Tea in a teeny tiny cup

By Vita Forest

Isaboe and the teapot

Today I had a busy day – marking and playground duty before school, teaching all day, lunchtime gone with dance auditions, meetings and eating lunch after school, organizing the logistics of two excursions (one next week) and rushing to finish an email so I could rush out the door early to (somewhat ironically) make it to my favourite yoga class.

The aim of many a yoga class for many a yogi, is to get through to that last five minutes when you are allowed to lie on the ground, with your eyes closed doing absolutely nothing at all.  Bliss…

As I write this, I am sipping jasmine tea out of an extremely tiny cup, pausing to fill it from my tiny glass teapot.  The size of the cup forces me to stop and slow down.  To stop rushing.  Time is a scarce resource.  But does it have to be?

At work I am trying to be extremely organised, to avoid this rushing, this feeling of panic, of having to be elsewhere.  Perhaps it will all settle down.  Soon.  When my programs are finished, when the auditions are done, when our assembly is over, when our item is learned, when we have had our video conference with our sister school, when I have booked the buses for the excursion…  Are you the same?

But at home – I am scheduling in some slowness.  Some luxury.  Yes I want to write, yes I need to send out submissions.  But if I never stop, I’ll never let those thoughts float to the surface.  Never be able to know what I really think.  Never recognize those moments of revelation.

I need to slow down.

Here are some of the things I do to indulge in slowness:

• walk when I could drive.
• breaststroke when I could freestyle (for the swimmers amongst us).
• hand sew or make something from scratch instead of buying it.
• read – preferably all day after sleeping in.
• have a picnic and just watch the world go by.
• cuddle a cat.
• sip tea.
• weed by hand.

What has happened to us?  Why is being busy a badge of honour?

Perhaps I should stop writing and just enjoy my tea…

Sometimes you just need to drink tea

This week

By Vita Forest

A beautiful day on Sydney Harbour

This week I have been

• READING Eyrie by Tim Winton
• WRITING
  • Overheard in Dollar King
  • On listening
• PRIORITIZING some time for blog writing (school work could devour all my time at this point of the year)…
• WATCHING The Family Law on SBS (quite hilarious).
• VISITING North Sydney Oval for Moonlight Cinema with Vastra and Saskia and Vaucluse House with Saskia, Sui-Sui and Alessandro.
• MAKING a collaborative artwork in class with oil pastels and two large pieces of brown paper.
• LISTENING to my class belt out Owl City’s Fireflies (can’t help but make me grin).
• CELEBRATING my niece Pippi’s 6th Birthday.
• RELAXING with some restorative yoga after an extremely hectic week (thanks Jade!)

Yoga with a view

By Vita Forest

One of the views from Barangaroo

Today I did my first ever outdoor yoga class.  How lovely it was – the breeze on our bodies, the grass beneath our feet, the harbour wrapping around the hill – because, that’s right, it was at Barangaroo Reserve on the Stargazer Lawn.  (It does seem a little that I spend a good part of my free time at this park…)

Last week when we were there for a birthday picnic for Lucy, my sister pointed out that they were holding yoga sessions there every Saturday through October, so today I managed to make it to the last session.

I got up early (for a weekend), slathered myself in sunscreen (this is Australia people), and packed my backpack (deciding on a beach towel rather than a yoga mat as I also planned to do some walking).

I caught the train to the city.  Occasionally, I fret about writer’s block, but then I catch a train.  Apart from the people engrossed in their phones, this is what I saw;

• a flash of mauve, scarlet and magenta – Jacaranda next to Flame tree next to Boganvillea.
• wild weedy daisies bobbing their golden heads along the strip of grass beside the train track.
• a trio of fisherman fresh from their exploits on a ferry wharf on the harbour, carrying all their equipment.  This included a fishing rod, a bucket sloshing with their catch, and some folding chairs.  Their chairs being more comfortable than Sydney Rail’s, one of the men opened his up and proceeded to sit and relax in it among the poles of the train’s standing area.  As we passed over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, he flipped his cap backwards too.  He could have been at a barbecue.  (Being a witness to these sort of events are one of the reasons I love public transport).

I walked down from Wynard, joining the yogis on the lawn.  Some of them were sunbaking on their mats as we waited.  I picked a spot in the shade of the Harbourmaster tower, which cut a blade of shadow across the lawn like a giant sundial.  As the practise went on and time passed, some of us had to peel off and move to the other side of the group to stay shaded.  We downward dogged, warriored  and lion-posed it (sticking out our tongues to Balmain as we did the last one).  On one downward dog, I glanced behind me and saw a familiar black schnauzer tied to a pole.  Scanning about on the up dog, I saw that Saskia had joined us.  I noticed the ferries and the spinnakers of yachts as we saluted the sun, but most of all,  the changing layers of wispy clouds above us in the blue sky.

We lay on our backs for savasana and closed our eyes.  I felt the wind on my cheeks, and heard a train on the Harbour Bridge, the clanging of cranes, and then, the clicking of a camera shutter moving in a circle around us.,

I suppose we were a sight to behold.