The posture of a valkyrie

I have terrible posture. Full stop.

Partly, this is because I have weak back muscles and a not-quite-scolioticly crooked spine--and am lazy like a three-toed sloth on downers. Partly this is because I am short-sighted and an obligate bibliovore--and until recently, a graduate student. Grad Student Crouch is a well-known affliction among my friends. Partly this is because I hit puberty at the age of eleven, and in the culture of condoned sexual harrassment that is junior high school (or was, in the late 80s), if you didn't want guys telling you you had nice knockers (a verbatim quote, btw, and wherever that asshole is, I hope he hates himself for it), you kept those shoulders forward and down. (And even that wouldn't save you, but it sure beat going around leading with your chest.)

Of course, I'm a woman now, and approaching détente with my sexuality, and also have a better appreciation of how utterly I'm fucking myself up and the trouble I'm letting myself in for ten, twenty, thirty years down the road. Ergo, the sign on my monitor that reads Straighten your spine.

(Other signs on my monitor are:

Omit needless words.

MORE COMPLICATED does not necessarily equal BETTER

any story is a war

I showed up on time, so I get to be Cowboy Guy

     The footsteps of the cat upon the snow:
     plum-blossoms

there isn't any safe and painless way to love. You have to stand and deliver, as the highway robbers say.)

But it's hard to remember. It's hard to do. And one thing yoga and pilates and weight training do is remind me to make those realignments so that ribs and hips are in the appropriate configuration along the spine, and remind me that I actually feel better and stronger if I do it.

done

I just emailed the complete rough draft of A Companion to Wolves to matociquala.

And now it can quit pre-empting Kekropia in the queue.