dog down.
the shape i’m in.
photo – by Q
18th year of fitness. wednesday. 2012.
i look down from time to time, more often than i’d like. i’d venture to guess, four times a year. maybe it’s a quarterly review. my posture stiffens and i shed a few tears. i don’t have much to cry about. yes, perhaps more difficult sibling issues than the average dog. my brother has battled mental illness for more than a decade, and in each of our own roles – father, mother, sister – we have battled with him.
in a brighter light, i usually gaze only at optimism. how far we have come as a family, how far he has come.
at times, like a dog down – posturing myself, more and more, after years of my own therapy, being a therapist, and through countless sun salutations filled with good intention each and every yoga class – i still find myself flipping my head below much of me. i stretch, but feel heavy.
hovering, downward facing, the ground appears nearby but surrendering into gravity has never been my strength. my thoughts wander. that is fine, i say. at these down times, surfacing a few thoughts is finally productive. i think about a favorite poem – eliot’s the waste land.
words that have a rhythm but lack linear clarity, compel me. they are familiar.
my life, family struggles, hopes, aspirations and disappointments sound that way to me.
“…but at my back in a cold blast i hear – the rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. ” ts eliot, the waste land
holding still, swimming in a poem that plays in my head like a soundtrack.
my belly caves into my spine. i find myself wanting to dissolve. in this moment, i could become a ball, a box, a triangle of sorts. the richer contents, you’d hardly notice, simply my shape, here and now.
you’ve seen me here before. usually, i stay where i am supposed to be.
recognizable, and something commonplace.
twisted into the day-to-day situations,
bathed by confusion. soaked in wallow.
sitting.
still.
soon. i come back to where i started.
with my intention, i bless the gift of only this moment.
work spouse. works out.
who feels it?
photo source: http://www.blogcdn.com/jobs.aol.com/articles/media/2012/07/cwspic-1342554689.jpg
year 18 of fitness. wednesday. 2012.
i’m comfortable being out about my marriage to a chick. a women’s college education provides you with this. and, besides, the idea is more commonplace than home phone lines, these days. get 21st century (and every other century), people. and just about everybody can probably identify that one they stick with, the one that got away, the one they wish they had…work spouse.
a recent read in women’s health, referred by a work-in-law, helped me realize just how deeply in platonic love i am with my office mate, co-hire and emerging besty.
i’ve been fortunate. this happened once before, in a city i miss, on an island where i miss the misfits who work there, but not the work. we’d share long walks with weights along the beach, sunset drinks on the Boston Harbor, dance club each Friday, and basically find a way to read the other’s mind, even if it got us into…hmmm, a little bit of trouble.
we weren’t bad-bleeps, we just had each other’s back.
when i moved back home, high on my return, but low on optimism that in the town where i grew-up, i’d locate another special someone. after all, i drove hundreds of miles a decade earlier, from rural to city life, thinking that’s the only place me’s belonged.
then i met t-hizzle. hired together, side by side cubicled. smart but humble, funny yet sensitive, always helpful and authentically vulnerable. after a few weeks of eyeing each other up, small talking this and that, one day – we began to respond to the other’s self chatter. more than colleagues, a friendship was brewing. the agency that hired us said they didn’t see it coming – different places in life, different veneers. but if i had the chance to interview who best to be cublicled with, for the rest of time, i cannot imagine a better. fit.
so speaking of fit, i felt like it was time to ask the big question: will you work out with me during a break? sure, we’d shared a few more socially acceptable moments of walks around the corporate block. but i was talking, closed-door, let loose, sweat a little fifteen minute jams. given that she’s the last person in our office to say no to something asked of her, i wasn’t shocked when she said she was willing.
but two sessions in, i have to say – i’m amped by her enthusiasm.
we try to do fifteen minutes, which has turned into twenty to thirty minutes, interrupted by demands of the work day (oh, is that what we’re supposed to be doing?). t-hizzle makes the music mix, she has the beats down – thank goodness one of us can count and hear music. kanye and beyonce cheer us on, sneaks and mostly work clothes – we do cardio samba and salsa, we do light weights with tricep and lateral raises, and stretching that resembles two suits breaking into a yoga sess (very unzen).
the best part, we move and laugh. we are openly clueless and playful for a few minutes.
of course, moving around without proper attire, that just enhances the relationship.
am i exposing too much to you? we’ve asked each other as flesh comes out of tops not meant for fitness. the answer is, just like a spouse, we’re used to seeing whatever. we’ve been vulnerable to one another for some time.
it’s all part of the intimacy.
’til laid-off do we part.
recalibrate: life in mush
why is everyone sitting?
photo source: http://www.mycarforum.com/uploads/monthly_01_2012/blogentry-60386-1327537829_thumb.jpg
year 18 of fitness. wednesday. 2012.
recently moving, i forfeited internet access for several months. justified by saving money in a computer saturated work world and motivation to read things at home involving simple ink and paper, front covers and luscious ideas in continuous flow, i isolated myself from blogging (and facebook). sure, there was the occasional post, and now that i’m wired again, i’m not promising a flood gate opening, q’s…but, while i gained literacy, i believe i also gained weight, as if this blog, pulse to my fitness, heart to my health – fueled me.
i realize this while i am sitting at my work desk, for the sixth of seven hours today. i sit, i type, i munch, i talk on the phone while sitting, sort papers – still sitting, joke with coworker – usually, still…you get the picture. come home, repeat the previous list and substitute sit with repose.
a client of mine told me recently that they read desk jobs of about eight hours a day, five days a week, take a toll of two years worth of life.
my butt is starting to feel this. so are the backs of my arms. maybe if i wasn’t so active as a young kid, actively driven in a world demanding physical(ly arbitrary) perfection in form and tone and zero body-fat, maybe this sixth of seven hours today might not hurt so much. it’s a silent, subtle kind of hurt, when loss of movement turns to a bruised mush. i remember when i first stopped the intensive ballet schedule, side-lined by a chronic injury. twisted in a bunch on the floor, i looked up at mom and whined, “i want to be a normal kid now.”
but as i said that, and acted out what i thought normal kids would do – come home from school, eat some ice cream over Oprah, do an outline of ten pages of European History, and then some math problem sets – sure, throw in Meet the Press on Sundays, i hadn’t realized then, dancing becomes who you are. if you moved that much once, it is a part of you. one, three or six hours, most days, movement was my job. but being grown-up, or normal, too often coincides with hanging-up the toe shoes and buttoning up the shirt.
movement, a marriage of body and mind, carves out a massive corner of a dancer’s identity. to move, it is the ghost that haunts the retired body.
i hear this in stories of the suddenly disabled, i imagine this for the gymnast who becomes the sedentary Stanford educated doctor (is that cliche now, or what?).
once in motion, you crave it. if deprived long enough, you might feel infected by – slothery, perhaps, but if i had to choose a true word: imbalanced. like me in high school, you may try to erase the idea of movement for years. just be prepared to have a handsome set of sweats and turtlenecks to hide the changes you’re not used to. everything softens. trust me. which is fine, unless you and your proportions are completely foreign to soft.
so during the final minutes of my seventh hour, at my desk in a small corner of the world, i scanned through online schedules – playing around with how i could optimize movement, when i had time. yet the ratio between two or three hours to seven, still… terrifies me.
because in the time we live, as a western human body, we devalue the call to move.
as i write, i sit, but this blog as my witness – may i now move along.
SaSsy SwEAt 
