Rothko in the Tower Closing This Sunday

ByElizabeth

Walk quietly and meditatively to the National Gallery’s East Wing right away if you have not yet seen the Rothko in the Tower exhibit and you are in town.  Exquisite.  I have been many times while it has been open (one of the best things about my job is its proximity to the National Gallery, allowing me to go visit a painting or two at lunch), but have left if more than a couple of people are in the exhibit with me.  Sometimes it is others who appreciate the subtleties and then we get the joy of communal appreciation and connection.  More often with a group of visitors climbing the steps to the Tower gallery space, it is tourists who come up, see that the paintings are mostly black and loudly exclaim that they don’t get it.  The act of not getting it without effort tends to make them louder and more inclined to just chat about whatever and not look at the art.  When I find an art exhibit that is not to my taste, it is my practice (as I was taught) to make an effort to appreciate the technique and intention, if not the aesthetics, and then move on with some insight gained for the broader art world–knowing there is another opportunity just down the hall or the street for me to find deeper delight and inspiration.

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    World Wide Knit in Public Day (and Vikalpa Samskara)

    ByElizabeth

    World Wide Knit in Public Day is this weekend — June 13th (and 14, 20, and 21).  What will you be knitting?  I have started a pair of leg-warmers.  The pattern was really for ankle warmers, but I have chosen to make them longer than the pattern suggested.  The nice farmers who raise the sheep, spin and dye the yarn, and sell it at the Dupont Fresh Farm Market, called them “yoga socks.”  The yarn is beautiful.  The sample pair looked like something I would want on my feet in colder weather.  The project was small enough to tuck into my carry bag.  Definitely a go for summer knitting (unlike the three-quarter finished mohair shruggy that has become a lapful of furry stuff).

    “Why are they so short?” I asked.  “We had originally designed them to be longer, but our teacher said we might need to grab our ankles?” they explained.  “When would you do that, when it would not matter whether you were touching fabric instead of your skin,” I puzzled out loud, not out of criticism, but really wanting to know, thinking maybe in Pilates.  The farmers could not really think of a reason.  I bought an extra skein along with the kit to make the — oh, let’s call them footless socks — calf height.  The yarn has a bit of a stickiness to it, so they are not slippery.  They will be good to wear for yoga.

    I’ve never knitted on double-pointed, size 2 needles, in the round before, though I happened to have four in the house (picked up at a yard sale for a $1 a decade or two ago and put in the sewing box).  I tend not to knit from patterns for whole projects.  So I had a little learning to do.  The pattern did not explain how to use the double-pointed needles; that knowledge was assumed.  I am not used to the contraints of following a pattern.  Doing so, on occasion, though, forces me to learn a new technique.  It took my a couple of hours to get into the rhythm, but now I’ve eased into the project.

    I sometimes seek the same type expansion with cooking.  Though easily able to cook something delicious without a recipe with most ingredients, sometimes I pick out a complicated recipe just to expand my skills in the kitchen.

    Yoga, most of all, benefits from a combination of free exploration and attentive development to the knowledge imparted by a teacher.  We are most full and expanded when we combine experience and teachings.  We receive the teachings and then we practice again and again to make it not just our own experience, but part of our being.  This process is called vikalpa samskara.

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    Eating Local, Annamaya Kosha, and “Human Landscape Dance”

    ByElizabeth

    When my friend Mac asked if I would let my readers know that his dance group Human Landscape Dance will be performing at Dance Place on Saturday and Sunday, July 9th and 10th, I agreed without hesitation.  As I was contemplating what to write, I found myself thinking about the koshas–the energetic sheaths of the body.  The yogis claim that the individual has five koshas.  The outermost, the annamaya kosha, is the “food body.”  “Food” in this context encompasses everything that comes into our body through all of our senses–touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell.  I thought about what it might mean to “eat local” if eating meant everything that we encounter with our senses.

    I am not a locavore (I too thoroughly enjoy avocado, coconut and, in winter, citrus), but I do try to emphasize local food as the mainstay of my diet.  I do it mostly for energetic reasons.  I want fresh food to have been picked as recently as possible and not to have grown weary from travel.  I want as few hands as possible to have touched the food I buy, and those hands to be those of a person who is happy with farming and is paid a living wage by the sale of the produce.  When your food growers, transporters, and preparers live nearby you are getting to know your neighbors and community, and not just getting food from a faceless corporate entity.  Over the years, you get to know each other a bit and learn what friends you have in common.  More threads are woven into the fabric of your community.

    Just as knowing the person who grows and sells you food means you can be more certain that it was raised and offered for sale with nourishment intended at every stage, so too having the art and entertainment we bring into our senses be created within our community creates a network of connection and support that we do not get when we only consume commercially prepared entertainment (though I cheerfully buy music from my favorite “stars,” go to the movies, and enjoy trips to Lincoln Center,and London’s West End, etc., just as I get avocados and citrus along with the greens from my garden and the fruits from the local farmers’ market).

    I feel blessed to be able to connect with Mac as a neighbor (Mac, his wife Jennifer Mueller, who is a student of mine and fellow yoga teacher on the Hill, and their delightful daughter live several blocks from me) and others who are performing next Saturday as fellow dancers at the Sunday Contact Improv Jam.  My dancing and personal explorations are raised up by the company of the wonderful dancers and friends who share that space, including those who will be performing next weekend.

    Why wouldn’t I want to both support my friends and learn more about them by going to Dance Place to receive the dance offering they are so lovingly preparing for all of us?  Such is the nature of feeding mindfully the annamaya kosha to help lead us to the opening and nurturing of our innermost spirit, finding and creating more bliss in ourselves and in the very essence of our community.

    FYI.  I’m looking for company to carpool or walk together to and from the Brookland Metro (for safety on the way home).  Perhaps Sunday CI Jam, dinner on the Hill, and the Sunday night show?

    Photo courtesy of Human Landscape Dance.

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