Pausing Between Flights

Got a summons to report for jury duty in August but asked for a deferment and, of course, I had to report on the coldest day of the year.

On Monday, sat until I couldn't sit anymore and just as I got up to walk around, this woman did too and she started stretching. It took everything in me not to start doing yoga.

Had to report this morning at 9 and there was not a peep from the overhead system for two hours. Read a chapter of Open Heart then walked while listening to Fresh Air's With Age, Joan Rivers Learned To Say Anything: 'It Has Freed Me Totally'.

Had forgotten how much I used to love Joan Rivers. Asked for a ticket to one of her shows when I was a teenager. 

Rivers said that her parents didn't like her then joked My mother wanted to have an abortion up until I was nine.

Didn't realize that Rivers really wanted to be an actress and she took a comedy gig because at, $8 an hour, it paid better than a temp job. Fresh Air played footage from a show when Rivers got upset with an audience member and Rivers goes on to talk about how long it took to get the audience back.  I fight to the end she said about trying to entertain her audience...

Finally got called for a panel and once we were all accounted for, lunch followed. Went to this restaurant that I've never been to before and got a chickpea burger. Climbed six flights to get back to the courtroom. Haven't done significant stair climbing in a while. Let's just say that I had to pause between flights.

Chickpea Lemon & Basil Patty...Kale...

We almost made it through the Voir dire process but not quite. 

Sweat, Wobble and Fold

As sweat pooled under my chin and rolled from side to side, I realized why Neal Pollack named his book Downward Facing Death.

Okay, he didn't really give his mystery that name because of the amount of downward facing dogs done in a yoga session but that's the way I felt this morning as Gloria showed us DFD, plank and forward fold love. Whatever the reason for soreness and sluggishness I regretted my decision, based on the temperature, to wear full-length pants...

Alison told me that one of her fave teachers, Kate, would substitute for the Yoga Under the Arch series staffed by YMCA teachers so I rolled out of bed yesterday and hit the practice area at 8:58 a.m. The weather was perfect and it is stunning to lift one's arms, look up and catch sight of the Arch. Equally cool is doing downward facing dog, and getting a close-up view of blades of grass and the Mississippi River behind you.

The sun on my face during savasana was worth the trip. Did you feel that breeze? Alison asked after we finished practicing. Yeah, the breeze was just as nice as the sun.

Couldn't Resist

Bending Pages or A Few of My Favorite Things

What do Downward-Facing Death and Wild have in common? I never wanted them to end.

Downward-Facing Death (DFD) is a Kindle serial and I knew that I wanted to buy it from the moment that I saw it advertised. It's a yoga mystery written by Neal Pollack. How could I go wrong? I had already read Pollack's Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude and enjoyed it. Pollack is really good and he's funny. It was pretty cool, too, to get an email from Amazon letting me know when the next episode of the novel was available.

DFD is about a charismatic guru who is found all contorted and dead in a yoga studio. Loved this whodunit tale. And here's wisdom from Slim, a friend of the detective Matt Bolster:

"They try to warn us when we start practicing," Slim said. "Don't get attached. Don't trust your gurus. But then, before you know it, you're following your meditation teacher up to Mendocino and he's asking you to monitor his pot farm for three months while he goes on a silent retreat in Thailand..."

I tweeted at Pollack that I wanted more Matt Bolster and Lora Powell, a meditation teacher in the book and he tweeted back coming soon! Sweet...

I am usually a huge page bender but not so with Wild. I just went along for the ride and had an urge to go on some trail and hike...

I often click on recommendations that Netflix gives me and so that's how I ended up watching Kumare about a man, Vikram Gandhi, from New Jersey who pretends to be a guru. I felt discomfort as I watched Gandhi's charade and I would like to think that I would speak to him after it was all over with but I don't know...

I was so moved by Raw Faith, an amazing documentary about Marilyn Sewell.





On a final note, totally dug My 2-Year-Old Judges Books By Their Cover by Robert Bruce.

Okay, that was a preacher's final note. I also liked a recent Neal Pollack article featured in Yoga Journal -- When Your Teachers Leave.

What are you diggin' these days?

It's A Dude's World

Did I mention that I finally got an iPod Touch? I caved and got a refurbished one off of Woot.com. I've bought other refurbished items including a GPS that is almost four years and that I sometimes wish would malfunction so that I can justify getting a newer model with lifetime updates but I digressed...

I've been enjoying the iPod and now I understand why that woman fell into a water fountain while texting.

I've purchased two books so far. The first one was Stretch. I made sure that it wasn't at the library before I purchased it for the steep price of $.99 cents. Let's just say that I can be frugal at times or that I don't want to fall into the habit of buying things impulsively just because it's convenient.

I read Stretch little by little. I read it a lot and, fittingly, while I waited for yoga classes to start. I enjoyed just about every moment of this book and it was definitely laugh out loud funny.

Dude, needless to say and as suggested by the title, becomes completely immersed in yoga but is apprehensive when he starts off and especially when he's the only guy in the class that he attends.

As I sat there in my coffee-stained white T-shirt and my paint-spattered cotton shorts with the "native" Guatemalan pattern embroidered across the hem, I felt self-conscious, hairy, and overly large, an ogre invited to a debutante ball. (pg 55 of 914)

I so related to the feeling of being consumed by an activity.

Yoga had steamrolled my family life, and infiltrated my reading list. I sometimes watched yoga DVDs, instead of movies at night. Sometimes, it felt as though I had space for little else in my brain. Now it was about to take over my professional life as well. (pg 412-13)

Even though Pollack's wife refers to herself as a "yoga widow," she benefits from her husband's practice:

Regina started calling me a "stinky yoga hippie," and I couldn't really argue, especially because she meant it as a compliment. I was nicer and calmer and more supportive than I'd been since she'd known me. Yoga made me feel better, and if I felt better, the family was happier. (162)

Pollack does a twenty four yogathon, goes to Thailand to study with a teacher, does seva at a studio in order to attend free classes, goes to a festival and ends up writing articles for Yoga Journal.

While this book did make me laugh a lot, this more serious passage is one of my favorites:

I felt hints of something big in the universe that I couldn't quite grasp; the edges of my personality were beginning to soften and ease into calm and humility...(192)

Speaking of serious, saw this video about people in China who work on Apple products. :(