Synaesthetic

It is my fervent hope that the idea of “labor-saving devices” is undergoing sea change. I feel like a lot of our species’ labor-saving devices got us into this mass-produced, toxic mess. I’m not saying I want to do my laundry by hand, but we’re straying into sedentary madness.

I listened to two engineers argue yesterday about which was more efficient, hand-washing your dishes or using a dishwasher. They both agreed that the machine was more “efficient.”

At which point I said: “Right. You start your dishwasher up, and now you have time to jump in your car, drive down to the gym to walk on an electric treadmill for a half hour? How is this efficient? Why didn’t you stay home, burn some calories and do the dishes?”

Because seriously. Seriously.

I don’t know much about strength and performance, but I’m learning. This is someplace I can point my trademark stubborness and have it pay off. I just keep showing up.

I do know I’m beating huge odds. Unlike 80 percent of America, I am not home on the couch with the remote and the ice cream every night of the week, rolling over to the statistics. 80 percent, people. That’s eight of every ten adults in the US.

Even when I have a teary, klutzy, meltdown of a workout, I get to say “Well. At least I showed up.”

So. Winning isn’t always getting results, getting ripped or even doing something well.

Winning is showing the fuck up.

The thing is, I starved myself down there to the right numbers a few years ago.

It all looked “great” from the outside but it was a nightmare on the inside. I was 125 pounds and a size 6 and while I finally felt I had permission to be “average,” and my BMI was finally “right,” I’d gone off the deep end about fitness and food.

I was quickly sliding into clinical depression (that got suicidal), I was taking in about 1k cals/day, and I was spending 2 hours a night, 5 nights a week slogging it out on an elliptical at a big commercial gym. That’s what I had to do to make the numbers happen.

I was afraid of food, and I was afraid of social situations where food would be offered. The only victories were what the scale said, and what the tags in my clothes said.

That’s what I thought “fit” was.

And as I climbed out of my depression (which was a culmination of many things, not just numbers), I decided if that was “fit,” I didn’t need it. There had to be another way.

So I don’t know what the answer is, and the self-image war goes on, but I am stronger and more fit than I’ve ever been at 180 pounds — a number any doctor and any insurance agency will tell you is obese.

I can say with confidence that the numbers are fucked up, the scale will eat your soul if you allow it, and don’t believe these numbers as they relate to your own sense of strength and fitness, they don’t apply.

So far so good without my (probably ca. 1980) window air conditioner. It’s nice to have doors on both ends of the house, and the evenings are lovely. It’s strange working in a super-cooled box and then living in a warm, open-window place.

Two new short skirts stare out from the closet at me with great expectation. I also bought some other completely unsensible clothes that can’t be worn to work. I have no idea if I will actually get the guts up to wear any of them, but the staring contest is fun.

A friend flew in from the midwest and I hosted her over the weekend. She’s more relaxed and peaceful than I’ve seen in years. We overate and overdrank and generally enjoyed the heck out of the weekend. Well played.

This post comes to you from home; I decided on a luxurious lunch at my own kitchen table. That’s how close to work I am. Trains wailing in the distance, birds twittering on their feeders, leaf blowers, not another neighbor in sight. Just me and the hum of the refrigerator.

Work is silly, but I won this round with human resources. I have been returned to full-time exempt status, and all accrued benefit hours have been credited to me.

These days I seem to be turning over the ideas of perfect imperfection, happiness as supplied, candor, and random small pleasures that hijack and delight, even in their smallness.

There’s a romantic feel to this summer, I have no idea why, and I don’t really care. It’s sweet.

If you ever get the chance, be sure and watch it. Black humor at its flesh-tearing finest with Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole (who apparently loathed each other on sight).

The fact that I’m slightly obsessed with Henry II and Plantagenet rule in England may have something to do with my affection.

Some of the finest film dialogue I’ve had the pleasure to watch.

“When the king’s on his ass, no one sleeps!”

The Miserere was once deemed too sacred to be transcribed or performed outside the Vatican. In 1770, the 14-year-old Mozart was allowed to attend a mass during which Allegri’s Miserere was performed. He went straight home and wrote the entire piece down from memory, and returned to the Vatican later that week to listen once more and add refinements to the piece.

In 1771, he brought his transcripts to (non-Catholic) England, where the piece first began to be distributed by historian Dr. Charles Burney.

Finest Renaissance polyphony you will hear. Written for nine voices, one choir of four, another of five.