Friday, January 19, 2007
Begin the Begin: In Medias Res - continuing what we begun yesterwhen….
I started this yesterday - a list of beginnings for this still-fresh year. Let’s continue, shall we?
* Which brings me to my bag. I’ve whined here before about it being too heavy, and eventually - late last year - I determined to do something about it. What, you may ask? Some basic housecleaning: I stopped carrying three extra notebooks and two memo pads I didn’t need around me every minute of every day, several old publications I once thought would be handy but which had ultimately proven otherwise, and one hell of a lot of random extra dayplanner chazzerai. As a result, the bag that used to torque my spine into a Twizzler on a twice-daily basis is now often so light and understuffed that it actually feels wrong, as if I’ve forgotten something important like a detonator or my spleen or something. (Perhaps I should be watching less 24 and Scrubs?) But no, I’ve got everything that I actually need - and nothing, for a change, that I don’t. The bag rests lightly on my shoulder and I have taken to carrying a clipboard in it to ensure that it maintains some semblance of its proper shape. Despite that it can hold the world, I have opted to carry in it only the necessities. Let me tell you, that feels good. Weird, but good.
* And furthermore: We scaled back last year in a significant - but only partial - way: we switched out our nice Danish dining table for a sort of scruffy little round cafe table. I think it’s led to less lifedross getting warehoused in the dining room, and more meals spent around the dining table - plus, it gives Z more room to play in the front of the house. It opens up the space and makes it more useful to us all. We’ve embraced the change with no hesitation - except, of course, we couldn’t bear to get rid of the old table. What if we needed it back suddenly, like for one of those expected spontaneous dinner parties? It’s so much nicer than the one we’re using now.... I haven’t been able to stomach the idea of just jettisoning it so it’s been propped up in pieces against a wall in the study lo these several months. I’ve been nervous it’d fall over but we didn’t have a better place for it. That room was already a jumble of projects and piles, so one more didn’t really bring it down too much farther.
For the new year we’re turning that around. I went and reassembled that ol’ dining table right there in the study and turned it into a project table. Phased-out toys now hide beneath it, books to be shelved teeter atop it, and the room takes a more coherent shape around it. It looks good in there with the table in the corner. That large piece of furniture has gone from being an encumbrance to an eyesore to an anchor for a newly-functional space. I didn’t have to give up anything, and I have already gained so much. Thus may it be for the entirety of this year, though somehow I doubt it.
* Yet additionally: It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to think of myself as a bike rider. It’s just been too damn long since I put in the necessary saddle hours. I used to ride a lot; my grotesquely hock-like calves bear witness to the miles of blacktop I covered in my youth. Back then the bike was my escape, my release, my meditation. I rode it like a hamster on a treadmill. And then, later, up here - the trail work, Bolinas and Railroad Grade and all those rugged little headlands loops on the mountain bike… I sat tall in the saddle and I knew how to cut my turns.
It’s been years, though, since I’ve put in any serious time on my bike. I broke my wrist in a bike accident not too long after upgrading to a new ride and now, five years later, it still seems pretty damn new. I hardly feel that I’ve even properly broken it in (though the opposite, I suppose, is true enough). One problem has been that, since my accident, the bike’s seemed a little out of tune. It was just one shifter, really - it wasn’t getting me into my small crank. Though it seemed like a little problem, it got rapidly bigger as the hills got steeper. Everything else seemed fine; it was just that one little thing that seemed wrong. So I took the philosopher’s tactic: I did nothing. I just avoided riding that bike. For months. Or, as it turned out, years.
This is not just lame because a tiny simple adjustment would have fixed everything. It’s particularly lame because I actually own a book that explains how to make that repair, using clear simple language and large photographs. I just never dethroned myself and made the effort to put the information I possessed to practical use.
This year, though, began with a great stride forward, in the form of a small simple bike repair. It required one Phillips-head screwdriver and took almost thirty seconds to complete. I have yet to test my handiwork on any decent hills but I think I’ve solved my shifty little problem. If I play that right it may also solve my biking (or “not-biking") problem. And that would be cool in a lot of different ways. A fellow can start to miss those padded shorts after a while.
* And lest we forget: I allowed my gym membership, at the beginning of the year, to unlapse: I’m once again entitled to hit the Y whenever I see fit. But this time I’m doing it differently: Instead of throwing myself indiscriminately onto various diabolical machines like a crazed doughboy into a grenade-infested foxhole, I went and had someone set up a workout for me and show me how to perform it properly. I’ve got a circuit now of 10 or so “resistance” exercises. That used to mean I resisted doing them but now it’s just strength training, and I am actually doing it. I’ve given myself four weeks to exercise regularly enough that it doesn’t feel weird and wrong anymore. However that works out, I now have some rudimentary gym skills, and that’s a weight simultaneously added to and lifted from my increasingly bulky shoulders.
Good stuff, eh chappie? Oh shut up then, I don’t need your troublemaking. I’ve got a few more beginnings yet to divulge. I’ll try to finish this weekend, or early next week. I need to finish this before I’m talking about middles. They’re often cremey and delicious but they just don’t pack the inspirational punch of beginnings. Then again, neither do I.
