Things to look forward to…
working up a sweat
Okay, maybe I don’t look forward to working up a sweat. In fact, I don’t particularly like sweating at all. But I do enjoy working up a sweat. More precisely, I love the loose-muscled calm that descends on my body after I’ve stopped working up a sweat and washed the sweat away under a stream of cool water.
However, it is getting harder and harder to safely work up a sweat. At 90°F and 90% relative humidity, sweat doesn’t do anything but add to the body’s distress, and working up that much body heat in hot weather can send you off to the hospital in short order. A co-worker’s father passed out just mowing the lawn last week — hardly an activity that normally works up a sweat. Most of the runners I know are getting in their running after sunset — which makes for a late night and a very tired morning. Thus many are not running much. I have a lunch-time walk that I like to take when the weather isn’t so warm that I do work up a sweat. (I hate showering at work and in any case I don’t have that long of a lunch.) But aside from the heat and the rain, it’s also been a buggy summer and hiking up the country road behind my office often earns me a few good bites for my efforts. So I haven’t been walking much.
What I have been doing is riding my stationary bike in the evening. My objective is to get to that loose-limbed calm without going through the sweating stage. I set the fans to blow on me and wear loose clothing with nothing on my feet. I never eat before I ride, and I drink about a liter of water. I shower immediately afterward, put on pajamas and only then have dinner.
This is great for my body. But it’s also great for my mind. I read while on the bike, something that can’t happen on my walks. (I’ve tried…) I also listen to music. Sometimes I watch movies, but turning on all the electronica generates heat so that doesn’t happen as often in the summer. So mostly I read. And I read books… which is significant… Much of what I read on screens is the opposite of calming. Just the act of reading on a screen irritates me and hurts my head. No point in adding anger and eyestrain to the work-out, so I stick to physical books.
Right now, my bike book is Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle, which is fairly typical of the kinds of books I read on the bike. In fact, most of it is fiction and much of it is genre fiction, usually story-driven, usually with a narrative that takes me out of my sweaty, peddling body, muting all the discomfort and making me completely forget time until the kitchen timer goes off. Then I peel my butt off the bike (why is that always painful…) and go shower.
The mark of a good book is when I pick it back up after showering and read while I am eating dinner.
The mark of a good work-out is when I take the book to bed and fall soundly asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow…
The relevance of working and sweating right now is that I am doing quite a good deal of actual work that generates sweat in the aftermath of the storm. But even when there isn’t mud and basement cleaning, cleaning is a work-out. Anyone who says otherwise… well, I don’t think I’d want to eat in their house. Gardening is also a great work-out, particularly for older people. You are constantly bending and carrying and walking and digging. It’s such good exercise that you don’t even realize how much exercise you are getting until you come inside afterwards and all your muscles feel like jelly (or feel sore if you haven’t been gardening regularly… a problem in the spring).
You don’t need a fancy exercise regimen to work up a sweat. Your body gets all the exercise it needs from doing the work — the actual work of cleaning and cooking and tending to the garden — that meets your body’s needs. How’s that for elegant design!
tough love
this is her mercy
amelioration of misery
in mud and sweat and anguish
this is setting the world a’right
recalibration of life
in flood and fire and forked lightning
this is mother’s love
repudiation of the wrongness
in trial and tears and torment
no need to send surrogate
to sacrifice for our salvation
she is here and whole
we are her body
and she is bathing
in the river of redemption
so we can breathe
Wednesday Word
for 17 July 2024
compassion
Seen from the perspective of humanity, Hurricane Beryl is cruel and unforgiving.
But if you use a wider lens, you will see that this is the compassion of the planet. This Earth is fighting off infection so that the whole can be healthy again. Our job is to be good microbes and go back to living within Earth’s limits, tending to our small lives, and always remembering that there is no Away, no Other to bear our excesses… Any waste we generate is balanced. Too much carbon equals hurricane. But it is all the love of this planet. For all its beings, not just humanity. And it may be that humanity will not be preserved in this healthy whole. Humanity might have been another mistake in the long history of Earth’s experimentation. At least the version of humanity that is capable of making such a self-absorbed, unholy mess for all the rest of the planet’s beings… and certainly the system that rewards and requires such behavior is doomed to fail, falling far on the wrong side of Earth’s tough love.
If you so desire, you can respond in the comments below or go visit the All Poetry contest for July. Your response can be anything made from words. I love poetry, but anything can be poetic and you needn’t even be limited to poetics. An observation, a story, a thought. Might even be an image — however, I am not a visual person, so it has to work harder to convey meaning. In the spirit of word prompts, it’s best if you use the word; but I’m not even a stickler about that. Especially if you can convey the meaning without ever touching the word.
Even if you don’t choose to scribble, at least I’ve made you think about… compassion.
©Elizabeth Anker 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 
compassion – soul’s compass
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I find that both gardening and housework keeps me in a reasonable shape. One day – when the weather warms up again – I will resume my daily swim in our home pool. Nothing Olympian, yet a good workout sans the stress or sweat 🙂
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Kindness and compassion are similar words, almost interchangeable in some contexts. I prefer kindness, it just seems more down to earth, less formal, more common. Or maybe, it is that compassion comes from ecclesiastical Latin, via Old French and Middle English. Both words come from the Latin compatior which literally means “to suffer with one.” The main reason however, that I prefer kindness is that it seems to be more of a neutral action word – an act of kindness — without the emotional, moral, religious connotations, aka baggage.
There comes a point in any relationship, whether that be two people, a family or a society when kindness is everything. When everything seems to be falling apart and communication breaks down, kindness can be all that is left of those ties that bind. Like hope, kindness is often the last to die. I think that we have reached that point in our society, whether that be the U.S. or globally, where kindness may be all that is left. And, when kindness dies as often seems to be the case in places like Gaza, Ukraine and even our presidential election, there will be nothing left of those ties that have bound us together.
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My old boss used to say everybody needs an editor. She was right. Compassion and kindness are not both derived from the Latin (I knew that!). Kindness comes from the 14th c Old English kyndnes which meant “nation” also “produce an increase.” Then there is Middle English kinde – friendly, deliberately doing good to others” and from the Old English (ge)cynde – “natural, native, innate” originally “with the feeling of relatives for each other.” As Eliza knows so well, words matter.
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