NYC Rambles

A number of friends and family expressed surprise at my jetting off to the big apple for just a weekend. NYC is great and fantastic and fabulous and exciting and all that, but I had a cheap direct flight, know my way around pretty well and had friends to stay with and visit. So for me it wasn’t really a huge expenditure of time, money or energy. It was more just a chance to go visit some friends for a long weekend.

And I had a great “weekend.” It started off rather rough with a red-eye flight Wednesday night, but I arrived to a city that was sparkling with sunlight and spring was out in the dramatic, overwhelming, voluptuous, decadent way that the Northeast does so well. I definitely got a good deal with not having to endure the wicked winter but still getting to enjoy the mass quantities of tulips, daffodils and other bulb-type flower surrounded by trees bursting with cherry blossoms. And all of this was emphasized by a gorgeous 78-degree day.

I celebrated my arrival in the city that never sleeps by taking a three-hour nap in the middle of the day (red-eyes wipe me out.) I awoke slightly groggy but got myself from my amico Sanguine’s upper East-side apartment into the glorious central park where I did a few laps around the famed reservoir, followed by a nap on the Great Lawn. Sanguine got home from work just as I was getting out of the shower and he took me out to a very lovely dinner. He actually took very good care of me all weekend while we ate out, played in the park, watched mindless TV, went for ice cream, went to the gym and more.

Friday morning found me at a Jivamukti yoga class – yeah!! The teacher I was going to in Philadelphia taught Jivamukti yoga and since leaving I’ve not been able to do a Jivamukti class. With one massive center downtown, an additional studio uptown and a related center in the Village, NYC is the heart of Jivamukti yoga. What I like about Jivamukti is that it is very spiritual, integrates the physical practice with your mind and spirit and the classes tend to be really fun. For example, today (I actually ended up doing two classes while in town, one Friday morning and another this morning) we did a partner asana (pose/posture) where one person was doing downward dog (hands and feet on the floor, making a V-shape with your body) while the other person did a forearm stand (like a handstand but on your forearms) and then from that position went into a backbend until their feet balanced on the downward dog partner’s back. Doing all this gives the forearm stand person a kick-ass strength, balance, stretch pose while also helping give the down-dog person a deeper stretch! Fun eh?? Maybe that doesn’t actually sound like fun to you, but I find it quite great. For more info on Jivamukti, visit the link on your right!

Friday night I got to see my most favorite modern dance group – the Stephen Petronio Dance Company – perform two band new works (appropriately, for my trip, titled “Bud” and “Bloom”) as well as an older piece set to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The work was very different from past pieces, but quite gorgeous. Stephen happens to be a dear friend, which you may think influences my opinion, but I have seen a ton of dance in the last 20 years and feel I have a pretty good degree of objectivity. If you have the chance to see anything they perform, I highly recommend you go for it. You can check out more info on Stephen’s company in the link to your right.

That already seems like enough for a long weekend, but I also did some more dallying in a gorgeous new-to-me part of the park called the “Ramble” for its rambling paths, ponds, streams and birds, spent a night and part of a day North of the city at Stephen and Jean-Marc’s (his hunny bunny) farmhouse in the Hudson Valley, gave a couple of massages, got to have brunch with my dear friend Sarah, met her new hunny bunny and ate and ate and ate and ate all sorts of yummy things at all sorts of wonderful restaurants. It is hard to say what the “highlight” was. At so many points during the weekend I felt like “this is the highlight.”

It is interesting how easily I slip back into this Northeast life of mine. And how seducing it is when I visit it for a weekend that is so fun and beautiful. But as I sit here in the JFK airport (taking advantage of their free wireless) I am looking forward to going home.