Ginger Snapped

Hands: Your hands are firmly placed on a yoga mat these days. After a hiatus of nearly two years (during which you injured your sacroiliac joint twice, had one bout of the flu, and two tussles with bronchitis), you are stable enough in body and mind and lung and muscle to return to your practice. Twice a week, sometimes three times a week, you drive to the next town over, park in the lot, and make your way to the studio, mat in hand. Though you've only been to this studio a handful of times, you feel at home on your mat. And really, all you need is a floor upon which you can place your mat, something solid to push against, a small spot on the earth to hold you up, and the air around you to breathe. There on the mat, you are balance and strength and clarity. You are connected there, whether mountain or tree or warrior or crow. You become one with the world around you, even as you stretch your boundaries while stretching your body. It feels good. Head: Paint is on your head, ...

March Head Wanderlust. Each spring, your mind shifts to Italy, to Roman skies, to marble mosaics, to churches and monuments. You itch to fly away, to see something exotic, to walk upon ancient roads, to breathe in air that has wound its way in and out of spaces for millenia. You check airfares. You check vacation schedules. You think in Italian, in Spanish, in the words of any other language you can conjure up, though not much remains of anything but English. When you were thirteen, your grandparents took your sister and you to England for a summer. It was a celebration of their 40th wedding anniversary, and they let you join in. They rented a flat in Surbiton, Surrey, the upstairs of a beautiful house. It seemed palatial to you, coming from your 900 square foot post-WWII urban home. You lived upstairs from a single mother and her three boys, who must have thought you were terribly American. You suppose you...