Silly Rules

I am known to make a million little silly rules for myself because I am constantly in pursuit of forming habits. For example, when I take a few days off from work like I did this week, I like to think that it is essential I participate in a morning yoga class. (You know, just because I don't normally take a yoga class on Friday mornings.) So this morning I joined LaNae for a brisk morning walk around downtown Evanston to catch up on the past three weeks and then we settled into (smack dab in front!) a 10:30 yoga class. And because I am ultimately supposed to tap into a tranquil and quiet part of my mind as I move from plank to cobra pose, my mind does nothing else but spin and reel through stream-of-conscious thoughts.

Like the time a friend of Lisa's told me I had a "yoga body". I was visiting Lisa in New York City and we were sharing a lump of cheese with this friend of Lisa's in the MoMa gardens when this compliment was fired at me. I had no clue what a "yoga body" entailed until 10:30 this morning when I think I gather that it is a not scary bulky or super skinny but altogether a healthy fit physique. Awesome. Not sure if I am still carrying a yoga body one year later but that got me reminiscing about my little trip last June and piecing together an evening that we spend wandering at midnight.

The thing I adore about Lisa and New York City combined is the mini discoveries that are barely detected if you aren't really paying attention. One evening we decided to walk a massive loop around Brooklyn. This of course lead to sweet little wine bars where we sat for hours & stumbling upon neat urban guerrilla gardening in random alleys. But if I had to choose a favorite mini treasure from that trip, it would be the night we tried to figure out where this beautiful lilac-ish scent was coming from. It was beyond the lilac season but this beautiful fragrance would occasionally waft and engulf us to the point where we would toss our noses in the air trying to figure out it's origin. We would smell the leaves of the trees and bend down low to the grass. I felt (and probably looked like) a basset hound.

One particular evening we were literally guided by scent to an opening in Prospect Park where a fiddle and laughing could be heard. It was near midnight and the voices and bluegrass snippets of music were just on the other side of this giant rock. Behind the rock we found four silhouettes. We never saw more than just their dark figures and the silhouettes of their fiddle, bass, drum, and guitar. There was one girl, flirty and barefoot, among the boys who I guessed to be just a year or two younger than Lisa and I. "You have a request?" they asked us and delighted, Lisa asked for a Bob Dylan song. At the end of the song they asked for more requests and we provided, sitting down as though we were an intended audience of two. They played for us and laughed among themselves while Lisa and I clapped, sang, and occasionally whooped. What could have been a better way to hear music than a little music concert intended for two?