open your hips, be happy

By now, everyone has heard my yoga-redemption story. Yet after it gave me the courage to get through the monotonous days (at least 1-2 practices daily), I only return to it once of twice a week and usually for no more than 20 minutes. I know, I know, the yoga purists are wagging their fingers at me. Come on, I’m a busy girl. And camel pose is hard.

But what I do love about yoga (when I do it) is that it’s a practice that makes me feel more open physically and emotionally than any other form of movement. It’s as if my whole body can breathe, being aware and proud of itself. I feel sexier. Calmer.

My body began to send distress signals when I re-entered school. My breathing was more shallow and my hip muscles ached. The breathing, of course, is a sign of anxiety, and the tight hips are a result of sitting all day.

The hips are important because they’re what allow you to move forward. Anyone who’s seen me on a bike or a hike know I like to go forward. I don’t even like reversing into a driveway.

Beyond restricting your forward momentum, some say that the hips are the seat of the emotions in yoga. I found this online:

Because we can hold years of physical and emotional tension in our hips, it’s important to know how to effectively release them … When tension from the hips is released, your whole body experiences the change. You’ll feel lighter emotionally and more fluid physically as you free stagnant energy and loosen tight musculature in your hips.

In yoga classes, I’ve seen people flat-out refuse hip openers like pigeon pose. As I’ve mentioned before with meditation, teachers have said we avoid the healing we need the most. Others say all movement begins in the mind, and when the muscles are tight, the mind simply overworks.

Either way, here’s a few faves (and a few others) that make your hips happy.

Beautiful Hemalayaa in the morning. The lunges in the sun salutations and triangle poses opens the hips. My absolute favorite, but I’ve done it so many times, I need something new. It’s like a little hokey pokey in the morning (you get to shake it all about).

Better Sex Through Yoga Vol. 1. Yes, this was a gift. Yes, I also own Striptease a la Carmen Electra. There’s no point in being shy, ladies. It’s a great practice, lots of downward facing-dog (head rush, anyone?) and hip openers I haven’t seen in other workouts. My only beef is the sound is poor quality, so I turn to it rarely. A good bet if you want yoga and a kegel-reminder wrapped into one.

When I’m particularly lazy (or sick, or hung over and my muscles need a good ringing out), I turn to the short A.M. and Stress Relief practices from The All Day Yoga Workout. Very much a beginner’s practice, using a strap and a brick. It’s healing like a bubble bath.

I just started using Yoga Bliss Hips, and the jury’s still out on this one. Not as much hip opening as you’d expect, but lots of emotion-bubbling from this form of yoga, Kundalini.

And finally, this comes from a DVD I bought and returned because Power (Vinyasa) Yoga is too fast paced for my taste. I like the breathers of yoga. I like not having to worry about my heart rate. Nonetheless, I may give this another shot, because I’ve heard good things about Tragically Hips. It’s a free, 55-minute download.

Here’s to moving forward.

getting back on the road

I learned two things when friends came to visit us in September.

1. Graduate school gives you cubicle ass.
2. I’m more tense than usual. (I think the diplomatic question was, “How’s your yoga going?” Obviously, not very well.)

Yikes. I’ll be a fat, gnarly girl with a graduate degree. My mind, of course, turned to exercise.

I don’t like to think of movement as exercise because visions of gyms come to mind. That smell of other people’s sweat. All those pectorals and cute buns. The high-end, fashion sportswear show. Sure, I like a romp on the treadmill every once in a while, but quite frankly, I’d rather nap.

I use my interest in traditional medicines to justify my lack of gym membership. In Ayurveda, this sort of strenuous exercise is detrimental to the ever-moving Vata constitution, which needs calming rather than revving up. In traditional Chinese medicine, it adds heat to an already overextended body warm with stress, caffeine and meals-on-the-go.

My interest in these philosophies stems from my belief in the mind/body/environment relationship, one that needs coddling. Yoga got me through unhappiness, walking through stress. I turn to them both again and again.

Walking

Several people I know swear by walking. I swore by walking, too, when it was my only form of transportation in a big metropolis. Exercise by accident, not design. California-going makes it harder.

After months of driving, my acupuncturist recommended I walk at least 5 minutes and as much as 45 minutes a day. I needed to get the chi moving, she said, I needed to let my work anxiety seep out. On a personal level, I needed to get away from my desk, under the trees, into the sunshine. Sometimes I thought of it as a moving meditation. Other times it was essential to my work. I’d leave my desk struggling with a lede, just to find it under the redwoods.

When I quit my job, I started to use audio walking guides by Debbie Rocker. They keep me going faster and longer. I try for at least a couple miles every few days. I know it’s not much, but consistent exercise is supposed to be better than occassional bursts of intensity.

But mostly, I’m searching for music that’ll make me gladly hoof the hills in my neighborhood. The kind of music that you dance to when you’re home alone. That makes you want to sing. From Motown to Wyclef to the Sundays. What do you listen to? What gets you out of bed in the mornings?

the great stories

“The secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen.. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic.”

—Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

ain’t no sunshine

Who says you can’t grow a garden in a dark alley?

This tomato from Czechoslovakia is putting on fruit, even as the days get shorter and the sunshine nearly disappeared last month. The climbing beans, however, may not fare so well, but they’re latching onto a fishing line trellis and flowering. They’re so beautiful, these shocks of white against the drab, gray day.

Plants never fail to amaze me, they’re biologically wired to do their thing. Climb, flower, climb, flower, die. Grow, flower, fruit, grow, flower fruit, die. The same is true of their needs, as the salad seedlings are leggy, searching for the sun. I’m not sure they’ll make it.

They’re fun to love, but I’m afraid I won’t get much in the way of produce. Next week, though, we start our biweekly produce from CSA Be Wise Ranch. Buggah, I’m happy to admit, is beginning to make peace with the vegetable kingdom and now we’ll have all these organic goodies straight from the earth.

grad girl

Whew. I have survived my first week of graduate school.

I have gone to three orientations, eight classes, and introduced myself a million times. Toward the end, I got bolder. My name is Alicia, this is my first week of graduate school, and I’m completely overwhelmed.

I feel both privileged and out of place. I realize what a gift this is, this learning, this time, these spaces to talk about books and writing. The mental space to dwell on art.

It’s an adjustment though. After having quit my job in May, I’m not used to rising at 7 a.m. and straggling in past 9 p.m. And on a broader level, I’m used to the work force where I provided a service to a company and they paid me for it. Now, as a student, I’m paying them and I’m still the one who has to prove myself. No longer do I get the twice-monthly perk of a paycheck for my efforts, that balm against disillusionment.

Now I have to wait for grades to come out once a semester. I’ll also have to undergo the solitary (and I imagine, sanity-searching) process of writing a book, which will be my thesis in three years time. The department advisor says we have to keep our eye on the prize. Food. Shelter. Write the book. Seriously. It may be the only thing I’ll have to show for all this study when I’m pushed back into the world I embraced, the “real” one, that is.

So don’t be under any illusion that I’m schlepping out here in the sunshine. But I digress.

My schedule is whacky. I’m in school four days a week, and on Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 9:40 p.m. I had forgotten (for good reason) what it’s like to be on a populated college campus. My undergraduate campus had more than 20,000 students and we called it the Zoo. We’ve got 33,000 students here, so you can imagine how long the Starbucks queue is. Likewise, parking might inspire thoughts of harikiri.

On a brighter note, the students, so far, are great. The ones in my classes seem open and smart and unpretentious. The ones I teach (freshman) are wide-eyed, prone to humor, and ask a lot of questions. I just hope they do their work.

All in all, I’m beat. I needed a nap after my last orientation and Buggah has promised me a pot of his pollo en fricassee this evening. We’re nearly settled into our new haunts and our newest acquisition is Buggah’s 6-foot wide florescent pink painting (so cool next to our Queen Anne-style couch). The rest will come. I was talking about furniture, but I like the phrase besides: The rest will come. In Alicia-speak: Stop being a control freak. Take care of yourself. Life will take care of you. Maybe it’ll be my new mantra. I like it better than: Food. Shelter. Write the Book.

Here’s to moving forward.

a meditation on a scatterbrained lady

I feel lost, unproductive. We’ve been moved in for four days and there’s still not enough room to sit in the studio (piled high with boxes) and the bedroom’s in disarray. The kitchen is partially set up as is the living room, where Buggah nearly left me for spray painting the bookcase.

I have forgotten to call my grandmother this week, and I’ve missed the calls of a few friends and an aunt. I forgot a friend’s son’s birthday, and my baby sister turns 16 in a few days and I’m panicked over what to get her, though any gift won’t reach Hawaii in time. I still haven’t looked up my other grandmother here in San Diego. I’ve fallen off the wagon of my Artist’s Way tasks, the reading for a classics book club, and I’ve got a ton of reading for work, which begins in a few days.

Part of the problem is I use the time to screw around, like now, typing away when I should be reading or calling or scrubbing the grime off the cabinets. The other part of the problem is I’m committed to organizing the apartment in the beginning, to save me trouble down the line. I’m beginning with the kitchen: contact paper and cabinet shelving and plastic canisters for the dry goods. And where is that damn Magic Bullet blade? Why won’t my new soap dispenser work?

I know, I know. Don’t sweat the small stuff. But packing, and unpacking, is an exercise in small stuff. The details of your life, insignificant but functional, in the damn soap dispenser spring.

I try to remind myself there’s time. It stretches out in front of you. Take baby steps. Plant the tomato, the cabinets will get done. Oogle over the books, the desk will be cleared. Live, and one day the pillows and roman shades will be stitched.

When I lived in DC, I swapped web work for yoga and meditation classes. Just sitting was hard for me, my mind wandered far, far from my breath. Treat thoughts like passing clouds, my teachers would say. And so I would mentally follow my breath through my nostrils down into my diaphragm and then my attention was bombarded: Did I turn off the iron? Should I defrost the meat? I wonder if that cute number is still available in the boutique next door?

They said this flurry of concern was an indication I was avoiding what I needed to face. Thinking back on it, perhaps it was my dissatisfaction with the city and my job. In contrast, it was so much easier to dwell on the details. If that is true, what am I avoiding now? Am I fighting change, transition? Does the frustration rest in an aching need for home? Am I a prima donna resisting the dirty work?

Nevertheless, one teacher told me something I haven’t forgotten. “You’re never lost,” she said, “you’re always just finding your way back.”

So right now, I’m going to close the computer and open the instructor handbook I came to this Internet cafe to read. I’m going to find my way back. Then I’m going to spend the rest of the day being nice to myself.

the rental gods have answered our prayers

Hallelujah! Buggah and I woke this morning in our new apartment, in our own bed. Our life may still be in boxes, scattered over the living room, but our own life in San Diego is beginning.

We really couldn’t have asked for more. The two-bedroom is large enough that we won’t have to compromise space for tasks. The kitchen is solely for cooking and eating, the living room for entertainment and peace, the office/studio for working and creating, etc. No desk at the foot of the bed, no dining table snuggling up with the couch.

A two-bedroom was the magical thing on the horizon for Buggah and I. “One day,” we’d say. “We’ll get a two bedroom, maybe three …” I had envisioned settling into a smaller place here in San Diego, 600 square feet or less. I actually have great admiration for people, like all those owners and renters on Apartment Therapy, who make every square foot count. Living in a small space requires designing how you’ll live and cutting out the excess.

My fear in living in a larger space is I’ll accrue stuff like a second-hand store, pieces with potential but no stars. I want to be a city dweller who happens to have some space. I want to design my life efficiently, own only things that I’ll use and hang art that I love. I want to move past this futon/wire cage/metal blind decor of being fresh out of college and poor.

In the meantime, however, we’ve going to have to use what we have. I’m painting everything. The book case is being whitewashed. My sister’s dresser will be crackled. The dining table will be stripped.

While we’re waiting for the paint to dry, we can walk to the all-night cafes, restaurants and supermarkets within a block of our apartment. Then there’s Balboa Park, just the kind of escape a city of this size should have. Next stop’s the beach.

While we can thank the rental gods for this abundance, one thing we don’t have is Internet. For days at a time I’ll be radio silent, folks. Over and out.

a real heartbreaker

The housing search has been dismal. Buggah and I felt we were old hand at this, given two long distance moves under our belt with good credit and references to boot. Our only worry had been finding a place that felt like home. We each had different ideas of what that meant. For Buggah, it was modern appliances, a spacious sink and some style. For me, it was an outdoor area for a few plants, a gas stove, room enough for a desk and a chair that I could curl up in and read.

Don’t get me wrong, there are no shortage of apartments in San Diego. However, many are your typical complex-style places with wall-to-wall carpet, little or no light, and no personality whatsoever. Being an older city, there’s also a plethora of older homes—Victorians broken into studios and one-bedrooms, old factories converted into stunning, mixed-use buildings, and the occasional run-down apartments with beautiful trim and negligent landlords.

I fell in love with a few, particularly one with abundant light, hardwood floors and exposed brick. I loved feeling urban again, only blocks away from business districts with that young, hip charm and Balboa Park a click away. I began picking out paint colors, planning how we’d place the furniture. It is my obsession du jour. We filled out the applications. Onsite managers and current tenants loved us, once asking us for help in “selling” us as tenants to their bosses. But then the applications passed into the hands of property management companies to whom we were only names and numbers. One didn’t even check my credit and references because I don’t begin work until the end of the month.

“A real heartbreaker,” one manager told me. “They’ve decided to go with another tenant. I really tried, Alicia.”

When your world is so small, as mine is now, everything is monumental, melodramatic. We said, There goes our cool, urban living-thing. We’ll be stuck sponging off my sister for weeks and weeks more. I was so melancholy, only Happy Hour at TGIF could fix it.

But tomorrow is another day, right Scarlett? We widened the playing field. Complexes and carpet were game. We’ll give more expensive places a chance. We also learned from our previous failures. Steer clear of management companies. We want to know our landlords and allow our landlords to see we’re dependable young folk. Semantics matter. I’m not a grad student who will be teaching and tutoring. I’m an instructor and tutor at the university while completing my graduate studies. Then I prayed to the rental gods.

I read that once you stop resisting, you allow life to take it’s course, to lead the way for you. Wu wei, baby. We found two apartments we loved, and guess what? They’re in complexes with wall-to-wall carpet. They’re older, with great trim and gas stoves and landscaping. Tenants are long term and grow tomatoes and have set up grills on the grounds. One is a few blocks from Hillcrest, and the other only a block from North Park.

We’ve applied for the latter. Buggah is utterly in love, it is a two-bedroom for one-bedroom rent. I worried about how we’d fill the space, given the U-Haul wasn’t even full. But an extra room will allow me an office, Buggah a studio and enough space for the people we love (because you’re coming to visit us, even if you don’t know it yet).

We shook the landlord’s hand, and he called us this morning to tell us our previous landlord had great things to say about us. There’s one couple who has priority before us, but their application may not be complete, he said, and he’d like to give us the apartment. We’ll know tomorrow morning.

So cross your fingers for us. In the meantime, life’s not so bad. It’s wonderful to see my sister and nephew. I fixed my sewing machine and am dreaming of fabric. My sister and I are picking out seeds for the fall garden we’ll plant at her house and tonight Buggah and I will make them dinner. I may still be homeless, but I’m starting to feel at home.

hitch?

Finally, I’m on the mend from the move. I have shaved my legs and eaten a homemade meal. I plan on drinking green tea and eating broccoli for a week just to recover from all that Arby’s and pizza and potato chip munching in the hours and hours in the U-Haul cab.

Ask me and I’ll wax angrily about moving. How it’s the worst thing next to nuclear war and that going through your life in order to discard it is somehow perverse. Impalement seems minor versus having to clean the grime off of the top of the refrigerator. Note to self: contact paper, contact paper, contact paper.

When we left our apartment with our 10-foot U-Haul towing our little car, we thought we were on our way; the worst was over. It was 8 or so, we figured we’d get to San Diego by the end of the work day. We’d enjoy a bottle of wine, slip into my sister’s jacuzzi. Say “Welcome to San Diego,” as we toasted each other. “We are now Southern California residents!”

In L.A., however, the hitch “bolted” to the U-Haul truck decided it needed to be liberated from bondage. The right side fell onto the tarmac, screeching against the I-5. We pulled over and discovered that it was two measly bolts on the hitch’s left side that remained, the only thing that kept our car from reeling back into oncoming rush hour traffic. We both shudder to think about the danger this could have caused to ourselves, others, and our car.

The U-Haul folks were incredulous. The hitch? You mean the tow dolly? No, the hitch, we kept saying. Your hitch that you bolted on. For a company that touts itself to be the “No. 1 Mover” in America, I was galled at the inability of its staff to deal with the situation in an adequate and timely manner. Only five hours later did help arrive to unbolt the last screw on the hitch and take the tow dolley with them. We had to repeatedly call for updates, and got the run around. Beyond the 800-number I began calling local U-Haul contractors in L.A. I spoke to Dawn, who said he had yet to hear about our accident reported two hours before. The 800 guys called back, said We’re going to call Dawn. We just talked to Dawn, we said. And so it went. And so it went.

Our friends in L.A. were our saving grace. Only ten minutes away from the accident, they took us in sweaty and dirty and moody. They gave us wine and fed us. I would break into Stevie Wonder if I could. It was that good to see them.

We wearily arrived in San Diego around 1 a.m., slipped onto my sister’s fine mattress and slept and slept and slept. We began circling housing ads the next day together over coffee and tea. Our next place has to be good, because we’re not moving any time soon.

homeless

While making a collage some weeks ago, I had cut out an advertisement for homelessness featuring Jon Bon Jovi. “Who Says You Can’t Go Home?” the copy read, also the name of a Bon Jovi song. It had appealed to me on the brink of moving. Of course I could go home, I told myself. Even a decade free from the rock, I still long for “home” with a sort of rose-colored sickness only felt by those who are still seeking. When I speak, I interchangeably use the word “home” to mean where-I’m-from and where-I-live.

I have written a lot about Hawaii and that’s what I thought about when the scissors sliced around the advertisement, but I think what I meant was a place-that’s-mine. Yes, I idealize nomad-hood, people who are so quick to come and go, whose belongings are few and their adventures vast. But in reality, I’m a creature of habit, there is nothing I love more than a couch I can read on, a bed that cradles me on hot summer days, and a kitchen where I’m queen. When I was in Hawaii, that’s what I longed for, my own piece of rented space (and earth) here in California.

When it came time to glue the collage together, my “Home” reminder had miraculously disappeared among scraps of paper. I even looked under the sofa. I guess I can’t go home, at least not to San Jose.

So, this is where we lived for three years. It is where I learned to garden, where I began to cook, where I rekindled my love affair with the sunshine after so many years out East, where I learned to love Buggah and myself with forgiveness. In San Jose, I allowed myself to heal against former trespasses, I opened myself to guidance and found it, to friendship and found it. I bought my first car, which we drove down to Santa Cruz and took silly photos in the boardwalk photo booth and Buggah shamelessly beat me at air hockey. I drank a lot of wine, around my kitchen table and in wine tasting rooms in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We drove up to the city for concerts and clam chowder and Ghiradelli’s. We walked Backesto Park a million times, we sang awful karaoke at 7 Bamboo.

Here, I was lucky. We were lucky. And we were grateful.