Start of new month & new week & (slow start to) new day.
January was a great month but last Saturday I got upset by Bian Chan’s fatuous piece on Salinger in the Straits Times. Not sure if he’s an idiot or he just interviewed a bunch of idiots but the piece comes across as saying that Salinger is too ‘quintessentially American’ to impact Singaporeans though Catcher was the required reading of pretentious wannabe intellectuals who now admit it doesn’t do anything for them.
To quote Gwee Li Siu (whose FB rant I only saw after I calmed down–somewhat)
Can I take this chance to say how shocked I am with ST Life!’s way of compiling responses? It’s one thing to include varying opinions on Salinger; it’s another to include people who clearly DIDN’T read his books and have an opinion!
He puts it better than I do. In fact just reading what he wrote calmed me down and now I’m going to put it behind me.
But first I just want to say though that ‘red hot rage’ doesn’t describe it for me. What I felt was more like an icy cold rage—lightheaded, dizzy and seeing light shards.
I’ve learned two things from this:
1) The Glass family was ‘my’ family for years.
I don’t think I would have survived adolescence without J D Salinger’s written assurance that I wasn’t the only one feeling like the only one.
Thanks, Li Siu, for doing the same thing for me on Saturday.
2) Road rage. I never understood it till now. I’m a happy driver. Someone rear-ended me at a light once & we ended up chatting about my old school which his wife & daughter were both from (yes, he paid for the damage).
But on Saturday after reading the article I was ready to smash the writer’s face in/gouge his eyes out/choke him on his scrotum.
No, it doesn’t make sense at all I know that now.
But still, I’m going to make February a good month for me by staying away from the ST Life section!
Went rollerblading over the weekend–I’m looking for ways to exercise the dogs without killing my knees from running–and it was great!
But I can see myself going skating for fun without the doggies–I didn’t realise there were so many skaters/skating groups in Singapore…
What was really good (for me–still a raw beginner right now) was learning that YOGA is recommended to help beginners with balance and I think that may have helped me more than I realised!
But today I’m aching in strange places… back to mat practice, I think… !
This morning after dropping the doggies at K9 (for day boarding/socialisation & grooming) I drove to Yan Kit Road for my first ‘real’ practice of the year.
It was raining, what I thought would be a trip of under 30 minutes took me almost an hour so by the time I got there it was almost 10 am and I had a 12noon appointment I needed to shower before and I couldn’t find parking closer than a hundred metres of construction work with muddy puddles & splashing cars away… it was SO tempting to bail, find a Starbucks & tell myself I need to get back into practice gradually… ie not today, not in the rain, not on a Friday after a tough week…
But bizarrely every time I thought about skipping this practice I felt a wince inducing twinge in my solar plexus, like the need-a-loo twinge almost but starting deeper–
I’ve been reading about purusharthas, triggered by an article in Yoga Journal (yes, reading about yoga is sometimes easier than practicing) & how the choices we make every moment are choices that could bring us closer to fulfilling our needs & goals or not. What we think of as ‘no choice’ situations appear that way to us because we’ve been previously conditioned to see them that way.
I’ve been trying to be more conscious of my choices & realise this solar plexus shiver-ache is how my body signals to me that its uncomfortable with something.
Though I wanted to get somewhere dry with magazines & coffee & be lazy till 12 and I was scared of plunging back into a full practice after three weeks, I also miss practice & miss the way I feel after practice. I also want to get rid of the little achey bits that surface in my shoulders & neck muscles when I don’t stretch & wring out the computer tension on the mat.
So… to the shala. Tried to explain to teacher I couldn’t do a full practice because 1) lack of time 2) lack of practice 3) lack of stamina could I just do an hour’s practice today?
Teacher, being a teacher of Sri K PJ lineage said “Just start. I’ll tell you when you’re ready to stop,”
And after all my initial fears I had a Fantastic practice!!!
Yes, I’d actually forgotten some of the sequence–couldn’t remember whether supta konasana & upavishta konasana came before or after supta padangushtasana when doing ‘air yoga’ in the car–but somehow, on the mat, muscle memory woke up and got me through it!
I was also afraid I’d transformed enough muscle tone into flabby dead weight to die at anything that required upper body strength but surprisingly it was like my body took the time out to figure out what it was supposed to do…
eg I used to struggle with my chakrasanas but today, each time I got into position & prepared to begin the struggle I found myself going over!
Yes, I did ‘cheat’ today.
I left out the vinyasas between sides, I used my arms for support in setu bandhasana, I didn’t do the final headstand (when I came in the others were finished/finishing the standing sequence. By the time I reached backbends they were queuing for the showers. I know I should have been focused on my breath but I needed to shower before 12…)
As it turned out I showered with plenty of time. I even had time to stop in Starbucks (no plexus ping this time) for hot tea & a banana before my appointment. And I learned something about practice today. It wasn’t about mastering the poses or the sequence. I was there because my body needed it. I was doing it to untwist and unkink and stretch out and flush fresh blood around this body I haven’t been paying enough attention to. Now I feel so good but as I sit here but I know it’s not going to last.
Yes, yet again I’m making the commitment to do this regularly.
This morning I did 3 A’s & a B before walking the doggies and doing breakfast. Haven’t done a full practice for some time but I’ve been walking twice a day (at least) & the dogs are settling in.
And after breakfast I got The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood) & The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (Kate Summerscale) on the Kindle this morning to kick off my year’s reading so I’m going to call it a good start to the year!
This year I intend to do daily home practice (more than just sun salutations no matter how pathetic the dogs look–this morning they came to lick my fingers and toes and every time I paused in a pose Hermione would sit down and lean against me…) and go to Yoga Shala on Fridays after dropping the doggies at K9. I can drop them as early as 7 am. I need to get into a system where I pack my yoga gear and shower stuff all ready the previous night because Friday is the day my house help comes and I don’t like being around getting in her way.
2009 was a good year despite multiple deaths & upheavals. I enjoyed the trips to Hong Kong, Paris & the Koh Samui retreat & learned so much from them & I love the new doggies and all they’re bringing to my life.
In 2010 I want to:
1. Balance dog walking with regular practice to feel good, sleep good, look good.
2. Write with focus; complete four projects
3. Master Hand stands
4. Go on a Koh Samui pranayama retreat with dogs (!)
Does anybody know what quarantine laws are for Singapore/Thailand?
PM postscript:
Okay, got the info I needed though not exactly what I wanted… it’s very easy to get my doglets into Thailand with me; just not as easy getting them back into Singapore after. The reverse is true for Australia… looks like more trips are going to be postponed this year because I really want them to settle in here before I abandon them (temporarily but will they realise it?) to K9 boarding or AVA quarantine…!
If only there was some way to arrange ‘home quarantine’, they could be monitored same way as criminals under house arrest…
And I just realised today is the first day of WoYoPracMo! I may have to count my mini practice this morning since I’m now feeling all over-sunned.
Went for a late morning-noon time walk around Fort Canning with Peach & Mini (it’s hard to keep yelling “Princess Peach!” & “Hermione!” when trying to get them to run after balls/frisbees/kong toys… all of which they ignore) and got a bit too much sun, I think.
I was counting on the cloud & tree cover & was carrying lots of water (for all three of us) but now I’m feeling happily drowsy dozy and not at all inclined to do an evening practice… perhaps a little Yin or just warm ups, back bends and closing…
But only just barely. I would dearly like to have a bit more ‘buffer zone’ for off days but as it is I’m still working at untangling stuff and wondering whether I should switch from a first person narrative to third person…
Well, on target is good. I’m not grumbling. And not writing too much here where word count doesn’t ‘count’.
The two doggies have been so beautifully behaved today. Probably the rain just now helped. I’ve been at the computer and they’ve been sleeping on their towel/mats beside me all morning long. We had a good morning walk and I’m hoping they’ll settle down till our evening walk.
Somewhere nearby a small dog has been yapping for ages with someone periodically shouting ‘Shaddup!’ at it. I was concerned about the doggie but my first reaction was thankfulness that my two little ones were silent.
The old pre-dog me would have gone out in search of the other dog (which I’ve done before. Turned out to be a puppy recently adopted with the owner saying she didn’t know what to do with it. We got the puppy a box (that tins of milk came in—scary. How much condensed milk can one household put away?) and a towel to sleep on and that quietened it down some. Yes, the busybody side of me I’ve been trying to quell. I don’t know whether I’ve succeeded in putting it down or whether I’m using up all my interference energy with these two.
Still haven’t figured out how to find & add friends as writing buddies on NaNoWriMo though. I know Vera’s on there somewhere but we couldn’t link up so we’re updating/encouraging/taunting each other on FaceBook!
I’ve handed in my first draft of one book and synopsis and suggestions for the second so I’m ‘free’ till I hear from SPCA which probably won’t be for at least a week. So for the rest of this week or until I hear from them I can go back to working on ‘Man Groves’. The first thing will of course be to set up a new folder, rename and resave my chapters and set up a new master document to get past the cranky behaviour or Master Doc on Mac… I’ll start tomorrow.
Tonight the dog tutor is coming. We’ve mastered ’sit’ ‘down’ and ’stand’ and cut down on the barking at strangers so we’ll see what’s next! (plus I have beef treats now…)
Sunday again, I’ve completed one week of November—which is one week of NaNoWriMo, one week of Beginners’ Challenge and one week of working on the SPCA books. So far I’m still ‘on track’ for all three things.
In the long term I would like to have Sundays off writing—not because writing is painful or difficult or even unpleasant but because I think I need more time for input—both reading and otherwise.
This morning I walked Princess Peach and Hermione out and across to the prata shop where we picked up cheese prata and (on the way back) left several widdles and two very satisfactory waddles (safely wrapped in plastic bags and dumped in garbage bins). They’ve settled down enough to walk without trying to bark down, intimidate or otherwise destroy any other dogs or humans we pass.
Then—two baths with hair dryer grooming and then I defrosted and cut up some chunks of dead cow that are now grilling in the oven as they get converted into homemade dog treats.
Great contrast; last night I was having dinner with the VeggieGays at Rowell Road and this morning I (literally) have blood on my fingers. The dead cow(s) I just cut up probably didn’t have any better lives or deaths than the poor sick bloated beef cattle in the meat industry expose videos I can’t bear to watch. But I believe dogs are ‘true’ carnivores unlike us. And anyway it’s just a matter of where we draw the line… for myself it comes before eating cows. For the dogs I think it comes after cows but still before eating chickens… chickens seem to have the worst time of all in factory farming. The beef bits do seem to make a big difference in getting their attention when we’re out and there are distractions all around. I don’t know whether this is just a temporary training stage we’re going through or whether I’ll be cutting up bits of dead cow forever! But at least when I do this myself at home I feel like I’m giving them something closer to the original source than if I fed them commercial treats which contain “beef, lamb, chicken… preservatives and flavourings”!
Last night was a really great outing. The food was good—of course. I love Food #03. They ran out of burger buns because there were so many of us (and a big group before us) so we got our burgers made from scratch and served in wraps… surprising but delicious! Sadly I ate too many deep fried mushrooms to make room for the brownies the guys were putting away but I did pinch a tasting (okay, probably more than half a scoop) of the ice cream with red passionfruit that came on top of them.
Conversation ran from dragonboat training; how to distinguish between pimps and triad scouts, between opticians and optometrists and between horror and gore; dialogue in films vs dialogue on stage. It was great fun and I got so many new ‘sparks’ though I’m afraid the Megan Fox story doesn’t look so believable by day and after some extensive web surfing (yes, broke my no surfing before writing rule but it’s Sunday…)
Missed church this morning though I was hoping to bring someone for an ‘intro’ but I didn’t do the cancellation so I’m practicing my ‘no pointless guilt’ (another November) resolution and got in the prata walk instead. Later going to buy an oven, attend a champagne lunch to celebrate a lawsuit win and then see if I can scrounge last minute tickets for Sofaman at 3pm. I don’t have any other times free and I only found out I’m clear for this afternoon this morning and SISTIC has already closed ticketing for today so… it will totally serve me right if I don’t make it. But again—no guilt—I’ll put the time to good use instead… or maybe I’ll go watch Jennifer’s Body (even if or especially because I can’t believe the Megan Fox story from last night!)
Princess Peach who arrived on Tuesday will be joined later today by Hermione… former cell-mate at the SPCA.
Hermione was originally ‘pending’ adoption by another family but they had difficulties deciding between her & a siberian husky (Hermione is a chihuahua) & I guess they went with the husky!
It’s interesting getting used to living with dogs again. I was told to expect 2 weeks of settling in problems–fear, diarrhea etc but so far, apart from being rude (from a distance) to construction workers carrying things Princess has trained herself to piddle on newspaper & save her poo for walkies.
Or rather, whoever abandoned her seems to have trained her well.
She’s sitting on my lap now as I type this. ‘Separation Anxiety’ is another term I’ve learned & I’m hoping that time, familiarity & the company of another dog will help her settle in.
The first night, shut up in the kitchen/laundry/storeroom area she barked for almost an hour & I was afraid neighbours would object. Last night she had the run of the apartment (except the bedrooms) & she seemed all right.
Talked to Ivan last night, he likes The Abomination of the Blue Hibiscus and agreed to read an excerpt with me at Books Actually–Ivan, I love you love you love you!!
Books Actually (the official bookshop for Singapore Writers’ Festival 2009!)
86 Club Street (they are moving today–12th Oct)
Saturday, 31st October, 4pm
Thank you also to Kenny & Karen of Books Actually for making this part of your SWF programme!!!
