While I was reading Jaganath Carrera’s commentary of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, there was section where the image of Peter Pan trying to reattach his shadow jumped out at me. After 20 minutes of drawing it and posting it here, I can’t remember the point. “Almost like an allegory for something.”
Last week was a doozy. I’m down to myself and one other designer at work, my six-person team destroyed by burn-out, attrition and furlough. After MK and MQ left last week, I knew it was time to start looking. Or rather, after nothing changed in ask volume or scope from the rest of my co-workers, I knew it was time to start looking. I applied at a couple spots, and another reached out to me. This place that reached out to me is sort of dream gig, while a place I applied to that replied eagerly is a perfect fit. I spent last week in over 8 hours of interviews at both, and have as many this week. I’m… on a fast track to burn out myself. But if I can get away from my current place… it would be a dream come true.
We spent this last weekend in Idyllwild, hoping to escape for a minute, and get out of the heat of the city. As we drove away they announced we were in for a record heat wave: 114 F in Los Angeles, 104 in Idyllwild. Our cabin didn’t have A/C, so while it was nice to get away, I felt like I was painted on the air: a papery and kiln-dried husk. I woke up nightly with blood in my nose, my feet and hands felt like sand paper, my mouth like fly trap.
Each night, after it finally cooled off, we piled into the hot tub, turned down to a balmy 96 F — warm enough to be comfortable, cool enough to bring the heat out of our bodies. The cabin came with a telescope and I busied myself nightly with dialing in Jupiter, its moons faintly visible; or the face of the moon, its details razor sharp. Jon and Danny sat with us, our necks relaxed back against the rim of the tub, scanning the sky for satellites, tracing the cloud of the milky-way.
On our last night, John said “I just want to see a shooting star — not some little flash but one that streaks across the whole sky.” We saw plenty of the former, hairline slashes of moon-white lasting a split-second, gone if you blinked. We saw the occasional space-x orbiter, marching purposefully, if dimly, through our field of view. We saw, from time to time, too low and too close, the frenetic, silent silhouette of a bat dipping towards the water. And suddenly, just past 10, starting at the horizon and blazing across the whole span, forcing us to turn our heads as we gasped aloud, we saw a golden, snufffed-wick and still-smoldering ember of a meteor break up in the dark above the trees.
This week I start a year long certificate program in the philosophy of Yoga, a gnarly series of courses taught by a handful of PhDs and professors of religion from around the country. I’m excited, already exhausted at the thought, but eager to get going.