It's all about balance in the midst of change, or so I tell myself. Maybe that accounts for the solid workout I got at the yogafactory. Since it was the vernal equinox, I stayed for vinyasa class and almost kept up with the athletic young women to my right and left. I ended up doing a halfway decent tree pose and headstand, although my tight hips and knees limit what I can do seated.
Still I felt good going home, building a fire, heating up lima bean soup that by pure luck had just the right combination of peppers (9 dried cayenne, 3 pickled jalapeno). Gven had a book group meeting, so I ate sitting by myself at the kitchen table listening to Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros' "Rock Art and the X-Ray Style" and reading David Markson (nonreview to come).
Strummer's post-Clash disc struck me initially as an uncomplicated rock and roll with shades of the Talking Heads, then after listening a few times I started to hear more jazzy rhythms and vocals that remind me of Pete Townsend, John Lennon, David Bowie. Gven, who knows more about music than I do, likes the last track in particular, but it's the drivingly danceable "Techno D-Day" that really gets me going.
Markson started to lose me halfway through Wittgenstein's Mistress, but then it suddenly became funny and interesting again. Is it me, or did I get to the "good part" after trudging through the boring middle? There's no way to tell. The universe is an uncertain place. Or maybe it's me.
The threatened winter storm either fizzled on its way into central Swingstate or veered around us, and we woke to bare ground. The tulips and daffodils were untouched, and the fire in the hearth lasted all night. It's really a pleasure to step out of a hot shower into a cool room, dress for the weather, and walk into another room warmed by a wood fire.
Tuesday, the first full day of spring, I was all set to drum for J.S. Bach's birthday, wellsprings, lifesprings, but nobody showed up, and instead I drummed by myself and composed an announcement in my head cancelling the drum circle. In a participatory democracy, people vote with their feet, and when their feet go elsewhere, the people have spoken.
Walking the dog later, I still had one of Joe Strummer's songs jumping around in my head, and pretty soon my walking fell into the rhythm of the song, or maybe the song in my head fell into the rhythm of my walk. A funny thing happened then, as the Strummer song morphed into "Satisfaction," which has a similar rumba-like beat, and for a while the young Rolling Stones of 1965 propelled me around several blocks of old Methodistville on the edge of the Brethren campus under a crystal clear sky.
What's vernal about it anyway? Like vernacular? Nope, Latin ver (spring) from Greek ear (spring) from Sanskrit vasanta (spring).
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3 comments:
Is your name really Sven Golly?
Hmmm. I be interested to see how you answer that Sven.
I am sorry that your drum circle is waning. It always sounds interesting.
Thanks for keeping us up-to-date on your perambulations and reflection(ation)s.
I feel I owe Anonymous an answer. When my critically thinking daughter was just a crtically thinking toddler, I would read her a story or tell her a tale, and she would often ask, "Is that real, or is it just a story?" I would often reply that it's a real story. Any later epistemological confusion over the dotted line separating fiction from nonfiction can be traced to that evasion. To make a long story longer, yes, Virginia, there really is a writer who goes by the name of Sven Golly.
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