Posted 2 years, 7 months ago around lunchtime by oso
I’m in an area of my gymnasium known as “the pit.” It is full of free weights; of dumbbells and barbells that go thump against the padded mats. Tattooed, young Asian-Americans and Eastern European graduate students grunt loudly on their ninth and tenth repetitions before dropping the weights to the floor in disgust. They rise slowly, effortlessly, and stare straight ahead into the mirrored wall, seemingly oblivious of the fact that the rest of the gym - sorority girls on elliptical machines and socially awkward freshmen passing lonely nights with low impact machinery - faces in on “the pit.” They flex their muscles with non-chalance, simultaneously content and dissatisfied with what they see.
I am, like they are, listening to my iPod, comfortably isolated in my own audio bubble. It’s ambient music, or “lo-fidelity” or “electronica” or “down-tempo” or whatever other genre has been invented to categorize the synthesis of four people in a room playing music. Deep down in the foundation of the track, almost indiscernable, focus on it, is a five note bass line. It’s somehow circular, giving shape to an otherwise formless medium. The bass drum comes in and dancing with it, brings it out from the dark corner of the club and glazes it over with a soft snare drum - brushes not sticks - that is tempered by the railroad-like hisses and sighs of the cymbals. There is another layer to the music; of bleeps and blips mixed with a collage of vocal tidbits, horn samples, and slightly dissonant jazz chords from a dreamy organ.
I’m still mentally preparing for the last set of the night; the one where I supposedly push myself, the moment of truth to see if will and volition alone can convince my body to do something it was not able to do the week before. But then something starts to happen. I sink so deep into the music that the moment becomes suspended and my senses - all of them - dilate like pupils exiting a movie theater. I smell the cool soulless steel of the machinery, the new car fragrance of the vinyl-covered benches, the sweet stickiness of human sweat and unwashed sexuality. I feel the smooth worn-out rivets ground into each fiber of the dumbbell’s steel clutched in my hands.
Looking up, a row of 20 and 21-year-old girls stare down listlessly into the pit. They are observing, never once making eye contact, and they are bouncing up and down. They are on treadmills, stair masters, and elliptical machines, but they are all bouncing up and down like mechanical pistons in a comical engine whose purpose is happily fitting into overpriced, low-riding jeans in retail store fitting rooms. I try to individualize each of these girls as their pogo-sticking falls in line with the rhythm of the track, but I cannot. Each one of their lives seems a carbon copy of their neighbor’s even though I know this is not true, even though they could be thinking the very same of me.
The track ends. I use my knees to help hoist each dumbbell above its corresponding pectoral. Deep breathe, the slightest pause, and I push, and again, 3, 4, .. 5, …. 6, ………7, and …………..thump.
I had a friend. All she wanted out of life was a perfect house. The perfect house. She knew exactly how she wanted her house to look. Exactly how it would be decorated. She said once she had her house she’d be happy. She believed in a stable system. It seems to me that this is our biggest flaw.
great post.
I’m not so sure if wanting a “stable system” is really the flaw, as much as failing to see the differences between wanting a perfect house (with all its materialistic urges and hopes for conformity) and a perfect home (shit, all I ever wanted out of life is a home, a perfect home, with family and warmth and love, and yeah, stability).
It reminds me a little bit of “Fight Club” when Tyler says, “Fuck off with your sofa units and serine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let… lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.”
Your friend sounds like me…
The way the world is going today people just want a safe place to sleep at night.
Isn’t that what we all want? We want to be perfect. This is why those guys are in the pit, this is why you are there in the gym pushing yourself to supercede your expectations, even when the music (that detached ambient electronica) draws you more than your desire to perhaps look much better physically. We want that perfect house, that perfect body. Those women bounce up and down like pistons and they think a like–like a carbon copy–they do the same thing, they want the same thing. We want the same thing, stability, confidence, security. Unfortunately, in life there isn’t a place for us to go to “work” on those things. They aren’t muscles, and there definately aren’t any drugs we can take to make us feel like we have those things. And thus, most of us find ourselves in a gym.
It’s like a race where you want to show people that you are good enough. Whether its the way you look, the things you own, the car you drive, etc., etc. It kinda goes back to just being happy. It’s so much easier said than done…I think that’s what drives my own anxiety disorder…”am i good enough?” “what will they think of me if I fuck up?” “I gotta be successful” blah, blah. It may sound stupid but sometimes I think that homeless people show more balls than some of us by simply saying “fuck it,” I’m not going to live by your rules, by your system.
I think that was a pretty cool entry. I like the way it was written. I definitely have found myself doing the same sort of observations while watching random strangers, and even my own behavior. What this post made me think of is the way we (americans, especially middle and upper middle class) have evolved. It seems like we’ve evolved to the point that all of our more basic needs (food, comfort, political and economic stability, etc.) are satisfied, so we then find other things to focus ourselves with like, fitting into low cut jeans, having “the perfect” house, spouse, body etc. I guess thats one of the downsides of being given so much is that you lack appreciciation for it and your only able to see what others around you have. Somehow you have to find a way to remind yourself to step outside of the world around you because there is so much else going on in the world. Otherwise, it seems like all we have inherited is just a big waste.
I don’t think it’s wrong to wish on marriage, family, 2.5 kids, picket fences, stable job and perfect body. The problem lays on wanting these things just to keep up with the Jones’ or because that’s the way others have decided it’s supposed to be.
Once again, the google quote of the day is on point:
Damned interesting comments. And points that I hadn’t really thought about before. This post was inspired by an unlikely chain of events that started on the weblog 43folders, which I’ve been reading more and more because - against all odds - it’s actually making me more productive. Anyway, Merlin has recently been writing here and there about meditation and slightly alluding to Zen Buddhism. So for the past week or so I’ve been pulling off some old dusty books from the bookshelf and … do I really say this? … I’ve been meditating.
No, sorry, no incense, no lotus position (single or double), no focusing on a flame to distinguish my subconscious desires, and no tibetan monks chanting in the background. None of that metaphysical, shave-my-head and don-a-crimson-robe yahooee. But there is music involved. Each night, just for about 10 or 15 minutes I put on some instrumental music … usually classical or jazz, something complex enough to keep me focused … and I lay down on my bed and I do three things:
1.) feel my body get as heavy as possible like it’s sinking into my mattress
2.) focus on my breathing. not that I do any breathing exercises, I don’t even really now how to, but I just pay attention to how I’m breathing and how my body reacts to the breathing
3.) once my breathing gets a real steady rhythm, I focus completely on the music and try not to think about anything.
Not a single thought. What I usually discover is that I have to work through layer after layer of thinking. I’m one of those types that always has a running dialogue going through my head. It’s full of thoughts, reflections, memories, to-do lists, and made up conversations, but it’s always there and always hyperactive. So trying to make it stop is a monumental task for me. Eventually I get to a point where I’m really just concentrating on the music, but then I usually start to picture the chords or how the drummer is playing. But then, finally I’m usually able to clear it all out for at least five minutes.
That probably doesn’t sound like much, but once the inner-dialogue comes back, it is more focused, more meaningful and not just a bunch of cerebral diarrhea that usually comes about via anxiety more often than reflection.
I claim no domain over what meditation is or what it should be, but for me meditation is all about opening up your senses to the wonders of the world around you. It’s about pressing “restart” on your system so things start working a little bit quicker again. It’s a tune up on your car or bicycle.
I feel like we spend so much of our lives obsessing over our future and our past. Our minds are constantly rooted in analyzing what we’ve done wrong and right in the past and fantasizing about how we’d like our life to be in the future. Not that there’s anything wrong in reminiscence or day-dreaming - I am a fan of both - but more often than not, they take away from the beauty that is constantly surrounding us. When we do focus on the here and now, it is in the form of impossible to achieve running to-do lists that are meant to bring us closer to a future which we are sure will make us happier, but not sure why.
So that’s what I’ve been working on recently: smelling the eucalyptus on my bike rides or the batch of licorice on my walk to work. Savoring the taste of food, chewing slower. Admiring the beauty of the human body, the way a woman’s thighs become her buttocks or the arching divide between a man’s shoulder and back. Being not only aware of my surroundings, but holistically aware. Cause let’s face it, the brain is lazy. Anything that only uses 10% of its potential is lazy, and I’m trying to tell it to let me enjoy as much as this world has got to offer me as often as possible.
So that was the inspiration for the post. Interpret it as you will. Fight Club was such an amazing movie, such an amazinger book.
Oso - I, too, love boobies. That was the point right?
Exactly. It’s amazing the insight that 15 years of friendship can bring.
way to use my favorite billy bragg quote as your headline.
sorry you wonna be me so badd
i dont know why my comment says its written by you
I wonna be you so badd? Look who’s trying to steal my name. Besides, my dearest boogs, how’d you find out about Billy Bragg in the first place?
“She believed in a stable system. It seems to me that this is our biggest flaw.”
I know exactly what I want my dream house to look like. I want it to be an old spanish colonial one, like the one in that terrible movie with Keanue Reeves, A Walk In The Clouds.
I want to be a doctor. I want a supportive and financially stable husband. I want two children.
I know what I want. What is wrong in know what you want and wanting stability?