Tubes

To be part of an epidemic of obesity, to be a walking manifestation of a cultural dilemma, or not to be... my personal question of survival. My diversion to exertion, my proactive self-destruction, comes down to a betrayal, a neglecting of a court order from the evolutionary process of perseverance.

Gluttony, sloth, and greed, deadly sins as old as written reflection... a mirror, a magnification, indisputable evidence, a proclamation of guilt throughout the week. A sad journey of wobbly stunted motions, arthritic feet, and short breath panting.

Cut loose, cut calories, increase motion, change something fundamental inside where the sun don't shine... where a voice goes unheard, where some lie lays undisturbed, some rotten anti-truth decaying still salvageable flesh. Demons dance on a corpse of this living being, laughing and teasing 'Wake-up! Wake-up! You foolish old pig on a stick, or we will roast you in the flames of your own decadent sins!'

But I am intoxicated with diversions, and beat myself down with my spiralling stupor. Lamentable lard laid out on the pit, a luau for angry lost souls and mocking Asian crows.

A feast for the dismal self-righteously hungry, or one more blessed witness to God's rule? A Rumi poem of a lion eating a greedy ox, allowing the fox a chance, to know it is better to sacrifice all of the hunt's bounty, in order to be allowed to be left in the hunt. Better to sacrifice today’s pleasures in exchange for life, in agreement with the punishable laws of our universe.

Get off my merry-go-round while I still can.

No Direction Chose

I choose. Dubious such as it is. Lack of exercise, lack of caloric discipline. Choosing web work, driving... choosing to feel the stiff, the crystallizing joints, the out of breath sweating encumbered soul. So easy to tumble under the weight of sadness. Wondering if I have the spirit to counter-attack this summer. To make hard choices before I am chosen by nature as another bad example.

Small Successes Small Setbacks

There There, Big Boy... sometimes you go to the scale and there is good news, and you just do not know why. The very fact that you have not been paying attention may be the reason for your success, just as when you neglected the scale you gained all that weight. Go figure.

Marauding Anxiety

I will need to weed the planters on the terrace, toss the dried weeds into the recyclable trash. All part of an illusion of normalcy. All above an underlying theme of angst, a perpetual percolation of anxiety. There is such a magnificent spring outside, seeping through the windows.

We allow the world in, for better or for worse. We must. Life is a participatory phenomena. To walk as a ghost on the parameters of existence just doesn't cut it. We need to be in the game, to make any sense of what it is we are doing here. If we make it a meditation then there needs to be a front line of analysis, somewhere the rubber meets the road. Better we are the one directing the motion, initiating the interaction, living the life that suits us best.

Not taking the bull by the horns, or the balls, or, as in Zen, as a gentle friend, lead by its ring... is a fundamental error. Yet choosing among the options, when cloaked in a trench coat of despair, is daunting for the depressed. The chicken to egg cycle, of impotence due to the blues, needs to be disrupted somehow. The old hen needs to be beheaded or the damn egg scrambled.

In someway an initiative followed by an ignition is called for... a fire under our procrastinating perplexity... A self-anointed rite of passage, out the door, and into the mix of things. Spring awaits, but only for one season. Summer sits simmering just around that pertruding bend up ahead. Best to pull weeds while we still have fingers.

Best to express what you are really thinking, what you really want to be doing... and then, do it.

No Place to Go

To go out... I seem to have no romance with place, unless there is a high probability that I might meet someone. So the best place for me is a centrally located coffee shop where I know friends go. Since I am sedimentary at home, this means I end up being sedimentary when I go out. I love sedimentary activities. Computers, movies, chatting with friends, watching strangers, reading, listening. All are, more often than not, a study in still life.

Taking a walk with a friend, or dancing, as well as walking in dynamically different environments as a pilgrim or a tourist, are ways in which I combined my love of society with exercise. This is one reason I often fantasize purchasing a small place as residence downtown (either here in Kyoto or New York, though other dynamic centralized urban centers might work equally well) or to have a storefront where passersby may stop in and chat, as we watch the passing strangers, together over coffee.

There are many people watchers as myself... I wonder what it all means... what purpose do we serve in the organism of humankind? Is there some greater purpose, than just passing time? Are we meant to do more than watch life go by?

No Satisfaction

Futility. What could be... expletives. There is no... definitiveness, only bloated disgruntled negativism I'd prefer not to share.

Model by example.

Be the Man.

Spring Salvation

This has been a long and emotionally challenging Winter.... as has been my conscious 'un-participation' in this blog. In fact, I came close to destroying all records of my struggle.

Firstly, instead of using this time to lose weight, I rebounded back to my highest weight ever. I seemed to languish in a self-destructive pattern of over-eating and avoiding motion, knowing full well I was manifesting symptoms of a depression. As my body manifested the sickly physical symptoms of obesity my emotional fatigue and social self-conscientiousness festered.

There are personal events that I might attribute this to, but that would be unfair, as I believe in 'taking responsibility for my actions' (and in this case in-action). Therefore I will take this time to try and analyze my behavior.

I began by genuinely attempting a raw vegan style cleanse. While my intentions and initial actions were both genuine and extravagant, flaws appeared and undermined my progress quickly. The pendulum swing between my 'Natural' cultural diet (i.e. meat and potato fast food, American raised in the 50's heritage) and the enviable ideals of the New Age 'Natural Vegan' diet, remains absurdly wide and profoundly ludicrous. I am unhappy on either end of the spectrum, and shaken even in the middle. I do not trust nor fully believe the radical claims of conspiracy and psydo-science professed by the left and intrinsically mistrust the established nutritionists and marketers on the right.

In my fantasies I hunger for a support group where I might eat in peace... yet what I love in most indigenous food cultures is less than what is best for me, and the dietary lifestyles of dietary scarcity, where I might again rediscover health and physical potency, all leave me feeling desperately out of sync. I feel inordinately hopeless and ashamed, having tried so many paths short of my goal. My website and personal history is a burial ground of failed methodologies.

There are moments in most days when I make a gesture toward moderation and pro-action, but these are all so short of what is needed. Thus the parallel to depression is obvious. I would so much like to fall into a pattern of healthful behavior, when what is really needed is a climb up into a precise long-term commitment, to what inevitably would be a brutally uncomfortable sacrifice.

A commitment and sacrifice which must span a longer time then I am presently prepared to make. Yet my survival depends on it... Witness the downwardly spiraling logic of the defeatist. How much I'd love to blame someone besides myself, to be swallowed up in a cult who would lavish me in supportive sensuality while purging me of all my addictive patterns. But instead I am being asked by circumstance to heal myself.

How tedious reality... how unmovable... how frightfully real. How the hell can I beat this looping mania?