asanas sin gafas.

so i went to yoga with my mom this evening, at a community center on the lower east side/alphabet city. it's really only the second time i've ever gone to a yoga class, and like the few other remotely athletic activities in which i've deigned to partake during my life thus far, i tend to vaguely dread it on my way there, but once i'm actually doing it, i'm glad i got off my ass and did it.

it was only 7 bucks for a two hour practice. the pace was really slow (by the end i was almost falling asleep in the resting pose) but this was perfect for me as i pretty much have no idea what i'm doing, and i had to take off my glasses and i don't wear contacts, so i really needed that extra time to figure out what was going on in each pose. at one point the instructor said, "if your vision gets a little blurred while doing this pose, that's normal." well, that was a relief.

i took off my glasses before even entering the room so i had no clue what the teacher or anyone else really looked like. the instructor was much hotter when i couldn't see him that well. just saying. some things are like that; they look better out of the corner of your eye, and once you focus on them too much they start to suck. (i suppose that's not a very positive, post-yoga view of the world. whaddya gonna do about it?)

(as an aside, i am fully aware that i am way behind on this yoga thing and that all the kids are doing it. i mean, any activity where you can hang about in pajamas and fart in public is going to develop a following, right? these days you can buy yoga mats at the supermarket and yoga bags at the bookstore and yoga pants made by bambu. indeed, the company that makes rolling papers also sells comfy yoga pants bearing their logo. i found that rather weird, until i took off my glasses and turned my head a little to the side so i could only see it in my peripheral vision. then it just started to seem normal.)

during the meditation bit towards the end, when i closed my eyes and focused "on a point between [my] eyebrows and on [my] heart," my eyes suddenly filled with tears. i'm not sure why. i think my heart and i really need to have a sit-down.

at the end of the session the yogi said that with more and more practice, "we can become able to sit for as long as we want." how peculiar to think of sitting as such an achievement, but it really is. the hardest part of that stuff, for me, is the breathing and the sitting still -- two things i theoretically mastered as an infant, but then i somehow forgot how to do them correctly... now i really have to focus to get them right. in time, maybe they'll become second nature... again.

walking back to the train, we saw a black cat fall out of a window and land on the sidewalk, on one of those metal hatches. at first he just looked like a bag of trash, a heavy bag of trash that thudded when someone carelessly threw it out of the window... but then a tail and a leg twitched slightly, and went still. people stopped, people gathered; my mom and i crossed the street to get away. hours later, i still can't stop thinking about that poor kitty's last plummet: the rattle and bang of his body on the metal, his contorted final position, the small crowd that surrounded him but kept their distance... the thought of someone coming up the block, someone who loves him, and seeing him lying there... or going up to the apartment and calling to him when he doesn't appear at the door... the panic, the grief, the guilt for not closing the window... if only it had happened five minutes later, if only we'd taken 7th street instead of 6th... i would have missed the sad scene entirely.

i'm aware that there is pain in the world, but i'd much prefer not to witness too much of it. or at least be able to take off my glasses first, so as not to stare it full in the face.

(...so i'm a coward. whaddya gonna do about it?)

the long languid arm of the law.

so i'm on the roof of the building the other day... re-reading a battered old rex stout mystery, hoping the door doesn't slam shut and lock me out since i'm not allowed to be up there in the first place. and yes, i am clad only in a bikini, because although i know the sun is going to give me cancer and wrinkles i still feel as if the summer has been a waste if my boobs aren't framed by pale triangles by the end of the season.

...so anyway there're these two cops on the roof of the projects across the street... with binoculars. they're a number of stories higher than i am (and you know, we all need to look up more); i wouldn't even have noticed them if one hadn't been laughing so loudly. but now they are both laughing, at something going on down on the street several blocks away (judging from the angle at which cop #1 is holding the binoculars). i imagine the fate of whoever just got busted for whatever and i feel sympathy for the perpetrator. no doubt he was just trying to flip some beat weed to an unsuspecting consumer. or maybe it was more innocent; maybe the kids had had enough of the heat wave and opened up a fire hydrant to create a refreshing street sprinkler.

the next time i look up, the cop who had possession of the binoculars is handing them to the other cop, and now they are checking me out. i look up and wave, slowly, and they both wave back, eagerly. i suppose they wanted me to flash them...? sorry, guys.

meanwhile, several floors below the birdwatchers in blue, a backpack dangles mysteriously out of a window. what could be in the backpack? lots of drugs, no doubt. a pretty clever contingency plan, i must say -- if there's a raid, just let the evidence drop. you might even be able to retrieve it later! certainly more efficient than trying to flush it.

i wonder what the pigs were looking for, up there on the roof with their binoculars...? and all the while there was contraband several stories under their very noses.

...just thought you might like to know where some of your tax dollars are going.