For Me, Yoga

For me, yoga is my moving meditation. It is a dance. It is the moment in every class when I smile from a room of people moving together in unison from posture to posture. In this dance, we embrace the beauty of our differences and imperfections. Through yoga, I understand the energy of a group of people and how that can lift up, up, up.

Yoga is knowing that I cannot make it through an om without my happiness breaking through into a smile. And yoga is that smile expanding to a laugh, because sometimes a smile isn’t big enough for my type of happy. And yoga is letting myself laugh during that om, because I think that maybe somewhere in that first sound of the universe, it included the sound of someone smiling.

A great yoga class gives me a happy that makes me skip home, and a great yoga teacher is one who inspires me, and who inspires me to teach.

Practicing yoga is a greater connection to a positive community. The desire to smile at everyone, and have them smile back, and then I smile. Again. In return. And so do they, and we walk away having seen a beautiful part of each other’s soul and feeling closer to something for it.

Yoga is the readjustment at the grocery store or sitting down to dinner where I roll my shoulder blades down my back and exhale, and pull my pelvic girdle in a little closer to my spine. And when I pass my reflection in a window, I think (no matter how much chocolate I’ve eaten that day), “This is how my body—my strong, resilient, imperfect/perfect human body—is supposed to look.”

Yoga is (I’m going to say it, because we’re all adults here) great sex. Because, for once, it makes sense how body and breath are connected and how beautiful it is when two people dance in intimacy together with one breath, one movement. Whether they even realize they are doing it or not.

Yoga is having the breath to hold through the Eisenhower Tunnel, but the knowledge to release and let it go in moments of my life where things seem too big to overcome.

My yoga mat is the place that I go to get out of my own head. I lay or stand or sit, with my back on this earth, or the soles of my feet pressing downwards to ground me, or my palms facing up to receive. And for sixty minutes or ninety or a hundred-and-twenty I think of nothing except,

I am here.

Here.

Here I am.

Speak to us of Beauty

I've been opening Kahlil Gibran's _The Prophet_ at random with the intention that whatever passage I open it to will answer a question my heart is seeking. My own version of tarot maybe.

Here is where the book fell tonight.

.

And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.
And he answered:
Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?

The aggrieved and the injured say, 'Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us.'
And the passionate say, 'Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.'

The tired and weary say, 'Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.'
But the restless say, 'We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.'

At night the watchmen of the city say, 'Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.'
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, 'We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.'

In winter say the snow-bound, 'She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.'
And in the summer heat the reapers say, 'We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.'
All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

Home&Wondering

Having a travel blog was fun, and I'm lucky to have had those experiences, but there is something to say about home.
It has been a long few weeks here with me, and I realize I'm doing a terrible job of maintaining this blog, but mostly I am happy, and that's an important thing for me.

Tonight I just want to ruminate on love a bit more, because honestly... it's on my mind a lot.

I am trying to stay positive, honestly. And I am happy, really. Every day I am happy for at least a minute and usually more.  It is not hard to keep smiling and to put a smile on my face--a real one where my eyes squint and wrinkles appear.

But I do have to acknowledge how much time I spend thinking about love. And whether or not I was ever really in it. And whether or not I'll find it again.

I want to be in love again. Or for the first time maybe.  I do. but I also question if I know how to give myself to a person. I wonder if companionship is really the end-all-be-all. Is that all that I'm looking for?  And what is it about the idea of being "in love"that offers me more than I feel like my friendships can? Or what is it that I am missing from myself that I feel like I need to seek from someone else? Is it sex? Is it physical&mental intimacy?

I miss holding hands.
And I miss kissing.
And I miss being able to lean over in the store and put my head on someone's shoulder if I'm getting sleepy or just want to feel that connection of my warm body to theirs. And then they would put their hand on the back of my neck
and I would feel safe.
I miss waking up next to somebody, and I miss falling asleep with my feet tangled between their shins.
And I miss smiling at someone and having them now exactly what that smile means.
I miss talking on the phone
and I miss saying I love you when I meant it at least sometimes. When the fullness of those words came from the fullness inside my soul.

But, again, do all those things add up to love?
And, if they do, do they add up to a love that is greater than the feeling I have of being able to live for myself? And learning to love myself?
Of being able to enjoy my rituals of drinking tea
or journaling
or writing poetry
or going to yoga
or sleeping in
and not having to worry about the time those things take and how the cut into my time with someone else.
I like being alone
and being able to decorate my room and my space without concerning myself with the tastes of someone else and whether they appreciate nudes as much as I do.
I like being able to eat refried beans cold straight out of the can
and not do laundry for weeks
and not shave my legs or shower
if I don't want to.
I like being able to enjoy a bar of chocolate or a chocolate cake and not worry about being judged or where those calories are going to sit when I am undressed&naked, sweaty and rolling my hips in intimacy&ecstasy.

I like so many things about being alone,
but I wonder if those things add up to outweigh the weight of being in love.
What is it to be in love?

Paris, In One Fell Swoop.

Paris casts a spell on anyone with an artistic heart, I think. To me, it's perfect. I idealize it. It was my third trip and I want more.

Maybe part of it is that the city caught me up in its endless neighborhoods and histories and museums, and kept me spinning so that after four days, I was left with only vague memories and an impression of falling in love with the places my footsteps fell.  I'm happy that I take a lot of pictures, because without them, I find myself questioning if I was really there at all. 

It was raining until our last day, but even that helped it feel more like Paris, the fabled city of lights and dreams. Ian and I are lucky that we kind of grew up outside so we didn't mind the weather, and I'm lucky that I somehow associate umbrellas with being cultured and romantic. I love that when you walk into any shop or restaurant in Paris, it's polite and expected to leave your umbrella in a stand by the door. And I love that the French pace of life is such that, when the clouds break, even Parisians with umbrellas simply stop under the closest doorway or awning and simply wait out the storm. In France, the moment you arrive is exactly when you should have gotten there.

This trip we focused on museums and macaroons mostly, and spent several hours one morning wandering the Père Lachaise Cemetary to see the graves of Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Edith Piaf, and Jim Morrison. We staged mini-memorial services: we played Piaf's 'La Vie en Rose' and The Doors 'Hello, I Love You,' by their respective graves; we read Stein's 'Sacred Emily' next to where she is buried with her lover; and we stood next to Oscar Wilde's granite tomb and recited as many of his cynical quotes as we could think of.

We went to the Museé de l'Orangerie and Museé Marmottan and saw countless Impressionist masterpieces by Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, and Picasso, and I fell in love with the work of Marie Laurencin, a woman I can't believe I haven't heard of before.

(I wish our museums looked like this)

(I know. I'm sure you all would rather see a picture of an entire Monet, but instead just marvel at his brush-strokes and layers)

We avoided the metro as much as we could and wandered through miles&miles of cobblestones instead. That meant we got the see the vineyard that grows on the hill behind the Sacré Cœur, and we somehow stumbled upon the crêperie I ate at four years ago with my ex-fiancé.

In Bastille, we almost got swept up in a celebration of the Paris rugby team (complete with riot police), and Ian found a shop that had four bottles of limited-supply Belgium-monk-brewed beer (he bought them all for 13,90€ each). On our last evening, we sat in front of Notre Dame eating Pierre Hermè macarons before we went in to hear the opening hymns of evening mass being sung to the stained-glass windows. 

It was all beautiful, and it was all a little sad. It's impossible to deny the romance of Paris, but sometimes I wish I could. 

Gent, Postage-Stamp Sized//Postcard Beautiful.

Gent was the perfect town for a pause between the hustle&bustle of Amsterdam and Paris. It's a barely-there medieval village, strategically built so that its canals worked as moats for the castle.

There is a huge student population in Gent; and they have a fantastic modern art&design museum ('Fantastic' is totally word-of-mouth. I didn't hear about it until the day we were leaving and that's a definite bummer). Anyway because of all this young hipness, the buildings are old, but the residents have learned to make that a simple backdrop for the modern interior design they clearly appreciate.

We fit in perfectly as 20-somethings meandering around in the afternoon sunshine, soaking up what was apparently the only two days of Spring in months of almost-constant rain. In the evenings, twilight lasted until midnight, and so we joined the groups of people dangling their feet over the water and sipping wine out of plastic cups. 

The only touristy thing we did (besides take 100000 photos of windows&doors) was to climb the old watchtower, running up 256 steps to test our Colorado lungs at sea level. We had the place mostly to ourselves, and we stood on the observation deck and commented how the red brick roofs reminded us both of Boulder. We noticed the stairs climbed higher, so we followed them up to a locked gate. Never much into 'rules,' we simply climbed over&through the gate. We made it to the top of the stairs and onto the roof, just in time to watch the 4 o'clock bells chiming in front of us--the only other audience member was a gold weathervane dragon. Definitely weren't supposed to be up there but, hey, no one was there to tell us no. :)

Our hotel was fabulous and adorable, run by the cutest girl ever in the world who asked me where she could buy my Vera Bradley duffle bag (so of course I loved her instantly). We wasted a lot of hours making conversation with strangers&eating&drinking too much at the Irish pub downstairs, where the entire staff was transplanted from the Emerald Isles. There were 40 types of Irish whiskeys on the menu, and we sampled more than a few on bartender recommendations.

I can't say we did too much more than that in Gent. But we were happy there. We walked circles around the city. We explored. We slept in. We went shopping. I ate chocolate (I'm getting visibly plumper every day!) I'd like to go back some day. Until then, here's some of those 100000 photos I mentioned.

Amsterdam, Bits&Pieces. 3

Caaaaaaaaats! I'm officially an international cat lady! I get a badge and everything! 

 Plaster molds of real-life men of the Nias Islands in 1910. Only one man is vaguely smiling, and as an installation, they all seem to take on the anonymity of the Chinese terra-cotta army.

 Baby-sized bikes!

 Public playground. Yes, that is a giant rope climbing gym AND a metal trampoline built into the ground. Guess who thinks kids are only made better for getting hurt? Me AND the Dutch!

 People more concerned with taking pictures of Rembrandt's "The Nightwatch," than actually looking at the thing. ;) 

More house than houseboat.

Amsterdam, Bits&Pieces. 2

Here's some typography porn for you all. Oh, just me? Well then I'll simply try not to drool on you while I practice changing my handwriting. :)

You're not imagining. That's a whole store for billiards. 

Taking the anti-tourist photo in front of the most-photographed typography in Amsterdam. 

We asked some locals. They don't even know what this sign means. 

Amsterdam, Bits&Pieces. 1

Here's me and the scooter I bought, parked in front of my new apartment! Just kidding, but don't I look like I fit in? Thanks, Mom&Dad for the Scandinavian heritage! Thanks, hipster style for totally translating to Europe!

Here's the house I would buy in Amsterdam, if I were into that sort of thing. :)

Here's a watercolor print by Jan Sluijters I did buy, because I'm going to be a grown-up and start collecting art. It is half of my B.A. after all.

Wall of ties and killer polka-dot wall at suitsupply, a fabulous Dutch mensware shop that had Ian drooling. They're opening one in Denver! Score!

 Speaking of Denver... Someone's hometown reppin'.

&Other weird stuff on walls