If you are new here, if you searched for twinklysparkles on google to get here, for instance, you may surprised to discover that I have a tendency to chew on the negative, to get the blues, to sit with my own dry crusty thoughts*
*from the poem What Have I Learned? by Gary Snyder, from the book Axe Handles
I’ve been a bit funky lately and not in a good James Brown sort of way. This condition has put a damper on my creative juices (or is it the other way around, chicken-and-egg like?). This is entirely the reason that I invented Thankful Thursday (yes, I invented it; I was the first, I swear).
I love many things today
I love yoga, the 2 studios I frequent, the teachers whose classes I attend. I love the yoga class I was in on Tuesday night wherein my teacher taught to the body of spring, to our spring bodies, to the shift in the air and light. I love how deep yoga goes, how it inspires me, the coiled snake, the mud, the ooze, the tones of my being, the heat, the invertebrate that resonates in my soft tissue, below the bones. I love the 7 chakras and that each has a sound, a color, and a desire or higher manifestation. I love the double helix and the spirals of my muscles which wrap around my bones.
I love that to be a student of yoga is to be in a state of unknowing, same as to be a student of the Alexander Technique. That in the West, thinking one needs to be positive alone to attain enlightenment is a misunderstanding of complexity. I am not enlightened; I am only on a path and that path has no destination.
I love acupuncture and the lessons my practitioner shares with me. That the Chinese system of looking at the body is more complete and encompassing than a Western approach, that it is both subtle and complex, that I will never understand it, that I know only the tiniest bit about it, but what I know I understand and want more of. I love that the Chinese understanding of the body includes how we relate to the world seasonally, that there is an explanation for how our bodies chime with the brightness of spring and that sometimes this can manifest in restlessness and anger. I love that there are foods and activities that nurture our bodies and that these change seasonally. I love that every part of the self is interdependent. I love the 5 elements though I have little understanding of them.
I love that my Alexander teacher, Missy Vineyard, sent me a link about this.
I love that I wrote my original Thankful Thursday post almost a year ago today. I had no idea when I went to search for it just now. I love symmetry and anniversaries and time as much as I hate them; therefore, I love asymmetry and random occurrences and timelessness.
I love so much that sometimes I am taken down by it. I cry with the spring, I wait for the rain, I walk the earth alone; I let my thoughts whisper and hope they take flight in the moonless, cloudless night. I bear witness to the air, the red planet twinkling, the new prey being eaten in the dark, all that goes past us and beyond our time here.
twinklysparkles 
I love this post! I share 10 things I’m grateful for every evening with a group of women. I’ve been doing this practice for almost 7 years now. It’s so nice to reflect on what we have to be grateful for, even if it started as a negative.
I too, love and am grateful for acupuncture. Greatest!
I hope all else is well with you!
What a great thing, Lara. How do you do that? By email? That is really an amazing thing.
I am okay. Spring is early, yes? The peepers are noisy, the cat has killed 2 large, whole chipmunks in 3 days. I am trying to summon the patience to finish the taxes. I need sleep mostly.
I would love to catch up on your blog. I usually pop in, but I also like to read more in depth when I have time.
I hope all of you are well. I have never seen the cherry blossoms in DC. Must be something.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Lara! Katherine
Vanilla Twink, I start with vanilla. I can do it straight or I can add hot fudge and pecans, I can douse it with caramel and a handful of salted pistachios. Honey rum and fruit? oh hell yes Sam I Am. I can do it with whipped cream or not, but never Cool Whip. A cherry to improve the presentation never hurts.
I’m not without my dalliances, I’m not ashamed to admit devouring various flavors of Haagen-Dazs, Cold Stone Creamery or Ben and Jerrys one pint at a time. But vanilla is forever.
I like ice cream with a friend.
Jeez, I was just re-reading my post. I got a little sappy and doughy there at the end. I think I need some ice cream. Alone or with a friend, ice cream is ice cream. What’s your favorite flavor? I’m a coffee girl, no doubt about it.
Once, our friends back in Kent brought us some Graeter’s from Columbus–they took a cooler and everything just for this purpose. I don’t remember the ice cream, but I remember that.
I hope you can eat some ice cream with a friend right now or at least very soon! twinkly
alpha, wordpress sure is weird. I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but the comments are not in chronological order and I’m pissed!
I think good vanilla can be very good, but there’s a lot of bad vanilla ice cream out there.
As far as downing a whole pint–if it’s Starbucks coffee ice cream either plain or their java chip, I can do it, no problem. My dirty little secret is that I used to eat an ENTIRE QUART of Starbucks on a daily basis, sometimes I’d even start the second quart before the end of the day. Do you know how much ice cream that is? It’s so crazy, I can’t believe it was me.
This went on for several years. I finally quit it and they came back with the pint-size, those bastards. All those years, if only the portion had been smaller, who knows what I might have accomplished?
When I was a kid, I had this great manual nut grinder. My mom would buy me coffee ice cream, I would make some sort of fudge sauce out of cocoa or we’d get a can of Hershey’s, I’d grind peanuts and mix the whole lot together.
That’s just a tiny window into my entire ice cream history…..
That’s a lot of ice cream Twink.
I remember the kids across the street thought it was a great treat to spoon instant coffee on top of their vanilla, it never really did much for me.
Maybe one day we’ll eat ice cream together Twink. Promoting harmony and understanding through ice cream.
reading archie ammons’s garbage–good for a thankful thursday quote:
we
need nothing more, except the spelling out of
these for those inattentive or too busily lost
in the daily elaborations to prize the essential:
(1) don’t complain–ills are sufficiently
clear without reiterated description: (2) count
your blessings, spelling them over and over into
sharp comtemplation: (3) do what you can–
take action: (4) move on, keep the mind
allied with the figurations of ongoing
hope you like.
ptd
YES, I like. What is the name of the poem? I love that wordpress seems to be accepting you here. I had a coupla sticky wickets with them just today creating my latest post and yesterday trying to leave a comment on another blog. Asswipes!
K
the poem is titled garbage. one of his book-length poems that i am inflicting on my students. glad you like it, twinkly.
ptd
Of course, I took “garbage” to be a simple descriptive/general word for reading any/all of his poetry. Book length. Hmm. I don’t read books or things that are book-length. Not usually anyway.
I am ready to see you shed punctuation in addition to your habit of not using caps…just sayin’ it might be interesting.
THANKS for the clarity and try do better next time, teach, hunh?
But seriously, I was inspired by the poem. It was a necessary reminder for me as I’ve found myself pissing and moaning lately and not doing ANY fucking work of any kind to change my situation. Sigh.