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Saturday, March 23, 2002

Have just arisen, rather shaky, from a brief sharp attack of Le Crud, and am striving to get my brain re-engaged. A quick self-conscious "thanks!" to all the folks who said ego-buttering things about the pix; I'm blushing in a most un-black-leather-jacket-like way.

I had a vivid dream just before waking, of lying on a narrow platform bed/mattress that was floating very high up in the air, with no visible means of support. I knew that if I moved at all I was going to fall off and be destroyed, and so I lay rigid with fear. Upon waking, I pondered this for a while. Many people have been extremely kind to me lately, pumping the helium of encouragement into my ego, and that of course rouses the voice in the back of my head that says Oh, just wait until they find out ... because one of these days, you're gonna slip ... and then they'll see what you really are ... and then you're gonna fall ...

I shall forbear from further over-obvious dream interp. [g] Except to say that one way of coping with this is to transmute that little voice into the voice of Ren Hoek, in one of his trying-to-be-menacing bad moods, threatening Stimpy -- "I'm gonna hit you ... and you're gonna falllllll ... and it's gonna hurt ..." -- which makes me grin. Yeah, right, Ren, ya little twerp. I adore Ren, I truly do; archetypal cartoon hero for all us insecure and grandiose wanna-be's.

Posted @ 09:32 AM CST [Link]1 Comment

Thursday, March 21, 2002

A madly egomaniacal footnote to previous entry --

Bad-ass mofo Kat (a.k.a. "You talkin' to me?")

Posted @ 07:33 PM CST [Link]19 comments

Tuesday, March 19, 2002

Rampant consumerism warnings ahoy --

So. Um. {gulp} I bought. The leather jacket. The leather jacket, the one I'd been carrying around in my head for some time. Black heavy-weight bomber jacket, well-made, un-foofy, with a zip-out thinsulate lining. I'd tried it on over the weekend, and had been smitten, and had gone home and reasoned with myself for a while, and then found that I was mildly obsessing on it, and . . . well. It was on sale, after all! Much reduced! And it's very warm. Hence, practical and all, for a cold climate!

Oh, screw practical, I am smitten. I keep putting it on and checking myself out and doing the James-Dean-voguing in the mirror, with my sunglasses and a cig. Heh.

Since it's a men's small, it's just a touch snug in the hips; but that'll provide incentive to keep on with the mad-gym-rat routine, after all, and once I get an inch or so off the hips and butt, it'll be perfect.

And it smells so good . . . I will sternly repress any TMI excursions into just why the smell of a leather jacket has such, uh, pleasant associations for me, but trust me. It's a good smell. It's a gorgeous jacket. I'm happy.

Posted @ 08:01 PM CST [Link]4 comments

Monday, March 18, 2002

So, part of the getting back into writing has been getting back into writing shape, pulling myself out of this winter's doughy depressive slugdom. Which means I've been going to the gym this past week, pretty consistently.

Which in turn means that as I sit here I can feel every separate and distinct muscle in my body hurting like a motherfucker, because there are several areas of life where I do not have a firm grasp on this concept of "moderation," and exercise is one of them.

It's appalling how quickly one can lose muscle. Not that long ago, I could lift -- well, a pretty respectable amount of weight, especially for a woman of my age. Restarting after layoff, I had to drop all my weights down a substantial amount, and still it was a sweaty trembly business to get all the reps ground out. And then a half-hour on the god-damned elliptical trainer, panting and hacking up wads of cigarette-crud, with a final mad five-minute sprint to shove the heart rate up to 90% of max. Moderation is not in the picture, not at all. I know from grim experience that pushing this hard is simply upping my chances of injury, but excess is really the point of it, for me, pushing the body right out to the edge and then harder and holding it there, until that magic moment when the floodgates open and the endorphins whoosh through my brain.

Every time I go to the gym, I think about how I'd give anything to be able to run again. I still miss it like crazy, even though it's been fifteen years since the orthopedic surgeon sat me down and told me if I kept running I was looking down the barrel of knee replacement surgery, in the near future. (Which was not a big surprise, given that for months I'd been feeling bone grinding on bone every time I ran, had limped more or less all the time and couldn't really bend my right knee -- the point at which a moderate person would have gotten a clue.) I miss it the way I'd miss alcohol, if I really ever had to stop drinking, or sex, if I had to give that up. Endorphins are my drug of choice, really, better than the single-malt and neck-and-neck with the finest sex.

Some of the best memories I have, the ones I want to keep until I die if I can manage, are of running -- in Wood Lake Nature Center in the middle of a March blizzard, around Lake Calhoun on a nearly-90-degree morning when the humidity was like a wet hot blanket. And especially on November nights, in the cold darkness, running past all the houses full of normal families with the warm yellow lights shining and the TV on and dinner on the table, and me out alone, racing along with the huge ferocious black wind whirling the dead leaves in the gutter. Often in the middle of such runs I'd find myself laughing out loud with pure joy, body humming with bliss and power, brain stone-drunk on endorphin cocktail, feeling tirelessly strong, lithe, invulnerable. (That's what it must feel like sometimes to be an Immortal, I think.)

But of course I'm both mortal and vulnerable, and when it became clear I had no real choice I stopped, and nothing else has ever been as good. I did racewalking for a while -- and yeah, quit laughing, you over there. The fact is that racewalking, though an excellent aerobic exercise, is an even better mental and emotional discipline; doing it means achieving a transcendent level of peace with one's own dorkitude, a willingness to go forth and look asinine, in front of the world, day after day. Which is, of course, really the spiritual practice of entering one's forties--embracing one's inner dork, relinquishing all one's youthful pretensions to hip and cool. And it worked for me, sort of, it let me get out on those November nights, until my shins and ankles began whining nonstop, and then I had to let it go too.

For me, not working out (as I have been not doing this past year) is a clear symptom of hovering depression, an anhedonic turning-away from sources of pleasure, figuratively self-destructive, suicidal. Just like the smoking, and the not-writing. When I was at the gym today, on the tedious elliptical trainer, it was mostly grind and slog, cursing every cigaratte I'd ever smoked and feeling doughy and leaden. But right at the end, when I kicked it up to overdrive and really pushed myself--too hard, too soon, just asking for trouble, I know that--I got just a quick taste, a sudden spike, of that sweet sweet rush, and I was alive in ways I haven't been in quite a while.

Insert obligatory junkie metaphor here; insert reference to road-of-excess-leading-to-palace-of-wisdom. Me, I'm going to run a tubful of hot water and go soak my achey muscles. I love my sore muscles, each and every one of them. Pain -- there's nothing like it to let you know you're alive.

Posted @ 09:29 PM CST [Link]7 comments