Thursday, July 19, 2007

Magical Light

I had one of those wonderful post practice euphorias yesterday. It had rained all day but was just clearing as i drove home. it was about 7 to 7:30 pm and the clearing was to the west. this allowed the sun to come in at a really low angle, lighting everything up under the still dark clouds. there's something special about that particular kind of light. I remember it very well from my youth. those of you who live in places where afternoon and evening rains are a common thing will likely think nothing of it, but those of us who live in the great western desert, where brown and grey are the predominant colors of the natural landscape and where it almost never rains, tend to just stand and gape at the effect that that kind of light has. the area of vermont that i'm in is known as the green mountains. that was never truer than last night. driving home, i was just hypnotized by the vibrancy of the views. add in the post practice calm and i was just in another world. at one point, driving down a ten mile backroad to get to my main route, i looked down and saw that i was tooling along almost ten miles below the speed limit. that was the most enjoyable drive i think i've ever had. there's a school of art called plein-air, in which the artists work outdoors to capture the effect of natural light. i'd love to see if artists could capture the kind of light that i saw as the sun came in and lit up those fields and hills.

i did my second series poses last night. I was the only one doing second, everyone else was doing led first. I was somewhat anxious starting off. you never know ahead of time if this will be one of those good practices or if it will be your day to stink up the place. being an outsider and then doing a different series from everyone else, it would look extremely bad to flail in the poses. i did okay, i didn't do anything all that well, but i didn't bring shame on my teacher either. i did a lot of my usual break taking, finding spots here and there to recover my breath. i sensed that the teacher encourages her students to try to keep to a disciplined approach in their practices, not futzing about, not taking extra breaths, not making long transitions into and out of poses. she was kind enough to let me do it the way i do, lazy as it is.

while there was nothing stand out about the poses i did, i think i focused better than i might usually. somewhere along the line of her led first series class, she decided to make it a more improv type thing and shifted away from straight first series. i heard her say at one point that she was going to skip marichy B. i don't remember anything else about what they were doing until i was moving into my closing poses. then, i heard her talking them through eka pada bhekasana. that kind of woke me up and i looked over to see what was going on. i gathered she had been going thru a modified intro to second, but i didn't pick up on it until the very end. usually, with my tendency to focus externally, i would have been more attuned to what they were doing than what i was doing.

maybe that better focus and doing second series helped lead to that all too rare post-practice feeling of happiness or whatever it is. definitely the kind of thing that brings you back for more.

the boy and i head back home today. i woke up with the light. he's luxuriating in the chance to sleep in.

as they say at the end of the madeline stories: that's all there is, there isn't any more

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's good to see you writing again, J. You do so beautifully, and your perspectives often entertain and educate me.

Ed

okrgr said...

thanks ed. in truth, if all i manage to accomplish is to get someone to laugh or smile, even mentally, then i'd feel pretty good about my day.

encinitas ed? teacher training '05 ed?

Anonymous said...

Yes

Ed

Boodiba said...

I know that magical light. Gives you a sense of extreme well being.

okrgr said...

i think it's the feeling that recreational drugs are trying to replicate. for those thirty or forty minutes, driving back to my hotel in the cocoon of my rental honda minivan, all was right with the world

Boodiba said...

I know that feeling of contentment. Evening just imagining it brings it on a bit, like how walking into a coffee shop & smelling all the coffee makes you feel a little more awake & alert.

Anonymous said...

acorn, where are you? you've been visiting everyone but me. Was I really a flash in the pan? Am I no longer inspiring enough to evoke comments? ugh

Anonymous said...

acorn, it's been a month. time for you to post again. you can do it.

okrgr said...

it's empty

Anonymous said...

okay. i can see you're blowing your wad over on sooozen's blog right now anyway.

okrgr said...

i'm an excitable type when it comes to perceived unfairness. i should probably just not hit the enter button, but what would the world do without my opinion?

Anonymous said...

no apology necessary. i would do the same, i'm sure. and yeah, we need your opinion. i need it. those other folk need it too.

Anonymous said...

it's almost like we could have a private conversation over here. Do you hear an echo?