LOVE

Age

"What I really mean to say is that I hope you aren’t held back because of a number. And that you don’t rush into things because it feels like time is slipping by. I hope you do what’s right for you. Hold on. Slow down. And breathe in. Your age is your age. But more importantly, your life is your life. Don’t change your journey so that it matches someone else’s. We need to walk different paths so the whole world can be explored. Revel in the differences. And enjoy where you are."

-- Found here

Suriname Dreams

Viviane Sassen’s Colorful Study of a remote Surinamese jungle village of Pikin Slee.
Found via Nowness

Explore

Instead of putting your body into a shape, can you feel the shape with YOUR body?

(image found here)

Sunday Tunes

Found here

Sunday Tunes

A Ska triple cus the 13th October is ALWAYS that kind of day.
The dancing in the Swing Easy video is just pure happiness.
Listen, watch and give it ago!

Le weekend!

It's my birthday this weekend and I'm going to Paris with my best girlfriends. I AM BEYOND EXCITED!!
Cheers to whoever decided it was a good idea to celebrate birthdays. GENIUS.
And here's to aging. It is a privilege afforded to too few and NEVER a worry. I'm loving getting better at being me....

(images found here)

(found here)

Found here

it helps

Have you noticed the way your breath moves differently around your body as you move?

Lift up your arms and breathe.  See how different it feels compared to having your arms by your side. I love the transition in breath that comes with an arm lift...It helps my extension....

Image from Le Sacre Du Printemps - Pina Bausch

A Good Day

Yesterday, I spent 60 dollars on groceries,
took the bus home,
carried both bags with two good arms back to my studio apartment
and cooked myself dinner.
You and I may have different definitions of a good day.
This week, I paid my rent and my credit card bill,
worked 60 hours between my two jobs,
only saw the sun on my cigarette breaks
and slept like a rock.
Flossed in the morning,
locked my door,
and remembered to buy eggs.
My mother is proud of me.
It is not the kind of pride she brags about at the golf course.
She doesn’t combat topics like, ”My daughter got into Yale”
with, “Oh yeah, my daughter remembered to buy eggs”
But she is proud.
See, she remembers what came before this.
The weeks where I forgot how to use my muscles,
how I would stay as silent as a thick fog for weeks.
She thought each phone call from an unknown number was the notice of my suicide.
These were the bad days.
My life was a gift that I wanted to return.
My head was a house of leaking faucets and burnt-out lightbulbs.
Depression, is a good lover.
So attentive; has this innate way of making everything about you.
And it is easy to forget that your bedroom is not the world,
That the dark shadows your pain casts is not mood-lighting.
It is easier to stay in this abusive relationship than fix the problems it has created.
Today, I slept in until 10,
cleaned every dish I own,
fought with the bank,
took care of paperwork.
You and I might have different definitions of adulthood.
I don’t work for salary, I didn’t graduate from college,
but I don’t speak for others anymore,
and I don’t regret anything I can’t genuinely apologize for.
And my mother is proud of me.
I burned down a house of depression,
I painted over murals of greyscale,
and it was hard to rewrite my life into one I wanted to live
But today, I want to live.
I didn’t salivate over sharp knives,
or envy the boy who tossed himself off the Brooklyn bridge.
I just cleaned my bathroom,
did the laundry,
called my brother.
Told him, “it was a good day. 

Kait Rokowski (A Good Day)

(Source: justsingyourlifeaway)

Recommended Read

‘Yoga takes you by the scruff of the neck and takes you on a journey whether you like it or not.’

Vanda Scaravelli

A reprint of this classic book revised by Vanda’s daughter and based on extensive notes left by the author. Even if you have the first edition, it’s still worth having a look at this one to see how Vanda’s ideas subtly changed.

Inspiration for experimentation, trusting in YOUR yoga and allowing this stuff to be a constant evolution

Beautiful.

Images from the book ‘Awakening the Spine’ (The final one is B.K.S. Iyengar with, or rather on,  Vanda Scaravelli,)

 

Oh

Oh by Kiki Smith

 LEONATO
Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.
 BEATRICE
Not till God make men of some other metal than earth.
Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a
piece of valiant dust? To make an account of her life to a clod
of wayward marl? No, uncle, I’ll none.

-- Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare) 

Sabine Mirlesse

I went to The Photographers Gallery yesterday (there is a photo in their print room by Ori Gersht that I like to go and stare at every now and again) and I came across the work of Sabine Mirlesse. Her book As if it should have been a quarry gave me goose pimlpes. Georgeous.

In fact I'm going to go back and get it...

Cătălin Petrișor

Selected paintings by Cătălin Petrișor

Stories

We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories. 

-- Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

Sycamores

I came from a place with a hole in it,
my body once its body, behind a beard of hair.
And after I emerged, all dripping wet,
little drops came out of my eyes, touching its face.
I kissed its mouth; I bit it with my gums.
I lay on it like a snail on a cup,
my body, whatever its nature was,
revealed to me by its body. I did not know
I was powerless before a strange force.
I did not know life cheats us. All I knew,
nestling my head in its soft throat pouch,
was a hard, gemlike feeling burning through me,
like limbs of burning sycamores, touching
across some new barrier of touchability.

—Henri Cole, “Sycamores”
Art Credit Emilie Halpern via Booooooom

(Source: theparisreview)

Libra

Just for now, just for this week, forget all your maps and forget all your plans and forget every detailed drawing you’ve made of the future, forget the picture of the life you’re supposed to have. It’s not about throwing yourself into chaos, it’s not about getting rid of your plans for good, just that this is a week for softness, it’s a week for feeling sweet and hazy, it’s a week for unwinding, a little, for loosening up the parts of you that are too stressed, too serious, to look at the mountains or watch the sky or go to the movies in the afternoon.

-- Madame Clairevoyant 
 "I am not a real astrologer or a real writer, and so it’s strange and great that people actually read these..."

It is exactly why I read these!! I'm living by this one this week.

American woman teaching English boys to dance the Charleston. Great Britain, 1925
Found via oldtimefriend