Yoga Six

Hi Friends,

This month I am taking my first yoga classes at a studio at Yoga Six-- one of the studios Nick got me a gift certificate for! I had always imagined that classes would be more stressful for me than doing yoga to videos by myself: I did not like the idea of a studio full of mirrors and of other people around to see me flop around and pant, which I thought would be further exacerbated by the heated rooms. But I have been pleasantly disillusioned! Doing yoga with a group actually helps to empower me! I am inspired and even comforted by the group energy, and I feel relaxed in the heat and do just fine. My recurring thought "I am so stressed out!" has been replaced by "I am so stretched out!" lol. It really feels wonderful. I have to add, though, that my introduction to yoga was through YouTube videos, and my favorite video-- Jillian Michaels' "Yoga Meltdown"-- is really excellent! It was a solid foundation for the Power Yoga classes I am taking now, and very similar. 

I have also been writing quite a lot this week. It has turned out to be mostly journaling, a mediocre children's story, a scene comparing traffic and El sounds to ocean sounds... weird stuff, haha. I have been writing less over the past few days because Nick and I just broke up. But yoga is helping of course, and I will get back on track. 

Today I read a bunch of great stories from an anthology of short stories and snippets called Short, and some hilariously terrible (and therefore encouraging) stories by published authors called Drivel. I always love hilariously bad literature, Pinterest fails, "unnecessary quotation marks," and other art humor. =) 

Here is one of my favorite poems from Short, by Baudelaire:

Get Drunk

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On  wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"

Thanks for reading! Namaste! And namascray (the crazy in me sees and honors the crazy in you).

Kaeli