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Quandary, clarity
Saturday morning another intense vinyasa workout (see January 14, 2010, Morning/yoga/dance) overjoyed me. Michelle guided us in constant movement from a high lunge at the top of our mats to one at the back, over and over. Then, as on Wednesday, we sank into Goddess Squat, this time with our arms striking straight up and then forward, parallel to the ground. In each of the many repetitions we opened our fists in the outward gesture and closed them as we pulled our hands, fingers up, into the torso. Vocalization increased the exertion and the pleasure: Ha! with every inward action of the arms.
The last week of 2009 into the second week of 2010 found me in an uncharacteristically indecisive place about an aspect of my life. Quandary then clarity then quandary then clarity . . . By the Wednesday evening after the first super-activating vinyasa class clarity was mine!
- January 18, 2010
- Filed under: Body and mind, Pleasure
- Comments 2
Morning/yoga/dance
I usually go to a vinyasa class on Wednesday mornings. Vinyasa is a yoga practice in which asanas, poses, flow together and often feel and look dance-like. Vinyasa combines movement and breathing, both rhythmic, and can be moderately to extremely energetic as it helps a person to develop flexibility, strength, stamina, and cardiovascular fitness. Sweat, elegance, and meditation, the latter possible even during chaturanga, which is a push-up, draw me to vinyasa classes.
Yesterday was especially vigorous and included an asana called, in English, Goddess Squat.
In the pictures below, my stance is Goddess Squat. If I were strictly in the pose, my arms would be symmetrically raised with upper arms parallel to the floor, forearms and hands facing forward, and palms open with fingers spread.
In Goddess Squat we shifted to the right and to the left, holding the squat while further increasing its intensity with dynamic arm gestures. We were dancing to a primally exciting audio of drumming and activating a lot of heat.
Our instructor, Michelle, in whose spirited honesty and vulnerability I learn to further love those qualities within myself, laughed as she promised, “We’ll be here a while!” I felt taxed, and then came a loosening of the mind, a transcendence of Oh, I’m not strong enough physically to continue, to enjoy this. I became stronger, and so did my pleasure. Felt great then and feels great now!
- January 14, 2010
- Filed under: Body and mind, Pleasure
- Comments 0
Salon
I held a salon and it was great fun! I use the word salon to describe the conversation I hosted, because it partook of elements essential to the salons of 18th-century Paris, where women of intellect and education, called salonnières, received guests and facilitated polite conversation–stimulating, fluid, focused, intelligent, and harmonious. Conversation is erotic, in contrast to small talk and chit chat. Conversation is an erotic art, by which I mean it is an art of connection.
- December 19, 2009
- Filed under: Body and mind, Pleasure
- Comments 2
Sacrifice and softness
People believe in sacrifice and define it as giving up or even destroying something that you care about or love for a greater good. Sacrifice is a severe kind of surrender, because people can only sacrifice something that they presumably would prefer not to give up: like parents, who sacrifice their sleep for the sake of their infant; like a career woman, who sacrifices her marriage for her work; or like a soldier, who sacrifices his life, period. Sacrifice is difficult and may bring altruistic pleasure but just as likely none. Sacrifice results in loss. Selfish people don’t sacrifice.
I’m not especially selfish (if selfish means operating only for one’s own benefit), but I don’t believe in sacrifice as the culture I live in defines it, and I don’t understand the attendant self-punishment or necessary suffering. I’m a strong person, but that differs from being hard, and my hardness does neither me nor anyone in my life, from intimates to strangers, any good. For me, sacrifice is a softening of blocked or inhibited feelings, of fears that have collected in the body. That way, sacrifice is pleasure, like a sigh of relief or healing tears.
Fresh threshold/geranium
I just had my two front porches painted a gorgeous red. I’d give you a photo, but the color on your computers would probably not match the creamy, dreamy richness of Benjamin Moore geranium in Low Lustre Moorgard (with a lifetime warranty!). When a friend of mine came over the other night, she noticed. She said something like, “How do you keep the porch so clean?” When I gave “new paint” as the answer, she asked me for information about the paint. That’s how great it looks and feels. Many–most?–porches in Tucson, when painted, are some version of terra cotta, and the color is often very faded, similar to the pale, muddy orange that my porches used to be. They had been painted long long ago, way before I lived here.
Every summer my father bought a bright red geranium for a planter on the back patio. Bright reds can be harsh, even in flowers. His choice was a mellow red–brilliant and comforting. Like the beauty that my front porches have become.
And depending on the time of day, geranium casts a warm pink reflection on the white walls of my home.
New color energizes the threshold. I and others enter and leave with a freshened spirit.
A simple day
Sometimes life is this simple–watering the plants, painting a gate and then the threshold of the front door, seeing things (seemingly) fall apart then come back together (all apparently of their own accord). Within less than 24 hours. With the bad mood that I tell other people I’m in, teasing myself out of it. With the underlying pleasure of taking things as they come rather than taking things to task.
Incandescence
Celebrities interest me very little, though lately I’ve been reading about the phenomenon of celebrity. Such as David Haven Blake’s Walt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity, from which the reader learns about the construction of fame in 19th-century America, and through that, facts about the foundation of today’s fame-as-the-manipulation-of-people, both the celebrity and the public. The worship of personality, the invasion of a so-called personality’s privacy, the publication of supposedly intimate details about celebrities’ lives, and the embodiment of greatness or talent in the celebrity body–nothing new. And all of it historically as now accompanied by–dependent upon?–frequent disinterest in and even ignorance of the artistic, intellectual, or other skills and talents that supposedly generated the “greatness” of the celebrity; and, more in line with the celebrity as star, skills and talents that presumably generated the celebrity’s brilliant luminosity.
At its absolute height, the star’s brightness is incandescence.
INCANDESCENCE. It describes Rita Hayworth in Gilda, which I watched again a couple weeks ago. Gilda is one of my favorite movies, and I can count them on one hand.
As a star and as an actress, Hayworth got Hollywood-ized up the wazoo. But it isn’t that she’s hot, it isn’t that she’s gorgeous. Here’s what she IS in Gilda: transporting. She transports me–deep within myself. There, and only there, I might learn to flame, glow, and sparkle mightily. She is an impetus towards radiance, and I am grateful to her self-creation in the midst of the film industry’s artifice.
Incandescence is a noun, so may seem static, but Hayworth’s incandescence within me operates as a verb. Incandescence is an idea about radiance, which is always in the making.
- November 18, 2009
- Filed under: Beauty, Body and mind, Bookshelf, art, and media, Pleasure
- Comments 3
Bettie Page Buddha
“Wouldn’t it be great to have a character party?” I asked my friends Frances and Harold. Characters being distinctively–and for the party–pleasurably unusual people. Of course, all of us were included.
Later, as Frances and I were walking to a neighborhood cafe for our weekly treat together, she suggested, “What about everyone wearing a costume?” A costume associated with a famous character. Read more
Habits
We think of everyone as having habits and we think of monks and nuns wearing them. We think of performers, whether in Shakespeare’s plays or in the circus, wearing costumes. Costumes indicate a role, or something other than what one really is, and a habit (presumably) indicates something that a person truly is, the monk and nun having chosen to serve the spirit every instant of their lives.
The habits of religious orders are distinctive. The clothing of monks and nuns declares them to be different from other workers, communities, and mini-cultures, who wear everyman and everywoman attire, like suits, or jeans and a T-shirt, or any of the wide array of casual or semi-dressy outfits that we see in the workplace and on the street. Of course, the iconic clothing of religious orders is long, flowing, and supremely simple, and that clothing is worn every day.
- November 11, 2009
- Filed under: Body and mind, My work, Pleasure
- Comments 0
Thank you
I’m so enjoying the responses to my posts. Thank you, everyone, for the following qualities that permeate what you write: enthusiasm, humor, friendliness, intelligence, introspection, close observation, curiosity, insight, and the tender honesty of vulnerability.
