Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Symbolism 101

At one point today in yoga class, the teacher was having us visualize our bodies as temples, and the breath as the altar in the temple. OK, that was sort of hard. She walked us through a visualization of putting something on that altar as a symbol of what doing yoga is for us. She suggested a lotus flower, as the symbol of transformation, since the lotus grows from mud into a beautiful flower. But before she muddied the waters, so to speak, other symbols had already sprung from my imagination and settled themselves firmly on that altar. What were they? A rubber band and a paper clip.

Hmm, these are not what you might expect on the sacred altar of breath in my body, you say? They are not the kind of symbolic icons that you might see engraved on the walls of the temple of Ishtar or upon the great pyramids of Egypt. However, these two lowly items are strong in symbolism and power in today's world, don't you think? The flexibility and utility of the rubber band - one of those thick, blue kinds that can be used for holding power cords together or broccoli stalks. I guess the rubber band is the body I'd like to have.. stretchable, reboundable, colorful... and the paperclip could be my mind - holding things in place, strong yet bendable, shiny and sharp. Put the two together and you can make a toy, a slingshot, a contraption of many uses.
Leah Brooks at 2:15 PM

Emerging

Well, the allergy symptoms turned out to be the beginning of a very strange virus/cold. I don't think that we could really call it the "common" cold, because that would indicate that it was similar to other colds that I've had, and this one was definitely very unique. After completely losing my voice for 3 days, then I started to have a stuffed up head and body aches. I never got a fever, but had extreme pain all the way down my esophagus, and couldn't swallow. Also, a very bad headache. Sunday morning, I thought I might die.. but by Monday, I felt much better!

I am a very bad sick person. I am impatient and pessimistic when sick. If I'm going to be sick, I prefer the tried and true, familiar symptoms, not new ones that could indicate that I have contracted West Nile Flu or the Black Death or something. I suppose if pressed, I could say I have slight hypochondria - but only when I am already sick. Then, my mind goes off to think of the worst possible scenario - that I am headed for the crypt with what I've got. I'm sure it gets very tiresome to deal with me.


Leah Brooks at 6:10 AM

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Silence

Allergies are hitting everyone hard this year, so maybe that's why recently I've been waking up with a froggy voice. Today, no voice at all! The edges of my vocal cords feel ragged and flap near one another, but do not connect. Yesterday, I was able to warm up sufficiently to get to a singing voice by the afternoon, but today I don't even want to try. It's time to give it a rest while I just keep hydrating.

I try to remember what laryngitis was like in the days before email. Email communication keeps me sane.. at least I don't have to scratch notes on a little pad and pass it around. Public appearances are strained: I did have to use a little sign language to tell the cook that I wanted my eggs scrambled. I'm trying to lay low at work, so that no one will ask me any questions in person.
Leah Brooks at 10:48 AM

Monday, March 22, 2004

If ever a wiz, a wiz there was

Dan turns 45 this week, and so we all went to see the wizard last night: at the Castro theater, they showed "The Sing Along Wizard of Oz". Equipped with magic wands and bubbles, the audience lustfully sang every lyric, and most spoke along with most of the dialog as well. One guy behind me knew the wicked witch's lines just a little too perfectly. You can tell a lot about one's personality by knowing which character's lines they have memorized the best.

James and I agreed that our favorite scene is the one when they first arrive in Oz and are getting tidied up. Seeing that movie on the big screen is just fabulous. The costumes are unlike any you have seen in a movie (on screen credit for the costumes went to "Adrian".. we want to know what other films he has done!).

The movie continues to make us laugh, cry, and sing along. It has not aged one bit. It is solidly number one on my list of best all time movies.
Leah Brooks at 12:49 PM

Friday, March 19, 2004

Slogging through

My blogging has slowed of late, but it's not because I don't think of you, my mysterious readers.. I really do. My life has become quite busy and scattered with responsibilities, with two quartets, a chorus, a wife, a dog, a house, a yard that needs to be mowed, several hundred databases to be managed, new software to learn, songs to be sung and kites to be flown.

Well, actually, I haven't been flying any kites lately. But I'd like to have.

This is the equinox, so let's try to find some balance, and I'll try to find some time.
Leah Brooks at 8:56 AM

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Happy St Patrick's Day!

From the far-western outpost of the Brooks clan.


Leah Brooks at 4:56 PM

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Lydia

Here is a mp3 of Groucho singing Lydia the Tattooed Lady. I think this was recorded late in his life, because I might be wrong, but it sounds like he is being nudged along and accompanied by the great Michael Feinstein (with piano and la la's). I've heard Feinstein do a great Groucho, too.

R.G. Brooks at 10:33 AM

Monday, March 15, 2004

A warm evening stroll

Walking the dog just past sunset:
the scent of jasmine blooming
greeting the neighborhood dog friends
wondering about the houses for sale and just sold
going up to the bridge that goes to the little island
opening the gate "NO DOGS ALLOWED"
walking on to the bridge, the sky in the west all aglow
hearing the ducks and birds calling in the grasses
watching the silhouettes of egrets wading in the creek
pausing and then sitting there on the bridge, feeling the warmth of the day seep up from the concrete
the dog stretches at my feet
feeling the evening come upon us
we rise and turn back, leaving the island to the birds.
Leah Brooks at 7:12 PM

Sunday, March 14, 2004

I just finished the strangest novel: The Little Friend by Donna Tartt. I was smitten by the book- such good writing, such fully developed and believable characters, and I cared so much for the young girl who was the protagonist. I stayed up late all week reading it, even during this busy week. What made the novel strange was how it ended - or rather, didn't end. Is this post-modernism? to leave a reader hanging at the end, with no arc of completion, no ray of hope that things are now changed as a result of the story's exciting action? Of course, in real life, we don't often have the perspective that allows us to see why things have turned out for the better after all.. but when we are examining it through literature, don't we deserve that luxury? (In a review by the NY Times: "The Little Friend seems destined to become a special kind of classic. . . It grips you like a fairy tale, but denies you the consoling assurance that it's all just make-believe.")

We had a lovely week. Brad & John came up from L.A. and got married on Wednesday, just before the courts put the weddings on hold (on Thursday). I took an offsite software class on Thursday over in Emeryville, and then turned around an taught the class on Friday. Friday afternoon through Saturday evening, the quartet and the chorus got coached by Jim Arns. Finally having arrived on the other side of that busy schedule, I am at last free to do some things at home. Today, we are going to, at long last, grout the tile murals that we made last summer.
Leah Brooks at 5:52 AM

Monday, March 08, 2004

Heating up

The warm spring air is wafting around - bringing with it sneezes for those who can't tolerate acacia - and spring fever for everyone else. I read in the paper about snow in the east, but just can't visualize it. The daffodils nod, the cherry, peach and apricot blossoms glow, the green green green of the hills... it is nearly blinding in its intensity. Blue iris begin to show. Someone recently told me about immigrating to California from Minnesota during February when she was young. She thought she had travelled to the Land of Oz, when winter was transformed into spring like Dorothy's trip from black and white to technicolor.

My musings on book memories of last week coincided with the film we rented this weekend: Stone Reader. I thought it was very poorly edited, and quite ego-driven. However, the filmmaker's quest to find out what books "mattered" to people is a question that I enjoy asking. I recently bought a used copy of a book called "Lanark", that was described in someone's blog as a book that really mattered - a definitely book of a generation, etc. However, I just couldn't finish it. It got very, very dreary and surreal towards the end. Hearing the description of the book "The Stones of Summer" in the film reminded me of "Lanark". Parts of it were brilliant, and the writing was clearly the work of a very intelligent, obsessed person.
Leah Brooks at 3:08 PM

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Oscar notes

It was such a boring show this year, that I almost forgot to post something about it. The highlights this year for me were the musical performances - I just adore Alison Krauss, and can't believe she lost.. of course Annie Lennox is also fabulous, but that song was just drab in comparison to the two Alison sang. Sting played the hurdy-gurdy, which was interesting - though it looked like he was only playing the drone.

The most energy in the whole show was generated by the band that played the song from the Triplets of Belleville. I just loved the part played by the vacuum cleaner!
Leah Brooks at 4:46 PM

Goodbye, Lenin

I heard about an interesting film called Goodbye, Lenin on NPR yesterday. It's the story of a man and his mother, who live in East Berlin. She has an accident, and during the 8 months that she is in a coma, the Berlin Wall falls and life for them is completely changed. The son, to keep her from having another shock, tries to re-create the old East Berlin life inside their apartment. I really would like to see this film... shades of Rip Van Winkle, set in modern times.
Leah Brooks at 4:15 PM

Monday, March 01, 2004

Making room for new growth

One of the books that I read repeatedly while growing up was "The Secret Garden". One of my favorite parts of the book is when the little girl, who was very city-fied and therefore ignorant in the ways of the country, finds her way into the garden and deduces, while scratching in the dirt, that the new spring growth would have a better chance if the old stems and detritus were cleared away. Later, when the lovely country boy, raised on the moor and surrounded with tamed animals, gets there, he is surprised to see that someone has done some work there, and she is proud of what she figured out.

Every year at this time, I re-enact the story in my front yard. Sadly, so far, no magical boy with a lovely British accent has stopped by to admire my work.

When I think about that book, certain scenes from it flit across my memory, as if they were part of my own life history. Such is the power of literature, and of repetition. Movies, which last 2 hours, rarely stay with me, but some books, which have been read over days, weeks, months and years, have organically become a part of me.
Leah Brooks at 4:16 PM