Tag: inspiration

Be a student of falling.

Life lessons that were disguised as yoga advice from classes I attended this past week (I took mental notes during vinyasa and tried to remember them accurately to share with you):

  • Think of the harmony of opposites in Eastern culture. That yin exists within the yang. And for yang to exist, there must also be yin.
  • As in yoga, stillness must exist in movement and movement lies in stillness. This is how we find truth. Be open to fluidity. Be also open to pause.
  • We have all these pre-defined images of what things should look like. What our bodies should look like in a certain pose. What relationships look like when compared to a certain “normal.” That only when we have arrived at an advanced pose, then finally we will have accomplished everything. However, true openness exists at every step of the journey to the pose. The openness exists in the deepening of awareness and breath, regardless of the pose.
  • Use props to help you- it does not mean you are weak. It is okay to have support to gain stability and assuredness.
  • You will fall. If you don’t fall, you’re not approaching the edge of what you can do. Be a student of falling.
  • Sometimes the smallest and softest actions can be the most transformative.
  • Just because a choice between many options is offered does not mean that you must change course from the path which you are already on.
  • Revel in choice, but do not be afraid to settle on the one that opens you the most.

I received a message: “I’m gonna keep visiting you so… we have a lifetime.”

And it kind of felt like this avalanche came crashing down onto my deserted heart. This realization that I’ve been treating everything in my life as temporary. To protect myself. New York City does that to you. I think in hours, days, sometimes months. Everything is finite. The light, the warmth, the space, the cold, the seasons when half a pint of blueberries costs $13, the waits for the subway, the eternal pulse of the night, the snowstorms, the leaves changing, the feeling that someone loves you. The hope that someone may want your company for longer than a few hours, for more than just your body. It is so much easier to convince yourself that it is all momentary, ephemeral.

I command it to be, so that when it ends (as it inevitably will), I’ll be prepared.

I flinch at “lifetime” or “always.”

But today. “We have a lifetime” calmed everything down. Everything felt less urgent, so still. Like it was okay to believe that someone will stand in the sun with me. And keep me company while I make jam. And that the light will linger.

“…none of us can get
far enough away from each other
and none of us can get close enough.”
– Dean Young

It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it

This morning:
A rather mild and welcome overdose of John Mayer’s more bluesy/folksy songs while eating overripe nectarines beside the window.

This afternoon:
The Head and the Heart on repeat because I need to learn more about former. “Rivers and roads, rivers until I reach you.”

This evening:
Homemade tomato jam made by the one and only Randwiches (don’t worry, I obtained the recipe) and the hope that one day I’ll grow up to be brave enough to run away to Tokyo just to make photos. Walking around in sticky sweet summer, and then voracious reading of Edward Abbey (in fact, so entranced by it that I nearly missed my subway stop and a man jumped up to hold apart the closing doors to allow me to run out).

Edward Abbey, because all I can think about after Saturday night (and morning) are words of one genre:

“wild,”
“freedom,”
“hope,”
“life,”
“earth,”
“space.”

And music, of course and always music.

There is one more unsaid word, the one that I have failed to mention as a category or theme after 15 years of writing here. Perhaps even then I knew that it would find its way into everything despite all struggles against it.

Edward Abbey, on all of the things mentioned above:
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