Yogis Are Not Into Comfort

Gloria and I were chatting about climbing shoes when I brought up the Brandi story. Once, Brandi helped someone test out climbing shoes and the guy said that they weren't comfortable. Cool as a cucumber, Brandi said Rock climbers are not into comfort...

We started yoga practice in child's pose to bring our chakras to the earth as Gloria said. It was kind of cool because I had just done a partial self-chakra connection. Little did I know, though, that I would long for the earth.

We did lots of lunges, planks and hovering while in planks and I waited eagerly for Gloria to say Lower to the earth. I don't usually find downward facing dog restful but I did today and, let's just say, I thought more than once about yoga and discomfort and the quote that says The pose begins when you want to leave it.

Through it all, I paid attention to my breathing and tried not to sacrifice the breath. I also tried to remember one of the most important asanas, a smile -- which I definitely did when Gloria got tickled in lizard pose. If you're not feeling it, she said, I have a "modification." She didn't say modification but it was something like upgrade or variation. At any rate, I felt lizard without the upgrade.

Crime and Cells...

Finally got around to reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks after hearing about it almost two years ago. Skloot, the author, is sitting in a college class trying to get credit for a biology class that she's in because she failed out of public school for non-attendance. It's during this fateful class that she learns about Henrietta Lacks but what she learns about Lacks is more of a footnote than anything else.

The blurb on the cover says a lot:

Doctors took her cells without asking. Those cells never died. They launched a medical revolution and a multi-million dollar industry. More than twenty years later, her children found out. Their lives would never be the same.

Skloot gets an introduction to the family via Roland Pattillo who was the sole African-American student of George Gey, the one who initially cultured Lacks' cells. Here's a portion of one of Pattillo's first conversations with Skloot:

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are white."
"Is it that obvious?"
"Yes," he said. "What do you know about African-Americans and science?" (50)

Good question...

I'm definitely glad that I read the book but there were many sad elements including the fact that Henrietta Lacks' cancer cells "spread like crabgrass" and "seemed unstoppable" (41)

After learning more about her mother who died at 31, Deborah Lacks decides to go to school so that she'll be better equipped to understand the information that she's been given but there's a roadblock in her way:

"...Cause there's nothin to be scared about with my mother and them cells. I don't want nothin to keep me from learning no more." But in fact there was something that would keep Deborah from learning: she didn't have enough money. Her social security check barely covered her living expenses..(301-302)

And Deborah is not the only Lacks descendant who faces financial obstacles. Her son, Sonny, has a quintuple bypass and because he has no insurance, ends up with $125,000 worth of debt which shouldn't be the case when clones of his mother's cells (HeLa) go for $167 dollars a vial...


* * *

Also read In The Woods, a Brandi recommendation -- sort of. Brandi actually recommended the sequel but I had to check out Tana French's debut book first.

About 200 pages into the book, I wondered whether or not I was diggin' it then all of a sudden, the book picked up. I think part of my ambivalence was due to my fatigue with crime novels. I was on quite the Patricia Cornwell trip for a while...

Here's one of my favorite passages from Into The Woods. It's about exercise. Are you surprised?

I sent Cassie a text saying I wasn't feeling well enough for dinner at her place; I couldn't bear the thought of all that solicitous tact. I left work just in time to get home before Heather -- she "does her Pilates" on Monday evenings -- wrote her a note saying I had a migraine and locked myself in my room. Heather tends her health with the kind of tenacious, minute dedication some women devote to flower beds or china collections, but the upside of this is that she accords other people's ailments the same awed respect as her own: she would leave me alone for the evening and keep the sound on the television down. (211)

Carrying Books

I seldom take reading material to the rock climbing gym but there was the possibility that Patti might be running behind schedule because of rush hour traffic and I'd rather read than twiddle my thumbs.

I'm so glad that I was carrying that book under my arms. Otherwise, Brandi would not have asked me what I was reading and we wouldn't have gotten into a conversation about books and she wouldn't have told me that she was reading Half Broke Horses. I don't know when the book would have fallen onto my radar because no one else has mentioned it to me.

When I finished reading the book, I turned it over, read the authors' bio and blurbs by other authors and quickly requested the author's first book, a memoir. All that to say, I really liked Half Broke Horses, a "true life novel" about the author's grandmother.

In the Author's Note, Walls says that she intended to write the book about her mother but her mother insisted that her mother was the one who had lived a remarkable life. Lily Casey Smith, Wall's grandmother, died when she was eight so a lot of of what she relays about her grandmother has been passed down to her.

However, since I don't have the words from Lily herself, and since I have also drawn on my imagination to fill in details that are hazy or missing -- and I've changed a few names to protect people's privacy -- the only honest thing to do is call the book a novel. (272)

Here's one of my favorite passages in the book. Casey Smith responds to her first husband, Ted:

"You have a mighty high opinion of yourself," I told him. "The fact is, you don't love me, and you haven't destroyed me. You don't have what it takes to do that." (82)

I also liked what Casey Smith said to her second husband after he grew weary of his wife's run-ins with different people.

"These showdowns. It's becoming a pattern."
"It would be either a pattern of me standing up for myself or a pattern of me getting pushed around." (180)

I love a woman who stands up for herself...


Downloaded or had any interesting books tucked under your arm lately?

Poser Ambitions

I had forgotten that I had a book tucked under my arm until Brandi asked me what I was reading. I showed her the cover and she almost flinched. Is it self-serving?, she wanted to know. I told her that there was a point that if I heard co-op etc. one more time, that I was going to put the book down. In addition, Dederer also dabbles in a bit of self-deprecation about being "educated, white, liberal and well-intentioned."

Brandi told me that she was reading Half Broke Horses and that it was pretty good. Poser, I said, grew on me. Brandi said she doesn't have that much patience. If a book doesn't win her over in 40 pages, she's outta there...

After the book grew on me, I settled in and enjoyed reading about Dederer, her career, family and childhood which she usually explored in five Child's Pose chapters.

Perhaps because her parents are writers, Dederer's young daughter Lucy has a way with words. After the family moves from Seattle to Colorado, Lucy has a rough day at school and tells her mom:

Thank goodness you're so big. That way I fit into your lap. (252)

I think I feel the same way that Dederer does about yoga at home.

Home practice sucked. The gestures and movements that were so thrilling in class seemed flat and dull when done at home alone. In class, tension hummed in the room as bodies moved in and out of shaped, failed, succeeded, breathed. There was a feeling that you were participating in a very slow but very real transformation. At home, the same movements became mere stretching exercises -- the boring part of PE. (261-262)

At one point, Dederer shows her friend, Lisa, the handstand that she has been working on for a quite a while and Lisa, without any hesitation, kicks up into a handstand and, later on, completely immerses herself in yoga. Dederer writes: She had turned into a human parlor trick. (150)

I can relate to Lisa (not the parlor trick part) which is why I'm on my third book about yoga. Yesterday, when I went to yoga, I, first, did my best not to look in Dana's direction until after class and, after class, she told me that she did everything to avoid my eyes during a spinal twist. Of course, the woman next to me, Dee, was funny too. She breathes heavily as if she is dispensing with loads of tension and she also finds my muttering (while trying to do a really splity pose) amusing.

This passage also rang true:

People think yoga is boring. This is one of the big raps against it. And it is, if you're not concentrating. If you fling yourself into the pose, and let your mind wander, and merely tolerate the experience, yoga is, in fact, extremely boring. But if you concentrate hard, boredom opens up and the pose becomes the most interesting thing on earth, in fact the only thing on earth. The more you practice dharana, the simpler the world gets. There's just you and the thing on which you are bending your attention. (152)

If nothing else, after yoga, I feel like my body has gone from constricted to pliable. It's even more transformative than that; I feel as if I were blown glass -- heated and twisted. More viable.

One Boulderer To Another or Overheard at the Gym, IV

Note: Most of these exchanges were overheard at the rock climbing gym.

People who rock climb are not into comfort.

Brandi while helping someone select a pair of shoes during Upper Limits' Black Friday sale.

My toes are sound asleep.

Patti's commentary on her toes which were in her new climbing shoes and weighing in at about two sizes smaller than her street shoes. Brandi, LOL, helped her select the shoes.

Marrying you is one of the smartest things that I've done...Marrying you is probably the smartest thing that I've done.

Mike to Patti

This hurts. Boy Scout who was trying to put on his rock climbing shoes.

It's supposed to hurt. Another Boy Scout

Like, I can't even get my foot in the shoe...Boy Scout

Over Here-ah? Young boy who was trying to get input from his father about where to place his foot.

Boy: I want to come down.

Father: Don't look down; just keep going.

I'm afraid of heights, a little shorty halfway up Slabtastic, a 5.6 route

His father tried to convince him to continue with his ascent.

It's okay. It's all right. Don't worry about it. You can just climb. It's okay...

A young man repeated this refrain to his friend who did not pass her belay test. He reassured her for quite a while.

Shorty (hesitant about continuing upward): I haven't been here in a while...

Mother: I'm here. I gotcha.

How do I get my fat ass off the floor?, One boulderer to another...

Boulderers will often start a route in a seated position. That's Ryan getting ready to start a route.

When You Are The Motor

You need something with a motor a man commented as I loaded my bike. I told him that my legs are the motor and when you are the motor, you certainly think about mileage differently. I bicycled for about 16.5 miles. I wanted to go for longer but the to-do list awaits.

I had more stamina than last week. Brandi, a former trainer at the YMCA, said as much one day when the weights that I was trying to lift seemed so much heavier than the last time I was in class. She said that your body is capable of different things on different days. Of course, that makes perfect sense but...

I maintained a steady pace although I got passed up by the serious bikers with their padded biking shorts and jerseys but slow and steady works for me.

It does irk me when I have to get off the bike to walk up hills or if I lose my grip when I rock climb or come up short while doing the front crawl. In due time... I was actually able to make it up one hill that I had to walk the bike up before.

Here are a few of my favorite things from today's stint on the STL Riverfront Trail.



On a side note, I took some Propel in addition to water. Propel is made by Gatorade and doesn't have high fructose corn syrup. What it does have is sucrose syrup and sucralose which made for a super sweet drink. I only drank about a fourth of it and couldn't stomach the rest.