Missy | May 29, 2006

Rolling up into the final position, which explains the bruises on our collective right elbows. My friend and teacher, Ezra.

Today I took my last regular dance class with Ezra, with whom I’ve been studying for the past year. It’s my last “regular” class because his schedule changed. Unfortunately, mine does not change, except for summer flex hours–which I intend to use completely this year, unlike last year–to pay him visits on Friday afternoons here and there. I’m a little sad. Not only do I have to find a new regular teacher, I have truly enjoyed being around him and will, quite frankly, miss him. I’ve never seen him in a bad mood and his enthusiasm is infectious if not occasionally bordering on lunatic. He is incredibly talented in many ways–he’s the kind of person you look at and think or say, “How can you be possibly be so good at so many things”.

I complain sometimes–more like utter some kind of growl-like noise–and make lousy faces when I’m tired, but nobody has made me work as hard as he has. I’m forever grateful, dude.

[This community is nothing if not transient, particularly in this town, but it's my staple. I know this whole dance thing is just a hobby and not my career, but in many ways it is far more important to me than my career (save for the whole having to pay rent thing). I fell back into dance almost accidentally in graduate school and realized that if I wanted to maintain a sane and balanced life, I needed to do it often and be serious about how I approach it. I never dreamed it would become such a large part of who I am.]

[Incidentally, I'm being all mushy on the blog, which I've gotten out of the habit of doing assuming I was ever in the habit of doing, and which I feel very silly doing just now. On the blog, I mean. In private I am slightly more mushy. The important thing is, it's now up to me to find the time to hang out in plank pose for indefinite periods of time or the length of one Doveman song...or say, while I'm eating dinner, or on a conference call etc. I need an Ezra podcast, and probably some floor space.]

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Missy | May 20, 2006

A boy and his hound and rocking horse

I bought this today. Believe it or not, I’ve been eyeing it for months. I am so happy I’m now its owner.

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Missy | May 20, 2006

Hearts on fire, Arizona

[UPDATE: I think I've stopped tweaking this post, some eight hours after I first wrote it, which means (I believe, I am 99% sure) that it's acceptable to go ahead and read now. If you already read it, please re-read. Why don't I obess over things that really matter, I wonder.]

By the looks of things on the ground around my neighborhood this morning, New York has had quite a different week, weather-wise, than where I was for the past week, in the desert, where it hit 100 every day. I was mostly in front of a computer, however. Or stuffing myself with food. But I’m home now, where I can actually get some exercise without even trying (the alternative being walking to or from the car, of course while breaking a sweat.)

When I’m traveling on an airplane I find it difficult to concentrate so I generally stick with magazines for my reads. Mostly In Style rather than the Us Weekly variety, simply because the former, though heavier in weight, takes longer than the latter to get through–the latter being more appropriate for, say, pedicures, which isn’t to say that I never toted an Econometrica to a pedicure years back (or maybe it was JPE, as if that makes it any better even though, if I’m permitted to judge the two in relative terms, JPE is less daunting than the theory-heavy ‘metrica). It’s good to see that I’ve loosened up a little since then.

This time around, at least for the flight home and since, I’ve been deliriously consuming Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep—a solid airplane read, the kind that, when you look up after several hours you think, where am I, how long have I been on this plane, what time is it. Lee, the book’s outsider heroine, is characterized by (mostly) endearing, obsessive self-consciousness. Yet with that come bouts of selfishness if not periodic superiority, all balled up into a mild self-loather (largely environmental rather than inherent). In other words, a teenager. It conjures the sort of surge of nostalgia for adolescence so brilliantly evoked in My So-Called Life, except without all the mopey-ness. (I’m feeling a little bit awkward and unconfident just reading it, and I’m also feeling like a bit of a snob for avoiding this book up until now. What are you doing to me, Curtis. I’ve got crushes on boys to worry about now.) I’ve got her follow-up, The Man of My Dreams queued up right next. Have you read either? Feel free to leave a comment.

Additional photos should appear soon on my Flickr page.

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