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There's an interview meme making the rounds, and I'm doing it in a very leisurely way, with questions from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angeyja, who is also asking in a very leisurely way.
And if you'd like to be interviewed, possibly a question at a time, comment below! I may move more speedily than that, but can't promise...
Question the first is "Will there be tea? And if not, what?"
In my life there will always be tea, but I think the context of the question was tea as a shared event, which is a slightly different thing. A shared cup of tea is mind, body, and heart. I guess that's why there are Chinese and Japanese and English and Moroccan tea rituals. And in a very different style but with a similar motivation, the American tea ceremony, when it's not a teabag in a microwave: The kettle on the stove whistles, one friend jumps up from the kitchen table, there's a little chitchat on the slection of mugs, the choice of the tea and the teapot (and probably its history), the milk and the sugar (or honey or Splenda...) But still the warm heart and the warm tongue.
Lately I've been a little guilty about tea. I've been giving Bill a hard time about needing to spend a little more and get fair-trade chocolate, but then it eventually got through to me (he was nice enough not to point it out) that tea is also the means by which a lot of human misery comes into the world. I realized that I need to start finding a source of tea that's also a little cleaner. Selective blindness, for sure, because I've been at tea plantations and seen how painful it is to pick the tea tiny leaf by tiny leaf, bent over all day in the heat with a huge bag on your back and another over your arm, while your kids play in the dirt by themselves at the edge of the plantation. I know that a local store probably carries Equal Exchange or some other fair-trade teas--just need to prod myself to go find it.
But if not tea...Scotch. Fair trade is not the issue there!
Second question: What's your favorite yoga pose?
Ah--that's a very changeable thing. I like poses that didn't come easily, but didn't do me damage, challenges I could eventually master. I think the one that I like the best right now is ardha chandrasana chupasana. I was surprised long ago in a beginner class that I could actually do ardha chandrasana (half-moon pose--start in triangle, then go up on one leg with the other straight out in the air). And then a year or so ago, I was surprised again to realize that I could reach back and hold the ankle of the leg in the air, sort of like that thing ice skaters do at the top of a spin (only they usually use both hands! I'm nowhere near that). I like this pose because it took me a long time to develop the strength to stand without shaking, and because balance is totally challenging to me. I still fall out of tree half the time. But it really feels so free and oddly secure to stand in this pose.
I'll have another favorite in a couple of months, probably.
angeyja, who is also asking in a very leisurely way.And if you'd like to be interviewed, possibly a question at a time, comment below! I may move more speedily than that, but can't promise...
Question the first is "Will there be tea? And if not, what?"
In my life there will always be tea, but I think the context of the question was tea as a shared event, which is a slightly different thing. A shared cup of tea is mind, body, and heart. I guess that's why there are Chinese and Japanese and English and Moroccan tea rituals. And in a very different style but with a similar motivation, the American tea ceremony, when it's not a teabag in a microwave: The kettle on the stove whistles, one friend jumps up from the kitchen table, there's a little chitchat on the slection of mugs, the choice of the tea and the teapot (and probably its history), the milk and the sugar (or honey or Splenda...) But still the warm heart and the warm tongue.
Lately I've been a little guilty about tea. I've been giving Bill a hard time about needing to spend a little more and get fair-trade chocolate, but then it eventually got through to me (he was nice enough not to point it out) that tea is also the means by which a lot of human misery comes into the world. I realized that I need to start finding a source of tea that's also a little cleaner. Selective blindness, for sure, because I've been at tea plantations and seen how painful it is to pick the tea tiny leaf by tiny leaf, bent over all day in the heat with a huge bag on your back and another over your arm, while your kids play in the dirt by themselves at the edge of the plantation. I know that a local store probably carries Equal Exchange or some other fair-trade teas--just need to prod myself to go find it.
But if not tea...Scotch. Fair trade is not the issue there!
Second question: What's your favorite yoga pose?
Ah--that's a very changeable thing. I like poses that didn't come easily, but didn't do me damage, challenges I could eventually master. I think the one that I like the best right now is ardha chandrasana chupasana. I was surprised long ago in a beginner class that I could actually do ardha chandrasana (half-moon pose--start in triangle, then go up on one leg with the other straight out in the air). And then a year or so ago, I was surprised again to realize that I could reach back and hold the ankle of the leg in the air, sort of like that thing ice skaters do at the top of a spin (only they usually use both hands! I'm nowhere near that). I like this pose because it took me a long time to develop the strength to stand without shaking, and because balance is totally challenging to me. I still fall out of tree half the time. But it really feels so free and oddly secure to stand in this pose.
I'll have another favorite in a couple of months, probably.