Jenna walked in to my life on Wednesday in the form of a strong tiny manduka-bearing woman in the 5:45 am dark below my balcony. Wow that was easy. Practice was relatively internal for us both, but we both noticed a few times that our vinyasas tended to sync and our pacing was more or less the same. Not such a surprise. She is graceful and awesome even on a lactose hangover.
Nice when you don’t have to build context or set stages in order to see each other. I’m not sure if it’s her openness; or having shared the same corner of the blogosphere for a year; or just the sense that things that we both have learned in the recent years of practice show up in parallel tracks.
Specifically: the crazy shit and the joy that comes from doing the ashtanga practice, going through the period when you’re coming to terms with the strength of what it does to you, and learning not to identify with that or with “being a yogi.” So nice to talk with someone who has dealt with the transformation and decided that gratitude, relationships, and letting life please you still matter. And that these things are easy!
Same kind of weekend as usual here, which means really good, though in addition to the SS/ ashtanga/ dissertation frame, RE is taking me for my first-ever manicure—something she’s been scheming for months.
Anna, who knows nailpolish shades like she knows California contract law, suggests “East Hampton Cottage” or “Dune Road.” Ok.
Also, the neighborhood rental shop—the Video Store Named Desire—finally ordered for us the new Criterion Collection re-release of Alex Cox’ badass political film, Walker. It’s sitting on the DVD player right now, waiting. He filmed it in Nicaragua during the Reagan-funded civil war, loaded it with anachronisms, and cast Ed Harris as the grey-eyed man of destiny. Exciting.
No links today, but the levitating man is the dancer Sascha Radetsky. No strings or photoshop there: he is just falling nonchalantly.
9 Comments