Changes and walking
I have been living in the midwest for almost five years. Time flies. I like living here -- it's grown on me. I like the culture and people. But I miss southern californian weather; the oddball circles I used to run in (like raw foodists), and the multiple, daily opportunities for getting into something new.
I was getting fit when I left. Then snowy, 15 degree winters and a broken toe, hit, and it seemed like I started to age, started to walk with less elasticity, constrained by an inelegant stiff gait. I miss getting up and making a smoothie out of giant lettuce leaves and ripe bananas, and then going for a two-hour walk in sunny southern california. I was doing almost 100 squats when I left. It's been a struggle getting back into doing squats, though I do 100 (really well executed) push-ups. I felt powerful in California.
I've started to go for long walks in this unexpectedly mild Winter, two weeks now. I have started to taste a surge of health reminiscent of the kind I was attaining in California five years ago. I have also gotten closer to God, and that has brought more peace to my life. Before, I wanted to exercise to feel powerful and sexy; now, I want to exercise as a way to take care of this body that God has given me, the internal man no less important than his physical embodiment. Actually, I've started to consider all I have as belonging to God, while I'm just a good steward or manager of it. It's been so liberating because now I want to do my best for him, as opposed to trying to parlay my accomplishments and talents into accessories that enable social importance. Less anxiety, and, paradoxically, there's still success. It's just not everything anymore and neither is feeling powerful. I want internal change, to have a rich interior life that is connected with the divine.
I had this scary thought a couple years back, and it was this: "What if I'm exactly the same when I'm 70? Continually preserving an accumulation of resentments and failures, pettiness and anger, bitterness." It terrified me. I wanted to feel light and cheerful, to be a source of encouragement for others, as opposed to being a worldly but pessimist fellow. I'd rather be authentically earnest and caring, than urbane and detached. It seems like irony and sarcasm are revered values in our contemporary culture. I'm over them. Being clever is over-rated. Being kind and making folks feel comfortable in one's presence is better, affirming.
So that's where I'm at.
I'm also getting into stuff I was too embarrassed to go public with before, like my interest in Sci Fi. I have been reading novels set in the expanded Star Wars universe and watching the animated _Star Wars: Clone Wars_ series. They make my day! I'm also into the CW's _The 100_, a kind of dystopian lord of the flies. And, yeah, I'm still reading the likes of Henry James for fun (_Wings of the Dove_ is, in spite of its baroque and interminable syntax, wonderful. I might write about why that is after I finish reading it.)
And why should there be some kind of aritificial divide between "high" literary fiction and popular genres? I think you can love many things for different and overlapping reasons, as opposed to adhering to some hierarchical value system imposed by scholars.
I love what I love.
I was getting fit when I left. Then snowy, 15 degree winters and a broken toe, hit, and it seemed like I started to age, started to walk with less elasticity, constrained by an inelegant stiff gait. I miss getting up and making a smoothie out of giant lettuce leaves and ripe bananas, and then going for a two-hour walk in sunny southern california. I was doing almost 100 squats when I left. It's been a struggle getting back into doing squats, though I do 100 (really well executed) push-ups. I felt powerful in California.
I've started to go for long walks in this unexpectedly mild Winter, two weeks now. I have started to taste a surge of health reminiscent of the kind I was attaining in California five years ago. I have also gotten closer to God, and that has brought more peace to my life. Before, I wanted to exercise to feel powerful and sexy; now, I want to exercise as a way to take care of this body that God has given me, the internal man no less important than his physical embodiment. Actually, I've started to consider all I have as belonging to God, while I'm just a good steward or manager of it. It's been so liberating because now I want to do my best for him, as opposed to trying to parlay my accomplishments and talents into accessories that enable social importance. Less anxiety, and, paradoxically, there's still success. It's just not everything anymore and neither is feeling powerful. I want internal change, to have a rich interior life that is connected with the divine.
I had this scary thought a couple years back, and it was this: "What if I'm exactly the same when I'm 70? Continually preserving an accumulation of resentments and failures, pettiness and anger, bitterness." It terrified me. I wanted to feel light and cheerful, to be a source of encouragement for others, as opposed to being a worldly but pessimist fellow. I'd rather be authentically earnest and caring, than urbane and detached. It seems like irony and sarcasm are revered values in our contemporary culture. I'm over them. Being clever is over-rated. Being kind and making folks feel comfortable in one's presence is better, affirming.
So that's where I'm at.
I'm also getting into stuff I was too embarrassed to go public with before, like my interest in Sci Fi. I have been reading novels set in the expanded Star Wars universe and watching the animated _Star Wars: Clone Wars_ series. They make my day! I'm also into the CW's _The 100_, a kind of dystopian lord of the flies. And, yeah, I'm still reading the likes of Henry James for fun (_Wings of the Dove_ is, in spite of its baroque and interminable syntax, wonderful. I might write about why that is after I finish reading it.)
And why should there be some kind of aritificial divide between "high" literary fiction and popular genres? I think you can love many things for different and overlapping reasons, as opposed to adhering to some hierarchical value system imposed by scholars.
I love what I love.