Waking Up | The Casual Blog

January 6, 2019

Some yoga, being more present, nature photographers, Fiction Kitchen, the dances of Shen Yun

Sunrise in Raleigh this morning looking southeast

I was congested and sniffly for the first week of 2019, but still managed to get up early for some exercise every morning. On Friday, I went to Flywheel for a spinning (stationary bike) class, and had a pretty good result: 317 points, and second place in the class. After that I went down to O2 fitness and did some upper body resistance and core work, plus stretching.

I also made it to my first yoga class of the year. I like the Early Bird classes at Blue Lotus, just across the street from us, which are on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Each class is different, but the system always combines flexibility, strength, and balance. I like moving as part of a group, and I like the teachers, Andrea and Glenda. I don’t have much interest in New Age ideas, which fortunately they do not emphasize.

Last Thursday Glenda was an excellent form, and gave a lot more than an ordinary exercise class. She always has a great mixture of cheerfulness, supportiveness, and demandingness. But this time she helped me tune into to tiny details of sensation and investigate connections of distant parts of the body. She encouraged us to move into the present moment in a way that made it seem both easy and marvelous.

This is my prime New Year’s resolution: to be more present. I’m hoping to spend less energy in unproductive worrying and the like and more in the present moment. On the Waking Up podcast last week, Sam Harris spoke about meditation and its benefits. Harris pointed up that most of us could improve the overall quality of our lives enormously just by cutting out useless mental loops of fear, anger, or craving. Just dropping the pointless emotional junk would allow a lot more room for fulfillment.

I also resolved to get to some of the Carolina Nature Photographers meetings. I joined the group a couple of years back, and have gone to some of their outings, but until this week I hadn’t been to single one of their monthly meetings. Part of me always thought it would be great to talk shop with other nature photographers, and I decided to start this week.

But part of me was resistant. I generally dread meeting people I don’t know. Based on my reading in evolutionary biology, I’d guess this dread has ancient roots: our ancestors of hundreds of thousands of years ago living in small bands seldom encountered others of their species, and when they did it usually meant trouble, and possibly a violent death. So they too probably avoided it when possible, and passed this strategy along to their successors. Anyhow, for whatever reason, I’ve got a mild phobia of strangers.

But I recognize it’s important to connect with others and so I usually manage to buck up and just do it. Much more often than not, I enjoy a social chat once it gets started. At the meeting, not surprisingly, I found several nice people to chat with companionably about photography subjects, and enjoyed the presentation. I thought some of the photography shown was really good, but not at all out of my league. I’d already resolved to take better pictures, and resolved this week to enter some of the contests.

I took the wildlife pictures here this weekend at Yates Mill Pond, Lake Lynn, and Shelley Lake. I liked the reflections. I was experimenting with some new settings in preparation for a trip with the Carolina Nature Photographers to Lake Mattamuskeet in a couple of weeks, where I expect to encounter thousands of water birds — snow geese, tundra swans, various ducks, and others.

On Friday night we ate at one of our favorite restaurants, Fiction Kitchen. We were happy to get a seat at the bar. They’re popular and don’t take reservations, and we’ve been turned away more often than we’ve gotten in. Fiction Kitchen is about delicious vegetarian and vegan food and a friendly artsy atmosphere. The core social vibe is distinctly lesbian, but all are welcome. Sally had the veggie mock pork barbecue, and I had the mock sushi. Both were very tasty, and we had no room left for dessert.

Then we walked over to Memorial Auditorium to see Shen Yun, the Chinese dance troop. They bill their art as part of an ancient Chinese tradition going back thousands of years, and contend that it is the root source of elements of western ballet and gymnastics. Perhaps. What is certainly true is that they are very graceful and super athletic. The colorful flowing costumes are lovely, and the use of technology in the sets is creative. There’s a degree of formality in the way the dancers present themselves, but that also is attractive.

Shen Yun’s beautiful dancers and lively stories emphasize the richness of Chinese culture, and at first I wondered if it was sponsored by the Chinese government. But midway through the program, there were a couple of highly political segments that dramatize the brutality of Communist authoritarianism. The roots of Shen Yun seem to be in Falan Dafa, a/k/a Falan Gong, a movement involving meditation and qiqong exercises which continues to be persecuted by the CP.

Anyhow, we found the show stimulating and fun, and would go back again. As I mentioned to Sally, the idea of China that was I got from American schooling turns out to have been a wild oversimplification. The inhumanity of Chinese Communism is only one part of the picture. The China of real people turns out to be incredibly varied and interesting. Without too much preaching, Shen Yun showed this.

April 16, 2017

Eno River wildflowers, a good spin, and some favorite podcasts

The Eno River, near the ruin of the old pump station

On Friday, I had a mini-adventure exploring Eno River State Park. I asked a friendly staffer at the park office for a good place to look for wildflowers, and so found my way to the pump station trail.

It was a lovely calming place. I walked slowly, looking for tiny blossoms, some of whom are shy and easy to miss. Sometimes I got down on my belly for an extreme close up. I heard the river and a number of migrant warblers singing, though I couldn’t see them in the new leaves.

On Saturday morning I did a 45-minute spin class at Flywheel, which I’ve been trying to do once a week. As usual, it was hard. I met my objectives of getting 300 points ( though barely, with 301), and staying out of last place. In fact, I finished first in the class. I also set a new record for my average heart rate, with 158, and a peak of 168. And I didn’t die!

Eno flowers-3 Most mornings I’ve been getting up at 5:05 and heading to the gym. I’ve been swimming one day a week, and on the others I do a combination of various aerobic machines (stairs, treadmill, elliptical, bike, row) and weights.

During the non-wet workouts I’ve been listening to some stimulating and fun podcasts. I usually start with some news in Spanish (Voz de America) and French (RFI), and then explore some history, science, or other interesting domain. Here are some recent favorites.

S-Town. I finished the seventh of seven episodes last week, and loved it! This was done by some of the same creative folks that did Serial and has a similar format. It starts out being about a crime in a small Alabama town, but ends up being about a quirky and mercurial guy and his community. Parts of it are shocking and tragic, but it’s also funny and compelling.

Radiolab. These folks focus on science and social issues, and sometimes they’re very lively. I particularly liked their recent episode on our nuclear command structure, which gives the President complete and unconstrained control of a nuclear force that could end the world as we know it. That is, we put the question of whether the human race survives or not in one person’s hands. I learned there’s a pending bill that would add some congressional oversight, which could mitigate this existentially risky situation a little.

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Common Sense. From time to time, Dan Carlin does long form podcasts on public policy matters, and they are well researched and thought-provoking. His most recent one concerns America’s health care system, which he points out is not by any measure the best in the world, but is far and away the most expensive. Carlin has some ideas on how we got to this absurd state of affairs, and how we might get out.

Rationally Speaking. The format here is Julia Galef interviewing smart people about social and philosophical issues. This week I went into the archive and listened to her conversation with Peter Singer about ethics and animal rights, and liked it a lot.

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Waking Up. This is another podcast where a smart person, here Sam Harris, interviews another smart person. The most recent one is a conversation with Lawrence Krauss, which covers a wide range, from quantum physics to the under-appreciated nuclear threat to the overhyped threat of Islamic terrorism.

The New Yorker Radio Hour. Somehow David Remnick manages to edit the New Yorker, read everything, watch a lot of television, and do this podcast. Each episode has several segments, which usually include an author talking about a recent piece in the magazine. Those are usually goods, though just as with the magazine, there are some that I would skip.

This American Life. Even after all these years on NPR, Ira Glass and company are still almost always fresh and original.

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October 19, 2014

Enjoying opera, and meditating

Looking west at new construction on Glenwood Avenue, October 18, 2014

Some of my musical friends have a phobia about opera, which I can understand, but it’s really a shame. Some of the greatest music ever conceived is found there, and some of the greatest living musicians express themselves in the form. At its best, it is visual, kinetic, psychological — and fun. A case in point: Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, which we saw on Saturday.

This was a new production from the Metropolitan Opera, performed live and simulcast in HD video to movie theatres around the world, including our own North Hills cinema in Raleigh. The main story concerns a servant, Figaro, about to marry another servant, Susanna, who is being pursued by their master, the Count. It’s a comedy about love and jealousy, but it also has a tragic side, with elements of deception, abuse of power, and corruption. It gets complicated, with various hard-to-follow schemes, impersonations, betrayals, and stolen letters – enough to make you wonder whether eighteenth-century audiences were smarter than we are. But with subtitles, we get the gist.

The new production, set in the 1930s, had interesting sets, gorgeous costumes, excellent singer-actors, and the great James Levine conducting. The music is perhaps Mozart’s finest — transcendently beautiful. The production took the story seriously, and not just as a sequence of wonderful songs. Along with belly laughs, there was surprising depth in the leads, who were all new to me. I was particularly charmed by Isabel Leonard as Cherubino, Marlis Peterson as Susanna, and Ying Fang as Barbarina. Peter Mattei as the Count sang wonderfully. Ildar Abdrazakov as Figaro was very human, funny, and musical.

The schedule for the remainder of the Met’s season of Live in HD productions includes a couple of other favorites of mine (Carmen and the Barber of Seville) and others that look interesting.

Waking Up

I’ve been reading a new book by Sam Harris titled Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Harris is scientist and outspoken atheist, and, it turns out, a serious and experienced practitioner of meditation. He proposes a middle way of approaching what he calls spiritual life that steers between religious mythology and strict scientific rationality. The book is a combination of meditation guide, neuroscience, neo-Buddhist thought, and memoir. It inspired me to find 20 minutes in the schedule for my own meditation practice. If I experience a major illumination, I’ll let you know.