Monday, July 10, 2006The MunchiesA post-yoga endorphin rush is better than any drug I've ever experienced.A good yoga class leaves my mind scrubbed so free of lint and clutter that I literally do not see the world in the same way. It's like the first time I tried on prescription glasses and couldn't get enough of looking at the lacy filigree of tree leaves. When I come out of class it feels like my lenses have been reformed and made of glass that is so much clearer than before that I am now able to see things as they really are, without prejudgment, without static, without noise. Tonight after one such class I decided to take Sam on a walk. It was about 9:30 and we poured out of the front door into the summer night. I love these nights, the heat of the house wafting out of the open windows, floor fans perched in front doors while the TV flickers inside. I listen to the lights... the garden lights softly illuminating the underbellies of tree branches and little amber lights perched on brick steps. The luminous red of a closed curtain with a living room light glowing behind it. Cars swish by, urban jazz pulsing out through open windows, sound systems of power and clarity, music of seduction and speed. A truck starts up next to me. I see a hand turning on the radio. The deep thrum of the engine shoots me back to Oakland, maybe thirty years ago, when my first truly adult boyfriend would start his car in the black early morning hours, leaving me warm and aching for him in his big foreign bed. A house with no lights on intriques me. I sense that it is not empty. Maybe there is an older couple inside, already deep into sleep. They may be entertwined somewhere in the back, so used to each other that they feel as comfortable together in sleep as I feel alone with my dog. How many years? Fifty? Maybe sixty? A couple sits on a front porch behind a wide lawn and a hedge. They seem like they've just finished dinner. She may be sitting on his lap, I can't tell. But I see his hand on her arm, encircling her waist. It strikes me that these houses are not the houses of romance or sex. These are the homes that people buy after they've been married for awhile, not the college shoebox apartments that make you want to wear a condom to even open a door, nor the little cottages of the newly married, pre-baby set. So it seems odd and marvelous to see a touch of romance in there beyond the hedge. Are they children of the owners? Housesitters? Or even maybe the owners, married, still friends and still happy to sit in the warm summer evening together, breathing in the cooling air with mutual compatibility. I hear Tom Petty as I near the corner coming from a tiny Spanish style bungalow, squeezed into the corner of the lot. Stucco walls, tile roof, vintage 1930's LA. In ways I cannot explain, this house smells like college life. The kitchen window above the sink is open, without a screen, and I can hear the on/off of water as the dishes are being done. Some spiciness is still in the air and as the dog stops to investigate the ivy, I casually turn my head and take a good look. A hispanic man, maybe in his late 20's, is framed in the window, intent on washing the dishes. Above the house arch several tall pines, opening up into a square of deep blue night. In the center of that is the full moon, bright as a newly minted nickle. The square of the window, the moon overhead. "And I'll feel a whole lot better when you're gone..." in the background. I cross the street, looking back on that scene one more time. I wished I had my camera. I wished Edward Hopper could've caught it. But it's not Edward Hopper that is necessary, I suddenly think, and it's not imperative to capture it. All that's needed is to keep discharging the internal clutter so the images can flow in, pure and achingly beautiful. There are more out there. Walking up the hill to my house I realize that this is how I used to feel about freshly baked chocolate chip cookies; I am ravenous and insatiable to consume all of this. The summer evening, the man in the window, the bright moon, the promise to come. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:23 PM  
Comments: Kathy... yet another great post. CONGRATULATIONS on your latest award. Don't foget me when you win the Pulitzer. # posted by  LoriAnn's Blog : 8:57 PM
Wow! You are really a great writer! I hear you on the yoga afterglow. My best yoga experience was when I was trying to teach a class to a bunch of teenagers while totally knocked up on cold meds. It was a fantastically zen experience ;) I'm a South Pasadena blogger and found your site through southpasblogs.blogspot. I'm looking forward to reading more of your stuff.
# posted by Sarah : 8:07 PM
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