Emily A. Benton

(from zombie filming on Fourth of July. Read more about it here and here.)

Yeah, I got hacked like it was 1999 and lost a couple posts in the process when my administrator went in to try to fix the problem. Sorry to lose all your lovely comments. Be back soon.

Yesterday, I started my weekly yoga class again. I did yoga once a week for almost two years, but I haven’t been to a class since early 2006. I never wanted to quit yoga, but my life piled up around me and the classes I wanted to take (with a specific teacher - because quite honestly haven’t connected with the other teachers there) ended up conflicting with my finances first, and then my schedule.

When I was doing yoga regularly, in addition to taking long walks in my old neighborhood four times a week (it was the perfect neighborhood for walking - sidewalks under giant oak trees, around Queens campus, up and down hills and around the park and back), I remember thinking I was in the best shape of my life. My shoulders rolled back, my hips felt firm, I could sleep without back pain. With this in mind, I signed up this week to fix some rusty screws and stiff joints that the gym isn’t working out. I joined the Y in January, but didn’t start really using it until about March. I’m now going 3-4 times a week, but even with weight training my body feels out of whack.

So now that my Tuesday nights opened up, and the freelance checks lined up, I can work that yoga class into my schedule again. I started back at Yoga I, although the last time I was a student there I was doing Yoga II-III. I thought the class would be pretty easy since I still try to incorporate sun salutations into my after-workout stretch routine, and I usually do a few arm and back stretches at home. We just did some very basic postures, nothing out of the ordinary. (Although I’m glad to report that nothing slipped out as I was getting back into the habit of sticking my butt in the air!) But, woo, am I feeling it today! My shoulders, triceps, and torso have been pleasantly achy since this morning. I missed that feeling.

But what I really missed, and didn’t know it until last night, was how much yoga helps me calm down and cool the fuck out. I’m a big worrywart, and can easily go off the deep end anytime stress plops in my lap (which, oh, happens often.) I also have a hard time letting go of mistakes, and tend to haunt my future with what stupid things I’ve said/written/done yesterday or six years ago. (Emily, you really shouldn’t have said “Oh, I’m just sucking up” in that meeting yesterday. or Was it necessary to point out that your boyfriend’s haircut looked like a girl’s when he walked in the door? or Why did you let Mandy walk all over you on the playground?)

Yoga helps me sort all of that, or at least helps me be more reflective and forgiving, in ways that other exercise can’t. Because even when I’m on the treadmill or the elliptical, I’m thinking about how many minutes I have left until I’m out of the gym and on my way home to work (or feel so defeated as to not work) on whatever project I have lined up that week. I DO love going to the gym now - something I’ve pretty much loathed and avoided for the first 24 years of my life. And I’m seeing results from my consistent workouts. But last night as we centered ourselves before practice, it became all too clear what I have been missing in my daily/weekly life apart from anyone else’s offerings: silence, reverence, focus, peace, positive energy, space, comfort.

My shoulders sunk when I heard my teacher say over the hum of new age music in the background: “no place to go, nothing to do.”

Kripalu yoga, my teacher reminded me, is all about living in the present tense.

Yes, sign me up.

I’ve known Timothy Davis in print more than I’ve known him in person. As a former writer for Charlotte’s Creative Loafing alternative weekly, I enjoyed reading his music reviews and I appreciated his feature story on the making of R.E.M.’s Murmur in Charlotte (reprinted in Shuffle Magazine this year).

Our friendship started through Internet correspondence, although Tim swears we have met in person before. (My brain seems to have erased that memory for reasons I hope are appropriate.) But what I do know is that he’s a down to earth dude, even after already accomplishing this much:

Timothy graduated from the MFA/Creative Writing program (fiction track) at Queens University in January of this year. He studied under Elissa Schappell, Naeem Murr, Fred Leebron, Ann Cummins and Susan Perabo, among others.

His partial publication credits include pieces for Salon.com, Mother Jones, Saveur, the Christian Science Monitor, Punk Planet, Harp, Gastronomica, SPIN, Tracks, and No Depression. He is the former staff writer at Creative Loafing in Charlotte, NC and Weekly Surge in Myrtle Beach, SC, and contributes as an associate editor for Gravy, the official newsletter of the Oxford, Mississippi-based Southern Foodways Alliance. He’s recently had two pieces anthologized, one in Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas, and the other in Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing.

Name: Timothy C. Davis

Age: 36

Astrological Sign: Pisces

Website: http://biscuitblogger.blogspot.com (on hiatus)

Place: North Myrtle Beach, SC/Nashville, Tennessee

What are you working on right now?

The final chapter of a book I’m coauthoring, an essay- and recipe-rich compendium which the University of Georgia Press is putting out. (www.southernfoodways.com)

How long does it usually take you to get from start to finish?

Depends on what it is. Once I’m done with the requisite procrastinating - which I do a lot of - things come together pretty fast. I can usually tell pretty quick when things seem to be clicking, and everything I see/read/hear/experience seems to serve whatever it is I’m penning. It’s not exactly the Kerouac-ian “first thought best thought” thing, but I try and get it down hot. As perhaps the best piece of writing advice I ever read put it, the only thing in writing you can’t do is revise a blank page. That said, some pieces have taken minutes, some years. You know when they’re ready to go out into the world, and every one’s different. Unless one’s on deadline, of course.

What is your greatest accomplishment thus far?

Righting some bad tendencies in my personal life. Writing-wise, realizing that I ultimately knew nothing, even as I experienced some early publishing successes. I still get excited when I get it down “right,” which I now know to mean “clear.” In the past, I had perhaps too much fun with words, and sometimes it’s hard to go back and read some of that stuff. That’s why I mostly throw it away.

What is something you have done to improve your creative and productive life?

Have a stable, trusting relationship with someone who supports me. Also, I try to focus less on over thinking things, and try to live in the moment. Also, I try to make less excuses about finding the time to write.

Tell us something you learned recently while working on a project:

That the Southerner’s love of stuffed cabbage and the like has direct ancestry with the African custom of wrapping things in banana leaves.

On a Friday night, I could find you ____:

Probably with Kathy, my fiancé, watching a movie or planning to take over the world (usually from a bar). I’ve learned one at my age has to pick his spots - meaning out of Friday or Saturday, I tend to get more done if I go out but one of those evenings.

What are you consuming this month?

In a given day, I read the New York Times, The Sun News (local paper here), The Charlotte Observer, and any one of a number of websites (usually on music, baseball, food or history - I don’t read all that much fiction, online at least). Sometimes I go on Wikipedia jags. I read friends’ blogs (this being one). I check out my fantasy baseball team, trying to figure out why I’m stuck in 5th with such a good lineup. I just read a wonderful essay by Dinty W. Moore (not the potted meat company) called “Son of Mr. Green Jeans: An Essay on Fatherhood” that was really inspiring…fun with form yet still utterly affecting (see www.dintywmoore.com). I recently devoured both Willie Nelson: An Epic Life and The United States of Arugula, about the gourmet-ization of America, plus more books about Southern vegetables than I would have expected I’d read in 14 lives. Foodwise, I’ve been cooking a lot, as it relaxes me, is cheaper than eating out, and makes me feel good - a lot of Latin stuff, and things using all the good late Spring/Summer vegetables out there now. I recently acquired my 10th and 11th harmonicas, and play them whenever I get a hankering. Finally, the new Bonnie Prince Billy record, Lie Down in the Light, is pretty great through 3 or 4 listenings.

You feel guilty when ______:

I try not to feel guilty. Which is hard since I came up Catholic and have since lapsed into something of a zen humanist. When I fail to get the work done, I suppose. In whatever sense of the word. 

What are some of your goals for the coming year?

Finish this damn essayed cookbook that’s taking me forever. Pitch some fiction/lyrical essays (one’s a tracing of my life through bad food choices) to magazines, something I have the stomach for about once a year. Have a relatively spotless acclimation to Nashville. Buy some Larry Mahans.

Define “success”:

Being able to live with yourself, while being pretty damn sure you’re not fooling or lying to yourself at the same time.

Sometimes music is prophetic, sometimes it tells it just like it is. Whichever of the two, Aimee Mann’s opinions and characters reign true on her newest album, @#%&! Smilers, released through her SuperEgo Records on June 3.

At a time when economic speculation is high, and everyone’s whispering “recession,” she’s telling it to us bluntly, starting with the first track where her rising vocals sing, “You’ve got a lot of money but you can’t afford the freeway.” Summer vacationers are sure to love that one. Later, she speaks for the careless spender and says “I ain’t looking for nothing/ just spend the money I made/ I ain’t gotta do nothing today.” And in “Phoenix,” the metaphor relates to the person stuck in a relationship, or perhaps the musician stuck in a cycling economy where art is rarely reaping rewards: “You love me like a dollar bill./ You roll me up and trade me in/ and if you had the change, you will/ and if you get the chance again/…I know you’d do the best you can.”

Along with economic struggle comes the story to survive. While Aimee does devote songs to the helpless - those homeless on the street (“Columbus Avenue”) or uprooted by natural disaster (“Little Tornado”) - she also conquers that inclination to feel a victim. She fills her listeners with upbeat songs and urges them to “Get up” and “Go, honey go.” She even gets a little preachy with “It’s Over”: “That was a lucky break but luck is a thing you make./ Not just another hustle/ cause nothing can wait forever./ They don’t give you unlimited chances in life.”

While @#%&! Smilers implies a jab at the overly optimistic, this album does send out a more positive vibe than her previous solo efforts Lost In Space and the Magnolia soundtrack. The saddest track is “31 Today,” where the persona looks back at a life moving by too quickly and full of bad choices. But at 47, Aimee’s latest album is certainly an artistic success, and will leave listeners smiling long after they’ve spent their hard earned money at the record store (or so we hope.)