Flower pinning/loving/craving

"I must have flowers, always, and always."

--Claude Monet

Pancakes.

My breakfast of choice this week. Try them! They are so easy (and satisfying) to make.

Ingrediants:
x1 banana
x1 large egg
hand full of blueberries
coconut oil (for greasing the pan)

Mash the banana with a fork in a bowl—it's fine if there are chunks—and then mix in one egg and blueberries (chopped).
Pour  small pancake-size amounts into a greased frying pan over medium-low heat. Keep lifting the edges with a spatula to see if they're browning, and once they are, flip them over to brown the other side. Simple.

The blueberries can be replaced/joined with what ever takes your fancy. I've also tried cinnamon, chopped strawberries and cacao nibs.

YUM!

(Image from CupOfJo)

Noemie Goudal.

Noemie Goudal

(source: giphy)

What the Queef?

I've spent a ridiculous amount of time upside down of late in class...mostly...and two 'issues' keep popping up for my students. Queefing (yep) and rib thrusting.
So I've searched the inter-webs for simple explanations of the two and (to my delight) found THIS from Katy Bowman of Katy Says.
Ladies check it out! Saves me having to provide the detail ; )

The rib thrusting thing is for the gents too...

The beauty is in the detail.

Images by Nina Leen for LIFE, 1949.

“I think of empathy as a set of cumulative effects, ideally—that it can be a force shaping your habits, shaping where you put your attention and then—if you’re hard on yourself, in good ways—pushing you to translate that attention into action, on whatever scale. That’s interesting—like, what good is “awareness” on its own? Is it good on its own?” 

 

— The Rumpus Book Club Chat With Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exam. 

Nice read!

Prodigal Electrons Return to Shine

“Tonight she walks
up to the particular
porcelain lion she had
when she was a girl
for a now forgotten
reason chosen, puts
her hand on his nose
and says tenderly
in her mind I’m sorry
I can’t remember
the name I gave you.” 

--Matthew Zapruder

— From National Poetry Month Day 27: “Prodigal Electrons Return to Shine” by Matthew Zapruder. Read the whole poem over at The Rumpus!

Image by Paul Outerbrigde via thesphinxandthemilkyway

It's better to have it

Upside Down Day

An ode to those times when everything seems backwards.

Upside Down Day (public library), 1968
Illustrations by artist Kelly Oechsli and written by Julian Scheer (the head of NASA’s Public Affairs Office, responsible for enchanting Americans with the space program)
If you like this then check out  Weight and Weightlessness, another spacetastic illustrated gem from the same era, and the story of how Scheer and his team marketed the moon.

(Found via brainpickings)

"The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground."

 

--Trungpa Rinpoche
(via goldlionaz)

(Found here)

Feel things

The first person who saw your face was delighted by you. Isn’t that something? You managed to bring joy only by breathing.
Your mother will occasionally peek through the cracks of your door when you are sleeping, even now, to make sure that she can see the movements of your chest.
The boy who kissed you in the park last night isn’t in love with you, he won’t even stay, but he meant every second of those minutes.
You’ll walk a city street that your feet have never touched before and you’ll be terrified of getting lost and that feeling is what’ll help you find the way home.
You’ll give your money to a homeless man and he will hold your hand firmly between his and he will say ‘thank you so, so much’ and isn’t that something?
There’s a piece of music that makes your heart feel like it’s bleeding. Listen to it. Listen to it again.
When was the last time you paused to stare at night time?
Did you know that there is at least one person in your life who will jump in front of a hail of bullets for you, without your asking.
Your entire body is made of nerves. Feel things.
Take walks in places you’ve never been.
Take photographs of people not everyone considers beautiful. Find loveliness in them.
Let go of the things that are killing you from the inside out.
One day you’re going to be part of the sky, you’re going to be that beautiful and that necessary but not today. Not today.

--Azra

Your entire body is made of nerves. Feel things.

(Source: thirlie)

Sunday Tune

Sunday Tune(s)

Songs About Sometimes (via my brilliant brother)

Yep

(Source: theclearlydope)

Saturday Poem

Peripheral

Maybe it’s a bat’s wings
at the corner of your eye, right
where the eyeball swivels
into its pocket. But when
the brown of your eye turns
where you thought the white saw,
there’s only air & gold light,
reality—as your mother defined it—
(milk/no milk). Not for years
did you learn the word longing,
and only then did you see the bat—
just the fringe of its wings
beating, its back in a heavy
black cloak.

—Toi Derricotte.

Friday!!

Source: 100yearsoflolitude

(Found here)

Rothko

"I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on — and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!”

--Mark Rothko 

(Quote found here Conversations with Artists (public library) via Brain Pickings)

(images found on this beautiful blog)

Mariano Peccinetti

Collage al Infinito by Mariano Peccinetti

Wild Thing

" The claim that Wild Thing can be done safely might involve the same wishful/magical thinking as the claim that yoga and meditation will automatically “shift consciousness”, whether individually, communally, or “vibrationally”. Both claims seem to depend upon overlooking concrete material conditions in favour of nurturing faith in vague metaphysical principles. Concrete material conditions demand specific learning objectives. If yogis want to be smart on the biomechanics front, yoga needs physios, osteos, neurologists and kinesiologists. If yogis want to be at all relevant on the cultural front, yoga needs anti-oppression educators and activists."

If you have a bit of time to spare I would recommend heading over to Matthew Remski's blog to read his What are we actually doing in asana? posts. His latest addition to the ongoing project provides
a thorough biomechanical critique of what “Wild Thing” forces the supporting shoulder joint to do. 

His writings so far make for some thought provoking reading, every time I delve in I come away with the same simple question; 

 'What is my intention when practicing and teaching this stuff?'

It's an important question and Mr Remski (and others!) are opening up a well needed debate.

Go check it out!
(p.s. read the comments section too!)

The Infinite

The Made Shop - The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories (2012)

(Source: suckybl0g)

“I remember him saying that he had to be a magician for his readers, but that magicians always start with reality and come back to reality.”

Read Silvana Paternostro’s oral biography of Gabriel García Márquez, first published in The Paris Review Summer 2003 issue.

Dustin Yellin

Saints, body parts and nature.
Dustin Yellin Sculpture.

“Time is an illusion.”
― Albert Einstein

All images by me.