Williams Crossing

Super Nintendo in your hands.

13 year old me is ecstatic right now.

THE PROFESSIONAL ACTS IN THE FACE OF FEAR

The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work.

The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.

What Henry Fonda does, after puking into the toilet in his dressing room, is to clean up and march out onstage.

He’s still terrified but he forces himself forward in spite of his terror.

He knows that once he gets out into the action, his fear will recede and he’ll be okay.

STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Via Andre.

Yoga teaches me many insights that don’t immediately seem related to yoga.

For example, direct your friend to imagine a person doing yoga. Typically, their immediate image will be someone in a crazy, super flexible pose.

Like these, for instance. Take out the zen and the sex and you’re left with crazy poses. That’s what most of us think about when we think about yoga.

What you don’t realize is how much work it takes to get to that point. Not just in general, but how much work is needed right before the photo to build up to holding the crazy pose.

Recently in class, Jeff, our instructor had us on our backs, trying to bring our feet behind our head. We spent many minutes slowly progressing our hips looser and looser. After a while, we’d take a short break in another pose, and then return to our backs and working our feet up further and further.

We spent 10 minutes on it, a long time in one pose for our class. Jeff explained that higher level teachers will spend 30+ minutes deepening a single pose.

(It’s surprising how flexible you can get when you have enough time to loosen up.)

And that’s how people get into the crazy poses for the photos. They just don’t sit down and dive into the hardest pose. It’s not immediate. They methodically work their body and progress up to it. Then they take the photo and enjoy the success.

Some times it’s easy to forget the years of practice leading up to and the progression they went through immediately before the photo was captured.

Apparently it didn’t have an official video. Now it does.

It’s getting tons of press and for good reason. Ultra cool.

I visited for the first time the Turkish and Russian Bath House in the East Village on Saturday. I had no idea what to expect.

The first thing you do upon entering is place your wallet in a lock box. The key you get in return is both for your lock box and your locker. They provide you everything, sandals, shorts, towel, robe. You can buy water (or fill your bottle) and an assortment of cheap Russian food.

They don’t fry the pelmeni, which is a substantial bummer.

So you change in the no frills locker room and follow a flight of stairs down to a buffet of hot doors. Russian room for max heat. Another for dry heat. Steam room. Steam with aromatherapy.

In the middle of the Russian room is what I can best describe as a box of water and a few buckets. You douse yourself to maintain longevity in the room. There seems to be a silent agreement toward a little showmanship when dousing yourself. If you sit near the box, you’ll catch enough spray that you never need get up.

A story I’ve long told myself is that I handle cold better than heat. My roots make this unsurprising. Sitting in a 185 degree room quickly got challenging. So the best I could do is challenge myself to fully submerge in the pool at least once.

I did it. Reminded me of the Polar Plunge on New Year’s day 2003. Your legs get the coldest because they’re in the water the longest. It felt kind of good, if you’re into that thing. Probably good for hangovers or anger. I think it’s good to challenge yourself, especially when you’re in a personally challenging environment. Even if it’s a simple challenge you keep to yourself. Life outside your comfort zone gets very interesting very quickly. It’s good to get familiar with being there.

I wouldn’t fight to go back, but I’m glad I went and enjoyed the opportunity to experience the bath house for the first time.

I awoke at 10:21am today.

Between my first spinning class (whose title included “Extreme”) in years and pizza night out with Burbo, the big guy needed to sleep in.

I’m glad I slept in. More importantly, I’m glad I feel glad.

It’s taken a long time to come to terms with the flexibility of my working situation. I’ve spent many weekday mornings sleeping in or hanging with people I like. Until fairly recently, those mornings were followed by afternoons of guilt or shame. Unbelievably, the morning felt underutilized because it didn’t include hours of work.

Feeling like a lesser member of society is an odd way to emerge from such an optimal situation.

I’d feel that vibe from others, too. Almost everyone expresses desire for flexibility in their schedule or location. Yet, when offering stories that reveal I have that, I typically receive resentment or some manufactured superiority. Oh, you got up at 10am today? Wow… Given the desires, you’d expect to receive happiness or at least intrigue more often than actually occurs.

So for a long time I’ve battled internal and external forces to achieve true appreciation for what I have. I think I’ve finally done it. Feels pretty good.

(I think that’s a nice way to kick off this blog.)