, the series will attract some attention that can benefit the artist as well the writer. And most of all, I will be able to thank Mr. Iyengar by giving him this collection to thank him for the gift he has given to me and to all of us.
Since I cannot offer you “Headstand,” as it is already due to be published elsewhere, here is another one of the series—“Uttanasana—Standing Forward Bend.”
Uttanasana—Standing Forward Bend
Diving down and down
toward the distant floor,
I approach the knees’
locked gates, peering
into the darkened space
between, almost at my
destination. Grasping
the heels, the ropy
tendons, I belly forward.
Chest presses thighs,
buttocks rising and rising.
I am an explorer,
entering the ancient city,
descending into another world.
I am a yoga student and a writer. These are both activities that occupy me for some part of every day, but despite efforts to connect them, until this past December, I was unable to do it. I would look forlornly out of the studio window at the waving palm trees and think that surely this, as much as any of the other activities that took up my day, could be the subject for poetry, but nothing emerged from the hazy slate of my mind, as stubbornly unproductive as an unplugged computer or a cracked crystal ball.
This pattern continued, the two poles of my life occupying their own, utterly separate spheres, until my teacher, Denise Thibault, taught several classes in a row based on Mr. Iyengar’s Emotional Stability Sequence, which had an immediate, profound effect on me.
I should say that I originally began doing yoga about two decades or more ago to help me deal with my fractured neurology. My family exhibits a spectacular array of neurological conditions, from Tourette Syndrome and OCD to bipolar disorder, ADHD, learning disabilities, and depression. My own little share of this neurological bonanza is occupied by GAD, generalized anxiety disorder, a disability that kept me from driving till late in my 40s and otherwise hampered my physical as well as mental well-being.
Regular yoga, along with cognitive behavioral therapy and mild medication, had quelled the worst effects of this disorder. Though I still don’t drive on freeways, my life proceeds on a much smoother, less fearful course than ever before, and my physical health is excellent.
But this particular series, even foreshortened as it was into 1 ½ hour classes, had a definite effect, inducing a further calm and sense of well-being I had only rarely experienced. I was suffused with gratitude and energy, a warm feeling, as though I was standing before a blazing bonfire, enough to fuel a poem.
That afternoon, a fortuitous summons beckoned: an online journal in which I had several times published, Qarrtsiluni, was planning an issue on the theme of health. Maybe I could write a poem about yoga for this issue? That is what began a flurry of writing the like of which I had never before experienced.
I looked up the particulars of the sequence, which contains 15 asanas, many of them variations on shoulder stand, and stared at the diagrams for a while. Then I wrote “Salamba Sirsasana—Headstand,” which I submitted to the journal, where it was accepted but has not yet appeared. The itch did not abate. I was not finished with this project.
The poems poured out over a two month period so that by the end, I was producing several a week, a feat unheard of in my snail-paced past. I followed up on the events in my blog, Shadow Knows (http:// robbi-shadowknows.blogspot.com), where my few followers checked in daily for the latest updates, revisions, and ruminations on the series.
The lines, the images flowed effortlessly, emerging from the same fount that fuels the asanas themselves. I felt as Keats described himself: like an explorer facing an immense and long-sought sea. It was as though it had been there all the time, waiting for me to turn a corner one day, when it would be revealed, all at once.
I hope to publish this series as a collection, but that will require the aid of an able artist who can accompany the poems with fluid renderings of the asanas’ shape for those unfamiliar with yoga. On my blog, I used photographs from the Internet, but I want something less detailed and realistic for the book.
It is with this in mind that I turn to you, the Iyengar community, hoping that someone wants to join me in this endeavor. I cannot promises riches—poetry is not lucrative—but I think that with the help of these drawings, the series will attract some attention that can benefit the artist as well the writer. And most of all, I will be able to thank Mr. Iyengar by giving him this collection to thank him for the gift he has given to me and to all of us.
Since I cannot offer you “Headstand,” as it is already due to be published elsewhere, here is another one of the series—“Uttanasana—Standing Forward Bend.”
Uttanasana—Standing Forward Bend
Diving down and down
toward the distant floor,
I approach the knees’
locked gates, peering
into the darkened space
between, almost at my
destination. Grasping
the heels, the ropy
tendons, I belly forward.
Chest presses thighs,
buttocks rising and rising.
I am an explorer,
entering the ancient city,
descending into another world.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Whatever Happened To the Yoga Poems?
The other day, Lou asked what happened to the yoga poems. I am still trying to find an artist to take on the task of doing illustrations for them. Until then, it seems, no one aside from a few yoga aficionados understands what I am trying to do with them. When I read them to an audience that usually enjoys my poems, it was to blank stares. Very few people, except for those I know do yoga, commented on them. The rest were puzzled. It is frustrating. However, I have sent them out to a contest anyway, and to numerous journals. Except for the headstand poem (everyone knows what headstand is!), which will be published one of these days by Qarrtsiluni, probably as the last poem in their Health issue (currently running), no one has taken one of these poems individually. I will keep trying to send them out singly and collectively and to find an artist.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)