Seasonal in Everyday Ramblings

Happy spring to you in the southern hemisphere. With a full day of rain under our belts this week, yet the crackle of dry leaves underfoot we are experiencing fall unfold day by day. It has been a lousy year here for sunflowers, and I admit this one is from last year, so strong is my longing to experience them.

I think about Ukraine. The mined fields. It makes me so sad. There is a little deliberate sunflower garden across the street from the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C. that I follow on Instagram. Unlike last year, this year the Russians are leaving it alone.

My student who had the hip replacement is now starting her 7th week since surgery and has a good sense of what she can and can’t do and I am beginning to return to more traditional hip and leg movements in all the classes she is attends.

Adapting for her has been quite the learning curve for me. I have been adapting for knee replacements since I started teaching and am a lot more comfortable with those. Now my challenge is how to encourage a student with a chronic condition to come to class when he feels he can and to learn over time how not to be so fearful that moving will bring pain.

We have a guy in our old man’s coffee group with Long Covid. He came the first time I ever went but then I didn’t see him again for almost a year. He is a gifted painter. Very talented and well known in our area. When he did come back a few weeks ago he said to the whole group that the conversation had to be deep and meaningful for him to expend the energy to come. We tried.

He came back this week. He had a topic. He wanted to know where all the modern icons had gone. He clarified that he wasn’t talking about celebrities like Taylor Swift or Harry Styles. He was talking about visual icons. Like Marilyn and Elvis. Then the guys, there were nine of them spent 45 minutes mostly talking about Barbie. That was a hoot.

We have a rule that you get fined 25 cents if you bring up Trump. Nobody ever pays but it is the prohibition that counts. Walt brought him up using euphemisms this time and we talked about the mug shot and its trajectory and if it is already iconic. The conversation was quite lively.

Our painter brought up how an icon historically wasn’t finished until the eyes were finished and there was a tangent that went off in that direction, particularly with the photographers in the group. But that also got us talking about the senses and how they work and what we are finding out about them. I brought up Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost, which has a story line about finishing a Buddha icon’s eyes.

We also talked about a watch you can use to help your hearing and a class in teaching children how to read with their eyes closed and how the muscles along our spines tell us not to fall out of bed.

This place we meet in is a hotel as well as a coffee shop and because it was raining and they were hanging an art show in the gallery we had to sit out in the main seating and eating area and there was this young man, clearly a traveler from Asia with his suitcase curled up half asleep in the corner of a big leather couch. He had two phones, which I thought was interesting.

We pulled up a bunch of chairs and enveloped him telling him he was welcome to participate. Eventually he needed to go but he stayed for more than an hour. He was quite gracious when he left and mumbled something surprised about philosophy and we thanked him profusely. One wonders what he was thinking sitting amongst us.

And then I got to ride home in the back seat of a brand-new Tesla. Finding how to get in and out was also a learning curve but enjoyable. We listened to Rodney Crowell on the way. It is a bit like riding in a computer.

Not a bad way to spend our first rainy day of the season.