Of Two Minds

My mom has been dead for 9 years. This time of year is always devastatingly hard for me. As early as the beginning of September, when my mom was admitted to the hospital for the last time, until mid-October when she passed away, it is hard to keep my chin up, one could say. The Summer after I graduated from college, I began working with a woman who had lost her husband to cancer a few years earlier. She mentioned that the month around his death was extremely difficult for her and her daughters so they planned as many nurturing activities together as possible. The first few years after my mom died, I was depressed all the time, so it was hard to notice the change. Plus I assumed that it had something to do with how hard it was for me to go back to college every September. But when I met this woman, I was out of school and still Fall came around and I fell apart. It usually starts without me noticing whats going on.  Other people illustrate depression better than I can so I'll

He does have incredibly good taste in music. Other than the whole Cave Singers/Fleet Foxes thing and some debate about if Seattle will ever have another Nirvana, we agreed on pretty much everything. Sometimes he would recommend something and I would just think "how is it that you've come to know me so well? or is it just that we're the same, already." --saved at date of writing, published oct 2017

Tree pose, if held long enough, can be either a zen grounding experience or an infuriating exercise in patience.  It's a balancing pose on one leg where the raised foot fixes firmly to the standing leg. Or firm-ish. One thing I really like about yoga is that every studio and every teacher at each class says things slightly differently and puts the focus somewhere different. Sometimes to get into tree pose you move from standing, to shifting your weight to one side, to slowly moving your weightless foot up your standing leg. Other times you raise one knee to waist height and, after you've found balance, you place your raised foot against your standing leg. One thing that is very confusing about yoga is that yoga teachers have a habit of telling you to do things that either a) only very advance students will be able to flirt with or b) are helpful in visualization, but not actually something you will do. A key word to listen for is "maybe." If a yoga teacher says &q