Furry Wombat

The cliff face of west Nihoa plunges into the water with an iron-red stain. Perhaps the red stain gives the water its shade of royal purple-blue. Not much coral here: cauliflower heads and small polyp patches on large basalt boulders that get rolled enough by passing storms to prevent larger, slower growing corals. Bright four-spot and ornamented butterflies wander through the high relief with hole-peeping blennies, pursed-lipped chubs, and square-jawed emperors.

The push and pull of waves overhead overwhelms our effort at staying still. Here, stillness is to acquiesce to the movement of the water. Of course, we push against the stillness: we have work to do. Work on hypotheses that, in the blue face of nature, are clearly oversimplified by too much time in the lab, in front of the screen. It’s all foolishness, even when the experiment works.

I made it out for a short ride yesterday morning.  Cycling on Oahu isn’t great — there is a lot of traffic and very few back roads.  But one of the nicer rides is the Tantalus/Round Top loop, which is right behind where I live.  This is the view from the top.

I could feel the ride in my practice this morning: IT bands a bit tight.  But it all worked itself out.

Off to chinatown for some vegetables!

Today we said goodbye to our kitty.

I was on the phone with H in the vet office while he held him.

Here are my boys cuddling, when Feynman was still plump.

While Owl has been in Mysore, I’ve been going to the Bollywood Film Festival.  All new movies (this year: Billu; Road, Movie; It’s a Wonderful Afterlife) — I cannot tell you why I like them so much, but I do!  And there’s an un-self-consciousness to that enjoyment that is rare for me, so I am choosing not to think about it too deeply.  I heart.  That’s all.

Practice has been interesting the last couple weeks.  Our teachers (CL and Glen) went to see one of their mentors, John Scott, over the holidays and came back reinspired.  So, they have been tweaking our alignment in interesting ways, e.g., feet a bit closer together throughout the suryas (hip-width = hip socket width).  This feels tighter at first, but then there’s more length and more upward-flying and less oozing.  And a new emphasis on counting!  I hadn’t realized that I had been sticking in an extra breath before jumping through and, sometimes, missing a breath before jumping back.  Well,  that changes everything!  (For now, it makes everything a bit harder.)  And it’s made me realize that I really don’t know the counts for the first part of second series that I’m doing.  Time to break out some books.

H took our kitty to the vet today and found out that he has a sarcoma on his kidney.  Difficult decisions to come.

Apologies for the lame photos of the whole spread — I didn’t want the food to get any colder!

The nerves were jangly this morning.  I awoke several times last night, uncomfortable, a little wired.  The usual tension in the upper back seems more extreme than usual and, somehow, connected to tightness in my IT bands.  Not sure if this was from snorkeling yesterday (training undergrads), wearing 1 1/2″ heeled sandals (not very high!?!) to a community fundraiser last night, or rebound tightness from last weekend’s big bike ride, but geesh.  And I’ve been fighting a fair amount of psychic negativity, so this morning’s practice was marked by a minor emotional fall-apart in forward bends.  Ugh.  Luckily, CL has me cutting to second after the janu sirsasanas, so somewhat fewer forward bends through which to hold it together.  The body, of course, felt better after practice and a nap.   The mind is a little better too.  Interestingly, the mind is the worst in the morning.  When my eyes open from sleep, it has just two speeds: denial or overdrive.  Difficult to find the middle path out of bed and to the yoga studio, rather than stay in bed or head immediately to the desk.

H got a grant this week.  This is great news for him (his first federal grant!), and, potentially,  a big deal for us, since he applied for it thinking that he might be able to move out here with me if he got it.  He has been loathe to come out here “empty handed” — this is a pretty crappy place for him to try to work in industry, so he’ll try to find a way to hang out at the university.  News of the grant is exciting but has also made me anxious.  While H has been safely ensconced in CA, I have been daydreaming about living in Sonoma County and raising chickens*.  But if he comes here, I’ll have to try to make a real life here.  It’s not entirely clear that here is where I want to do that.  (It’s clear that here is not H’s preference.)  And, yet, here I am.  Adrift in the middle of the Pacific, with an enviable job, geckos on my windows, and ever so slightly queasy.  At the same time, I think I would be so much happier with him here!  I get cheered up just thinking about it.  It would nice to have a real life and a work life, but I’ve never had much of a chance to do that because my sweetie and my job have always been at least 400 miles apart.  Since 1996.   Just saying that makes me want to throw up my hands and raise chickens.

*Raising chickens is my code word for dropping out and growing something.  Maybe some vegetables, maybe some chickens, maybe a kid.