The Last Post

How To Approach A Woman Who Is Out Of Your League.

How To Survive A Tiger Attack.

How To Pursue A Dream.

Thanks for reading, everyone.

The Second-To-Last Post

So with little fanfare, it's time to announce the closing of this blog.

The short story is that co-authoring a children's novel and writing a blog are mutually incompatible.

Also, the character of my life is very different now. The era of the 365-day weekend is long gone, and I'm just as busy as any office worker, with the small differences of not having to go to an office, and also commanding my own destiny and stuff.

Finally, it's a bit of a professional and personal liability, having this much information about me so easily available. I'm mainly worried about spoilers. I don't want people who are just now meeting me to ruin the experience of getting to know me. I like surprising people, and having a blog makes it much more difficult.

I know I'm leaving quite a few threads dangling. Did the Queen of Wands ever show up? Did I manage to open the gates of Hollywood? Will I ever become a regular level 2-3 yoga student? Will Naruto ever rescue Sasuke from the clutches of Orochimaru?

What do you think?

I'm not asking that question as a means of obliquely hinting at the outcome. I'm asking because your answer is important, and reveals a great deal about how you view the universe. Two-and-a-half years ago, I took a monumental, life-altering risk, not knowing what would come of it. Do I live in the kind of world that rewards such risk? Or the kind that is indifferent to it?

What do you think?

What I think is coming up next.

English Parks Are Suspicious

It wouldn’t be one of my vacations unless it involved biking through picturesque landscapes. Huili took me to what he jokingly called the ex-con bike shop: a group of hippies that constructed Frankenstein rigs from bicycles of suspicious provenance. I purchased a light mountain bike with a rusty chain for forty dollars, and we were off.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t take much adjustment to learn to bike on the left side of the street. The primary difficulty is that when I approach an intersection to make a turn, my assumptions regarding the safety and wideness of a given turn must be inverted. But it’s not too difficult. My assumption is that driving would be much more tricky, given that what video game designers call the “control layout” is reversed in British cars.

So I found myself biking past small houses with chimneys I recognize from Mary Poppins, crumbling brick walls covered with ivy, and eventually, parks.

A park is a very different thing in England than it is in the United States. An American urban park is an ephemeral respite from the urban landscape; no matter how much time you spend in the park, or how deep you wander into it, you will never escape the sensation of being surrounded by a city on all four sides. The English park is an otherworldly entity, in that it creates the unique illusion of being surrounded by a seemingly infinite yet utterly tamed wilderness. The trees are tremendous by American standards, and yet they stand in formations too orderly to be natural. The stern influence of humans is apparent everywhere; the trees are even housed in wooden cages to protect the trees from deer antlers.



The fauna are everywhere in England, and yet completely non-threatening. It feels as if long ago, the English eradicated all species that could be considered even a minor annoyance to humans, leaving behind only the colorful and the scenic and the well-mannered: swans, deer, butterflies, hedgehogs. In an English park, a mother duck pops up on her feet to reveal ducklings huddling beneath, who then walk up to me without fear and peck at the dirt around my shoes.

I’ve never been surrounded by so many creatures in my life, and I’ve been to Patagonia and rural China. I often hear crows cawing when I’m biking through Hancock Park in Los Angeles. But here, I can hear five or six different types of bird calls - all at the same time. The air is teeming with melodious chatter, making everywhere else I’ve been seem silent and lifeless by comparison.

There are signs everywhere in the parks in and around London, advertising the animals you might see if you look around. From my earliest days as a schoolboy, I have learned to ignore such signs, because they have always been guilty of false advertising. (In many American cities, streets are often named after the natural feature that was bulldozed in order to build houses: Stone Creek, Oaktree.) But the average time from sign-reading to creature-spotting in England seems to be in the neighborhood of about five minutes. I’ve learned to identify blue tits, meadow brown butterflies, and coots. Huili’s daughter Miranda would spot and identify species after species - something that could never happen with an American childhood.



And the smells! Walking through the Isabel Plantation section of Richmond Park, one can smell plants growing, flowering, dying, and decaying - again, all at the same time. There are so many species housed in the Isabel Plantation - including the common roadside weed from my childhood home known as the Texas Bluebell. The fragrances are overwhelming, and yet they transition gracefully from one area of the park to the next. It’s an olfactory experience that I’ve never had, and will probably never have again.

But there’s something unsettling about how well-mannered the wilderness is in England - as if it were cowed into submission. The people, I hesitate to say, feel much the same way. The good manners of everyone around you are both novel and delightful, but at the same time, somewhat suspicious and oppressive. There is a sinking suspicion that nobody is going to behave in an unpredictable and raw (and human) manner, and worse, that everyone is resigned to this fact as if it were a basic and fundamental aspect of existence. Which it’s not.

What’s on offer in London is quite beautiful indeed, but you must be content with what’s on offer, and never ask for anything more. Not an easy proposition.

The Rain in London

There’s a big difference between the rain in England and the rain in Texas.

The rain in Texas is like God coming down here after He just said not to make Him do it. It’s weighty and fierce, pelting you like ancient Greek capital punishment. (Meteorologists say that there’s more electrical energy in the Texas climate, so we also get some truly epic lightning.)

In England, the rain doesn’t fall; it condenses like an eternal morning dew. London rain is so fine and weightless, you almost forget that it’s there. But it is, the water slowly working its way into everyone and everything, wearing down your happiness and resolve droplet by droplet.

The rain is an integral part of London’s character and mood, acting as the counterpart to the sun in Los Angeles. Walking past Trafalgar Square, across rain-slicked streets, pedestrians wielding black umbrellas - there is no mistaking where you are.

However, I had the pleasure of experiencing a few sunny, twenty-degrees-Celsius days in London, and the city absolutely shines under such conditions. Hyde Park under the sun, suffused with green; Londoners lounging in deck chairs; swans with heads tucked in their feathers; the bronze gleam of the Peter Pan statue - the place becomes a storybook like no other.

But sunny and warm is clearly not the default mode of this place. The sun is always about to take its leave in London, and everyone knows it.

London and Largo

Before I get to London, a bit about Los Angeles.

One of the significant elements of my tenure in Los Angeles, one of the things that makes this place feel like somewhere I grew up, has been Largo, the dinner club/performance venue that is home to Jon Brion (he of Kanye West and I Heart Huckabee’s fame) and an ever-rotating ensemble of performers. Over the past several years, I’ve had the unexpected pleasure of seeing Brion improvise with musicians such as Robyn Hitchcock, Beck, and Fiona Apple.

Largo is relocating and shutting down its original Fairfax space, and so Huili flew in from London a while back to attend one of the last shows at the original venue. It was a pretty decent show, with Benmont Tench (the pianist from Tom Petty’s band) and Fiona Apple both in attendance. Fiona Apple is usually a very timid and halting presence, repeatedly engaging in the false start and then retreating to the corners of the stage. One of the pleasures of hearing her sing, and she’s very good at it, is watching her move through her fear and confront the audience at center stage, where she is utterly transformed. That night, the audience was treated to covers of “Crazy” and “Ain’t No Sunshine”. I’m not a particularly big fan of hers, but hearing her cover Bill Withers was something else entirely.

One thing in particular about Largo remind me of London. First of all, Jon Brion often covers the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” at his shows, much to the chagrin of both Huili and GP. And Waterloo Station happens to be the closest station to Huili’s house in Surbiton. It’s a beautiful, timeless station, emblematic of its city in the way that Union Station is of Los Angeles.

The Great Telectroscope of Brooklyn

From the creators:

Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel has finally been completed. An extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope has been installed at both ends which miraculously allows people to see right through the Earth from London to New York and vice versa.

A letter from myself to the inventors of the telectroscope:

Good sirs and madams,

I have been enchanted by early accounts of your exceedingly fine device, and would like to request the privilege of viewing the wondrous "telectroscope" posthaste.

I will be visiting the renowned municipality of Brooklyn soon, and it is my intention to behold the countenances of my old schoolmate chum and his beloved female progeny of six years; both live in London, and I have not seen the young lady since the Lichtenstein parliamentary elections of three years ago. Accompanying me will be another former colleague of mine from my days in university; she is, like myself, captivated by your commendable efforts.

The four of us endeavor to send each other greetings and salutations by means of your technology, and hope to complete a legally binding business transaction. Thanks to the "telectroscope", we will no longer have to rely on the woefully archaic semaphore to trade our rare specimens of tulips. A tip of the cap to your industrious engineers.

With Warmest Regards,

Robert

An Eight-Year-Old’s Secrets

Here’s how you get an eight-year-old girl to reveal all of her secrets. You just shut up and wait for her to volunteer things.

This is something I learned shortly after a touching and picturesque wedding ceremony in Ryetown, New York. Afterwards, I found myself riding in a Prius into Manhattan, arriving in the afternoon. The day was spent roaming around Manhattan with my friends George and Stefanie - visiting the Uniqlo flagship, eating red velvet cupcakes, and then, unpredictably, playing at a local playground.

At the playground, Stefanie’s friend Ting showed up with her eight-year-old sister Nancy in tow. Nancy is a dancer/gymnast, and showed off some incredibly impressive high kicks and splits. And then I saw her perform a physical movement I found very familiar - a pose I’ve learned as Upward Facing Bow - a backwards-bending arch formed with the hands and feet as the foundation.

“Hey!” I said. “I can do that!”

So I threw my bag down to the ground, laid on my back, bent my knees, and pushed up into the pose.

“You’re cheating!” said Nancy.

“What?” I thought it was a pretty decent UFB, if a bit sloppy.

“Look, she said. And she stood upright, and fell backwards into the pose, which is of course something I cannot do unless I want to severely injure myself.

“Oh,” I said. “Okay. IT’S ON.”

And that’s how I found myself playing follow the leader with an eight-year-old, something I hadn’t done in decades. I did camel pose for her, as well as swung through the monkey bars without letting my feet touch the ground. Somehow, these feats earned her grudging respect.

Which allowed me to sit down with Nancy for a chat, which was something I felt would be extremely useful for Pillow Crisis research.

“Do you like Pokemon?”

“No,” she said. “I like DIGIMON.” As if the distinction were the most important one in the universe.

Later, she quizzed my Chinese.

“Do you know da?

“No.”

She smacked her forehead. “Do you know siaw?”

“Nope.”

“Da means big, siaw means small. I’m small, you’re big.”

“I know the word for automobile.” I proceeded to butcher the word. She looked at me.

“You’re Japanese.”

“No! I’m Chinese! It’s just been a long time, dude.”

From there I learned the most intimate details of the internecine politics of best friendship in elementary school, which is mainly a task of balancing multiple demands for playtime from various suitors.

What was interesting about Nancy’s monologue on the perils of friendship was how utterly serious it was. Not once did I think that her problems were diminutive or cute - I felt very much in the presence of someone who was struggling to make sense of the various ends of her life.

Much like myself.

This Is The Way!

5/24-5/28: NEW YORK, NEW YORK


5/28-6/5: LONDON, ENGLAND


6/6-6/9: EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

The Plaster Conundrum

My room is so cluttered with stuff right now, I can't even think.

The concrete floor in the apartment is coated with a difficult-to-remove-plaster, which sloppy contractors spilled everywhere during the construction of the building. GP and I have attacked the plaster from several different fronts. We've poured water on the floor to soften it, we've scraped at it with trowels, we've scrubbed it with brushes. The plaster slowly erodes away under the force of our efforts, like a wind-carved canyon. Unfortunately, the plaster, which should have taken a couple of hours to remove, became a multi-day project.

Which means I'm leaving town before the job is done.

After I leave, GP and the apartment super are going to SAND THE FLOOR WITH POWER TOOLS. I'm kind of sad that I will miss my initiation rite into the use of power tools. It's quite possible that GP and the super will go on to acid-stain the concrete floors, finishing the common areas before I return.

After that, it's bedroom carpets, curtain installation, kitchen cabinet repainting, door repainting, and furniture acquisition. And then Operation: Apartment Pimp-Out will be complete.

This Just Got Real

Strips of carpet and carpet foam, cut and rolled.

For this renovation project, I am wearing a twenty-dollar pair of jeans from the Gap, knowing that they will most likely be destroyed by the process. In fact, they are appreciating in value. Thanks to random paint spots and indigo dye distressing, they now look like a two-hundred-dollar pair.

Something strange happens to your sense of time when you spend all day doing manual labor. The days seem much longer, and tend to run together. I wake up, I work, I eat a big dinner, I go to sleep, and then I do it again.



Our living arrangements have been thrown into disarray by the renovation project. My room turned into a makeshift staging area for my stuff, belongings ready to relocate at a moment's notice.

When I open my bedroom door into the hall, I am greeted by what looks like an archaeological dig: dust, debris, tools, work lamps. We wear gloves and filtration masks. We are uncovering details of the original construction of our apartment building, circa the late seventies: green shag carpet, original off-white paint.


The living room, de-carpeted. Note the brighter and lighter wall color, as well as my Hello Kitty calendar.

We keep hoping that our apartment super will decide that a given task is too difficult for us to complete, and that he will do it for us, or even better, call in professionals. This never happens.

Instead, he provides us with a quick five-minute tutorial on the task at hand, and then returns a few hours later to note our progress.

Cutting out carpet with knives? Easy! Prying carpet staples and tack strips from the concrete floor? Easy! Repairing huge fault-line cracks in the concrete with Cement-All? Easy!

Every day, a new unforeseen task, a new lesson in DIY. Exhausting, but also empowering.

Now I know what you're thinking: this had better be a really hot girl.

That's what I'm saying.

My To-Do List is Sick, Dude

During the next few months, I will:

1) Convert apartment into loft: paint walls, tear out carpets, stain and seal concrete floors.

2) Go to New York for a friend's wedding.

3) While in New York, begin work on new radio project with Stefanie. Work meaning spend lots of time with her, insult her, make her laugh. But this time, get it on tape. (More on this in a bit.)

4) From New York, fly to London and visit Huili. Discuss Pillow Crisis.

5) From London, take train into Scotland.

6) Write the first draft of Pillow Crisis: A Novel.

7) Finish the second draft of Lobsters vs. Butterflies: The Movie.

8) Go running, do yoga, lift weights, hike.

9) Prepare for glory.

This is the kind of list that makes even the most hardened overachiever cry. As recently as a couple years ago, I would never have been able to even consider taking on responsibilities of this number and magnitude. But I've learned something very important during this experiment in self-determination: how to optimize my own workflow.

This is how fast I move now.

How To Convert Your Apartment Into A Loft

The end of Citizen Kane, or our apartment before the painting commences.

1) Residents complain loudly about decade-old carpet and a landlord who refuses to replace it.

2) Building super comes up with the idea of ripping all the carpets out in the common areas, staining and sealing the concrete beneath, offers to pay for the materials. Residents will pay for new carpet in bedrooms, landlord will pay for installation.

3) Residents counter with idea of painting walls before ripping out carpets, which will be used as a dropcloth.

4) Super thinks this a fantastic idea, happens to moonlight as a professional housepainter, offers the use of his equipment, and provides color guidance.

5) Residents choose between two completely indistinguishable hues: "Swiss Coffee" and "White Dove". The avian shade prevails over the neutral (heh) one.

6) Super wants to know when the painting will start. Residents realize that they do not, in fact, have day jobs, and can, in fact, start painting in the next thirty minutes.

7) Super immediately calls Sherman Williams, orders a five-gallon drum of "White Dove" with his professional discount. Residents pick up the paint, a roller, and a pan.



8) Residents disassemble shelving units, move furniture, start painting. Residents start at 1 pm, finish about half the entire apartment by midnight.

The crazy thing is, most of these steps happened in a single day. I'm in a real hurry to finish this job, because a) I'm about to start writing my first novel (more on this in a bit), not to mention leaving for New York and London, and b) I'm hoping that I can finish the renovation before certain individuals visit my apartment.

Let's put it this way: I've certainly cleaned my apartment for special guests, but I've never RENOVATED my apartment for them. Draw your own conclusions.

SF Girls Versus LA Girls

I was eating a chocolate croissant at Tartine Bakery near Dolores Park, when I caught a girl wearing fake cowboy boots making eyes at me from behind her Macbook. (Again, it is difficult to write about San Francisco and not set a new record for yuppieness in a single sentence.)

She was a pretty girl, well-dressed. But this is the thing:

If she were an artist, she'd be living in Los Angeles.

If she were an actress, she'd be living in Los Angeles.

If she were a musician, she'd be living in Los Angeles.

If she were a stripper, she'd be living in Los Angeles. (Or, admittedly, Las Vegas.)

That leaves me here at Tartine Bakery with: a girl who can write me a sweet press release? Someone who can sell me an awesome text ad? Maybe walk me through a kickass Powerpoint presentation?

The comparison I draw between the female populations of the two cities might easily be expanded into an allegory of the differences between the cities themselves.

(San Francisco apologists will insist with some shrillness that there are also writers and doctors and such in their fair city. But Los Angeles also has such individuals. And so the allegory is extended even further, because everything SF has, LA has as well. Sadly, the converse is not true. )

San Francisco is a charming, elegant, and pretty little town, but spend enough time there and it's hard to shake the feeling that all the truly interesting, hot, and unique entities (things, events, people) are happening somewhere else. Somewhere far away.

Somewhere, perhaps, four hundred miles south on the 5 freeway.

What I Did In San Francisco

1) Attempted to prevent the stench of the cattle slaughterhouse (you know the one I'm talking about) on the 5 freeway between LA and SF, by pressing the recirculate air button in time. Completely, utterly, miserably failed.

2) Decided to write Pillow Crisis as a novel. More on this in a bit.

3) Posed as an design school applicant in order to trick a security guard into admitting me into a design college's building. Was told to visit Admissions on the fifth floor, disregarded these instructions, and headed directly to the roof to take in a view of Union Square from above. I am a NINJA.

4) Ate at Burma Superstar and The House (two old favorites).

5) Visited the W hotel, and was offered a free limo ride to the San Francisco symphony hall, courtesy of the all-new 2009 Acura MDX, the finest sports utility automobile on the road today. (As you can see, it is impossible to write about San Francisco without mentioning at least three yuppie institutions per sentence.)

6) Repeatedly encountered the San Franciscan custom of offering unsolicited help from strangers, as people threw themselves at us to offer directions, restaurant recommendations, and holistic friendliness. Believe it or not, this was neither cloying nor annoying, but in fact, rather appreciated. San Francisco is much less militant about being nice than say, Santa Monica.

7) Visited the observation deck at the De Young Museum,which is oxidizing quite nicely, and will achieve a nice green patina within a matter of years, I hope.

8) Returned to Dolores Park, the site of two crucial scenes in Pillow Crisis. Took in a very lovely view of the city from the perfectly placed bench in the southwest corner of the park, recently installed by some very prudent and wise park officials.

9) Experienced the startling coincidence of standing directly across from a couple on the Muni that I stood across from on my last trip to San Francisco, over a year ago. Given the size of the city (and the fact that I was riding the same line, the N Judah), it may not have been such a staggering serendipity. But in Los Angeles, this occurrence would be considered an act of god.

10) Considered actually moving to San Francisco when I get older and slower and more boring, and need to raise my offspring, which sounds like heresy until you realize that Pillow Crisis is about the relationship between parents and children, and the story is set in the city for a reason. (Then again, moving to San Francisco means being prepared to lose everything you own in an earthquake. And if you think that's what insurance is for, I'd like to introduce you to some New Orleans residents.)

I've Been Away For A Whole Month

And not a single day passed that I didn't think about writing a new post, but I simply couldn't make the time. That's how busy my April was.

The short story is that I was preparing my new screenplay, Lobsters vs. Butterflies, for entry in the open screenwriting competition held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. I was also submitting new design documents for the Princeton overfishing experiment - I have designed a new video game in which players feed cookies to hungry beached whales trapped on an iceberg.

I was writing and being creative seven hours a day, which is the equivalent of a fourteen-hour day at my old job. And in order to help relieve the stress, I was running twenty miles a week, going to yoga six times a week, weight training twice a week, and hiking in Runyon Canyon once a week. My abdominals are starting to go six-pack on me. This is a good thing.

And then Huili, my writing partner from London, visited for a week, during which we drove up to San Francisco to begin work on Pillow Crisis.

There wasn't a whole lot of time left over for blogging, as you might imagine.

And there still isn't. As I type this, I'm packing my bags for Dallas, to help my mother deliver flowers for Mother's Day. And then at the end of the month, it's off to New York (for a friend's wedding), London (to visit Huili and continue work on Pillow Crisis), and Edinburgh (because I can).

But I'm back and posting regularly again. And I have plenty to discuss: my trip to San Francisco, future installments of A Crash Course in Women, a possible small adventure involving the most frequent female guest star on this blog, and my journeys in the United Kingdom.

A Very Big If: The Second Anniversary

The Dutch language has a word that is not easily translated into other languages. The word is gezellig, and its closest counterpart in the English language is “cozy”. The Dutch might use the word to describe, for instance, the experience of drifting on a barge down an Amsterdam canal with close friends after a good dinner, watching the sunset.

If this Dutch word sounds familiar, it might be because I invoked the word a year ago, to commemorate the first year of this adventure (and subsequent blog). And I am summoning it again for the second anniversary, as I struggle to describe my gratitude and awe for the profound changes that have swept my life over the past two years.

Recently, I was sitting in the yoga studio in the fifteen minutes before class, reading a sociology textbook about social dilemmas for my new job while enjoying a chocolate mousse baklava and listening to Jamaican steel drum music from the street performer outside.

(If you’ve never heard of chocolate mousse baklava, you’re not alone; it was concocted by a yoga instructor who moonlights as a pastry chef, and often delivers his leftovers to the studio. Every so often, a brand new exotic dessert appears in the yoga studio’s lobby, free to all. This is the sort of thing that occurs frequently in my life.)

And I immediately thought to myself, how strange and unpredictable is this life. It wasn’t that long ago that I was trapped in a cubicle blighted by monitor glare and the smell of printer toner. And now here I was, reading a book I would never read, eating a dessert I’d never heard of, about to engage in an exercise I never thought I’d do.

The word gezellig may not have an English translation, but I have clearly deciphered its meaning over the course of this adventure. It has been two happy and wonderful years, and beyond belief, I still have no real idea when this adventure will end. There is the small twinkling of hope that the sabbatical is not a sabbatical, after all; that somehow, uncannily and unpredictably and indiscernibly: the sabbatical has become my life.

We’ll see.

The Sociologist, The Ecologist, & The Game Designer

At the Bellagio buffet, my friend Matt and I deposit tuna nigiri on our platters.

“You’d better load up your plate, dude,” I tell him.

“Why?”

“Because in a few years, there won’t be any left.”

He was utterly crestfallen.

The sad fact is that tuna is a severely overfished species. We are the last people on earth who will ever eat wild tuna, as opposed to farmed tuna. Sushi chefs in Japan are already experimenting with horse meat, which would have been considered a heretical notion as recently as a few years ago. But overfishing is not just a problem for the world’s fish, but for the world itself; the particularly human tendency to overconsume perfectly renewable natural resources is hardly limited to tuna.

My new job, working with a sociologist and an ecologist from Princeton, is designing an experiment that studies human behavior in an overfishing scenario. Overfishing is obviously not in the interest of the common good, but it is in the interest of the individual good (of fisheries, sushi restaurants, and tuna lovers). The activity itself poses a social dilemma: whether it is better to cooperate with others (and be good stewards of tuna stocks), or to defect (and keep all that delicious tuna for yourself).

The experiment takes the form of a video game, which is where I come in. I originally pitched a game about ninjas defending a village from bandits, but we found it difficult to map this scenario onto the traditional structure of the classic overfishing social dilemma. So the new game is about the symbiotic relationship between parasites and hosts, with parasitic organisms cooperating and competing for the lifeblood of a host organism. I’ve been reading up on cellular biology, reminding myself of the difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, the function of mitochondria, and the components of cytoplasm.

One thing I’ve really enjoyed about the job so far is the contact with experts from other disciplines. I’ve really enjoyed learning the vocabulary of sociology, and becoming semi-conversant in the discipline. (I never knew what a nonrival good was until a month ago.) And conversely, I’ve enjoyed exposing these academics to the finer points of game design, everything from asynchronous play to presentation layer to the all-important sense of fun.

This project is unique among my prior works because I am working in the realm of very pure design - there are no marketing types, no conventional wisdoms, no trendy jargon. Just the job of designing something beautiful and fun. With the added benefit of making the world a slightly better place.

It’s good to be a game designer again.

The Yoga Personality Test

I have a theory that your favorite yoga poses say a lot about your personality: you like what you are. For instance, my favorite poses are the Warriors, Crow, and Tree, and I have an affinity for all three of those entities.

I haven’t really tested my theory enough to gauge its accuracy, but there it is.

A classmate of mine just recently began taking yoga, and has not developed any show-off moves. But during one class, she busted out a flawless Side Crow on her first try. Bear in mind that I’ve taken over three hundred classes at this point and I still can’t even come close to pulling off that move. My jaw was agape.

Afterwards, she was lamenting her lack of skill at basic poses like Triangle, and I was all like, “B-but you can do FREAKING SIDE CROW, girl! DAAAMMMMNNN!” She had no idea what she had just done.

I don’t know what Side Crow says about my classmate, but consider my curiosity piqued.

The Yoga Beatdown

Practicing the things I’m bad at allows me to become even better at the things I’m good at. That is the lesson I’ve learned during the six months following the departure of my favorite yoga instructor.

As I’ve written previously, my favorite instructor left six months ago to pursue a new love and career on the east coast. Since then, I’ve been rotating among a cadre of various surrogates, concentrating on strengthening the weaker aspects of my practice, shoring up my fundamentals, and acquainting myself with different yoga styles.

It’s been a very productive and educational hiatus from Anusara, the branch of yoga that my favorite instructor taught. I feel stronger than ever, more flexible than ever, more balanced than ever. In short, I feel that I’m ready for whatever comes next.

That would be a class taught by the spiritual successor to my favorite instructor, a woman who was trained by the same master and teaches an advanced Level 2-3 course. For the record, my old instructor taught a Level 1-2.

As soon as the new instructor saw me, she brightened and smiled. She said, “I’m going to write Elsie an e-mail and tell her I saw you. I’ve been meaning to write her.” There’s something quite nostalgic and touching about the idea that even at this age, my teachers are still communicating with each other about my progress as a student.

Class started well enough. Among my specialties are the Warrior poses, because my favorite instructor couldn’t get enough of them, and I practiced long and hard to emulate her form. Sure enough, the new instructor noticed my Warrior One, which is a decent facsimile of the old instructor’s, and said: “Awesome.”

Things quickly went downhill from there. I wrote earlier that this woman was waiting to introduce me to my new pain threshold, and my words were highly prescient. I found that I couldn’t perform a good half of the poses, and I wasn’t alone: students were flopping out left and right. Every pose was either new or a difficult variation of an old pose. At one point, she asked everyone to perform one that no one in the room could duplicate. And then she smiled and said, “We’re just doing this one so everyone can laugh at themselves.” Simply brutal.

The next day I felt a profound fatigue in my body, still present at I type this over twenty-four hours later. My ultimate goal is to take this woman’s class three times a week. I am by no means ready, but I plan on coming back next week.

I would be surprised if she weren’t expecting me.

The Walk

The arrival of spring had endowed Runyon Canyon with thick, new greenery, rendering the park nearly unrecognizable. I had to stop to gather my bearings at multiple points, because I found the newly wild and fecund path to be unfamiliar and strange.

The trail has recently suggested itself as an allegory of the years of my life: the easy stroll of my childhood, leading to the fierce ascent of my twenties, and then the stunning, revelatory vistas of the present day. Fittingly, I used to get winded hiking the park, but now my lungs and legs can easily traverse the hill without upset or complaint.

Runyon Canyon is an off-leash park, so grinning canines roamed the park with glee, willfully ignoring the voices of their masters to sniff at other dogs and root in the dirt. The air was thick with orange butterflies, twirling around in pairs. A hawk circled in the sky above me, the air crackling under the force of of its wings, as it swooped so low I could reach for its tail.

I walked into the park exactly an hour before sunset, which meant that as I climbed to the peak, I saw the entire city from above, thrown into sharp relief by the fading light. The first street lamps had just lit up, jewel-like in their color and radiance. At the top, I paused to remember how overwhelmed I was by Los Angeles when I first moved to the city as a film student, and how tame and pretty and small it seemed in the twilight.

By then, the sky was plummeting into a dark lavender. As I began the climb down, negotiating the sand and rocks and brush, a tall, young woman climbed past, smiling at me. It was a particular kind of smile that I’ve come to recognize from female strangers: the kind of smile that suggests that she knows something you don’t.

At that moment, as with the others, I had to wonder what that something could be.