AUTUMN IN NEW YORK



The 6am flight out of Chicago was delayed 1.5 hours because the airline could not round up a co-pilot (apparently there is no pool of pilots waiting to be called into action; eventually they pulled someone off an incoming flight).

So instead of going to Brooklyn and taking the subway into Manhattan, I cabbed it straight to the Dharma Yoga Center for the noon master class with Andrei Ram.

Walking up the long stairway, I felt profound relief, like I was coming home. That feeling was intensified in the dressing room, when I caught a whiff of the familiar burnt-bagel smell wafting up from the shop downstairs, and flashed back to the 500 hour teacher training intensive earlier this year.


It was a wonderful class - although the body felt like that of someone who'd just spent six weeks doing ashtanga and consuming cooked food in India (Dharma advocates a raw diet and says, "If you eat cooked food, you feel cooked."). Also I discovered a terrible knot in my right shoulder (probably left over from the scooter accident). Like Dharma, Andrei can help students into asanas mentally, from the other side of the room. He led us into poses I'd never tried before. And the savasana was out of this world.




On Saturday Catesey and I walked to Prospect Park Farmer's Market, where the longest line was for fresh eggs (which I've been trying to avoid since Dharma's 200-hour teacher training in Feb '07. Sivananda says they are an animal product, and Pattabhi Jois says "y'eggs bad!").



On the way home we walked through the park, which was indeed a walk in the park.



We passed the dog beach, where a crowd was watching two Golden Retrievers do their thing.






On the way from the F-train to lunch in the East Village, I saw former Blue Man John Grady (star of the short film "Doga") shooting a video, dressed as a tree. (Apparently Jon Stewart passed by a short time later).



I met dear friend and fellow sadhaka E. at Angelica Kitchen*, where we each ate half a Wee Dragon Bargain, and took the rest to go.



Then we sat for a spell in Stuyvesant Park before using the loo at the Hotel 17. On Third Avenue we purchased white roses and pineapples and then headed to the shala for Dharma's three-hour Maha Sadhana class, followed by graduation.....




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*The recipe for the moist, wonderful, wheat-free cornbread at Angelica Kitchen (and the accompanying miso-tahini topping) is right here.