Saturday, June 02, 2007

View from the Top

Long time no see, EE composition pane!  This has been my hiatus month, and a less relaxing hiatus I couldn’t wish on anyone.  Being this busy isn’t a bad thing, unless there’s something else one wants to do… like blogging… so I’ve had to take my pleasures, such as they are, where I could find them, and when I could.  It’s certainly left me tasting the stress in the back of my jaw more than once, especially when I was far from any opportunity to do anything about it.  At such times, I’ve taken solace in remembering a few really relaxing moments.  One of these, I experienced only quite recently, and since I’ve taken so much from it over the past 10 days, I figgered I’d just share it up with you-all, for being so patient and generous with me.  No no no - you’re welcome. 

I looked it up before I even left for work- power yoga, 6:30 pm, two blocks from my office.  I brought cloths and everything; I was looking forward all day to a new class, a high impact prana-ing, a hardcore callisthenic schvitz.  It had been weeks since anybody ordered me into repeated vinyasas till my heart sang and the sweat dripped into my eyes.  This was going to be good.

I left work at 5:30 because I needed to see a friend and get some videotapes back to him.  (thanks, dave.) We chatted till it was time for us both to leave – him, home; me, 12 blocks back east to the Y.  I went to the nearest bus stop, where an appropriate ride was just leaving me behind.  The next two busses went to the stop on the far side of the intersection, so I moved there.  The next bus stopped where I’d just been before.  I was losing a lot of time.  I did catch a bus, finally, and it was slow – very slow.  Too slow.  I wasn’t going to make it.  I hopped out again, ran to the underground line. Downstairs the station was teeming with ballgame crowds.  I fought my way to my train and it got me three blocks from my destination pretty quick, but despite fast walking, climbing up the escalator two steps at a time, and taking every possible shortcut, I was pretty sure I’d blown it.

I arrived at the desk, pulse racing from the exertion of just getting there.  “I understand,” I said somewhat archaically to the three women chatting behind the counter, “that a power yoga class is this very moment being taught here.” I paused as they collectively verified and confirmed this fact.  “Is it too late for me to join?” Their six eyes swiveled to the clock: 6:40.  By the time I got changed and on my mat, it’d be 6:45 at the earliest.  Not really the way to go.  Their eyes returned to mine, larded with commiseration.  “I’m so sorry,” one of them said.  “But really, we have a lot of other stuff you can do here – work out, whatever….”

“Yes,” I agreed, “but I didn’t bring any shoes.” The women’s sympathetic faces fell another degree or two, and then the one suggested, “It’s such a nice evening, though; what about hitting our sundeck for a stretch on your own?”

The sun wouldn’t be setting for an hour or so and it was a ridiculously warm evening – clear skies, light breeze, and a grin of a crescent moon on high.  “I’m not familiar with this ‘deck’ you speak of.” I replied, thinking it over for a second.  “Deal. Let’s do it.” I paid my tariff, got directions to the deck on the fifth floor, and was on my way.

The fifth floor was pretty damn minimal: an elevator, a staircase, a storage room, and a door to the deck.  The deck was about the size of a basketball court cut in half lengthwise, with most of the center portion full of bulky HVAC equipment.  I walked the perimeter.  I noted that it was coated in a rubbery material, something like what I see under the climbing bars on playgrounds.  On the east side it just abutted a taller part of the same building, with five or six more stories of windows looking down on me and out into downtown.  The west side, however, offered an open view into a forest of office buildings, malls and roofs.  The terrain was quite familiar to me, but the angle was new.  Sunlight cast gold leaf onto a thousand walls and windows.  I took a deep breath of the warm wind and settled in at a spot with a particularly broad view forward. 

Let’s step back for a moment.  It’s not just that I live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world – even in our fifty square miles of land there’s plenty of bits that just aren’t that nice, and many more that are nice enough but nothing special.  I, however, have the exceptional good fortune to reside in a corner of town where, when I compel myself to exercise, I am confronted with the best that SF has to offer: running in the manicured wilds of GG park, biking through the Presidio and across the GG bridge to the dramatic cliffs of the headlands; stumbling out of my gym at six freaking thirty in the A of M, I can clear my lungs of stale sweat-laden air at the edge of Crissy Field with the bridge catching dawn rays to my left and the wrenchingly beautiful Palace of Fine Arts cutting a silhouette against the rosy rays on the right… All in all, I am entirely spoiled when it comes to aesthetically-pleasing environs for my athletic exertions.  That’s where we’re starting.

So: I’m on the somewhat gritty but beautifully situated roof of the gym, at 7 o’clock on a balmy evening.  I’m in my jersey-cloth shorts and my Booberry ™ shirt, unshod and hatless.  (I repeat: hatless.) I lay out a towel and do my preliminary hip-openers; as I recline I notice that the roof is warm beneath me – whether from an afternoon’s baking in the sun or from crawlspace HVAC equipment makes no difference to me.  The heat penetrates my spine and I feel my neck and forehead relax.  I’m drinking the warmth through my back and the breeze feeds my senses.  This bodes well. 

I stand up strongly and begin my sun salutations – five As, three Bs.  I’m feeling my own heat now, kicking into plank, pushing hard from posture to posture.  I can’t remember all the poses, what to do next, but I crank through the ones I recall. I do some balances – better than I usually do.  I hit some strength poses, some deep alignments. I toss in a salutation between every sequence; I nail them so vigorously that I chafe raw spots across the tops of my feet against the rubberized roof.  The exertion makes me too warm and the shirt comes off – it’s against gym policy, but I’m free of those fetters up there and alone.  I conclude with a long headstand, toes pointed to the pale moon as it brightens against the now-dimming sky, legs motionless in the quiet breeze, a city’s worth of sound winding down on the streets below me and a new vitality pulsing straight up from my hands and head to the soles of my feet and out to the heavens above.

The workout took half an hour, plus a shivasana cool-down.  The class would have been twice as long.  But I was still enjoying my time on the rooftop a solid week later and beyond.  I don’t think I’d have gotten half that much satisfaction had I done what I’d planned to do.  For a change, being late for class made me on time for life.