Yoga

I am putting together a yoga practice for my friend's office that we will play with tomorrow. I am excited - it's the second time I've gotten to practice with them and it's been a blast so far.

We'll work a lot with opening the shoulders and our focus will be on alankara. We talked a lot about this word in my yoga teacher training with Mitchel Blier, which is technically Sanskrit for ornaments, but I believe is the closest we can find as an English definition for beauty.

The thought is beauty is not doing too much or too little...just enough.

We are constantly told to give 110%, to give all that we have and then some; you know, the early bird catches the worm...always striving to reach perfection. But what is perfection? In the Tantric philosophy of yoga, reaching perfection is achieving Nirvana - a state where you cease to be.

The New York Times had this wonderful blog called "Happy Days," a series about the search for contentment, written by those striving to come to terms with the lives they lead. Its last post "Happy Endings" focused on life and death and one of my favorite excerpts from blogger Todd Mays, talked about Jorges Luis Borges' story "The Immortal" where he describes immortal beings as characters unconcerned with their lives and surroundings. I mean, why would you care if it never ends? Immortality can last a long time, but so can a life where you are pushing too hard.

Doing just enough. That is real beauty - and is hard to achieve in a world where you are either doing too much or not enough.

Finding that balance is tough. A life without limits would lose the beauty of its moments because it's no longer precious.

As May writes, "this is the paradox death imposes upon us: it grants us the possibility of a meaningful life even as it takes it away. It gives us the promise of each moment, even as it threatens to steal that moment, or at least reminds us that some time our moments will be gone. It allows each moment to insist upon itself, because there are only a limited number of them. And none of us knows how many."

Mays and I agree to think that the paradox of death is the source not of despair but instead of the limited hope that is allotted to us as human beings.

Is life a trick or a treat?....a wise yogi once asked. I like to think it's a treat with endless possibilities. You learn one thing and there are millions of new things to learn. Ahhh...it never ends.

In the meantime, here is my playlist for the class:

Jazzanova Another New Day (Stereolab Remix)
Fleetwood Mac Dreams cover (artist TBD; got it from some free CD a few years back)
Jim Sturgess & Joe Anderson: With a Little Help from My Friends
Jesse Harris: Watching the Sky
Marvin Gaye: Got to Give It Up
Siouxsie & The Banshees: Hong Kong Garden
The Postal Service: Waving From Such Great Heights
Junior Boys: Bits and Pieces
MC Solaar: La belle et le bad boy
Tracey Thorn: Get Around To It
Weezer: Island in the Sun
Wilco: Theologians
Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah

Butterfly Tattoo Tights?

Apparently, you don't have to commit to a tattoo. Check out these tights on Etsy.com. Clever, but kind of silly too...I don't have a tattoo anywhere on me, but I have a lot of friends who do. I think these are sort of poserish (sp?)...like wearing glasses when you don't need to because you think it's hip. Gag.

An Education

Over Thanksgiving weekend I saw the film An Education (screenwriter is Nick Hornby). I am a Hornby fan (High Fidelity (see memorable quotes below) and A Long Way Down are two books high on my favorites list), so I was excited to see what I believe is his first foray into film.

Here is a brief overview as well as my thoughts:

A cautionary tale of an innocent young women seduced by a smooth-talker, the main character Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a dutiful student and a passionate consumer of modern novels and French pop records. At 16 she is in a terrible hurry to grow up (who isn't at that age?)

One rainy afternoon, David (Peter Sarsgaard) shows up. A seemingly harmless 30-something fluent in a language of style and culture, David strikes up a conversation with Jenny. Before she can fully inhale her first ciggy, Jenny is swapping out her high school uniform for designer dresses, black mascara and expensive champagne....and you, the viewer, know something is abound to go wrong and are sitting waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But, as The New York Times' A.O. Scott writes, "director, Lone Scherfig, and the screenwriter, Nick Hornby, let it (the shoe) float gradually and gently to the ground. It is vital to the movie’s delicate, comic tone that intimations of the predatory, duplicitous aspects of David’s character do not emerge too suddenly. Jenny is smitten, and so, rather astonishingly, are her parents, in particular her conservative and unworldly father, who all but delivers his daughter to her seducer tied up in a bow, believing that this is an opportunity for her social advancement."

An Education is one of those films where you can see that the train wreck coming, but you can't turn away...you are both entranced and disgusted by the characters. Able to agree and disagree with the decisions Jenny is making in life, wanting to smack her parents upside the head and trying to really understand why a 30-something man would have interest in a 16 year-old-girl.

This film has received criticism for its portrayal of Jewish people (David is Jewish in the movie).
I did some digging around and found that the film is based on a true story, a memoir by the writer Lynn Barber: http://www.guardian.co.uk...In her youth, she had an affair with an older man who was Jewish. So that's "why the character had to be Jewish." Just an FYI.




High Fidelity Quotes:

Barry: [performing at the record release party] Rob, thank you for that kind introduction. We're no longer called Sonic Death Monkey. We're on the verge of becoming Kathleen Turner Overdrive, but just for tonight, we are Barry Jive and his Uptown Five.

---

Rob: How does he do it, you ask. How does
[stops, whispers]
Rob: how does an average guy like me become the number one lover-man in his particular postal district? He's grumpy, he's broke, he hangs out with the musical moron twins...
[shrugs]

---

Rob: Liking both Marvin Gaye and Art Garfunkel is like supporting both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Laura: No, it's really not, Rob. You know why? Because Marvin Gaye and Art Garfunkel make pop records.
Rob: Made. Made. Marvin Gaye is dead. His father shot him.

---

Rob: Should I bolt every time I get that feeling in my gut when I meet someone new? Well, I've been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.

---

Laura: I'm too tired not to be with you.
Rob: What, so if you had a bit more energy we'd stay split up, but things being as they are, with you being wiped out and all, you want to get back together? Is that it?
Laura: Yeah.

---

Laura: Listen, Rob, would you have sex with me? Because I want to feel something else than this. It either that, or I go home and put my hand in the fire. Unless you want to stub cigarettes out on my arm.
Rob: No. I only have a few left, I've been saving them for later.
Laura: Right. It'll have to be sex, then.
Rob: Right. Right.

---

---

Rob: I can't fire them. I hired these guys for three days a week and they just started showing up every day. That was four years ago.

---

[first lines]
Rob: What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

---

---

Rob: Sometimes I got so bored of trying to touch her breast that I would try to touch her between her legs. It was like trying to borrow a dollar, getting turned down, and asking for 50 grand instead.

---

Barry: Holy shite. What the fuck is that?
Dick: It's the new Belle and Sebastian...
Rob: It's a record we've been listening to and enjoying, Barry.
Barry: Well, that's unfortunate, because it sucks ass.

Puppies Dressed as Thanksgiving Dinner -The Tonight Show with Conan

Puppies Dressed as Thanksgiving Dinner -The Tonight Show with Conan

Wishful Thinking

Hello! I've toyed with the idea of starting a blog for several years, but I couldn't get past the notion that what I have to say may not be all that important. I got really stuck on the "who cares" notion, which happens a lot (I think) when you work in communications. But, I care - and if it isn't important to someone else, so what?...this is a concept I have struggled with for years. So here I am - taking a leap into the unknown. I am excited to document my thoughts, places that interest me, people who may annoy me, musings on yoga and in general, things that come across my desk on a daily basis.

Cheers! Agatha

P.S. I selected the name of my blog - Wishful Thinking - because I like the Wilco song and I've been known to more than once rely on wishful thinking instead of looking at the facts...but hey, what would we be without it?