A Month of Yoga: Week 1

The yoga place across the street has a new student special, where you can do 30 days for $30.  I signed up for the class with the intention of doing yoga each (or nearly each) day for 30 days, and seeing how I feel physically, mentally and emotionally after.  I ended up not doing any sort of 'before' to which I could measure an 'after', but I figured I would have some thoughts about it anyway - which I do!

Of the first seven days, I did yoga six (one day I was too busy - oh the irony!).   The first three days were rough.  I'm just terribly out of shape since the move - I have done little more than walking around (up hills, the dog, etc. but it's definitely not much), and have crammed myself in a UHaul and worked from home in probably not the best ergonomic conditions (for example, my desk chair arrives tomorrow, finally - although some days, I did work standing up which is even better than sitting).  Consequential, muscles are tight enough that now I know what they mean when they say 'screaming pain'.  I often had to back way off of postures I used to be able to do with no issues.  My shoulders in particular are so tight that one teacher asked me when I had my shoulder injury (I have had none).  I am also much weaker than I used to be - holding some arm, ab and leg posters ended up with much more shaking and counting the seconds instead of the breaths until they were over. 

How terrible it feels, and how easy it is to become out of shape compared to how hard it is to get into shape!

The last two classes showed some physical progress.  While I'm sure I wasn't actually more flexible or strong, I did feel much less resistant.  The final class of the week was a restorative/yin type class. Normally I like the intensity of a vinyasa/ashtanga class, but there was something about the week and the move and the rainy-ness of the night that convinced me to do a more contemplative practice.  Turns out it was just the ticket to be holding fewer, gentler poses for longer periods, and it was soothing to my mind to have the teacher work in some spiritual/intellectual study with the physical.

Speaking of the spiritual/intellectual, trying to quiet the mind in meditation at the end of the session got easier too as I stopped resisting the moves.  One day we did a guided meditation that was particularly good, and the last night was very peaceful.

When I was at the last boot camp I did, the instructor would talk about how he keeps in shape so that he can do whatever he wants to when the chance arises - he can go hiking or swimming, he can run a race next weekend if he feels like it.  And that's also what the instructors in the Buddhist pod casts I listen to also say - that we practice quieting thoughts and becoming mindful so that when situations arise where it is easy to lose track, we can stay centered.  And that's, of course, why practice - 'the harder you work, the luckier you are.'  This is one way I think about yoga, that helps keep the focus on the practice instead of a goal (weight-loss, some bliss experience - which, while nice things that would be great, don't help experience the moment): maybe that I am practicing for the sake of practicing, growing for the sake of growing, and then, it expands to fill everything.

***

Side note.  It is something I've learned from improv and yoga and various other outlets that you should not hold back from giving everything you can and doing the best you can, which for various reasons people do, and lead by your shining example.  I think it's also maybe even more important to do what you can even when you now it's not as good as you want it to be, as everyone else wants to see, because when other people see that, they can understand that it's not the only excellence that matters, but also the practice.

I liked it, but what was it?: Some Thoughts on Directing Pocketful of Posies

 Photo by Steve Rogers

“I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.” - Miles Davis

“It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take things to.” – Jean-Luc Godard

Apologies about the spacing issues.  Blogger isn't letting me correct them.

All right, this is a long time coming.

A few weeks after Pocketful of Posies closed, I was sitting at a bar with one of the cast members.  He said something to the effect of, “You know, I was pretty sure this show wasn’t going to work and might even be bad.  But then, in the end, it was amazing.”

I had those thoughts myself.  Are there directors that don’t?  Are there people who are creating something and have no moments of doubt, no times when they panic that they’re not executing their idea properly or communicating right, and that if they did communicate it right that it was a terrible idea to begin with?  With Pocketful of Posies, I had started with something relatively obscure, made it even more obscure, then asked people to go on a journey with me with very few guideposts and nothing but trust.  My thankfulness for a willing cast and audiences cannot be understated.

About a year before the show, the artistic director of Gnap! proposed that a female company member direct a feminist improv show based on some foreign films from the 60’s, including “Celine and Julie Go Boating” and “Daisies”.  Films that few people I know have seen, belonging to a genre that not too many more people know a lot about.  I, however, am into all those things, so I jumped at the chance.  Women!  Comedy!  French New Wave!  Psychaelia!  Yes…and then I sat down with it, took a good look around, and realized I had no idea what to do going forward.  Gnap! traditionally does narrative shows.  How to make one out of these non-narrative sources?  How to create a format from a genre that intentionally subscribed to no format?  How to get anyone to understand and care? 

To make something out of this disparate set of stuff, I went to the basics.  What is there about New Wave that I could set up as a guide?  Some history: New Wave filmmakers were rejected traditional film forms and rebelled against their reliance on plot.  This is old-school, they said (I paraphrase), keeping the genre of film linked to the genre of the novel.  Film is a different medium, and could be used to create a different experience.  They sought neither to mesmerize the audience with narrative images, nor to encourage the audience suspend their disbelief, but rather made films identified the essential elements that were the film-y-ness of films.  They let the audience be involved in and aware of the process, the glory, and the agony that was movie-making.  They made movies to celebrate what was unique about  movies.  This, more than the specifics of the source material, even more than the very lose idea of a feminist adventure, is where Pocketful of Posies came from.  What if I did that with improv?  What if I stripped away the expectations of the audience and the cast and left only the bare bones of the form?  What if I subverted the expectations of improv to celebrate improv?  What if anything really could happen?

Exciting.  This is the kind of thing that really gets me going.  So now, New Wave improv.  Not a point by point show set up like a specific film or films (which not too many people in my target audience would clearly identify, which is not how New Wave filmmakers made their own movies).  Nope.  I was going to give an improv audience the experience of the New Wave aesthetic captured within the genre of improv.  So… that helped?  It got me ready to create.  I have done all the major improv styles that I know of – short form, Harold and the children of Harold (living room, deconstruction, sliding doors, etc.), narrative.  I love them all.  They all exist in Austin.  I was going to combine them into something that used all of their beautiful bits and pieces to make a new thing, under the very loose heading that we’d follow a pair of female friends on an adventure.  Fingers crossed, time to jump, the net will appear (right?).

I had such an incredible cast.  They came from all the improv styles and everyone brought something completely wonderful.  The analytical plot-makers.  The beautiful characters.  The intellectual commenters who clarified ideas.  The theme-guided move-makers.  The sillies.  And, to top it all off, they were all willing to do this crazy thing that had next to no structure!  The plot-makers learned theme-moving.  The theme-movers learned to be protagonists.  Everyone got to be erudite and silly (sometimes at the same time).  They brought their own thing and mixed it up with the other things.  The whole was even greater than the sum of its parts.  And we used everything.  The show had the loose structure, the larger conventions of New Wave films and of improv, but mixed linear-focused with thematic-focused structures.  Shows broke out into short-form games to emphasize themes, to help the plot, to just have fun.  Much to my delight and surprise, every single show had audience involvement.  We had talked about breaking the fourth wall, about monologues and takes to the audience, but without making audience members feel on the spot.  For the most part I think that was accomplished (although it’s hard to tell for sure if anyone was made uncomfortable).  But even I was surprised how each week the audience became an active part of the show not only by cast encouragement but also by more organic responses to the energy.  

Each week the show got better.  It took a while to get everyone on the same page - I would say, the entire time of rehearsal plus the opening weekend.  I was asked many questions about how to emotionally connect with such an intellectually-based show.  Create a character with wants and needs, and the show will happen around it.  There was anxiety about not having enough of a linear story, and contrasting anxiety about not being willing enough to let go of that same thing.  My advice to this was always the same – you do what you do, and let them do what they do, and from that, this show will come up.  You may not think it makes sense from the inside while it is happening, but in the end it will come together.  The audience builds connections and the others are there to catch you.  There is a delay between those two particular concerns is a pit of despair – there is a) everyone on board with executing a specific structure and joyfully working in that, and b) everyone trusting each other, the show, and the audience completely enough to let nothing but characters and ideas happen long enough for those to become a whole.  Between the two there is a place where nothing happens but confusion and chaos because there is neither enough structure nor enough letting go.  Fear will mess you up every time, make you try to force things to happen instead of letting them happen.  Fear was happening to me, too.  It was at this point when both the cast I and I were possibly thinking something along the lines of ‘OH  MY GOD WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN THIS COULD BE THE WORST THING EVER LET'S CHANGE EVERYTHING NOW’.  I had to stay the course.  I'd seen the flashes of what I wanted in rehearsals and I knew it was there, and I (for my own mental well-being and the future of the show) had to hold on to that and act like I had no doubts.  And then… the click.

Opening was a little bit of crazy-town, creating no small exuberance but left some cast and audience thinking “That was fun, but…what was it?”  The second week the cast settled into the show and some tweaks were made – the  click- and by the third and fourth weeks, it had hit the sweet spot.  The last weekend of shows was wonderful.  It was all there, all of the elements, all of the trust - it was like that darts game Cricket.  We'd hit all the elements individually and gotten all the other points, and then finally we hit the bullseye over and over to win.

People ask me, “Did that show look like what you wanted it to look like?” and I can only respond “I didn’t know what it was going to look like because it could have looked like anything.  If you want to know if the show felt like what I wanted it to feel like, then yes, it did.”  It was funny, it was tender, and it was alive.  I go back and forth wondering if I should have put show notes in the program to explain more to the audience what it was all about, but in the end I’m glad I didn’t.  Part of the idea was for people to experience that night’s show experience, to be embraced by the warm hug of improv.  I think explaining too much would have lost that possibility - would have given the audience the guidelines that I specifically didn’t want them to have.

Did I succeed?  Ultimately, for the goals I had for the show, yes.  Always there are sayings and the idea that art should push you, scare you, take you places you've never been before.  I've been doing improv for 12 years and I'm not really nervous on stage anymore.  Sure, sometimes there are butterflies, but it's more excitement.  Directing Pocketful of Posies was the first time in my recent memory that what I was doing that scared me and pushed me to try to be better - better idea-making, better collaborating, better encouraging, better organizing, better clarifying, better leading.  The response I got from cast and audience leaned towards this: “This show reminded me that in improv, everything is possible.  This show reminded me to enjoy the playing and the process.  This reminded me why I watch/perform improv.”

I mean this with my whole heart and vision - I couldn’t have asked for anything better than that.

Eats: Dot's Deli

This is the best BLT I've ever had.  I've been to some other allegedly bacon-and-or pork-themed restaurants both before and after this pork trend has popped up, and none of them hold a candle to this. 

Let me back up a little.  Seattle is a food town.  Before heading up here, in anticipation, I watched Anthony Bordain's No Reservations where he comes to Portland and Seattle. He goes on about how it's so great to eat up here because not only does the climate produce some truly top-notch produce and animals, but also the intellectual atmosphere of Seattle generates an obsession with 'craft' foods - foodies who specialize.  Not just foodies - but salumi-ies.  Donut-ies.  Coffee-ies.  People who learn the crap out of ONE (or two) processes and then make it so amazing you can't imagine getting it anywhere else.  So far, it's appeared true.

Part of the cool thing about living in Fremont is having dozens of these places literally around the corner. 

Dot's Deli is one of those places.  I wandered by one day, peering in as I window shopped, and a guy coming out says 'If you haven't eaten here yet just go in and do it.  Trust me."  Okay, stranger.  You've sold me.  So I went in and even though they have some truly delicious looking special sandwiches, featuring things like house-made sausages and pates, I felt like something simple so I got a BLT.  A place that can make a BLT this amazing... I can't wait to eat the other food.  Perfect, crunchy sourdough.  House-made mayonaise.  Perfect yellow tomatoes and crunchy lettuce.  Bacon!  Not too thick, not too thin, crispy but not burned.  You think, I've had BLTs.  I've made BLTs.  Why have none of them ever been this?  You have, in fact, much to learn about even the simplest of things.  Looks like, I'm in the right place.

Northwest Hike #1: Old Sauk

After much discussion, set out on a first hike in the Northwest last weekend.  It had to fit a time schedule, not be too hard (no hiking boots... yet!), and after some consideration of what we wanted to see (lakes?  old growth?  mountain vistas?  rivers?), involve some water.  We chose Old Sauk trail, somewhere about an hour from Seattle (I didn't drive so I didn't pay enough attention to where exactly it is).  It has semi-old growth and follows the Old Sauk River.

Lots of this awesome moss hung off the trees.  Moss covered everything.  There were all kinds of trees - I don't know from trees, but I do know there were leafy-ones and pine-y-ones.

The trail wandered relatively flat along the banks of this river.  Apparently there are salmon in these waters, but we didn't see any. 

Mossy moss moss.

There were a couple of little bridges to cross.  They came with these little railings just small enough to trip over (but we didn't).

The whole 6 miles (3 miles out and 3 miles back) we only saw one other lady and one other couple.  It was wonderfully peaceful and smelled great - the outdoors where its damp and mossy with piney trees smells so sweet and comforting.  It's pretty amazing to live in a big city and yet so near this kind of stuff.  The Northwest has it all!

Seattle Central Library

Last weekend, I visited the Seattle Central Library.  It's a contemporary building designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, and is both a destination to walk through and marvel at, as well as a large functional library with a million books, DVDs and CDs to borrow and 400 computers for public use.  Being in Seattle, of course, it also has its own underground parking for 148 cars, as well as its own coffee shop.

I gotta get a camera instead of relying on this iPhone. 

The floor with the meeting rooms is all red.
You can pretend you are going into some kind of Doctor Who spaceship, or just admire the modern aesthetic.

(Spaceship)

Take the escalator straight to the top, where there is an incredible view of the city, and leads you to the book spiral.  As far as I can tell, you go look over the city, then walk down in a huge spiral leading you through the whole Dewey Decimal system WITHOUT STOPPING OR HAVING TO GO TO DIFFERENT FLOORS OMG HOW AWESOME.  Sarcasm about the library's enthusiasm aside, it was actually pretty neat.

Looking down you can see all the people on computers.  Much to my confusion, it was far more than people actually reading books.  Maybe they were looking up books to read?  Who knows.

The elevator is pretty rad.  I'm not scared, though, I'm amazed at how long it is.

Look down onto downtown Seattle!

Look down onto the fiction stacks!  They are not in with the rest of the Deweys.  They are on their own floor.  I'm a big fan of how the stacks are not in neat rows, but look kind of organically placed wherever they happened to fall.  Much more interesting that way, no?  Those Dutch really do know how to maximize humanity in design.

Here are some of the more interesting details I saw:

 Familiar AND obscure!

Obscure, but not for long.

 Two words I don't see together often.

Two more words I don't see together often.

Seattle Arrival: A Rambling Review

So far Seattle has been wonderful, meeting every expectation (and exceeding some).

After a long, more-expensive-than-anticipated drive in a UHaul for three 12-hour days with a dog and a tow-hitch, we arrived.  Most of the first half of the drive was boring, annoying, and full of problems (Texas, New Mexico and Colorado), but the second half was beautiful.  The route took us through a beautiful part of Utah on the edge of Arches National Park and through Moab, across small towns in Iowa and rolling hills and farms in Oregon and eastern Washington.  Washington is stunning - patchwork farms in hills, with pine mountains in the distance that plunge down into white-blue rivers and oceans.

 
We drove over the Cascades and into Seattle.  The city glistens with glass and water, vibrant with lush green everywhere.  It's one of the greenest cities I've ever seen, both because of the climate allowing trees and grass to thrive, and because literally everywhere there can be a garden, there is one.  People are mad about gardens here.  Vegetables, flowers, herbs - anything that can grow is grown, in the front and back yards, in hanging pots, in old cans, in the holes of cinder blocks.  There is lavender, sage and rosemary everywhere you see.  Tomatoes are still ripening.  Nuts are falling off the trees.  It's so different from the hot, dry climate of Austin we just left.

Friday we moved in with the help of another post-Austin friend.  I love our duplex and the location.  We have a small fenced in yard, a deck, and over twice the space from the Austin apartment.

Our front neighbors are delightful.  After two long conversations with them, I'm now armed with enough restaurants and breweries and parks to go to (and secrets about how to avoid their lines and attend their happy hours) to last the whole first month here.  On the next block are a bunch of delicious looking restaurants.  We went first to Uneeda Burger, which had some of the best fries I've ever eaten, the best kombucha I've ever had (on tap!), and three of the juciest hand-made hamburgers I've had the pleasure of tasting.  Over the course of the weekend I've had Molly Moon's strawberry balsamic ice cream in a sugar cone, found an independent video store called Scarecrow, tasted pumpkin and beet beers at Elysium (both delicious), and gone to a concert and discovered three new bands.

Talah has had the pleasure of exploring a huge, wooded park with a fenced in off-leash area, the walk to which passes by a zoo and a rose garden.  Got to shop at Trader Joe's and have myself some $2 Chuck (which I've missed dearly since leaving LA).  Explored the winding vendor playground of the Fremont Market (to which we can walk) - and despite the funds being low from the move, look forward to going back for a hat, some spice rub, and a few other intriguing finds there.  On top of all this, I also did an improv audition (why not start off with a bang?) and crocheted some granny squares for a little tabletop knic-knack.

It's just wonderful.  All the people we've met have been friendly and helpful.  Food has been delicious.  People have dogs and bring them everywhere.  It's way, way more bike-friendly than Austin (although the hills are enormous) - which is great since I could use the exercise and gas is $4 per gallon.  The cars yield to pedestrians and bikes!  Bike paths everywhere!  The food is diverse and delicious and high-quality.  I feel very confident that this is a place I want to be, and that the choice was the right choice. 

Two Days Out

This dog knows something's up.

Everything is boxed except the things that will be needed on the road.  Tomorrow is active moving, yesterday was errand running and celebrating.  Today is a strange day of nothingness.  Just Talah and I here, for this brief moment of stillness.  She wanders around confused, sitting on my foot when I stand still for any length of time - stay here. 

The flip side of starting out on an adventure is all the wonderful things that beg you to stay.  In one multiverse, I do.  Depth, breadth.  Which is which? 

Allons-y.