books and yoga
now that it's warm and sebastian has also realized it's futile trying to get me interested in boat mechanics, i no longer have to hide below deck like a sad squirrel, hunched over my laptop, pretending to do "research"!
instead, i've been up on deck, reading in broad daylight.
today, i kicked it up a notch and hung out on deck with two yoga mats (stacked on top of each other for extra cushioning), a pillow, my kindle, water, sunblock, and a plate of sliced oranges. i enjoyed bathing in heat as i read about the biography of muhammad (the islamic prophet) and when i got too hot, i hid under the shade of our half-hoisted dinghy. as the day went on and the sun shifted from east to west, i rotated myself around the base of the dinghy, and stuck the bottom half of my body out in the sun and hid my head and heart in the shade, as these are the body bits that tend to overheat
i also shifted from reading my serious non-fiction biography about a man and a world far from and foreign to me to reading beautyland -- a book which pretends to be universal in scope but which is really a narrowly-focused american tale
(it's about an alien girl pretending to be human; she reports to her alien superiors via fax and through her dreams)
it is a book that feels "new typical" -- meaning, it's "new" in a sort of "but everyone is new in this type of way lately" way ; it's "typical" of the contemporary north american female writers such as sheila heti and fiona alison duncan. it's like michelin restaurant food kind of. not that i have a lot of expertise in this area but it seems that they serve food that is all "different" in the same way. the "styling" is the same.
but it is very fun to read. the style is fun. and though it is a little whiny (just like sheila heti and fiona alison duncan) it is also fun in a less-pretentious and more-imaginative way. (sometimes i feel sheila tries too hard to be avant-garde in some of her jokes and concepts)
i am having fun imagining myself as an alien faxing to my superiors
hmm i think this may be a book for people who feel lonely. the idea that we can fax our observations to someone who gives a shit is very nice! though i would fax observations of a broader scope. i now exist in a dimension larger than the tiny north american hole in which i once found myself (and which these north american authors currently find themselves)
part of the trouble with being an author or an avid reader is that you think you can explore the world through your mind, through books. but there are things which you cannot imagine. there are things which do not interest you because they have not touched you yet. i'm lucky to have sebastian drag me into traveling. it widened my world in ways that books could not have and the size of that wider-world can be sustained through books until it gets stretched out once again through personal experience
speaking of books:
- lately i can read faster/more fluidly and with greater ease of understanding. i'm a little suspicious about this...i wonder if my brain got better at suppressing its own thoughts and is now more like a baby in trance, soaking in the world like a gullible blank page? but i also enjoy it. i can even read in other languages more easily now
- i am reading books on topics, themes and settings which have interested me since indonesia
- i've been enjoying my readings a lot, with a steady stream of books trickling in on the horizon ; there is no set strategy for finding books now, as they seem to line up for me like a mysterious curriculum. i keep as trim of a to-read list as i can, marking books only if i feel that i absolutely want to remember to read them, choosing which of them to read next by a calculus of considerations but most of all a feeling
i read so much my eyes get sore but!
i've also been doing YOGA!!
i graduated from tim senesi to patrick beach. patrick beach is the hard stuff. he's quick and powerful but he is even more relaxed than tim. he's like a cool contemporary hippie. he espouses hippie values but he's chic and "chill"
sebastian and i have been doing patrick beach yoga for a few days now on the pontoon, a tad before sunset, and i am enjoying myself
also big gossip! T wants to know if they can sail with us this summer in case their boat gets sold.
i shall keep you updated on this big gossip. they have a buyer coming on monday to check out the boat...