Trite, so trite
Keen grasp of the obvious file: Age gets to us all.
I suppose a hip that took 25 years or so to deteriorate should be a hint, but some things come unbidden into my consciousness. Conditioning exercises like calesthenics and aerobics were once just a sort of dance to get up a sweat. There was no stiffness or soreness afterward, just a well-soaked shirt.
A quick shower, and the easy athletic stride quickly returned, only a bit more energized.
The last few years have taken a silent terrible toll on me. Unable to do much more than move around a couple of hours a day for more than two years, strength and flexibility simply seeped quietly from all parts of me. The draining exhaustion in the years previous to that period was dismissed as depression or stress: new country, new challenges, frustration with myself and others -- all took their toll.
And then the surjery, and the demands of slower-than-normal recovery because of my size, and the horrific stress of my ex partner's abuse, have transformed me into someone I hardly recognize in the mirror. Where did this samoan-style frame come from?
Conditioning just means stiffness as large muscles learn to breathe again. They sit beneath the flab like great chunks of meat until they do. And when they find oxygen again, they seem to burst and bulge with the promise of power, but not quite there yet.
And the power is needed to move this flabby, massive frame. It needs to move, but resists every attempt to make it move. Sweat comes too slowly. Where once muscles burned with energy and boiled the cleansing moisture from me, what's left seems to not be familiar with movement. Now it takes a while to work up a sweat; and I can't always keep the muscles moving for that while.
My whole body has atrophied into a shaped blob. Like an unfinished sculpture, the shape has not emerged yet.
I have gotten old. I don't think I like it very much. I want to kick and spin, leap and spring, see the world go flying by as my thighs flash in the sunlight. And to that now-impossible end, I keep pumping and splashing, back and forth over and over.
I suppose a hip that took 25 years or so to deteriorate should be a hint, but some things come unbidden into my consciousness. Conditioning exercises like calesthenics and aerobics were once just a sort of dance to get up a sweat. There was no stiffness or soreness afterward, just a well-soaked shirt.
A quick shower, and the easy athletic stride quickly returned, only a bit more energized.
The last few years have taken a silent terrible toll on me. Unable to do much more than move around a couple of hours a day for more than two years, strength and flexibility simply seeped quietly from all parts of me. The draining exhaustion in the years previous to that period was dismissed as depression or stress: new country, new challenges, frustration with myself and others -- all took their toll.
And then the surjery, and the demands of slower-than-normal recovery because of my size, and the horrific stress of my ex partner's abuse, have transformed me into someone I hardly recognize in the mirror. Where did this samoan-style frame come from?
Conditioning just means stiffness as large muscles learn to breathe again. They sit beneath the flab like great chunks of meat until they do. And when they find oxygen again, they seem to burst and bulge with the promise of power, but not quite there yet.
And the power is needed to move this flabby, massive frame. It needs to move, but resists every attempt to make it move. Sweat comes too slowly. Where once muscles burned with energy and boiled the cleansing moisture from me, what's left seems to not be familiar with movement. Now it takes a while to work up a sweat; and I can't always keep the muscles moving for that while.
My whole body has atrophied into a shaped blob. Like an unfinished sculpture, the shape has not emerged yet.
I have gotten old. I don't think I like it very much. I want to kick and spin, leap and spring, see the world go flying by as my thighs flash in the sunlight. And to that now-impossible end, I keep pumping and splashing, back and forth over and over.
posted by Unknown at
8:56 AM
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