yoga-induced stream of consciousness

the scene: yoga this evening. the room lit by fairy lights, the faint smell of sweat and jasmine in the air. mats being spread out. everyone silent, not even a murmur between friends. deep breaths and sighs as everyone settles down on their yoga mats. all of us in our own heads and trying to settle down into our own bodies. it’s not an easy transition. our teacher comes in. her calming presence quietly fills the room and our minds quiet. or at least mine does and i sense that the energy in the room settles down, so the others’ minds must go quiet as well. the stresses of the day wash away.

it’s yin yoga, so we push gently into long stretches, held for what can seem like ages at times and like not nearly enough time on other occasions. my mind leaves the lists and the counting and strangely flits to an apartment in chicago. where did that come from? it’s not even an apartment i lived in, only one i once looked at with a realtor on a whirlwind day of looking of 18 properties. where did that come from? it involved a kitchen island and what i would now call a hyggeligt atmosphere, tho’ i had no idea of that word then. there are seemingly no emotions tied to it, it’s just a random memory, popped into my head. and a remembered feeling…the green of many plants, the coziness of the kitchen, white-framed glass doors. why was it again we didn’t go for that one 20 years ago? i don’t remember that anymore now. and why did it come up? i think i could find it again, there in hyde park. i wonder who lives there now and if they changed it? does it still feel the way it felt then? does it somehow know i had a visual memory of it in yoga class tonight, 20 years and an ocean away?

then we change positions and someone farther down the room farts loudly. thankfully, not me. no one giggles, tho’ i want to. danes are polite like that. yoga can be strenuous and the body wants what the body wants. it’s natural.

home to my little weekday apartment. spinach for dinner. i could (and sometimes do) eat that every day. i revel in the quiet. listening to podcasts – britney luce’s sampler episode this week – cheat codes – is inspiring. i send it to a friend and mark it saved on my phone to listen to it again. it makes me want to get off my ass and make that podcast i’ve been talking about for a year now. what is stopping me? and then jonathan goldstein’s new heavyweight podcast feels poignant and touching beyond what i want in this moment, so i turn it off and put on the spotify playlist i discovered in a restaurant in klaipeda. it’s called freedom dub and you should go follow it. it’s great, loungey remixes of all the songs you know. in the best way. perfect to write to.

and it’s been far too long since i let the perfect conditions for writing happen. it’s nice to be back.

more mundane musings on pain

I would like to be able to say that i've developed a sophisticated and erudite philosophy of pain over the course of recent weeks, but i fear that the deepest thought i have about it is that it sucks. i do, however, have a new appreciation for how involved our backs are in virtually everything we do. tying our shoes, putting on socks, bending down to fill the cat food, coughing, sneezing, turning over, walking, sitting, standing, just riding in a car, let alone driving it. the back is playing a constant and key role in ways you do not realize until it cannot fulfill that role without hurting like hell. but i am on the mend now - the nerve pain is gone, the surgery pain is fading fast and i'm going back to work this week - at least part-time.

....insert three days here....

it's now several days later...i wrote the paragraph above on sunday and then never got a chance to sit down again and finish. i've been at work three days now and it's been great. i actually forgot all about my pain meds yesterday until late afternoon, so the healing is headed in the right direction. i may have overdone it a bit and i've been low on energy today, but i'm starting to sleep through the nights without waking around 3 when my pain meds wear off. and all of that is great progress.

all this play-by-play of my health, i know it's boring, but since this blog is also where i store my memory, it's more for my own sake than for all of you (sorry about that). this has been one long haul, even tho' it's only been about 6 weeks or so since it began. from what i hear from many people who have had back troubles (and there are surprisingly many), i'm lucky to have gotten it taken care of so quickly. for some reason, they often make people wait months and months in dire pain, thinking it will get better on its own. i don't know why, but they didn't think that with my pain. thank odin for that.

and i do promise to get back to writing about more fun things in the near future...like a little trip i'll be taking to amsterdam on monday. which is really a minicruise to newcastle and back to amsterdam. i'm even taking my trusty camera teenager assistant to carry all of my equipment. it's good to be feeling semi-human and functional again. 

* * *

i have an overwhelming desire to visit chernobyl. none of the other intensely polluted destinations in andrew blackwell's visit sunny chernobyl have the same affect on me.

* * *

the fascinating story of how one hundred years of solitude came to be published.

* * *

speaking of beautiful literature, 

here is a collection of beautiful quotes.

buzzfeed rocks lists.

* * *

vintage images of the soviet space dogs.
i'm loving atlas obscura.

life lessons

how to be a bitch:

1. float into the room, wafting expensive perfume and dramatically flounce down your easel and art supplies.
2. immediately pounce sarcastically on a small grammar mistake (the equivalent of a/an) made by a non-native speaker of your minor language.
3. hold onto that grammar mistake like a nasty little growling drop-kick dog with an organic designer artisan dog biscuit, pointedly bringing it up again half an hour later.
4. when the person who made the mistake (and who is tired from being up half the night watching the lunar eclipse and on top of it, in the throes of PMS) doesn't laugh, sarcastically ask if she's "too delicate to take a little teasing."
5. ask as well, "do you have trouble with the full moon?" in some knowing way that just seems weird.
6. refer to your husband as your consort (as if you're the queen). 
7. disparage the large, successful international company that has put your podunk little nothing town on the map, complaining about the tourists they attract and how the town is filled with their offices, theme park, school and museums and worst of all their foreigners (gasp!). (not to mention their airport, and the public sculpture they've provided...)
8. don't be able to take it when the absurdity of complaining about that is pointed out with a genuine out loud laugh.
9. deny that you said anything disparaging about said company and fluff up your feathers, preening about how your consort was instrumental in it all, including the airport.
10. launch into some insider story about the airport using a bunch of obscure acronyms and referring to your consort's private plane.
11. get in one last snide shot at the grammar while also disparaging the non-native speaker's husband (who is clearly helpless if he hasn't managed to eat dinner by himself) and whom you have never met. 
12. appear as a character in my novel. and wish to hell you'd been nicer.

* the g&t photo is because i needed one after that encounter.

own your shit

so, yesterday i deleted the facebook app from my phone. it feels quite momentous to do so. and more than a little bit liberating. now those moments when i'm waiting for sabin's train to come or for my turn at the bakery, i can just be with myself, in my own thoughts. i don't have to entertain myself with the inanities of the latest gizmodo or nytimes share or who has just had a coffee with pretty latte art. and i didn't take the drastic step of leaving facebook altogether (baby steps), i just now have to look at it via my computer instead of on my phone all the time. i left it on the iPad, because i've got a wifi iPad and use it more like a laptop in the evenings, so it wasn't such a dominant time thief there. 

there are things i like on facebook and i would miss those. the core group of friends around the world who i interact with the most. updates from the guardian and the nytimes. and the oatmeal and his crazy exploding kittens kickstarter, which just blew all previous kickstarters out of the water. and elizabeth gilbert. she of eat, pray, love fame. i honestly enjoy her feel-good posts. they often feel like she looked into my mind and said, "hmm, this is precisely what julie needs today." like on wednesday when she shared a post about owning your shit. 

she says, "You guys, for serious, it's very important that you learn how to own your shit. At some point in your life, you really have to get honest about the weirdest and most damaged and most broken parts of your existence, and take responsibility for it all...lovingly, but unblinkingly. ... That doesn't mean abusing yourself: it just means taking accountability. Own your shit with love and perspective and self-compassion...but definitely own it."

while we may not control everything that happens to us, we do (and more importantly, can) control our reactions. i haven't done a very good job of that this week and spent a good couple of days completely paralyzed by sheer terror and what feels like the unfairness of my situation. i let it control me and i wasted quite a lot of time and much more energy than i'd like to think about. i was also a complete bearcat to my family and impossible to be around. but, it helped me a lot to just own it. to own that i felt miserable and afraid and anxious and powerless and that i hated all of those feelings and that they were getting in the way of me being able to do something. anything at all. i gave myself permission to feel the way i felt instead of berating myself for being unable to get all of the things done that i "should" have been doing. and it helped, even if it was a bit of a fleeting feeling in that moment. owning your shit is a full time job and it takes a lot of strength. and for me, having that strength isn't a consistent thing - sometimes i'm weak and sometimes i'm strong. but that's part of my shit and i intend to concentrate on owning it.

* * *

gary shteyngart spent a week at the four seasons watching russian state-owned television.

and it was quite amusing.

tho' i'm glad it wasn't me.

and i wonder how different it really was from watching fox "news..."

* * *

i thought this article was very interesting and thought-provoking.
it seems we call for a muslim enlightenment every time there's a new tragedy.
but maybe we no longer really understand enlightenment ourselves.
or modernism.

and maybe what's really needed (tho' that's not mentioned in the article)
is for the sensible, moderate muslims (which are surely the vast majority)
to say that enough is enough.

own that shit.

the waiting is almost over

i wanted to report that i have what i call my sunday evening feeling. it's that feeling brought on by knowing that the laundry is done and put away, the dishwasher is going, the stalls are mucked out and all the animals are fed, you're bathed and ready to read a nice relaxing book before bed and you're completely ready to face the week ahead. and while all of those things are true, i don't have the serenity of the sunday evening feeling at all. because i'm just way too excited to start my new job tomorrow! i feel a bit like a child trying to get to sleep on christmas eve, lying wide-eyed in the dark, imagining christmas morning. hurry up already tomorrow!

* * *

reading this will make you want to hop the next plane to istanbul.

monday musings

i could tell a tale of a greedy and righteous troglodyte (is there anything worse?), but i don't want my monday ruined in that way. suffice it to say that i need to find another way to deal with this person. fantasies of gunning it when i see him crossing the street are becoming slightly too vivid in my mind at this point, so i'd best not spend much time behind the wheel today.

~ * ~

as you can see from my new banner, we had a good weekend at our riding club horse show.

~ * ~

isn't it sad that a person who never gives others room to do what they have promised, but stands over them and checks up on them incessantly will never find out if they can be trusted to do what they say they will? and ironic that they say they'll stop doing that as soon as people prove they will do as they promised. and pathetic that they can't see the logic.

but i promised not to dwell on the troglodyte anymore today. 

~ * ~

they promise rain all week. so a typical danish autumn is upon us. it makes my thoughts turn to candles and baskets of yarn. i've even lined up a knitting teacher, so this year, i'm going to get serious about actually using some of that yarn. tho' molly did just just singe off some of her whiskers jumping up on the shelf by my desk, so candles can be dangerous.

~ * ~

on friday at school, sabin and her friend (who are in the sixth grade) were on their way to class and some tough little fourth graders, in what is a rather confusingly-explained incident, threw a chair at them. they were apparently bitter over some altercations last year when they were in fifth and third grade respectively, tho' that part of the story is also a bit unclear. the chair hit sabin's hand and it has become steadily more swollen and sore over the weekend and we're going to have the doctor have a look at it today. i did say she had to explain to the doctor herself that she was beaten up by a fourth grader.

i asked her how she responded and she said that they went and let a teacher know it had happened. so in essence, they told on the little shits. some part of me wishes she'd thrown the chair back at them or at least grabbed them by the scruff of their necks and roughed them up a bit. but on the other hand, i'm also charmed by her utter faith in the authority figures at her school. we'll see what happens next.

~ * ~

i wonder if my parents ever received a communication with my sixth grade teacher that was signed, "hugs," mrs. b. looking back at the battle-axe of a soul-scarring sixth grade teacher i had, i'm thinking not.

i do remember that my dad once stamped one of my papers with a little "horse shit" stamp we had in the drawer at home and asked my second grade teacher whether she shouldn't be slightly more encouraging than that to small children. she practically died of mortification while my dad laughed. i thought it was pretty funny too. probably not entirely fair of dad what with him being on the schoolboard and all. poor mrs. luze.

~ * ~

i sent my absentee ballot today. and yes, i voted for the good guys.

~ * ~

i just reread the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society by mary ann shaffer and annie barrows. i gave it only 3 stars on goodreads the first time around and i actually wonder why. i was utterly delighted by it this time and feel a bit sad to be finished with it. i'm already missing those friends within the covers of the book. i do think you need to a read a book at the right time. i could vaguely remember reading it before, but i obviously didn't absorb it in the same way (that often happens, i think it's a product of the speed at which i read) as i did this time. i'll have to go in and update that rating.

here are a few gems:

"men are more interesting in books than they are in real life."

"reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books."

"i think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time."

~ * ~

and on that note, i'll wish you all a happy monday.

tranströmer poems

it's nearly time again for the nobel prize for literature. here are some gems from last year's winner, tomas tranströmer (best brush up on your swedish), while we wait:

Hör suset av regn.
Jag viskar en hemlighet
för att nå in dit.

Scen på perrongen.

Vilken egendomlig ro -

den inre rösten.

Askfärgad tystnad.
Den blå jätten går forbi.
Kall bris från havet.

on how we consume music today

there's suddenly a lot of swirl in the interwebs about illegal downloads. here in denmark, the government has just proposed the very daring step of "dialogue" about it, rather than laws and punishments (quite an odd move for them, as they like to legislate the hell out of everything). they're taking a hit in the press for that. but i also just read this, a response to a young intern from NPR's all songs considered that recently admitted on the NPR blog that she had 11,000 songs in her library but had only ever bought 15 CDs in her life (this is not to say that most of those songs were illegal downloads, she goes on to say).

as someone who has plugged my iPod into someone else's iTunes library and downloaded to my heart's content as well as ripping CDs from the library into my iTunes library, i'm not really one to talk, but i have to say that i find the debate to be quite a lot of whining all around - from both musicians and record companies. while i'm in favor of people being paid for their creativity, what's needed is a radical rethink of the way we consume music. apple has, in many ways, already done that for us, as we've got the devices and despite all of the frustrations and misgivings i have about iTunes, they have actually made it quite easy for us to legally obtain the song we want, at the moment we want it.

i know that the iPod has radically changed my own CD-buying habits. i used to buy 1-2 CDs every week - up until about 2006. now i can't remember the last time i bought one. and i'm sure that both musicians and record companies are legitimately feeling the pinch, as i'm not unique. and perhaps there's a bit of darwinism at play here as well - survival of the fittest. the trichordist piece says that there at 25% fewer professional musicians than there were in 2000. i'm not convinced this is a bad thing and when i listen to the radio, i find myself wishing the number were even higher, as there's still a whole lot of bad music (especially pop music) being made.

i actually think the danish government might not be so far off in their challenge to dialogue - what's needed is a conversation around this topic that results in seriously rethinking the way musicians provide music and the way we consume it. and when they have the conversation, they need to talk to children, because the way they're already consuming music points to the future. despite having iMac, iPad and iPhone, sabin doesn't ask to buy music. she listens on spotify (premium is part of our mobile phone package) or she finds the music she wants to hear on youtube and plays it on her computer in the background while she edits a video or builds a SIMS family.

services like spotify are changing the game and complaints that their payment model isn't good for artists sound like a whole lot of whining to me. my inner capitalist says that the prices will land on what the market will bear - so if musicians want different prices, they'd better change their tune. or come up with a viable alternative. i seriously don't believe that all these creative people can't come up with a creative solution.

living in the now or how she begins to show symptoms of the mad cow

the grass is insanely green from all of the rain (and that i dialed up the vibrancy one notch in my camera).
nikon rocks the color.
i think it's also somehow the special light this time of year, even on grey days.
and again i fear the photo has nothing to do with the actual post.

i'm a very immediate person.

~ when the sun is shining, i feel as if it will shine forever.

~ when it's cloudy and rainy, i'm quite convinced it will never stop.

~ when it's grey and dreary, i have a hard time remembering the sun. not only the object, but the actual word.

~ during the winter, i think the light will never return.

~ as i write this, near midsummer, with the orange of sunset still in the sky at 11:40 p.m., that darkness is scarcely a dim memory (tho' i can conjure a vague feeling of dread).

~ i make up recipes all the time, but if i don't write them down, i don't remember them. and people say, "why don't you make those fabulous fried elderflowers again this year?" or "when are you going to make us some more of that butter beer?" and i say, "huh?" and frantically try to remember when i would have made those and how i went about it.

~ i read all the time, but don't retain that much (perhaps i read too fast). the upside is it makes rereading more fun.

~ same with all those episodes of british crime shows...i can watch them again and again because i never remember who did it (that's only occasionally because i fell asleep before the end).

~ i almost always use photos in my blog posts that i took that day. only when i stroll down memory lane do i use an older shot.

it's quite trendy to live in the now and i guess that's what this is.

or maybe my memory's just fading. or i've got a touch of the mad cow, just like denny crane.