Mysterious Green Things

In Brazil last summer, I wandered around Parque Ibirapuera, with my SO's little sister, who I'd met only days before.  We were bonding, I suppose, in that awkward way to people do when they love a common person.
 

Ibirapuera is huge, compared to Central Park in importance to São Paulo.  It is a wild version of a city park, covered in foliage that, here in the States, you buy for your home.  There were kids longboarding, families strolling, and us, walking more or less in silence.  Until I saw baskets of green things.  Not baskets, shopping carts.  Shopping carts full of something natural, next to stands, occasionally staffed. 

The Mysterious Baskets, Green Things, etc.

 

 

What were these wonders?  Why were there piles of them? 

Me: Laura, what are those?
Laura: (confused at my ignorance) Coconuts.
Me: Whaaaa?  But coconuts are brown and hairy.
Laura: Not so much.
Me: But why are they there, what does it mean?
Laura: Haven't you ever had coconut water before?
(I think here is a good place to note: Laura speaks with a slight Australian accent that I give her no little grief about.  Also, she's Brazilian.)

Yes, coconut water.  Fresh from a coconut.  The attendant rammed the top with a chisel, and dumped the contents in a cooler, keeping up a stream of conversation.  Apparently, there was a problem in the park with people throwing empty coconuts at each other, that's why they could no longer serve the water straight from the coconut.  She handed me a cheap plastic bottle full of the stuff.    

The dirtiest phrase I know is chaturanga dandasana

Chaturanga Dandasana

(chaht-tour-ANG-ah don-DAHS-anna) 

chaturanga = four limbs (chatur = four anga = limb) 

danda = staff (refers to the spine, the central "staff" or support of the body)

{photo credit}

I've become one of those people, a yoga aficionado.  Last Friday, I committed to Hot Yoga at Southern Om, Greenville.  This before knowing that a yoga session is something that lasts 95 minutes.  Before fully comprehending how hot 95 is.  We were 70, crammed into one room for the $5 Friday session.  Everyone else seemed to know what was going on.  Towels were placed over mats, shirts were thrown aside, a spray bottle of water(?) was passed around.  In short, everyone was prepping but me.  I was more into enjoying the warmth after months of winter, laying back, relaxing, pondering what the packed room would smell like after an hour.

It started nicely.  Child's pose.  Relaxing.  But then the Chaturanga started.  Melt your heart to the floor, hands to the mat, high plank, chaturanga dandasana, upward dog, downward dog.  Over and over again.  At first, I was strong.  Strong arms, strong back.  But after the umpteenth repetition, my arms began to fail.  Flopping, falling, failing.  That was the progression.

But then, we ended.  The last minutes spent in dimmed lights, in silence, in a cool lavender scented towel covering face then belly.  I was hooked.  Before I made it home, I called my aunt, an avid Bikram Yoga enthusiast, and my SO, begging for a membership.  He agreed and now I'm a member of Zen Garden Yoga.

My first experience there was yesterday.  I was definitely much more distracted, comparing myself to everyone else in the room, unable to focus on breathing, unable to get my mind off the project I 'm working on.  But afterwards... After I felt wonderful.  Relaxed, sipping on tea.

Here's to hoping I improve, that I can calm myself, and that extravagant yoga positions are in my future.        

Moments in Paris

My first time in Paris was three Januarys ago.  I rarely spent time looking for a monument, favoring forward glances toward the sidewalk, in search for the merde I'd already come in contact with.  My downward eyes and my nil-knowledge of anything Parisian meant I was often startled.

An old man, in beret, playing petanque: Te veux que je prends ton photo mademoiselle?
Me: uhh...(keeping my eyes down, don't talk to strangers) pardon?
Old man: You vant zat I take your photo?
Me: uhh... No.  Merci. 

Half a dozen paces onward, I look up.  This portion of the path seems clean enough, though it is dirt.  Honestly, what's with this dirt park.  Don't they believe in grass here?  Through dense fog, I sense something looming ahead.  Ohhh, that's what the old man, (viel homme?) was going on about.  The Eiffel Tower, I'd stumbled upon it.

 

This happened half a dozen times.  I scorned a map that first week, consequently wondering at the length of the queue in front of a long tan building (The Louvre), marveling at the glass work of an old gare (Musée d'Orsay), questioning the building that appeared to be inside out (The Pompidou).

I had no plans.  I had nothing to do.  Just wandering, learning from the city, not from any guidebook.  I really did know nothing of Paris, my courses had always focused on Francophone Africa, not the Metropole.  Since that first trip, I've visited, lived, and loved in this city.  

I visited around, for a seperated two weeks, staying with a friend's aunt at the end of the 8 line, past the Decatholon, on Rue Jeanne d'Arc.  I've lived at République and in Boulogne-Billancourt.  I've loved both the city and a person there.

These are the Paris moments I want to remember.  Not the dark, the anger, the loneliness, spread across the past years, not how leaving feels, not the disillusion.

I want to be in the seconds, facing Les Invalides paying for my first Nutella crepe, biting into the warm creation.  I want to be in the same place a year later, falling in love, as my friend throws me over his shoulder.  My fists pound his back, laughter ripples over us both. 

A Poem Written on Thanksgiving

 A found poem, hidden among mounds of essays.

 I didn't have the best of Thanksgivings.  Even though I don't normally believe in such nonsense, there is something horrible about being alone, when you know your family is together, around a table of pumpkin pies.  Visiting the catacombs that day was even worse than being alone.  It was a realization of death and the macabre viewing that we tourists were doing, underneath the city, looking at the bones of forgotten people.

 

Death and hatred, on this, the day of Thanksgiving

 

The catacombs, lacking magic,

Embrace palpable darkness,

but oh light

is helium carrying me away to the top of cloudy Montmartre as seen through the clock (or cloak), until I'm floating above the table, covered in rice and turkey, goat meat and pumpkin pie bie bye

Quiche:

No shaking butter

No fresh gravy

No body

But the bones of the people who were to someone somewhen the most important, beautiful being alive crackled by the weight of a million needless hatreds crushing them, until even they, the generations of innocents refuse to help the gypsy woman off the RER, even their 1/2 baguette to the beggar who sits under the Star of Montparnasse.

Can you hear the pup weeping yet?

He joined the dead yesterday.

An introduction and much needed recuperation

Yesterday I did journalism for the first time in ages.  The idea has always intrigued me, but in practice it's draining.  Too much presentation, not enough creativity.

The longer I go without writing, the less adept I feel.  I'm disillusioned, with myself really.  Freshman year of college, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up.  Foreign correspondent.  Period.  I was a brilliant writer, hadn't my friends and family always told me so. There was no question, being a journalist, I'd get to live in the world, see the world, and that's what I wanted.  Then I discovered the horrors of an editor, taking my carefully chosen words and changing them.  The first article I saw printed had been butchered.  Only the information remained the same.

I changed career goals.  Gourmet, Vogue, Voyager.  Publications like these would be my one-day-outlets.  But I stopped writing.  I spent time in France, Italy, and Brazil.  I wrote about none of it.  That was out the window.

I'll settle.  Teaching will be fun.  ESL.  Abroad.  I'll be in the world…

But I won't be participating in the same way.  Sure, teaching will support me.  It's still the short term plan.  The, I'm-almost-out-of-uni-and-don't-want-to-starve plan.  But, but.

I don't want to stop there.  I'm terrified of being stagnant.  Of getting into a profession, then needing to stay.  Losing my creativity.  Having no time to write.

So preemptively and belatedly I will write of my adventures.  Skimming through my rambling journals and reliving the moments.  I'm hoping this will also help with the unbearable itch I'm beginning to feel again, after being stagnant in one city for almost two months.

I've been as productive as Fitz these past few months.