I realised this afternoon that we don’t have any time spare today. Not that that’s bad.
We woke up at 7am and headed down to breakfast. The chef kindly made our usual: white rice with cinnamon, honey and soy milk (although we were brought soy sauce at first, which made me smile). We ate, Jo read her newspaper, and we headed back to our room with almost 2 hours to go to yoga. We contemplated walking the 2.4k but decided to do our blogs for yesterday instead. I started by dealing with all the eBay auctions that had sold the day before.
We left at 9am and headed to Fitzroy and had a little walk around to while the time away to the start of class, signed up and were pleasantly surprised to hear we’d get the $19 for 10 days special even though we’re not newbies! We walked in to the yoga room and I noticed that it wasn’t very warm, wasn’t very dark, was big and full. There was barely space to stretch out for the “plane” pose (I’m still learning all the terminology - full cobra?) without touching your neighbour. Luckily my neighbour was very understanding, not to mention outrageously attractive.
The lesson was quite hard for me. The room ended up being very warm and I got a very good workout. I also benefited from a new perspective in our teacher for the day who corrected a few of my postures, making one harder and both more beneficial.
Our 2-hour tram cards having expired, we walked to Brunswick Street for breakfast - a fantastic little place not too far from the corner of Johnston Street, which served a Ma Baker: a cooked breakfast with chilli beans in a bowl. Perfection, just what my body craved: egg, beans and bacon.
We wandered all the way back to the hotel the long way round, stopping at a few thrift stores for Jo, and had a quick bubble bath before heading out to see Dr Zhivago at Her Majesty’s Theatre. It was fantastic. I haven’t been to a musical for a long time and have missed the big production environment. This performance really sucked me in though, as not only did it make me cry, I was suspiciously oblivious of the technical aspects of the production. I loved it, and Jo and I have decided to make seeing shows a permanent fixture in our future. We’re already planning to see Wicked.
Later in the evening, Jo and I will come to discuss the emotions we felt, and I explain that while I used to block those emotions because it’s not a very manly thing to do, I release and embrace them now. It might be that I have shit bottled up and it’s coming out when given a chance, but I also believe that expressing emotions in a controlled manner, to let them out slowly and in a restrained fashion, is to not only deny the emotions the playwright intended you to feel, but also to suppress the joy you can experience through emotion, even negative emotion. While listening to sad songs of love, I would feel my heart breaking, the tears rolling down my face, and feel so alive for being able to feel that. Give me raw unbridled emotion over socially acceptable restrained reactions any day!
We returned home and did some blogging and eBay dealing, followed by dinner at the hotel restaurant. I had the Lamb and Jo had the Fish. Both divine, cooked to perfection. We only just managed to grab a table on the condition we were out within an hour, as it was reserved, but we were heading off to another show anyway, so that suited us well.
So off to the Burlesque Bar in Fitzroy we headed - something Jo’s wanted to do for some time and I’d never considered but liked the idea of, and finally we were in the city and had a reservation. We sat down and tried a couple of cocktails, including “Gentlemen Prefer Brunettes”, created by one of the bar staff for an international cocktail competition and coming just shy of the final 10. I loved it. I didn’t enjoy the show so much though. It wasn’t the discomfort of one who’s not comfortable in a sexually charged environment, but more that I didn’t like the idea of encouraging women to strip off for our amusement. It didn’t help that the audience was mostly silent. I’m not sure if it was a deer in the headlights moment for them, or what, but I didn’t feel it was a dance, titillation and subtlety of the risque weren’t present. It felt like a strip show. I had thought it was more about female empowerment, holding the men in a trance, not a set of 5 minute performances where the women tried to seduce an audience in record time before baring almost all. We left at half time to come back to the hotel for chocolate instead. That was much better.