arturoyogi

Paris in Fajardo

family mall milk

i have been meditating each morning during my visit. however, the time usually dedicated to yoga practice has been interrupted with family get togethers, and times to meet and analyze what the loss of our father recently implies to us a family. sometimes the get togethers go well into late at night, resulting in late start in the morning. so i don't think i will be able to practice much yoga while here this week. i've done some yin yoga. here is a funny picture of the women in the family, all of them grabbing their cell phones at the same time. you wonder what it means when the lady that has been helping with cooking and cleaning recently in the house wears a cell phone in her ear with bluetooth technology. i guess it means that times have really changed. cell phone use is universal.
i went to the mall today, to wait while my sister and mom shopped. there may be a recession going, but you don't feel it in that the mall is packed. however, the mall here is like the center of town. there was a lady in a party dress, wearing high heels and pushing a baby cart with two children in it, with another child in tow. this is the place to meet and greet.

i mistakenly asked for a coffee at the Border's Books cafe, after 20 minutes in line. when i received warm milk with coffee in it, i realized you have to specify black coffee. they changed it for me. then i looked for cream and could not find it. i did not want to explain that i can tolerate a tablespoon of cream, but not a cup of milk with my coffee. frustrated, i left the coffee. not finding another coffee place, i returned to the cafe and waited another 20 minutes to ask whether it was possible to get black coffee with half and half. the attendant said yes, but that the cream was kept behind the counter. when i received the coffee, it was a late in which a cup of cream was used. i enjoyed it, but it had the same effect of drinking milk, making my stomach gurgly. these employees could go to Starbucks and see that people put a little half and half in their coffees. it's not so strange.i had to take a picture of these hord'oeuvres crackers, which are imported from Australia. they look, taste and have the same texture of Catholic Mass hosts. it really amuses me. some enterprising business which maybe supplies hosts decided they could modify and repackage their product as crackers. they have the advantage that they seem to hold well in humid environments without getting too soft.

Fajardo beach scenes

the Seven Seas beach in Fajardo, PR

beach scenes

patterns in the sand at the beach today a secluded beach; it's a look/see beach because the water is too rough here. beautiful nevertheless.

figured out camera

life standing wise

it's hard to practice calorie restriction and yoga during visits to the family. people probably think that vegetarians have to fill their plates to the brim because there is no meat there. yoga practice yesterday was standing sequence, a few of sitting sequence, bridge and shoulder stand. the phone rang and i shifted to continuing to set up the voice over the internet phone with camera. after several tries with my uncle in Florida, we succeeded to where my uncle and aunt could see my mom and i through the system. that was really exciting. so today we're going to have a reunion over the computer between all of the cousins visiting in Florida and all of the cousins visiting here in PR.

things in PR in general are regressive, economy wise. when things are slow in the mainland, they are worse here. condominiums in Condado that used to sell for $2 million are offered for $600,000 and there aren't buyers. in a popular neighborhood restaurant in a residential area of town, two weeks ago two armed bandits made off with the wallets and jewelry of the customers. in San Francisco we have the problem of the ever present panhandlers at every corner and outside many businesses in the heart of the city. i guess you can look at holdups here as a sort of pan handling where instead of a cup held out for donations, it's a gun that is proferred. generosity here saves your life. someone threatened a bank branch with a fake bomb and made off with a $100,000 recently. they say these criminal activities always existed before, but i wonder if they are symptomatic of the economy.
the doves in our balcony were beginning to flap their wings yesterday, when i took this picture. their mother would continue coming by several times a day to bring them food or keep them warm. this morning, however, they are gone. the head of one is near the nest. my sister, the public relations executive, always looking for the positive statement, stated that one chick was attacked by a strange animal and that the mother took the other one with her. - life.

meal visit photos

after our Christmas meal, our cousins came to visit

mass tellulah meditating

the Christmas tree at my aunt's house. it's always a beaut. i contributed this year with a tiny origami ornament that i blabbed about a few days ago, appropriately purchased at a fund raiser for the Hartford Street Zen Center. Zen. yea. i thought about the cross between Christianity and Buddhism as i enjoyed the music at the Christmas mass. this is a humble parish with the luck of having a priest who loves to sing and does it well. the choir also sings well. during the homily, the priest held out a statue of the baby Jesus, which after concluding his talk, he said, as he read the label in the back that it was made in China by French manufacturers -"fabrique en Chine" he exclaimed. "this is international," he said. we were all treated to a dousing of holy water. no one escaped this, which brought a lot of ducking from the celebrants. the priest also spread a lot of incense at different points, as for example before reading the bible. it was high church indeed for this humble parish. if Tellulah Bankhead were seated in the front row, she would have told the priest, "I love your outfit, honey, but your purse is on fire."

at different times he rattled out the names of all of the founding saints of early Christianity, which reminded me of how we rattle the names of the saints in the Buddhist tradition that passed the "lamp", as we say, from generation to generation. And i was thinking how Blanche Hartman, a Zen priest, quietly sat in her meditation at an interfaith peace rally held at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. i decided to do the same. it's difficult to sit zazen in a church vibrant with latin devotional music. the quietness and formality of the Buddhist tradition handed out to us through the Japanese culture, here played out in a rowdy Catholic service. which makes me think of this funny image of Jesus meditating like a Buddha, from this funny blogger who practices yoga. why not? without delving into all of the theology of it, i would leave it at that Jesus and Buddha can be best buds. i'm sure i've violated the religious precepts of various spiritual traditions in this post. it just reminds me of a former priest who is Buddhist. in his home he keeps a statue of Jesus and one of Buddha next to each other. he says he just prefers not to try to understand the conflict of all that. it is what it is.

(disclaimer - the above blog entry wrote itself, (0v0) style, althought i was present.)

flying baby doves

getting to the Island was interesting. the lady next to me in the red-eye plane out of San Francisco told me she would be going to sleep during the trip. somewhere around 1:30 am i heard this incessant chatter at my right ear. she had decided to talk incessantly to the person next to her. and talk she did, as if she was broadcasting in the radio, without breaking to breathe. on the next plane, from Miami to Puerto Rico, the two men sitting next to me did not stop talking for the entire 2 1/2 hour flight. i have never witnessed two men talk so incessantly; it was like a volley. one would end a sentence and the other would start his. i don't think they knew each other. the talked about, from what i could remember, about what you can do on a visit to Germany, the distance of traveling by car between two cities in Virginia, how much time it took to shave and get ready before the flight this morning, the cost of the luggage bags, the bag's brand and which store he bought them from at the mall, what the niece of one of them complained about regarding school (with full mimic of complaints), where in the public plaza of his town one of them would be meeting his friends this Friday and what they would talk about, the blow by blow details of the traffic to get to the airport and the report on such traffic that one of them shared on his cell phone with a relative (with full mimic of the conversation), the cost and style of the cellular phone of one of them; the quality of the service. i've lost some of you already. is any of that fascinating? no, i don't think so. the only interruption of the conversation was a moment when one of them requested black coffee with three equal sweetner packages. the stewardess said, "listen, google equal. there are as many calories in three packages as in a teaspoon of sugar." at that time i chimed in to say, "yes, and aspartame is not healthy - google that. splenda (sucralose) is better, but it has calories too."

so hopefully i'll do self practices while here. here are some pictures. one is of the view from the balcony, beautiful even after a shower. the other is of a little nest of baby doves that a dove dedided to build in a chair in the balcony and my mom decided not to disturb. the mother dove comes and feeds the babies now that they are hatched and sometimes keeps them warm by sitting there.

samastitihi prep

preparation for Samastitihi (we knew he was a yogi...). found here. Tadasana is an Advanced B series pose, by the way. only ashtanga luminaries get there.

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