30 Thoughts on 30 Days - plus, some serious bad karma

I was brainstorming for a catchy title of this one-day delayed post while I was in savasana this morning (I know, I know - not the point of savasana...) and came up with this. Which, I realized afterwards, meant I would have to record 30 yoga-related thoughts. So here they are, in varying relevance and depth, 30 thoughts which either occurred to me during one of my many (35, in fact) yoga classes over the past 30 days, or cultivated off the mat.

1. How the hell am I going to get to yoga every single day?
2. 7:00am classes really do require a 5:50 am wake up
3. My balance is truly awful
4. I sweat lots. Lots and lots and lots. More than everyone around me, and even more as I practice more regular yoga
5. I sure hope this increased efficiency in my sweat glands doesn't apply to my non-yoga life...
6. I don't know how to not scrunch up my shoulders in Crescent moon pose.
7. Must. Drink. More. Water
8. I love Wednesday morning classes with Caro - she is far and away my favourite teacher
9. It scares me to think about how my body would function without yoga - even with it, I have ludicrously tight hamstrings and an occasionally achy back.
10. My tummy does not look nice in seated forward bends...
11. I really am going to have to do laundry twice a week now.
12. I can't handle the crowded classes where I can't open my arms when I swan dive into a forward fold
13. Did the Moksha series at home. Barely sweated. The hot room makes a huge difference
14. I wish my hair was long enough to get into a top bun instead of these ridiculous pig tails
15. I want more yoga clothing.
16. Starting my day with yoga just puts my mind at peace - I've accomplished something, I've prepared my body for movement, and I have spent 75 minutes focusing on myself.
17. I hope one day I will be able to clothes my eyes in Tree pose
18. My friend Heather can do the most beautiful Dancer's pose
19. My leg hair is fascinating - haven't waxed since about a month before the challenge and I've become oddly attached.
20. I wonder how most men get into yoga...
21. How can anyone leave the studio after class without showering???
22. I really want more yoga clothing.
23. I am really getting much more flexible in the backs of my legs and my low back
24. I love love love Reclining Hero's pose.
25. I find it impossible to not stare at the person next to me when we do a supine spinal twist - I think that may be one of the most beautiful positions.
26. Yoga has a mixed effect on my body image. My own body gets stronger, and regardless of whether it changes shape, I take pride in its increasing ability. At the same time, I find it impossible to not compare myself to other women in class, who are sometimes just impossibly beautiful.
27. I still have not managed to figure out the perfect amount to eat before my morning class. I always have to burp before going into Dancer's pose.
28. I love it when the instructor will actually touch me and adjust me.
29. I finally touched my toes in Paschimottanasana!
30. I made it! And I'm going to keep going...

Quite across the board, I know. On a rather disheartening karmic note, the Moksha studio was robbed last night. Who breaks into and steals from a yoga studio?? They are taking it in stride, but their computer (and who knows what else) was stolen. Pretty deplorable.


It is a dreary day out, complete with freezing rain, so I am opting to work at home, doing some laundry and tiding up for Brielan and Yule who are coming over tonight to watch a movie and nosh on some psychedelic baked goods. Happy April 20th, one and all.

Existential Blogging Crisis

The more I peruse the beautiful blogs of my friends Aly and Kathy, the more I realize how inadequate my blog is.

I fail to tantalize you with beautiful pictures - I lost my camera's charger swiftly upon moving, and have never been able to recover it - my posts are essentially rants on a variety of topics, which I certainly do no research or preparation for, and I am embarking on no great adventures to retell.

I voiced this concern to my darling Heather, who, incidentally, had a very short-lived blogging career. She assured me that she likes the blog, mostly because it propagates her internet fame.

"The Narcissist in me loves the Narcissist in you." - Heather.

For my lack of direction and visual aids, I apologize. I can only hope that you will endeavour with following these posts until I reform my ways.


This said, I will be commencing my Christmas countdown with an ennumeration of the beautiful things I would like to be mine this holiday season - or, the less narcissistic way to look at it I suppose, my gift recommendations. My house currently smells like freshly baked gingerbread, and I can't resist plunging somewhat prematurely into the holiday spirit. I even listened to the Channukah Song yesterday.

Starting off this countdown, as I am currently quite chilly and find my sweater collection severely deficient (my mother would kill me for saying so - she doesn't think I need a single additional article of clothing - how wrong one woman could be) , I stumbled across this beautiful sweater. I want it on me. Right. Now.

Michael Kors, studded cotton blend V-neck, 175$

I have been lusting for more studs in my wardrobe (you can read: hot guys in my pants, and sure, but not what I meant in this instance), and this sweater would quench that desire. And without shoulder pads. I can't do this whole shoulder pad look that is out this season. I have lovely broad shoulders as is, and just as I will not work out my traps, I will not wear shoulder pads in my t-shirts and sweaters (for outerwear I will maintain an exception).

Everest

This paper may just kill me. Mostly because it is all I have to focus on between now and Wednesday.

I know, I know, poor baby, right? One paper!

But I am getting too much in my head for it. There isn't going to be any way for me to pull this off the way I would like to. I wont be able to finish the novel the paper is based upon, let alone to adequate research on the auxiliary topics I necessarily have to touch on. So I am getting stressed - do I just keep writing out my ideas until I have exhausted them all, and then turn to research? This seems obviously wrong, but at the same time I am desperate to get some words down so that, at least superficially, I will not be starting from square one.

And, as one may expect with a 947-page book, there is such a variety of topics I need to cover. The reception of the novel, in France, Germany, and North America; the nature of guilt and responsibility during total war; France's relationship in the past to artistic representations of of the Vichy Regime; Historiography of Germany's WWII motives/responsibility; the uses of fiction by historians; the nature of testimony; the list goes on, believe me.

And I am just not in a writing state of mind. I am an excellent bullshitter when I want to be, and usually when I need to be. But now, when I need to weave my magic web of articulate and charming bullshit, my abilities escape me.

I am starting to feel old. My mind and body are clearly deteriorating. The skills I had as a vivacious undergraduate are slipping away from my mind, like a dream upon waking. And I'm getting fat. To make myself feel better about this physical and, yes, I will grant, likely imagined, degeneration, I went to Holt Renfrew with Claire and bought makeup. Grown up women need to spend top dollar to keep themselves looking youthful, when their minds and metabolisms have quit. And it is always nice to have a salesclerk explain that "really, you don't need much foundation - you're skin is beautiful." Why thank you. And that thank you is, of course, directed at Keihls and Olay, jointly responsible for keeping me young.

In keeping with this (pathetic?) nostalgia which has seemingly reached into my soul lately, I nearly burst into tears today when I thought of my friend Heather. My heart actually aches from missing her; I was on the verge of sobbing in savasna. In response to this news, she, equally nostalgic, shared with me the following quote, from Dante:
Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.

There is no greater sorrow

Than to be mindful of the happy time

In misery.

Canto V, lines 121-123

"I don't know why we are doing this" - Jacques Derrida

I was talking with the eloquent and observant Heather Blom while I was cleaning my desk today and came across an old reading pack from my undergrad with this statement of Derrida's in bold. It was a poignant and almost cinematically choreographed moment. Heather was talking about all the expectations being thrust upon our generation and how they are being consistently abandoned and disappointed. We are the feebly striving generation of decline. Why are we doing this?

After an undergrad which had us continuously propelling upwards to what we assumed were prosperous and promising futures, we are finding ourselves disappointed and, probably worse, disappointing.

I am single, living alone with my increasingly aggressive tabby, struggling to contrive a thesis which I am quite clearly not qualified to be undertaking, trying to stay fit, trying to eat well, trying to keep my laundry basket and kitchen sink from over flowing, and not even trying to make the friends which I am so plainly and painfully without here in this strange city. I don't know how to do it all. I am expected to be domesticated, educated, socially adept, athletic, health conscious, a competent correspondent, fashionable, cultured and well rested.

I feel like Stevie Smith's narrator in my long-time favourite poem;

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

I know there is nothing less sympathetic than the winging of an upper middle class darling struggling to achieve perfect before she even dares to compare herself to the staggering depression experienced by this ill-fated poet. I feel like that is the irony of my generations Grecian tragedy; to be so entirely blessed with opportunity and completely unable to achieve anything with it, least of all contentedness. I am Alexandra.

I don't want to be obnoxiously meloncholic and narcissistic. I want to be able to do it all without self pity.

I'll work on it

5 Senses Friday No. II

Feeling:

Very hungover, and disappointed with the world today. Law & Order was cancelled, my rugby girls played without me at Mt A tonight, Rich Cronin is gone, and Heather Blom is not in my bed watching Twilight with me.

Smelling:

That starchy smell of pasta cooking.

Hearing:

"The Girl on T.V." in tribute to the lost Lyte Funky One

Tasting:

Bile. It has not been a fun day.

Seeing:

a very busy day tomorrow after this squandered, bed ridden one

R.I.P. Rich.

Thanks Mom and Dad

For buying me a removable shower head. Great end to a rough and tumble day.

So there has been another entry hiatus. I apologize. This one was preventable. My mind has been rather occupied with the stressful reality of a knee injury, and I was not quite prepared to post anything about it and thus make it real. That said, knee injury and all, I played my first game representing McGill. All is well, and so I feel safe to reveal that in last week's intersquad game I very likely tore my meniscus. The ironic and tragic karmic link between my best friend and grave robbing ACL pilferer Heather Blom remains strong, despite the distance between us. Not that I would liken our lots, since with my tear I am still able to continue my season. Thank God. I don't know how I would do in a new city with so few friends, such daunting classes and no rugby for respite.

I promise again to be more diligent. Tomorrow I have a game and perhaps will be hosting my very darling friend Melina for some of the week. Hi-jinx will ensue.

<#

Not a heart.

A waffle cone.

I actually do not like waffle cones. Or ice cream cones at all. I worked in an ice cream shop when I was 14 where, in addition to a sick forearm muscle and waffle burn pattern on my elbow, I acquired a preference for  ice cream in a plastic cup.

I know. That makes me the lamest.

I waffle cone / love you too Heather.

How's my what?

I visited my friend Heather in Sambro yesterday. It was like the Never Ending Journey - which means I rode that dog-dragon from the Never Ending Story there. Or I wish.

She has had her ACL replaced with the ACL of a dead person. She is basically a cyborg necromancer. Donna Harraway and Newton would be proud.

When I broke my foot two years ago, I was working in a very typical office, doing very typical secretary administrative assistant work, in Alberta. A typical office in Alberta means that wearing a pant suit makes you a very over dressed administrative phone answerer; my direct superior wore jeans and flannel and advised me that people with thick accents ought to learn to speak English before working in our country. Yup.

It is in this scenic pastoral setting that I encountered the phrase "How's your wheel?"

My what? What the fuck did you just say to me?

Oh. My foot. It's broken in 2 places and the whole thing up to my sock line is the colour of our H.R. girl's vericose veins. Thanks for asking.

Conclusion: Heather and I are cyborgs constructed from the usable (and useless) parts recovered from demolition derby Segways.