Bionic Teutonic

I find it disappointing when you are offered a lollypop with a brown wrapper, and it turns out to be chocolate instead of root beer.

At my bus stop after work, there is a man who sells the Seattle Times out of a little cart. He sort of looks like he could be homeless, and definitely has a worn look to him. Deep lines in his face, and it just sort of looks like he’s had a hard life. Over the last couple of weeks, every time I walk past, he is deep in conversation with this beautiful asian woman in business attire who stands there waiting for the bus. I can’t help but spy on them while I wait because it strikes me as such a wonderful and unusual friendship that they seem to have. You can just tell by their body language that although they could not be more different in appearance and apparent lifestyle, they are really enjoying each-others company and conversation. Seeing this every day gives me hope for humans after all.

I had circus class again yesterday, and I’m totally smitten with it. I’m in deep smitt. Not only is it just plain fun to swing around on suspended bars, hoops, and ropes, but it’s a wonderfully supportive group of people that I’m doing it with too. People are constantly giving one another encouragement and compliments and it’s fun to watch the joy people have when they get down a new trick. My favorite moment yesterday: a guy in my class named Chris striking a pose in a spinning hoop while proclaiming “Look. I’m a pretty princess!” That cracked everybody up.

At my yoga class this morning, there was a woman who walked in over  half an hour late, set up her matt, and proceeded to be much more vocal  than the rest of us for the next hour. I found myself getting  increasingly annoyed, pretty much because I’d decided in my head that  when you show up that late, you relinquish your right to distract me  with you banter. Of course, this is an incredibly non-yoga mind set to  have. I’m sitting here judging this woman instead of concentrating on  my practice, which then set me to wondering (again, not focusing on my  practice) where the line is between trying to let go of your judgment  and accepting what life throws at you, and being a passive doormat  because your irritation level won’t let you deal with a situation  rationally. I really wanted somebody to tell this woman (gently, of  course) to shut the hell up, but I certainly didn’t feel like being  that person, and really, it was only irritating me because she showed  up so late. All this is to say that I’ve been thinking about how easy  it is to let ourselves get distracted from our own health and happiness  by the most trivial shit. It’s hard to let go of the little twitterings  in our brain that believe we can force the world to be different if we  just get irritated enough (Which never seems to work for me, unless you  count becoming totally distracted and wasting my time fretting over the  trivial as working). The ability to let go of those irritations feels like what I imagine wisdom to be, and I wonder if I’ll ever get there or if it’s simply something you continuously need to work on.

My bus ride lately seems to have gotten crazier in the last week or so. And by the bus ride, I really mean the people on it. I don’t know if it’s the rain or what, but there has been a steady stream of nut jobs during my morning commute. Maybe they prefer walk when the weather is nice, so I’m normally spared? Today I sat next to somebody who kept saying “the BUS!” at random intervals. Yes…we are on a bus….thanks for the update. Besides the out-and-out crazies, there also seems to be an increase in the number of loud talkers on the bus. The people who for some reason can’t keep their conversations below the level of a shouting match. This confuses me this early in the day. When people shout, I generally assume that some sort of confrontation is occurring, but no - apparently they are simply discussing how “black women in Georgia just look different than black women up here”. This is apparently “due to slavery”, as apparently the black women in Seattle come from a lineage that somehow managed to escape the bonds of slavery, which as we all know has a dramatic effect on one’s genetics. Apparently.

I’ve had a busy couple of days, but things have finally calmed down a bit and I’m looking forward to having more time for music and hanging out. The Decible festival was fun, although I only managed to make it for the night I was working. That also happened to be during the one workshop that I really wanted to catch (on Abelton Live). Next year I’ll plan that out a little better. Things went relatively smoothly though and only one of the bands behaved like divas, which is better than some other events I’ve been involved with. I got to hang out with Static from Berlin, who was a really interesting guy, and I really liked his music. Half of the reason to get involved with music events for me is that you usually get to meet some really great musicians and pick their brains a bit.

On another note, the rainy season has started, and I’m very much looking forward to squirilling away for the winter. My summer has been fun and full of projects, events, social engagments and such, but I’m ready to hibernate for a while. I want to shrink the number of projects I have going on so that I can better concentrate on the ones I’ve got and really sink my teeth in. One of the things I love about Seattle is the ebb and flow of the seasons and how it sort of nudges you into modes of being. During the summer, the sun is out and it’s time to play. When winter hits, it’s raining fairly constantly, so the best option for me is usually to stay at home and hunker down in my studio. It’s like forced creativity or something.

My first circus class was yesterday and I’m here to report that it was AWESOME. I can see myself easily getting addicted to this. It reminded me somewhat of the gymnastics classes that I took for a year or two when I was a kid, only with WAY MORE TOYS. It’s like being a kid on a jungle gym. There is an adult acrobatics class happening at the same time as my aerial one, and yesterday at least, there were also a couple of circus folks at the gym training as well. I kept looking around seeing all sorts of stuff I wanted to try out. Crazy acrobatics moves. Tumbling. The juggler who was balancing on not one, but what looked like three teeter boards. One of these things. For us, yesterday was focused on learning some basic trapeze and rope skills. Fun as hell, but I can tell you, some of the rope tricks hurt, yo! My body is going to have to do some adjusting. Also, my arms felt like they were going to fall off. I was concentrating so hard on learning the basic skills however, that I didn’t really notice them getting tired until the end of class, when I started realizing that I couldn’t pull myself up at all anymore. That was when I noticed the pain. I foresee the need for lots of pull-ups. I can’t wait to go back next week though. It was every bit as much fun as I was hoping it would be.

Tonight I will be going to the Salon of Shame, which is always a good time. I’m looking forward to witnessing the hilarity of overly earnest teenage writing, badly written poems, and naïve (innocent?) musings on romance.