Friday, February 4, 2005
Fifth observation: Les negresses vertes
When you give up looking for a way to find music that somebody recommended to you, you can always just listen to Les negresses vertes.
Fourth observation: Yet another Murphy
It most probably is some sort of natural law: At the moment that you really, really want to find somebody, the one you seek is nowhere near.
Second observation: Demented songs
When calming a stuffed-nose, stressed-out, bored-to-tears, porbably ear-infected toddler, singing can actually work.
So what to do when you are mentally incapable of remembering lyrics? You sing songs that you make up. As you go along. Which is fine for the first half-hour or so.
And then they just all of a sudden turn completely insane. The songs, that is. I mean really, actually surreally, lunatic. This happens because your lyrically-challenged mind can't make up semi-senisible songs for more than half an hour, you see? After that, it's court-room dramas with chicken arguing their case, the travels of a bug into the afterlife after being swatted by someone's shoe, and claustrophobic aliens on Saturn, trying to make their skyrocketing mortgage payments.
Luckily, I don't think she really heard a word of it.
So what to do when you are mentally incapable of remembering lyrics? You sing songs that you make up. As you go along. Which is fine for the first half-hour or so.
And then they just all of a sudden turn completely insane. The songs, that is. I mean really, actually surreally, lunatic. This happens because your lyrically-challenged mind can't make up semi-senisible songs for more than half an hour, you see? After that, it's court-room dramas with chicken arguing their case, the travels of a bug into the afterlife after being swatted by someone's shoe, and claustrophobic aliens on Saturn, trying to make their skyrocketing mortgage payments.
Luckily, I don't think she really heard a word of it.
First observation: The cult
I think my neighbors have joined a cult.
When I tried to barge into their house last night, they both came to the door as their distinctly unusual selves. To begin with, they were dressed in a semi-business-like manner. Then they were not at all in their normal, relaxed mood, but appeared to be stressed, even nervous. They said things like they were having a "sort of a business dinner". Uhu.
Then, my wife came home and asked what that blue flag draped across their front door signified.
Finally, after a few cars had arrived next door, and as we were falling to sleep, I distinctly remember hearing some sort of singing, even chanting, wafting in through our bedroom window, which faces our friends' living room (I know, lucky us that they are not in the habit of throwing crazy, late-night parties).
So, the obvious conclusion? A cult!
When I tried to barge into their house last night, they both came to the door as their distinctly unusual selves. To begin with, they were dressed in a semi-business-like manner. Then they were not at all in their normal, relaxed mood, but appeared to be stressed, even nervous. They said things like they were having a "sort of a business dinner". Uhu.
Then, my wife came home and asked what that blue flag draped across their front door signified.
Finally, after a few cars had arrived next door, and as we were falling to sleep, I distinctly remember hearing some sort of singing, even chanting, wafting in through our bedroom window, which faces our friends' living room (I know, lucky us that they are not in the habit of throwing crazy, late-night parties).
So, the obvious conclusion? A cult!
Observation day
Today was to be a day when I'd blog some endless nonesense or other, before getting some actual work done. However, since my little girl is sick yet again—fevers, runny nose, and the works—it looks like it will be a day of comforting hugs, and fluid dispensing, interjected with short, inane blog-like observations.
Wednesday, February 2, 2005
Sweet, sweet air
I was really, really tense when I went spinning yesterday. It felt like I had become a steel feather, wound up to its full tension. I had to unwind. Literally.
This led me to give it all I had. I worked that bike as if my life depended on it. After putting the weight on it to its maximum, the machine actually started to groan. The steel and the iron pleaded for mercy, but I could not ease off. I pulled down on the handlebar to give me more leverage as I pushed the pedals harder, harder, harder. What really made me lose control was the music. It was just so right, at that moment, to hear hot, rowdy, greasy, sweaty heavy-metal rock'n'roll blaring from the speakers. And I don't mean the Metallica or AC/DC kind. I mean actual bell-bottomed, hairy-chested, cowbell'd old-fashion heavy metal.
And I just lost it.
For a whole hour, I became a physical slave to this primeval beat. When the endorphins kicked in, hard and sweet, I entered a state of elated bliss. That rapture which you can only get to by physically bringing your body to where it awards you with a dose of this closely guarded drug of its.
Which is how I rediscovered the sweetness of air.
After collapsing, exhausted and satisfied, onto the floor of the warm-up area of the gym, and finally catching my breath, I instinctly slipped into seiza sitting position and started breathing all the way into my tanden, as if my sensei had just said "Mokuso!"
I don't know how long I had been sitting there. My sense of time is lousy anyway, and it's been years since I have done this. I can't remember when I last entered a dojo. I don't even know where my gi is, although I still keep my belt handy.
Anyway.
I was well into 'realizing' my breath flowing up and over my head, engulfing my shoulders, falling down my sides, and out to the end of my limbs. I had even seen many of my thoughts quiet down, when, suddenly, it happened. I smelled the sweetness of the air. This is one of those things I had completely forgotten about. Like how cold water starts tasting sweet when you have been fasting for a while. And it felt magical. Sitting there on this mattress in the middle of a bustling gym, with my eyes closed and my hands resting on my thighs, smelling the sweetness of the air that I was breathing. It isn't that hard and flat sweet of sugar, or the heavy sweetness of syrup or honey. No, it is that fragile, barely noticeable sweet smell that you find in a summer breeze, woven in with its overwhelming, ripe pungence.
It is in a truly quiet moment, like this one was, that you realize how magical life is. How precious.
How sweet.
This led me to give it all I had. I worked that bike as if my life depended on it. After putting the weight on it to its maximum, the machine actually started to groan. The steel and the iron pleaded for mercy, but I could not ease off. I pulled down on the handlebar to give me more leverage as I pushed the pedals harder, harder, harder. What really made me lose control was the music. It was just so right, at that moment, to hear hot, rowdy, greasy, sweaty heavy-metal rock'n'roll blaring from the speakers. And I don't mean the Metallica or AC/DC kind. I mean actual bell-bottomed, hairy-chested, cowbell'd old-fashion heavy metal.
And I just lost it.
For a whole hour, I became a physical slave to this primeval beat. When the endorphins kicked in, hard and sweet, I entered a state of elated bliss. That rapture which you can only get to by physically bringing your body to where it awards you with a dose of this closely guarded drug of its.
Which is how I rediscovered the sweetness of air.
After collapsing, exhausted and satisfied, onto the floor of the warm-up area of the gym, and finally catching my breath, I instinctly slipped into seiza sitting position and started breathing all the way into my tanden, as if my sensei had just said "Mokuso!"
I don't know how long I had been sitting there. My sense of time is lousy anyway, and it's been years since I have done this. I can't remember when I last entered a dojo. I don't even know where my gi is, although I still keep my belt handy.
Anyway.
I was well into 'realizing' my breath flowing up and over my head, engulfing my shoulders, falling down my sides, and out to the end of my limbs. I had even seen many of my thoughts quiet down, when, suddenly, it happened. I smelled the sweetness of the air. This is one of those things I had completely forgotten about. Like how cold water starts tasting sweet when you have been fasting for a while. And it felt magical. Sitting there on this mattress in the middle of a bustling gym, with my eyes closed and my hands resting on my thighs, smelling the sweetness of the air that I was breathing. It isn't that hard and flat sweet of sugar, or the heavy sweetness of syrup or honey. No, it is that fragile, barely noticeable sweet smell that you find in a summer breeze, woven in with its overwhelming, ripe pungence.
It is in a truly quiet moment, like this one was, that you realize how magical life is. How precious.
How sweet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
