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Felt sort of tired, Saturday. Rolled seven times in six days, and not lightly. Kind of creaky when I get started, but I loosen up pretty fast. Of course I ossify instantly when behind touches mat. I'm saying this cuz I don't feel like thinking. It doesn't take any thought at all, to talk about myself. And, frankly, it is my favorite subject. Boundlessly fascinating, as you will agree.
Twice on Friday, and once of Saturday. It really is too much. I might be doing even more though, now that I've finally gone to a morning class. I have reservations about doing new things. I joke about it, but it's not really funny. Kind of pathetic, really. But in the miraculous mosaic that is I, such minor distortions serve as subtle accents of my overall beauty.
Speaking of which -- my beauty, which I really haven't been mentioning anywhere near often enough -- I was considering my fabulous abs? It's really getting out of hand. Off the hook. How is it possible? I don't do crunches. I've never done a crunch in my life, except as part of some class warm up. And I've got muscles that nobody even knows the name of. Gorgeous. Just stunning. Really. I've got that third cut, below the navel. Maybe it's the fourth, if you count the one above, on the ribs. And there are odd little muscles off to the side -- between the obliques, of which I have an absolutely hypnotic array. It's like I'm the human epitome of some Art Deco Adonis, all striations and angled plains. Breath-taking. And then on my belly, below the abs, there are these other muscles. What do they even hook up to? What do they do? I don't know. Nobody does. Physiologists haven't even named them. I am unique. I'm like a piece of art, a masterpiece -- some sort of divine device crafted by God to show humanity what it might have been. Carved from ice and alabaster. I must be what Adam looked like. Well, I'm sure his features were softer, but the fist-like quality of my face has it's own allure. I'm sure his skintone was more middle-brown. That's beautiful too. Nietzsche said, "The belly is the reason man does not mistake himself for a god." Well? Where does that leave me? Sometimes as I'm walking I'll put my palm flat across my abdomen just to feel the rolling -- sinuous beneath my hand like rows of estivating snakes. Sometimes I'll rub my fingers over the cords of sinew lying beneath the leather of my belly, like a master guitarist strumming out a passionate gypsy tune that wails longingly as a lost soul and stirs you with a yearning to live forever.
Sometimes my hands grow heavy and stiff, and drag on the ground behind me, bending my back curved as old mountains. Sometimes I stare through a haze of pain out of a face like a stone mask. Sometimes darkness leaks from my lungs and puddles at my feet and rises like surf into a sinking vessel, and words cannot contain the cold I would feel, if I could feel. Sometimes I fall into the hollowness that displaces my organs and the receding cavern of my skull expands away in every direction so fast that even vacuum hasn't time to fill it.
Sometimes God is so far away he can hardly see me, and I can't see him at all.
I know there are miracles. I know that somewhere in the boundless universe there is a flawless mosaic of unspeakable beauty. I know that somewhere there is a balm that will soothe every ache, and a hand that will wipe away every tear, and that the wretchedness that suffuses some man's heart need not last forever. Somewhere weariness will end in fulfillment, and darkness will represent a time of peace and satisfaction. Someday I will settle into ease and happiness, the way a mountain slides into the sea.
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I wonder sometimes if anyone gets it. Not specifically, but the specifics don't matter. If they get the meaning. I've come right out and said it, some number of times, in different ways. The problem is that anyone who gets it, understands that saying they get it is pointless. And that just leaves everyone else and their verbal incomprehension. A sort of double bind, then. Grief is answered only by silence. But it's the silence of companionship. B got it once -- showed that he got it. No, I haven't forgotten.
So I've rolled three times, now, in, what, 9 months? Is it less important to me now? I used it to deal with the absence of my son. Now he is returned from the wars. I used it to have a social connection. That particular connection is severed. And of course I did it because I really did love it. I remember saying that if there were a way, I'd do it for a living. Statements like that are self-revealing, and I said it to someone who never did get the self I was revealing. I do regret trusting, opening up, even a little -- it turns out too often to be a betrayal of myself -- I should have protected myself better. It would surprise me, if I didn't know better by now, how little loyalty I ever buy for myself with my own loyalty. It doesn't seem right. But it's more complicated than that. Everyone thinks they're the wronged party. How do we discern? Formulas don't work where there's free will.
And I was lying about my abs. I mean, I'm practically 50. Who could be that beautiful? It's ridiculous, is all.
Get it?
J
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