Downward Facing Slogggg

Every time I do the forward bending poses in yoga I go nuts crying. Like someone wrested my beloved (dinosaur) child from my arms, I just start weeping.

I'm not sure why this happens, but I'd like to know. I asked the yoga teacher for advice, and she said I should probably just sit there and cry. That is my kind of yoga teacher. She was pretty empathetic about it. She said that the forward bending poses are "inward, reflective" poses.

I am beginning to wonder if I can't touch my toes because of feelings?

To further investigate this, I went to a lunchtime Alexander Technique class with Ariel Weiss, who is a teacher in Center City. It was a cool little class. Whenever I have to go to something with feelings in it, I worry that the people there will be hokey and I will have to doubt myself. But all the people there were cool. One of the other guys in the class had this amazing way of standing up. (We were learning standing up) he was so tall that when he unfolded, he looked like he was about to walk out onto a life sized risk board and take over the world.

I have never taken an Alexander Technique class, but Rat told me to, so I tried it. Ariel Weiss watched me walk around for a while and do stuff, and then she said I had a style. She said I exploded forward, and that every movement I made looked like it ended with YEAH! I found it delightful to be described.

I will probably go back until I can figure out what's between me and my toes.

Vegetarian Moroccan Stew

I made Vegetarian Moroccan Stew this week for lunch. It's pretty good, but too yellow. It needs more red aspects, like maybe a bell pepper.

Titter. Sigh.

Ugh, Walnut Street Theater. The most interesting thing that happened at you tonight is that somebody in the mezzanine threw up. Her face got all yellow, and the EMT's came.

What a really, really boring production of An Ideal Husband, which might be a boring play. It's hard to tell. I'm pretty sure that Oscar Wilde wrote edgy, biting comedies? Was this his one attempt at saccharine earnestness with no timing? Or was that the directing? I don't know.

I do know that the woman two seats over from me just has no idea how to text flirt, and that is because the woman sitting next to me had to coach her in a conversational tone on what to say throughout the first act. Judging from the messages I heard read aloud, I think he might be into her. I am not sure whom the woman next to me was texting, which made her texting more interesting. (It's engaging for an audience member when they have to put pieces of a puzzle together.)

All the lit up phones were a nice aesthetic, too, like tealights floating in a Japanese pond at night.

Or maybe like distress beacons.

(It is ideal, in the theater, that aesthetic choices such as the lighting reflect emotional states)

At first I wanted to put all my energy into making nasty judgy faces at the texting people, but then I felt conflicted because I didn't want to be seen as defending the idea that they should quietly and politely watch the play. (It's good when a theatrical experience has conflict.)

And besides, I needed something to entertain me.

Hobhipster Nation!

This morning I went to Green Line and ate a bagel and read that Grotowski book I found in the pile of books I was supposed to have read in undergrad but did not because in undergrad I already knew everything. 

I was reading with my pen (that's what I always tell my students to do) and underlining stuff that was interesting or that I might want to think about later, and sometimes putting notes in my notebook. I picked up my pen and started to write in my notebook "we have no channel for our creative force without technique." and I stopped after "creative" and before "force" because in that moment I saw myself writing "creative force" in my notebook with my coffee in West Philly and I got an ocean tug of fear that I was kind of a joke. 

"Creative force" indeed. Too bad I didn't have my nosering in and tattoos and my old timey glasses. Pfft. Enjoy your chai, hipster.

But "creative force" was the right phrase for the job in the sentence I had read. I believe, at the very least in the context of what I was reading that creative force is a thing. And I do have a nosering and old timey glasses, and I like them both and also chai. 

What is this fear of being something? And why is it so powerful that it might prevent me from doing something?

This makes me think of a conversation Braak and I were having trying to figure out why we don't like Portlandia, even though it seems like we should. The conclusion we came to is that we don't think that people who do what they enjoy and don't interfere with others are a worthy target of mockery. 

I would go further and say, a destructive force is maintained when we make a joke of pursuing what you love. 

There's one joke where we take down the pretentious, and that sometimes gets parroted as a joke where we take down the earnest. One has cultural value and the other does cultural harm. 

Why WOULDN'T we want to own bookshops with cats in them? And why wouldn't we want to be poets in trees, and why wouldn't we want to wear gothy skirts and corsets that make us feel badassed, and why wouldn't we want to eat local organic food, and why wouldn't we want to spend our Friday night taking apart an old projector? I can't think of any reason besides the fear that joke creates.

I wrote the whole thing down, and then got pretty excited about the idea of leaning into that story to abate the fear. As a fearless parody, I'd be untouchable! If I weren't afraid of being a joke of an artist or a joke of a white thirtysomething in an urban neighborhood, or a joke of a woman, I could just get right down to being those things however I please. 

Today I made this curry with a turnip. It only calls for half a turnip, though, so I didn't really know what to do with the other half of the turnip. I cut it up and put it in a salad. We'll see how that goes, they are like a sweeter kind of potato. 

The recipe is here.

Wacky List

I do not like the line in the play where the protagonist lists all the clever characters and circumstances that the playwright has concocted to befall him. (In case you missed it, folks!)

BEAUREGARD: Why are you freakin' out, man?

CLETIS: Why am I freaking out? I'll tell you why I'm freaking out! My neurotic mother who is dressed like a pig is waiting for me at an A&P in Appalacia, and I can't get there because my arranged Iranian bride has stolen my car to go to the taxidermist! That's why I'm freaking out!

I don't like it even more when the list is full of cultural reference points.

BEAUREGARD: Why are you freakin' out, man?

CLETIS: Why am I freaking out? I'll tell you why I'm freaking out! My Paris Hilton wannabe mother is waiting for me at a Hooters in Waco, and I can't get there because my match.com bride has stolen my Mini Cooper to go to NASCAR! That's why I'm freaking out!