abigail414's diaryland diary
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Hellahot
OK - what was up with that last entry?
Well, as the country has a heat wave, so do I. It is an early monsoon season here in Palm Springs - yesterday it was 116 degrees (and weather.com said it 'felt like' 118 degrees). It is so hot that water from the hose never runs cool, and heat emanates from public toilets. It is so hot that it is never less than 85 degrees, even at 4 am. It is so hot that I have resorted to eating frozen fruit as a snack (esp. frozen chunk mangos, yum). Oppressive is the operative word, and claustrophobia is setting in - locked into air-conditioned comfort. The heat outside feels good for about 2 minutes after you leave a building, and then it hits you; there is no cooling nightfall with windows open, no walking the dogs in a cool morning (today's am was 87 degrees with 58% humidity); even the unheated pool is a tepid 85 degrees or above. For some reason I thought the desert cooled down at night, but the 80 degree thermostat on the air conditioner is as cool as it gets.
Yes, I know, this is pennace for enjoying amazing winter weather while friends were shoveling their cars out of snow, so enough whining for now. I'm taking mini-trips to cope. Last week I went to visit mom in north San Diego for a day or so and this week I�ll head up to a little cabin in Idyllwild an hour from here to breathe and catch up on my writing/thinking/hiking/living.
The Sawtooth wildfires have destroyed 70,000 acres so far. The opening photo is the smoke and the one below is the devastation. I watched it start as a small smoke signal that evolved into a churning cloudbank along the northern horizon. One person, over 50 homes, and thousands of plants and animals have been destroyed. Heartbreaking. Today I had post-yoga lunch with a park ranger from Joshua Tree, and she said that many of the desert plants are thousands of years old. It is one of the biggest fires ever in CA, and driving by en route to mom's felt like a scene from Apocalypse Now. (And, depending on the wind, it is smokey here too.)
I haven�t written about yoga lately and it has become a major source of centering and peace. After certain intense poses, the part of the body that was in the most pain feels alive for the first time � followed by complete and utter relaxation and at-one-ness. At the end of the 90 minute class, there is a 10 minute reclined meditation called savasana. Usually I fall asleep, or try not to snore, but the last few times I have tried to consciously breathe energy into different parts of my body. I feel a kind of connectedness with all the other people around me who worked the same motions, felt the pains, the release, and were now breathing and coming home to themselves. That is what yoga feels like to me, coming home to my body. I�ve spent 50 years numbly going through the motions, and now I�m actually feeling them (and getting some body definition in the process!).
On a more frivalous note, two men have given me their phone numbers the past two days, and a third was seriously flirting at the grocery store tonight. So, I guess there are heterosexuals around here after all!
9:19 p.m. - 2006-07-16
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