Latest Parries
December 2012
Some Consumer Affairs
I’ve tried to enjoy schlepping water, thinking that it serves to keep us to some human roots.
April 2012
From Nokia N95 to iPhone 4S
Annoyances and upsets with the iPhone 4S have been more than offset by its screen, the silkiness of its surfaces, the camera, and the third-party market for both software and hardware.
February 2012
2001: A Space Odyssey: Dry, Juicy, Linear, Luminous
After they finished watching the Bond movies, I figured the next series John Gruber and Dan Benjamin would discuss on The Talk Show would be Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre. But Gruber refused — too personal for podcasting, he said. Disappointed, I rewatched 2001.
January 2012
A Scheme of a Number of Friends
Instead of acknowledging the wisdom of leading from behind, the Right jumped on the Obama administration’s handling of Libya as yet another example of at best incompetence. They lost me there.
October 2011
The Mouse and the Cantilever
Steve Jobs we lost at the age of 56; when Frank Lloyd Wright reached that age it was still only 1923, the time of merely his second comeback with Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.
March 2010
Friendship is for Weenies
It’s amazing, given the adulation he enjoyed elsewhere, that the Israeli public knew from the start not to trust this US President.
Before the Setup
Nobody from usesthis.com has asked me what my setup us, nor is likely to anytime soon. So I’m just going to mouth off here about it. But first, some background.
February 2010
Walter Russell Mead steps gingerly into the Wieseltier/Sullivan imbroglio
On the Leon Wieseltier/Andrew Sullivan spat, Walter Russell Mead seems to want to have his strudel and eat it too.
October 2009
My Hope: Obama’s Change
Defeat in the Olympics bid may focus the mind in the Oval Office where it should be: Afghanistan.
July 2009
At Modi’in Mall
There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
T omorrow morning I return to Bikram Yoga practice after two days off. I’ve just done 60 days in a row. Rather than watching movies, reading a book and shopping, this weekend would perhaps have been better spent reflecting on that 60-day effort. So I’ll do it now. Wait, let me get a beverage… I should have nothing but sparkling water at this late post-midnight hour, but instead it’s half a glass of Coke. Naughty. Shall feel it later when I lie down.
Yes, I still have the heartburn if I’m not careful, if I eat at night; the yoga has not cured that. So what has it done?
- My reddened face all down the middle from my forehead and around my nose and mouth has much improved. This began after the first week, I think, and has stayed good. Interestingly, yesterday when I took a shower at home for the first time in a month, I got a bit of chapped skin on my forehead; the water here in the house seems to do it. Shaving has also been good; I’ve not needed to cover my face in jojoba oil afterwards. Actually, I’ve not needed jojoba at all. Previous to the 60 days, I was putting jojoba on my face every morning to minimize the effects of the permanent rash. Pardon the disgusting graphicness, but my spectacles used to collect flakes of dead skin that had fallen off my forehead. No more.
- I’ve had a general feeling of well-being and uprightness, despite being wholesomely tired. I feel in general that I am reinhabiting my body they way I used to, though *while my belly’s gone down somewhat it’s still there, and I probably won’t feel fully comfortable until it’s gone. And it’s not gone yet.
- My arms and shoulders are starting to get some shapeliness again, with the upside-down “U” shape returning to my triceps.
- My upper legs and lower back are in a constant state of recovery. When I stand up after sitting they are all stiff in a good way.
- I can reach behind me with my hand and move my shoulder and feel I have a lot more room to maneuver, which is nice.
Some of these things are starting to get somewhat trivial. Is this it? Is this what I get for all that time and effort on the mat in the hot room?
- I also get the feeling that I am doing just what my body needs, that although it takes time to get back to fitness, these postures and this sequence are what I need to do to get there.
- I feel I’m finally properly into a superpractice, one that can underly and strengthen all others. This practice is my closest friend, really, one step away from myself, my body, itself.
And now I’m returning to class, going to sleep and tomorrow it’ll be up and to the train to class. How do I feel about that? Well, I feel the two days was a real break, enough of a break, that I am up for doing a class now. Am I looking forward to it? No, not quite. But I get the feeling that soon I may be at a stage where yes, I am. It still feels like a drudge, an obligation. It would be nice to stop feeling about it that way, and more like what is also true: that it’s a privilege, that I’m lucky to have found it, to have been born during a time when it was becoming popularized, that we have such a nice welcoming studio so nearby, that I will feel great afterwards, that the actual class will be an engaging and exciting challenge. So on the one hand I’m not excited about going, but on the other I’m not thinking that skipping another day will be good. So. If it’s time to resume class, why be reluctant about it? Human nature. Because it’s difficult. But difficult can be fun.
Previously
Namaste, Dharma Workmen
Nextly
Israel, the Bad So Far