Friday night I smoked a big hookah pipe. I saw the smoke curl and dance and I thought it might be visible laughter.
Our host rinsed the big ornate metal hookah, and cleaned it, and heated small chunks of charcoal on the stove. He packed the bowl on the top of the pipe, which was two feet tall and had a swivel base for ease of use at a party (how clever), with saturated fruit-flavored tobacco. The greasy sticky sweet brown stuff came from a glass jar covered with miniscule Arabic writing. He set a screen over the wad of tobacco, and placed the charcoal on the little screen.
The pipe bubbled with a deep voice, like laughter, like our own laughter, fueled with wine and music and apple cobbler. Great billows came surprising, and I could not feel the smoke as I inhaled because it was cooled by the pipe's water. We sat on cushions, a red Bokhara beneath us, candles lighting the smiling faces, hearing and telling many tales of journeys.
Saturday morning my Egyptian cabaret style beginning bellydancing class began at nine o'clock. Two students returned from the previous session, which I considered a great compliment, and six new faces watched me with undivided attention. We incorporated some basic elements of muscle isolations into our warm-up, and I think this class will be a difficult one to teach, but I know it will be worth it. Most of the women said they're taking my class to increase flexibility and strength.
The motions used are sometimes foreign to people who have never taken dance or aerobic before in their lives. The notion of movement and muscle isolation seems incomprehensible. I show them how, and I tell them, keep your head and your hips in place, balanced, face forwards, but now slide your rib cage side to side on a horizontal plane. For some, this is difficult to grasp. They lean side to side, they lunge using their legs, they rock back and forth, they tilt their heads left to right. It is not easy to describe, in words, the motions necessary for the muscle control, but sometimes it is easier said than done.
I did get them all dancing, though, and they didn't realize it until I pointed it out to them. Everyone managed to execute a hip lift, in which only one hip at a time lifts up and forward, and also a hip tuck, in which only one hip at a time lifts up and tucks in directly beneath the ribs. We combined the two moves, lift, tuck, lift, tuck -switch hips- lift, tuck, lift, tuck, in time with the music tempo. I said, Excellent! You are all dancing. Those smiles, the feeling that fills the room when people realize they can do what they're trying to do, those are wonderful things. I was told my class is a lot of fun. And that's always nice to hear.
Saturday after my class we drove to the mountains, up into the deep dark wild woods. The lovely and kind JJ had rented a cabin and invited a few people. It was nice to have a party away from home, although everyone was tired from hiking, and went to bed by ten on Saturday night. S and I stayed up, sitting near the fire he had built outside. We listened to voices across the water, to the splash of fish in the lake, we listened to the big wide open silence and watched the yellow gibbous moon rise over the opposite ridge. The moon and stars reflected bright in the cold water, dark shadows cast by trees. S saw a shooting star and pulled me close against him, which is my favorite place to be.
In the cold clear dawn a pair of bald eagles came sweeping over the lake, rising and descending and splashing for fish, scattering the ducks across the water. The low mist on the water curled faint tendrils and drifted across the black surface. The air was cold but not frosty. Everything seemed to crackle with the energy of the dawn, a blinding brightness shining from the sun, reflecting from the water, light as a tangible thing crashing into the cliffs and the forested hillside. The air felt alive and vibrant, a shimmering with light refracting from the rippling water.
We walked along the wooded shore, a well-worn path beneath the firs and pines and cedars, thick with ferns and huckleberry, sedge and rushes. The wide shallow creek burbled and gargled around a bend, and in the cold water we could see the salmon. The land-locked salmon live in the lake and spawn in the fast cold mountian streams; their vermillion and crimson bodies with bright green heads rode the current and fought for space above the rocky creek bottom. We watched them in their swirling grace, facing upstream into the current. They rushed at each other, and fought, and slithered sideways, turned course, then let the current take them downstream, only to turn again and glide upstream again. It was acrobatics, it was dance, it was combat.
The fish were molting, their flesh beneath the brilliant red scales beginning to decay. We saw a number of dead fish in the shallows. They swim and spawn and die, and the lake freezes over in the winter. This is the cycle of things.
The day ended too soon, and we drove home, descending out of the mountains, into the valley below. And of course there is so much more to write, and no time to write it all.
Our host rinsed the big ornate metal hookah, and cleaned it, and heated small chunks of charcoal on the stove. He packed the bowl on the top of the pipe, which was two feet tall and had a swivel base for ease of use at a party (how clever), with saturated fruit-flavored tobacco. The greasy sticky sweet brown stuff came from a glass jar covered with miniscule Arabic writing. He set a screen over the wad of tobacco, and placed the charcoal on the little screen.
The pipe bubbled with a deep voice, like laughter, like our own laughter, fueled with wine and music and apple cobbler. Great billows came surprising, and I could not feel the smoke as I inhaled because it was cooled by the pipe's water. We sat on cushions, a red Bokhara beneath us, candles lighting the smiling faces, hearing and telling many tales of journeys.
Saturday morning my Egyptian cabaret style beginning bellydancing class began at nine o'clock. Two students returned from the previous session, which I considered a great compliment, and six new faces watched me with undivided attention. We incorporated some basic elements of muscle isolations into our warm-up, and I think this class will be a difficult one to teach, but I know it will be worth it. Most of the women said they're taking my class to increase flexibility and strength.
The motions used are sometimes foreign to people who have never taken dance or aerobic before in their lives. The notion of movement and muscle isolation seems incomprehensible. I show them how, and I tell them, keep your head and your hips in place, balanced, face forwards, but now slide your rib cage side to side on a horizontal plane. For some, this is difficult to grasp. They lean side to side, they lunge using their legs, they rock back and forth, they tilt their heads left to right. It is not easy to describe, in words, the motions necessary for the muscle control, but sometimes it is easier said than done.
I did get them all dancing, though, and they didn't realize it until I pointed it out to them. Everyone managed to execute a hip lift, in which only one hip at a time lifts up and forward, and also a hip tuck, in which only one hip at a time lifts up and tucks in directly beneath the ribs. We combined the two moves, lift, tuck, lift, tuck -switch hips- lift, tuck, lift, tuck, in time with the music tempo. I said, Excellent! You are all dancing. Those smiles, the feeling that fills the room when people realize they can do what they're trying to do, those are wonderful things. I was told my class is a lot of fun. And that's always nice to hear.
Saturday after my class we drove to the mountains, up into the deep dark wild woods. The lovely and kind JJ had rented a cabin and invited a few people. It was nice to have a party away from home, although everyone was tired from hiking, and went to bed by ten on Saturday night. S and I stayed up, sitting near the fire he had built outside. We listened to voices across the water, to the splash of fish in the lake, we listened to the big wide open silence and watched the yellow gibbous moon rise over the opposite ridge. The moon and stars reflected bright in the cold water, dark shadows cast by trees. S saw a shooting star and pulled me close against him, which is my favorite place to be.
In the cold clear dawn a pair of bald eagles came sweeping over the lake, rising and descending and splashing for fish, scattering the ducks across the water. The low mist on the water curled faint tendrils and drifted across the black surface. The air was cold but not frosty. Everything seemed to crackle with the energy of the dawn, a blinding brightness shining from the sun, reflecting from the water, light as a tangible thing crashing into the cliffs and the forested hillside. The air felt alive and vibrant, a shimmering with light refracting from the rippling water.
We walked along the wooded shore, a well-worn path beneath the firs and pines and cedars, thick with ferns and huckleberry, sedge and rushes. The wide shallow creek burbled and gargled around a bend, and in the cold water we could see the salmon. The land-locked salmon live in the lake and spawn in the fast cold mountian streams; their vermillion and crimson bodies with bright green heads rode the current and fought for space above the rocky creek bottom. We watched them in their swirling grace, facing upstream into the current. They rushed at each other, and fought, and slithered sideways, turned course, then let the current take them downstream, only to turn again and glide upstream again. It was acrobatics, it was dance, it was combat.
The fish were molting, their flesh beneath the brilliant red scales beginning to decay. We saw a number of dead fish in the shallows. They swim and spawn and die, and the lake freezes over in the winter. This is the cycle of things.
The day ended too soon, and we drove home, descending out of the mountains, into the valley below. And of course there is so much more to write, and no time to write it all.
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