Furry Wombat

While Owl has been in Mysore, I’ve been going to the Bollywood Film Festival.  All new movies (this year: Billu; Road, Movie; It’s a Wonderful Afterlife) — I cannot tell you why I like them so much, but I do!  And there’s an un-self-consciousness to that enjoyment that is rare for me, so I am choosing not to think about it too deeply.  I heart.  That’s all.

Practice has been interesting the last couple weeks.  Our teachers (CL and Glen) went to see one of their mentors, John Scott, over the holidays and came back reinspired.  So, they have been tweaking our alignment in interesting ways, e.g., feet a bit closer together throughout the suryas (hip-width = hip socket width).  This feels tighter at first, but then there’s more length and more upward-flying and less oozing.  And a new emphasis on counting!  I hadn’t realized that I had been sticking in an extra breath before jumping through and, sometimes, missing a breath before jumping back.  Well,  that changes everything!  (For now, it makes everything a bit harder.)  And it’s made me realize that I really don’t know the counts for the first part of second series that I’m doing.  Time to break out some books.

I have been listening to Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God for the past several days. There are a few themes running through the book that have resonated, but here is one for now: “belief” in god has historically not been about belief in the way we mean today, but about practice. The shift to intellectualizing (and, then, anti-intellectualizing) belief is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the context of several traditions, she discusses how practice precedes belief, rather than the other way around. Do your practice and all is coming, eh? While much of the book is on the three main monotheistic traditions, the first couple chapters have really interesting thoughts on prehistoric (think cave paintings in France 30,000 ybp) and animistic practices and on early aescetic yoga practices.

Speaking of practice, I don’t do it much when I am traveling, which makes it painful upon return. Ugh.

Feynman is hanging in there. He has responded well to his hospice care and to H’s close and kind attentions. We laid low over the holidays to hang with kitty, and he came with us to LA for a week. I hope he will still be there with some purrs when I return to CA in Feb.

Should I admit that I haven’t added an entry lately because I accidentally took the admin link off my page and couldn’t remember how to get in? Silly Wombat. Plus the Wombat has a new toy – an iPad – and is adapting to this new technology. Perhaps this new toy will ultimately result in more posts. Oooo, just started editing this on the iPad with the WordPress app. Very nice.