What Peggy reads

My delightful friend, Peggy, has a life I covet.  I may be way off-base, but the way I think about it, she basically does two things: yoga and reading.  OK, and eating really good food, too.  And hiking and traveling and savoring every bit of joy there is.  Peggy has a love for life that is unmatched by anyone else I have ever met in my entire life, except maybe my parents -- and that is saying a LOT.  If you've been a student in her class, then you know.  It's always the most delicious music, the biggest laughs, the deepest sweaty delirium of practice.  Her total enjoyment of every moment is infectious and inspiring.

The reading part of Peggy absolutely delights me.  It's a thing that ties me even more deeply to her, imagining her tucked up with a book on her lap, lost for hours in its pages.  I've gone to her house for dinner before and left with a shopping bag full of books, a stack of titles that she's read and is loaning me.  As a bookworm, I love this just so much.

A few weeks ago I came home and found a book in my mailbox with a note in her hand, a book I'm reading now, "Wolf Totem" by Jiang Rong.  That Peggy LOVED it is high, high praise.  That it's not really working for me, this book, makes me a little sad.  I want to feel her same exhilaration, but it's one of those rare reads where I don't get the same Pow that she did.  Generally, it's not this way.  Generally, I'm jumping around with delight, especially since I'm traveling the same wordy trajectory as Peggy did.

Regardless, I'm treasuring the note and the gesture and the invitation to be swept up.

We spent a day together in Point Reyes recently.  We went to the BEST yoga class, had the BEST grilled cheese sandwiches, enjoyed the BEST conversation and walk with Scout, tried the BEST sorbet at her sister-in-law's place in Marshall.  Everything, really, always the BEST with Peggy, life at its pinnacle of sweetness.  Peggy knows EVERYONE, and honestly I have met some extraordinary, gifted, delightful, amazing people through Peggy, thanks to her gravitational pull on all that is the greatest.

Every day, Peggy tells me, she reads three blogs.  The Force Expansive is one -- which is a super-big treat for me.  The other two, in case you're interested -- I know I am -- are The Sartorialist (naturally, as Peggy has exquisite taste) and The Improvised Life (naturally, as Peggy is nothing if not a creative force).  Some pretty excellent company.

Vogue-ing in the market,
Oaxaca

If you haven't been a student in Peggy's class, I urge you to check her out at YogaWorks in Mill Valley or Larkspur, or at the new Embrace Yoga studio in Terra Linda where she is now teaching a Wednesday 9am class.  For an extended good time, travel with Peggy through International Yoga.  Truly, some of my peak adventures have been in her company, on retreat and on nerdy yoga vacations -- in Haramara, in Oaxaca, in Peru.

It's an incomparable experience to be a student in Peggy's class, to benefit from her reading, her listening, her taste.  You will work hard, you will hear great music, you will laugh.  You'll emerge smiling, wrung out and ready for more of all that's tastiest in life.

Big love, Peggy!  XX