Memorandum 9/11

Leap, by Brian Doyle

Jennifer Brickhouse saw them falling, hand in hand.

Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows. They struck the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist in the air.

The mayor reported the mist.

A kindergarten boy who saw people falling in flames told his teacher that the birds were on fire. She ran with him on her shoulders out of the ashes.

Tiffany Keeling saw fireballs falling that she later realized were people. Jennifer Griffin saw people falling and wept as she told the story. Niko Winstral saw people free-falling backwards with their hands out, like they were parachuting. Joe Duncan on his roof on Duane Street looked up and saw people jumping. Henry Weintraub saw people "leaping as they flew out." John Carson saw six people fall, "falling over themselves, falling, they were somersaulting." Steve Miller saw people jumping from a thousand feet in the air. Kirk Kjeldsen saw people flailing on the way down, people lining up and jumping, "too many people falling." Jane Tedder saw people leaping and the sight haunts her at night. Steve Tamas counted fourteen people jumping and then he stopped counting. Stuart DeHann saw one woman's dress billowing as she fell, and he saw a shirtless man falling end over end, and he too saw the couple leaping hand in hand.

Several pedestrians were killed by people falling from the sky. A fireman was killed by a body falling from the sky.
But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the window holding hands.

I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.

Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.

No one knows who they were: husband and wife, lovers, dear friends, colleagues, strangers thrown together at the window there at the lip of hell. Maybe they didn't even reach for each other consciously, maybe it was instinctive, a reflex, as they both decided at the same time to take two running steps and jump out the shattered window, but they did reach for each other, and they held on tight, and leaped, and fell endlessly into the smoking canyon, at two hundred miles an hour, falling so far and so fast that they would have blacked out before they hit the pavement near Liberty Street so hard that there was a pink mist in the air.

Jennifer Brickhouse saw them holding hands, and Stuart DeHann saw them holding hands, and I hold onto that.

And We're Back!

After having taken the summer off from blogging (because it takes SO much time...), I am back to re-instate my life online.

This summer has been much less like a vacation and much more like a what-am-I-doing-with-my-life-let's-fill-one-hundred-percent-of-our-time-with-any-and-every-thing-we-possibly-can.  Whew. And that's just about what I did.  I finished my yoga teacher training and received my certification. I started ballroom dancing again. I'm still working at the lobster, only now I'm training all the new servers that come in (which I have found, to my delight, I truly, truly enjoy doing). I started teaching at a yoga studio in town. I started with 8 classes a week, but with the economy, we downsized that to only 4 classes, and I sub for other teachers when I can.  I'm also teaching yoga at my alma mater- only one class a week. I also was in an independent film- I was a hired assassin and got to do some serious fight choreography.  (The lead I was fighting with had little stage combat experience and he literally beat the crap out of me. I was black and blue for 2 weeks.  Still totally worth it.)  On top of all this work, I've attempted to have SOME semblance of a social life, which has amounted to seeing my best friend about once a week.  I TOTALLY lost the battle with healthy eating and have gained all my weight back with a vengeance...and then some.  I have gone to 2 Thai Bodywork workshops and have taken up practicing on all my friends.  I really, really enjoy it, and I find those I practice on really, really enjoy it, too.

I've become absolutely obsessed with learning how to West Coast Swing, a type of ballroom dancing I've attempted to learn in the past but have had very little of the rhythm necessary. Not this time! This time I win.  Damn it.  I've fallen in love with hiking and attempt to go as often as I can, which so far has amounted to thrice this summer.  But go I do...my phobia of spiders, ticks, and wasps be damned.  I also have started to find the word "Damn" really funny.  I read tons of books, including the entire Hunger Games Trilogy in just 3 days. I'm FINALLY getting around to reading Eat Pray Love, and I bought The Help after watching the film, but haven't read it yet.  I did, however, read Water For Elephants after having watched THAT film, and I must say while the movie was good, the book was incredible.  You should probably read it, too.  I've fallen in love with partner yoga, mala beads (although I haven't had an opportunity to own any yet), pretzels with cheese, incense (particularly the cinnamon kind), forearm/arm balances, anjanayasana, sushi, barre workouts, and hiking (of course). I've re-fallen in love with raisinets (we fought for awhile), going to the movie theatre, margaritas, going on walks (and sometimes jogs), reading, blogging, and, last but certainly not least, eating at out-door cafes. Mmm mmm good.  I'm preparing to re-fall in love with coffee, working out, autumn, scarves, and quieter days. 

I'm also preparing to send in my headshot and resume to hopefully receive invitations to audition for the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA, and the Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC.  If I receive no invitations I'm going to take that as a sign that theatre is not what I should be pursuing right now and throw myself into getting my masters in counseling.  I've become obsessed with the idea of working, perhaps, in an abused women's shelter, combining counseling, yoga therapy, and thai bodywork into a holistic kind of therapy that will encourage, inspire, and heal.  Whatever happens, I'm hoping to be accepting, energetic, and hopeful as I not so much walk, but LEAP into the future.

Book Currently Reading: Eat Pray Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert

For My Love of Yoga

                                              Paschimottanasana with Guyan Mudra

                                                                     Sirsasana

                                                                Parvritta Bakasana

                                                                       Bakasana

                                                       Baddha Utthita Parsvakonasana

                                                                 

                                                   Bird of Paradise (svarga dvijasana)

Paperweight On My Back, Cover Me Like A Blanket

I've been a member of an amateur mordern dance company through my university for many years. I took this last season off so I could work more, pay some bills, and really focus on my yoga teacher certification training. Consequently, it's been a long, long, LONG time since I've danced, and even longer since I just went into the studio and played around with music and movement.  Well, last night was the end of that streak!


A good friend of mine, Zach, showed up to play with choreography with me, and we went to town. I've been obsessed with the song Paperweight by Joshua Radin and Schuyler Fisk lately- it just makes me want to dance. You know music like this. I asked Zach to come by and help me throw a duet together and, boy, did we. We have just over a minute twenty finished, and just about two minutes to go. Luckily, we'll be having more dance dates soon!

It was so cathartic for me to dance again...to just get on the floor and move my body a little. Yoga is incredible, and life changing for me...but nothing can take the place of dance. The music, the emotions, the performance aspect- it's just...everything.  And the best part- his shirt and my socks matched! <3

It's ok to hurt. It's ok to heal.

Everyone has their heart broken at some point.  Lots of people have been jilted in love.  And lots of people find the courage and the strength to move on. They deal with the pain, the jealousy, the absolute heart break. And they live through it. Every day.  This is going to be me, too.

I woke up early this morning with a painful constriction in my chest, just one more physical sign of emotional distress.  No, that's not the term for it- it's so much more than that. And it has been for a long, long time now. But I woke up, praying with all my might that my loving Father in heaven could pick me up again after my fall. That my powerful God could make me right again. I asked Him to take all the broken, shattered, aching, distrusting, rejected, tiny shreds of my heart and make them whole again. I'd like to say it was instantaneous, that my life was better in that second. It wasn't. It won't be.  But I can start to see a tiny light at the end of this long, long, dark tunnel and that light is hope. Hope that I can trust again, hope that I can heal, that I can be new again, that the pain won't stay overwhelming forever. That the memories won't hold heartache and bitterness and rejection and loss and pain, but that I can look back on these past few years of my life as a time of love and growth.  They really did help make me into who I am today. Definitely not perfect, but worthy of love. Real, unconditional, heart-pounding, make-it-through-the-hard-stuff-even-though-it's hard type love.  And it's out there. Out there at the end of this tunnel.

I stole my heart from God and gave it away far too early, but I can give it back.  He'll take it.  All the shattered pieces of it.  He came for the sick, you know.  The downtrodden. The broken. That's me. It might be you, too.  I know I have a privileged life, and I know this experience isn't an isolated one.  Lots of people go through it.  And lots of people get through it. That's going to be me, too.

I wish I could say it's going to happen overnight.  Oh, how I wish that!  The constriction in my chest, that searing hot knife through the center of me- it's still there. But I know it won't be there forever.

Today is my birthday. I'm being constantly reminded that there are people in my life who love me. Maybe not in the romantic way I hope for, but in the unconditional, overwhelming, generous, enthusiastic, love-me-just-for-being-me way.  I think it's about time I stop throwing a pity party for my heart, and start throwing myself into loving other people. I've spent too much time already being consumed by my own pain, and missing out on the pain other people feel.  On their joys and triumphs, too.  I think part of my healing will come from throwing myself into lives that aren't my own.  If I stay too involved in my own, the pain and memories will just continue to drown me.  There are other things in this world than me and my life and my pain and my hurt.  People need to be loved. And if I can't receive love, I sure can give it.

God is so good.

Winky

Meet my new pilates ball, Winky!  He's 65 centimeters around, dark blue, and features stay technology, which basically means there is a sandbag in the middle which keeps it from rolling away when I'm not using it. We've worked out pretty hard in the week we've been together. It's a love/hate relationship, but I see a bright future together ahead.

New Goals, New Me

My roommate, a dietetics major and thoroughly knowledgeable about healthy eating, and I decided last night that we were tired of living in our normal, average bodies. We were going to go on a healthy-foods, low-calorie diet, and we were going to start exercising much more regularly. Both of us having been recently brokenhearted, we needed something to give our focus and attention to. What better than a new lifestyle?  I've decided to share mine here for an added bonus of accountability.

I started this morning weighing 150.2 lbs, 2 lbs more than I weighed last week, which is a direct result of my hedonistic and luxurious eating habits this past weekend.  My goal weight it 137 lbs, and my super goal weight is 135 lbs (simply because I'm not sure my frame can support that low a weight and still be healthy and toned).  I must drink a minimum of 64 ounces of water daily, and exercise atleast 30 minutes, 5 times daily.  Keep in mind this is a bare minimum, and I would like to exercise a full hour 5-6 times a week, making sure to keep one day for complete rest.  I've decided working as a server does not count, and the hours I spend on my feet will in no way count as "exercise" toward this particular goal. The obstacle I can see most clearly at this point is that I tend to be absolutely exhausted after week, and incredibly lazy before work, so in order to meet this part of the goal (and still work 40 hours a week), I'm going to have to be way more dedicated than I am.  I'm also planning to count calories. Every single one that I put in my body.  I'm limiting myself to 1600 calories daily in order to lose weight at a healthy pace, but my goal is 1350 calories.   So I'm shooting for 1350, but if I happen to trip over that line, as long as I don't go above 1600 I won't give myself too difficult a time, or too heavy a guilt trip.

So far today, for breakfast and lunch I've consumed 980. I went to Jimmy Johns with a friend and ate one of the healthiest choices on the menu (actually, only HALF of that sandwich) but that still was a huge hit to my count.  And I've only had 14 ounces of water.  So for my late afternoon snack and for dinner I only have 370 calories allotted.  Looks like I'll be consuming a ton of vegetables and 50 more ounces of water and hoping my stomach won't be too unhappy with not enough breads and sugars, like it's used to.

These are my new goals. I have a great habit of starting a new goal and being really motivated for about a week, and then allowing it to just kind of piddle away...  Here's to not allowing that negative habit to control me again!

Healthy = Happy