ice water and ocicats

UGH. With mad dislike, I must relay to you the news that my acro base, out with an injury these last few weeks, finally got his MRI done and he has a labral tear (probably a SLAP tear). Even if he gets surgery he's very likely to be out for 12 months. Which means I don't have a dedicated base for dynamic class anymore... and I didn't even give this last one a special blog name. :_(

Me last August: The next one's got even more to learn than Panther, and maybe I'll just waste my energy training up someone else who'll leave me before the work can pay off...

Yup, almost called it. The one thing I got with him that was new is the cast-up to foot-to-hand, which is gone now: a flyer alone can't do a damn thing.

I'm not 100% sure, but I currently suspect that I won't continue with this class; at least not next session. I'm too discouraged at continuing to cover the same ground over and over with different new partners, and I'm not putting in the time I want to on my second handstand coach's press drills. Maybe I can solve/avoid both of these problems at once by ditching LCS on Monday nights, and dedicating them to solo handstand work.

It was almost strange to have a lot of fun and feel a lot of hope at acro last night. We have big bases in class again, including two that I've had semiprivate lessons with (that means I like them), and one in particular who has giant shoulders and lots of "up" power. Which means flexagon got to fly flamingo lift again! Oh, first time in forever. We also worked on, and successfully improved, my two-base swing to overhead shoulderstand. ellenclaire gave me just the right cues! It was so exciting. I have a rug-burn to remember it by, too. :P

I think some of the same lofting-my-butt thoughts could also help with certain handstand entrances. And, for that matter, with inlocate to h2h, if I ever get to working on that again.

Today feels drifty, dreamy, like a day that didn't happen, because I wasn't supposed to be on this bus back to Boston -- I was supposed to be doing acro and handbalancing at the British Invasion acro workshop in NYC at an awesome parkour gym.

What happened is, I reassessed. For one thing, I'm sick. For another thing, I was there without the Ant, who asked me to go in the first place but then just never committed, and ultimately didn't show. Yesterday I got to take the lesson I really wanted (inlocate to hand-to-hand as taught by Nathan Redwood Price) and picked up a couple of tips, and got to practice with a strong (but shaky and hard-to-read) base. Honestly, that and some handstand tips from Sammy Dinneen were most of what I wanted, along with meeting a new kitten who happens to now reside in New York. I also got to jump into a foam pit from about 15 feet up, a few times, and do back tucks into it from ground level -- FUN! (Also fun: assessing the physiques of the parkour guys who usually frequent the venue.) This morning I woke up, reviewed the day's schedule, examined my own symptoms and energy levels, and decided to call it good and go home.

It seems to be all of a piece with the way things have been going: acro getting less fun as I'm partnerless and plateaued, high-level workshops being kind of a waste of time without a dedicated base, travel getting less worthwhile now that there's such good stuff at home, and realizing how much more work I have to do on handbalancing. But I'm happy to be financially supporting the NYC scene and to have met the kitten, an anxious little wisp of a ragdoll who doesn't yet enjoy being held.

The sky has poured rain all day, giving things a swampy sleepy hallucinogenic feel. I'm really glad I'll be sleeping in my own bed tonight, and will have all day tomorrow in which I can get things done at my own pace. I've read about half of The Martian on this bus ride, and I'm enjoying it -- near-future science fiction with adventure, a plucky hero and plenty of humor (without seeming too Swiss Family Robinson). I can see how some people would have found it dry, but I'm enjoying it.

With apologies for my LJ being sickeningly peppy lately -- I swear my life is not so peppy, I've been up past midnight working every night this week and I do have a couple of new zits -- I have to record some acro advances here.

The Ant and I were having a good night on Wednesday, despite my straining an adductor (not too badly) over the weekend and then annoying it when I gave him my usual panda-style hug. We kind of couldn't get the feel of a swingy move, but we did some front-mount tempos in our first acro class and I was able to get my butt way higher than ever before.

What the hell am I talking about? It's a front mount where I keep pressure on his hands and my center of mass just keeps going when his hands stop moving. Look at 1:48 in this video, or look at #5, the "Reverse Up", in this one. Except that we weren't going all the way to hand-to-hand yet, just the preparation... pike, lift the butt, come back to the ground. It felt different from ever before, smoother. I had my awareness on my center of mass rather than at my hands.

So in dynamic acro, we kept working that move, because we want that hand-to-hand entrance and we've wanted it for months. And we got it! WE GOT IT!! I really needed to be doing the pike and straddle, not the tuck like I'd been working before. 'Sokay. In theory the straddle is a more advanced variation anyway, and I think it's prettier. :P No video yet, but: just one time out of the three I think we got there, it felt really smooth and settled right away, and the Ant pushed me high overhead in celebration even though we had a really wonky grip at that point.

I think it's going to be great preparation for jumping (I mean, successfully) onto canes. All the instructions are the same: pike tightly, round back forcefully on the way up, open out legs late in the process. Jumping to canes I have to do it under my own power instead of being largely Ant-powered, but the movement path will someday feel similar. I keep thinking about how it felt.

flexagon dreams of myelin pathways.

We got two other tricks, too. One is incredibly simple but takes power, a front mount tempo STRAIGHT up to foot-to-hand. All I do is jump hard; the Ant tempos it all the way up, releases my hands at the top and goes for my feet. I stand straight and think about foot-to-hand. Only squeaked once while learning. :-)

Lastly, a back flying trick where he lifts me to back flying, immediately tosses me up, and I back tuck to the ground. He always makes a big show of loving these "toss it and forget it" tricks, and sauntering away while I attempt to land on my feet. I always laugh.

Two things that are true about me: I never want to leave home. And I am always happy and buzzy when I'm in New York City. Also, a third thing: I like to blog, document, email and otherwise write from airplanes. So when I leave home on Friday night to attend the NYC acrofest and then hop a plane to Cali on Monday morning, you get this post.

First, my pod. I stayed at the Pod Hotel, which aims for a sweet spot between hostel and hotel. The room really is a pod, very tiny and nice, just a bit bigger than the bunk bed it contained. In a way it seems like what a New York room ought to be; I quickly became fond of it.

I drove down with the Ant, who it turns out does not like NYC, late on Friday night. He took a look at the bunk bed and asked "so do you want to be up or down?...do I even have to ask?" Hah. We maintained our usual geometric relationship. :-)

The fest started with some rampant silliness: a short ceremony that involved invoking the energy of all the directions around us. The leader of said ceremony would say something like "The south-southeast is the direction of cynicism and sardonic commentary, source of perspective and also the occasional soul-deadening irony. Its color is kind of teal, well maybe actually it's more blue than that. It brings the energy of post-modernism and reflectivity. We welcome the energy of the spirit of the south-southeast!" Then we'd all say together, "AHO!" We did that for the east, south, west, north, sky, earth, and finally "within". After which we all said, of course, "A ho!" and I finally completely cracked up laughing. Well, at least I made it to the end.

And there was also the moment in class where the teacher mentioned "moving organically, like the elements of the earth." At this point the Ant and I met each others' eyes and made little WTF gestures. Elements are not organic, sir, your argument is invalid.

The acro classes on Saturday morning were fun, and introduced two tricks I don't have yet (pop from bird on feet to bird on feet, with 360 degree twist; and an entrance to reverse h2h from f2f. I then blew off the afternoon therapeutic session in favor of hardcore acro in the park with a NYC base who, last fall, flew me in my first no-safety-lines standing hand-to-hand. It was great fun to show him how I've improved, and he gave both me and the Ant some great tips that resulted in us being able to LOCK our extended standing h2h. First time ever. We even got a picture, which you can view on FB or G+ if you are so inclined (my feet are slightly cut off, but who can blame the photographer? Those feet were about 14 feet in the fucking air. The Ant and I are both tall, and much taller together.) I then blew off the "bodywork and dessert" party that night in favor of perching in my pod.

Sunday's acro classes were hard (Dutch-style acro that could've been taught by Niko but wasn't, and then a very h2h intensive class by KK). I finally got the apex trick of the second one by essentially doing a hs pushup onto the base's hands, and it took my last drop of energy: I was very suddenly All Done. Class hit the point of "there are five minutes left, practice what you want" and I decided to practice my escaping and eating lunch skills. More than likely, I missed a closing ceremony of some kind. Too bad. I relaxed alone in Central Park for a long time, did the big after-fest jam for a while (but lazily for the most part), and went to the Museum of Sex (vaguely disappointing, but I did see the exhibits for free by accident). Then I re-podded myself in preparation for this morning's very early westward flight, and here we are: somewhere between the East and West coasts.

I spent this weekend mostly in a workshop with a visiting Dutch acrobat. Organizing it was a pain, but in the end it sold out and everyone paid me, and I paid him, and all is well. And you know what a good experience means to a teacher... we're firmly on his map. :-)

We spent a long time on one little sequence (high bird on one base, to high foot-to-hand on a second base). I was kind of bored, until at the end the teacher used me as an example of the next progression: from high bird to EXTENDED overhead foot-to-hand. It's a blind tipping backward into a pair of hands you can't see, and then rising up like a soap bubble, high, high up. The second time, which was more graceful with a tempo, felt especially that way -- some tricks do that -- it's as if the room is filled with water and I'm rising up with a wave. I was pitching from the Ant to Scooper, then tipping from Scooper to the Ant for the rise up, and yeah... it was one of those moments of feeling near-perfect trust and having it perfectly validated. The room was quiet, so I raised my arms and smiled at the top: it's okay, I feel safe and happy here! Isn't my base wonderful? It's a dangerous trick, and it might've been sketchy to demo it without a safety belt or detailed talk of spotting. But it also looks scary as hell, so I doubt anyone else was tempted to copy us.

Let's see, what else was great? I was popped from foot-to-hand on one base to contra on a second base, and at least one of those (to Scooper, I think) went perfectly. I based a trick involving two other people: one in a throne position and one standing on the shoulders of that one. (That was heavy.) I learned a lovely new corkscrewing entrance to butterfly and a fun way to roll down a base's back from arabesque. And I did my first ever (half) hand-to-hand piston, along with several other madcap hand-to-hand variations down low. ("The Fence" is purely wacko.)

Oh, and the Ant had another one of those moments today where he challenged me the perfect amount. We tried something that's never, ever worked for us; failed; I said "that's never going to work for me", not meaning it in a defeatist way but more in a "let's do the entrance that actually works for us" way. He paused and said "Are you done with that thought now?" I said yes, we tried again and that time we made it work.

I still have a cold, but it didn't stop me from having SUCH a good acro-weekend.

Saturday's semiprivate lesson with the Ant was like a continuation of awesomeness from the weekend before. We worked on a few things and all of them had victories.

• Standing hand-to-hand is somehow the queen of tricks for me, and this is the first time that we literally stuck more than we didn't (I think). I'd be standing up there on his shoulders, and instead of "okay, here goes another try" I would really believe I was going into hand-to-hand, whether for a short time or a long time. And usually I would. I offer this still from a video as proof:
  
  (Props to you if you can spot the alignment problem we fought with all day.) We also tried pressing this up overhead a couple of times, which went rather badly, but probably also pretty well for a first lesson.
  
• Standing foot-to-hand, pressed way up overhead, after pitching to regular standing foot-to-hand. The Ant and I are both tall, and this trick puts my head almost 13 feet from the ground. But his hands are big, and we're stable: I feel safe.
  ( Picture of me feeling safe )
• Shoulder-to-shoulder. You've all seen this trick in some adagio act or other, where the acrobats un-twine their arms and balance as if glued together. Well, this weekend I got my arms to my sides and the Ant got his almost to his sides. We have to move really slowly to get there, and it doesn't feel great, but it's an advanced trick and we sure love our success rate.

This overlapped the acroyoga jam, which we continued into after a break for some almonds. I learned a new counterbalance with Rocky, flew a really good needle and some whips on Scooper, based the Ant in thighstand, and L-based my favorite small flyer for a while (I think I'll name her Chickie). Some other shenanigans; I don't remember, it's all lost in the druggie acro haze.

Today I showed up (late) for open studio, only to find out that it was Unofficial Banquine Day. Um, okay, handbalancing coach, sure! I'm set to fly if we have a belt and people are set to throw! So I got to fly a bit of banquine... on Rocky and Scooper at first, just tempos up and down, then toss up and lie back to basket catch. For those things I was fearless. I took a break while two other flyers went, on a mix of bases. One of them was an ex-gymnast and the other was my handbalancing coach. Both of them worked on doing a back tuck to a basket catch, so of course then I wanted to do that too. And I did! Holy crap, I guess I do still have the back tuck in my body from Z-dawg's classes long ago. The first time I was too tucked (and landed with a very loud squeak), second time too open, third time perfect. I could feel how pretty it was. And I was flying on Scooper and the Ant by that point, so it was the perfect three-way victory for my favorite trio. <3 I never, ever thought I'd do that trick in my life, so what a gift to be able to do it with them, today.

(For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, it was almost exactly like this... but instead of landing back on my feet, I rotated 90 degrees more and landed with both bases cradling me in their arms. Safer, easier.)

Somehow in all that, I didn't work any more h2h and I forgot to demand any Russian Rolls. Well, there's always next week. For now I will smile, be glad I rested my shoulders, and wonder why my quads are sore.

And now I'm on a BoltBus back from NYC to Boston. I said I would work in the NYC office today, but I don't desperately need to talk to the one person I could have productively met with, and I wanted so badly to come home. This way I'll be able to work from my usual office this afternoon, maybe attend handstand class tonight, and be back to normal. As my title perhaps implies, I'm on WiFi tethered from the Android phone in my pocket, because we live in the future.

It was an amazing two days of Dutch acro with teachers Det & Jim. I'm insanely glad that Scooper came down with me, and also that nobody else did, so we could focus. He and I work well together with figuring out new material, and together we got almost everything we were offered. Especially on Day 1, we got into a nice dynamic of learning things together and then splitting up to help others. (The Zillionaire I was going to work with -- and did, some -- is not NEARLY as strong or steady, as I suspected.) All this gushing aside, it was not Scooper but a giant New Yorker named Jake who talked me into my first no-training-wheels hand-to-hand on Saturday. Yeah. I still suck, but now I'm over that initial fear. Once I learn the right way to spot it, I'm almost safe to practice in the park. Not quite. But almost.

Awesome things learned include:

• Pop up from calf to 2-high, for real. Not one foot at a time, but landing on both feet. They had some great drills that led up to that skill, which I'm happy to pass on (ellenclaire, I have a Google doc full of notes, which I will share with you). So great to get this.
• Our first kettlebell swing! From the ground at first. Then from reverse thighstand, one can do a little one by squatting, then jumping, curling and being swung. I got the step-out from this really well, after some feedback, and Jim was pleased with me and I felt all pretty. :-) We discovered it is pretty easy to brush the ground (if too low) or the base's balls (if too high) but also that both of these may be glancing touches that don't necessarily kill the trick.
• A new entrance to standing front bird, which works really well and keeps me from wanting to straddle.
• A new, dynamic way to kind-of-cartwheel down from horse to handstand-on-thighs. Not to mention a nicer way up to horse.

At the very end of the workshop, I hugged Det goodbye and she said I was very talented... what!!! I'm walking on air from that one. I mean, she teaches internationally, and doesn't seem like the type to just randomly say things she doesn't think. So that was AMAZING.

Oh yeah. Other firsts today included foot-to-hand pistons, and pitching to standing foot-to-hand (with a half twist) -- which was kind of disastrous but with one success. Both of those were with the Ant, just in case you thought I was only lovin' on one base tonight. Nope, still slutty! I'm just sorry I didn't get to work with even more. I love all bases.

Next week I demand some time with you, soong, okay? :-)

Dear The Rest of My Life,

there are reasons I can't be sorry for how things are right now. I wish I could explain to you how fast I'm learning, how every day or two I feel neural connections slamming into place. How just a week ago today I felt the hand-to-hand feeling I now call The Zip, and then tonight my base and I got Apache Helicopter for the first time. Yes, this:



How we were curious about reverse spider roll, and so tonight we did version 1, then version 2 with a pop, then version 3 with a bigger pop (I mean, it's not clean yet but we did get three in a row) and added a death drop into it for fun and dubbed the result "Quattro". Who the hell learns that fast? We do, right now. I don't even know what I love more, my own learning or the learning things along with people... there's nothing quite like a shared victory.

I could use more rest, my day job could use more attention, and one day I will feel the pain of losing this, but carpe annum!