Paul Willis, Inventor

I have had this extra-large extra-heavy Manduka mat (the cadillac of mats, people) for many months now, but have not, until now, had any way to carry it, except slung under my arm.  Boo!  I have been lamenting this fact for nearly as long as I've had the mat, but not doing anything about it because I just can't bear to shell out the $50 for the mat bag that will fit this behemoth. 

This is where the I'm-the-luckiest-girl-in-the-world part of this post comes in, because...my dude took one look at my mat, made a trip to the hardware store and by the time I was home from class had built me the masterpiece you see above.

Not only was this solution only $10, it is also so cool and industrial and unique I can barely stand it.

And made with love.  Siiiiiigh.

The Space I Am In...

Tomorrow morning I leave for a 2 week + vacation to visit family and friends in the West. I am over the moon about getting out of New York...watching people jostle each other through the doors on the subway this morning (as if we won't all get on, eventually) made me so grateful for the impending break.

I'm not certain how my practice will fall out while I'm gone. I went to class early this morning, so as to be limber for a long day of travel on the 'morrow. I am being strongly encouraged not to bring my yoga mat (space and all), but I'm undecided. Rolling it out in class this morning I was struck with what I am often struck with when rolling out my beautiful (now ragged) orange rubber mat--that it is such a clean square space to hold my practice. I have sweated and prayed and wondered and fallen and cried and struggled so many hours on that mat, in that particular 72" of space--it's like carrying a little temple around on my back. And on this vacation, where we will be in many spaces and with much family and where quiet time with my body and my breath will be perhaps hard to eek out, I might need my ratty orange temple, in order to carve out space for myself in all these foreign places.

It is also, I realize, the only thing which posesses as intimate a knowledge of my practice as I do. I love all its funny sweat marks and pock-marks and where my feet have worn down the rubber to its fibers. I want to use it until I can see the floor through it, and then I might have to hang it on my wall or something (P. would love that!)...I am so grateful for this rectangle of rubber. I mean really I am so grateful for this incredible versatile body and for Laughing Lotus which is my home away from home and for the amazing teachers who keep coming into my life and for all the hope of striving for an easier mind, but ALSO I am grateful for this strip of textile that I can role up and shove on shelves and in bags and lug around with me and lay down ANYWHERE and make a yoga studio of it.

That's it. I'm decided. It's coming with me.