Double rainbows, the non-virtues of blogging, and Lino's upcoming Montana workshop

Wow, it's been more than two weeks since I wrote anything here. I haven't been that busy, although the beginning of the academic year does bring with it its share of things to make one run around a little more than usual. I think the more significant reason for not blogging is a certain sense of ennui with online interaction: Recently, the idea of churning out a whole bunch of blog posts that are read by a whole bunch of people that I probably will never meet just seems... old and unsatisfying. Why go through the effort of doing that when we can interact with "real" people in real time?

But I see I'm being a downer here. So let's talk about something else. Well, what about this: Yesterday evening, I met a couple of friends for beer at a local brewery. When we came out of the brewery, it was drizzling, the sun was casting a very surreal light on the town, and there was a double rainbow in the sky! It was the first time that I had ever seen a double rainbow. One was brighter and more vivid than the other, which seemed to be a sort of shadow of the first. The brighter one was so full of color and vivid, and stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. Again, this may also be the first time I have actually seen a full rainbow that stretches from one end of the horizon to the other. Should have gone to the other horizon to see if there was a pot of gold there :-) Anyway, my friend took a picture of it, and I have asked her to email it to me. Maybe I will post it here soon.
 
Well, here's another problem with blogging: I just spent an entire paragraph painstakingly describing an experience whose essence has already been carried away and covered in the mists of time: No amount of vivid description will ever bring back that moment. So there is a certain futility about the whole process of blogging (and maybe even the very act of writing in general): We are trying to bring back something that is gone forever, using tools (words) that are hopelessly inadequate to the task. True, there is such a thing as great writing, but one gets the feeling that even great writing does not so much reconstruct the moment as create a new, virtual moment, one that exists only in the consciousness of the reader.

Update: Here are the pictures my friend took of the rainbows:

What do you think? In the bottom picture, you can see a hint of the second "shadow" rainbow. Probably nothing like actually being there and seeing the rainbows for oneself, but still better than just writing about it: As they say, a picture paints a thousand words...

 

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In other news: The weekend after next, I will be attending a workshop with Lino Miele in Bozeman, Montana. This is Lino's only trip to the US this year, and he will be teaching at the newly-opened Ashtanga Yoga School of Montana, which is run by his student Randa Chehab. I am very excited to have this opportunity to meet and study with Lino. If you are unfamiliar with Lino, have a look at my favorite Lino video:

Maybe I will have more useful things to say after attending Lino's workshop, and maybe that will get me out of my present blogging funk. We'll see. More later.