Colors, moods, stones, and dance

Look at me! I’m 27!

Ok, so it really isn’t all that amazing or exciting . . . this stretch between 25 and 30 seems more preparatory than anything else. Time to reel in the 20’s, and start thinking about what the next decade should be about.

Last week I had truly worked myself up into an overwhelmed funk. It was a perfect storm of not sleeping well, a monthly hormonal flux, and a few too many projects on the plate all at once. I really do forget that—as an adult—I can still be cranky and in need of a nap. I wasn’t really excited for my birthday at all, because I’d either have to take time to enjoy my birthday, and thus have less time to get things done, or focus on getting stuff done and be bummed for ignoring my birthday.

But after a good cry and reaching a point where actually it looked like I’d get everything done, my birthday arrived and it was a lovely day. I had multiple rounds of “Happy Birthday” sung to me, and I gorged myself on sushi followed by coconut frozen custard (YUM!). The next day Andy’s parents arrived for the first trip to WI they’d made in 5 years. This was one of the big items I could now cross off the list: the apartment was clean and they were all settled in no time. We took them to the Terrace for icecream, where I left them to take my last class of my FIRST yoga minicourse. At some point I’ll elaborate my yoga opinions, but for now I’ll say it was a great final class because we did a sort of “flow yoga” version where we moved smoothly from one pose to the next, and my muscles were mostly happy about that.

Saturday we took the parents to the Farmer’s Market, which they enjoyed so much they went around it TWICE! After round one, I sprinted away for the Yousry Sharif dance workshop I had signed up for months ago.

The workshop was truly amazing. I was expecting it to be good, but I was not prepared for how good. First off, Yousry did very little verbal instruction: it was mostly gestures and demonstrations. This did make it a little tougher for more beginning dancers like myself (sometimes I wasn’t sure if I was doing the correct movement or something that just looked similar). But overall, it worked surprisingly well and allowed us to keep the music going while still being instructed. The thing I’ve been told about Yousry is that he does not arrive at a workshop with a set choreography in mind: he improvises and shapes the routine as he goes, changing it when it doesn’t work. It was really cool to be a part of a creation in progress, and there were times when a move just didn’t work, and so he’d swap it out for something that flowed better. I struggled a lot with the choreography, but as the day went on and I committed the dance to memory, it had this amazing how well it all flowed together, how easily you could pour your energy into it. It was an absolute honor to work with him.

Oh man, I think I’ve rambled a bit more than usual, and rather skipped most of the title content. So here’s a little of what’s left! There were a lot of great vendors at the dance workshop, and from across the gymnasium I saw this veil and it was love at first sight:

http://www.vashtisilks.com/2007/07/purple-tiger.html

As I told the vendor it looked like a storm-cloud, she told me she called this one “purple tiger.” Of course it would be tiger-themed. Oh, the sheer synchronicity of it all. There is just a bit of a tiger theme going on, and we’ll see how far it carries. Anyway, it’s a beautiful veil and it just *floats* in the air as it moves!

At a baby shower on Sunday, a woman commented on the mint-green turquoise necklace I got for my birthday from my mom. She said she was very sensitive to energies, and she couldn’t wear turquoise because it was so grounding. Now, I’ve loved this necklace from the moment it arrived, and after wearing it days in a row, I’ve had to force myself to put on other jewelry. I had a similar experience with a yellow turquoise pendant I bought this past winter, where I felt very calm wearing it and didn’t want to take it off. Is it all metaphysical BS? Sure, possibly. But at least it’s a lot like when I go clothes shopping and suddenly I find myself picking out everything of a certain color that I wasn’t all about the last time I went shopping. Right now, my eye grabs dark purples, greys, and the greens of moss and leaves. Plus golds and warm neutrals. Very nature-oriented colors. . . who knows what it all means!