Pineapple

After eight weeks of eating Sunday roasts and drinking pints of London Pride every evening at Ye Old White Horse, the Knights Templar, the Princess Louise, Shakespeare's Head, and the George IV pubs near LSE, I realized that I could use some exercise.

My flatmate generously offered me use of the fancy Nordic track in the garage (pronounced here with the emphasis on the first syllable, GARE-age), but I confess I felt a little too much like a caged hamster on a treadmill. In secondary school I used to run all of the time, going so far as to join the cross-country team, though I admit that running everyday was of secondary interest to the comraderie and the parties in the mountains. I remembered that when I attempted to revisit running here, dutifully setting off in the direction of Brockwell Park. Running has the benefit of making me too tired to think about anything in particular, which is good for me, but few people jog for fun here, and I got some alien looks as I shuffled past the Nigerian currency exchange stores and laundromats. There is a nice view of London from the center of Brockwell Park, which sits atop a hill, and I suppose the view was worth the expedition, but as I ran down I passed a group of people sauntering up the hill to drink beer and smoke. The men were all wearing tight black jeans and the women high heels. They were all thin and no one felt obligated or inclined to run. They moved past in a little cloud of cigarette smoke. It smelled fantastic, I wondered why I wasn't with them, and I vowed never to go running again.

A few days later I went to a classical jazz dance class at a studio in a converted pineapple warehouse near Covent Garden. I hadn't been to a serious dance class in at least three years, and when I realized that I could still keep up I felt as if I had stumbled upon a pile of bricks of cash stashed and forgotten about in the back of the closet or under the mattress or in the basement or something (haha, yeahhh...people do this in rural America....and there is a banking crisis on now afterall). It really was an extraordinary feeling; it made me inordinately happy. Also, at the same time it was useful for me to recognize that I was not the most prepared student in the class. Sometimes I get arrogant, and complacent, within my familiar circles of policy wonkette subject matter expertise. Dancing was simultaneously energizing and humbling, and ultimately centering, and reinvigorating.

The woman who taught the class was also really amusing. She has green eyes and wild curly red hair, and a semi-operatic voice that leaks out when she sings lyrics in lieu of counting. If the class danced a section well, she stepped back and bounced up and down excitedly, punctuating her jumping with little yelps of "YES!" She narrated one portion dramatically, instructing the group to, "Grab your heart, rip it out, throw it on the floor, turn front to the mirror, wipe your mouth a bit, yes, well, almost, yes, then...walk away, disgusted! You're disgusted!" and then "...On 'one' you hit the floor, 'two' you are lying on the floor, broken, but then! on 'three' 'and' you hit the floor with your fist, pound pound, 'four', you look up, you recover, that's right, raise your head, you're BACK! YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!"