Alegria
I sit in snowy Munich, belly full of our usual breakfast feast-food, getting ready to give my body the shock of its life. Tomorrow I fly to India. Not only will I trade chilly snow showers for heat and thunder, but cheese turns to chickpeas, chocolate to curry, relaxed outdoor sports to body-bending yoga. Although my rational senses tell me this order of travel is absurd (a fact I’ll remember at each 5:30am wake-up call), my irrational brain says, “Aren’t you used to me by now?!?” Maybe it was rational: I have had two months to squirrel away indulgences for my austere time in India, packing away fat to make sure I have padding when I fall out of a handstand in yoga class….
Hard to believe that a trip with so much freetime and loose schedules can result in so little communication with friends and time for blog bullshitting. I have no excuses. Well, maybe a few….
I fell into a pool of decadence and it took this long to eat my way out. Swiss yogurt, Maroni (chestnut) Mousse, fondues of cheese and chocolate, pina colada lassis, every consistency and shade of cheese, chocolate croissants, rainbows of ice cream, foamy rows of cappucinno….it’s hard to think clearly when your brain is insulated by cream.
Sometimes my body just didn’t have enough muscle power left to hunt and peck on a French keyboard. I did indeed make an effort to learn wind-surfing, a good venture for a person like me—learning patience, accepting baby steps. Luckily it’s easy to be thrilled with the smallest of accomplishments with this sport, like…. the first time I could balance long enough to pull up the sail, the first time I moved forward a meter through the water, the first thrill when I stepped back and got enough speed to make a tiny spray of water.
Unfortunate financial news interrupted my time on the computer, requiring that I search for Property Managers and travel OT jobs rather than write fanciful diary entries on a blog. Life is full of surprises. Most of mine have been good, so I guess I can’t complain about a little slap now and then.
So when I wrote to my Indian ashram to ask whether there would be phone and internet access they replied, “yes, but limited, and we recommend that you come with a clear mind.” A clear mind? In addition to the cream fog I mentioned, I think mine may be still a bit too cluttered with post-Europe alegria. “Alegria”–it’s the name of a song by Cirque du Soleil, played in our camper during the trip, played during their show that we saw in Zurich. According to the Cirque’s definition: “Alegria is a mood, a state of mind….a name that means “jubilation” in Spanish.”
So, until I can unbend my body and unclear my mind to write again–wishing you all your dose of Alegria….
Tags: Cirque du Soleil, Europe
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