wandering the sheltering sky

Everyone knows about my love for Bill Evans. A few notes from him and my heart soars or sometimes plummets. Either direction and he can still drive me to tears. Your reaction may differ but there is so much beauty, pain and splendor in the first couple of minutes of this composition than most people achieve in their entire lives.

My Foolish Heart | Bill Evans

Just to remind myself, this is why i’m going to the gym so much these days:

• I began this to trade one pain for another. I was going to cause serious harm to myself if i didn’t.
• I DO NOT get the “right” to use, “it’s in my genetics,” as a defense. A propensity towards obesity is one thing but a propensity is not the same as an inescapable destiny.
• I am tired of the distorted sense of self worth i have based on my shape. It’s not the only facet but it’s a tangible facet that i can change.
• I had a growing contempt for my sedentary lifestyle. It was costing me my self respect.
• I am tired of feeling my heart going off on me like a jackhammer when i barely exert myself.
• Because it’s the right thing to do.

In the time since i last wrote about this, i had finally hit my 30 minute mark. Since then, i’ve repeated that about three or four times. Last night was a bit different. Usually when i hit the 20 minute mark, i’m hurting but okay. At 25 minutes, i’m really questioning if i can make it to 30.

Last night i hit 25 minutes and i knew i’d be able to hit 30 “easy”. I put easy in quotes because it’s not easy. Fuck no. Not even close. I mean, i’m overweight and “running” for a half hour. No, it’s not easy. But last night was the difference between hitting 25 minutes and forcing myself to keep going and then last night, hitting 25 minutes and just going because i could.

I could and so i did. And i earned every fucking step i took.

So no, i’m not happy with what the scales have to say about me but i continue to eat fish and vegetables and have limited my intake of poultry/ beef/ pork to less than one pound a week (and usually less than half of that). I’m drinking almond milk these days instead of dairy milk, too. I have to say, someone showed me a resource for raw milk sellers and it turns out there may be two dairy farms in my area that are selling jersey made raw milk (grass diet), so i may try that for a bit just to see what i think of it. I’ll never give up my cheeses but if i can make a few small changes here and there, it adds up to much larger changes in the long run.

The long run. I guess that’s what this is about. Changes. Self image. Self respect. Dignity. Health.

There’s a lot on my mind these days. Recent discussions about some of my failings, an acknowledgement of my darker side- my “shadow” that someone deliberately provoked and brought out of me and how i move forward from here. I’ll be posting more later.

addendum: last night i had a meeting in Vancouver. Since it didn’t begin until 7, i decided to go to the gym instead. I really didn’t think too much of it but thought i’d go ahead and try to run. Normally i wouldn’t do this since my previous experiences have taught me that the ADP (is it ADP?) in my muscles isn’t recovered enough to run two days in a row. Guess what? I did it. Two nights in a row, 30 minutes each. In fact, last night was 32 minutes and the last minute of that was deliberately running faster. My heart rate peaked at 160 bpm which is great since the last time i pushed myself like that, it was 200. Three minutes after slowing down my bpm was at 130. Not bad. Not bad at all.

This isn’t even close to being one of my better works but i like that someone was able to get me to see how to draw my bees in a way other than straight-down.

The back story is this is a painting i made for a woman that i will probably never see again (unless i land a job in WA). It’s too bad because she has this beauty and brightness that i’m very drawn to and i’m sorry that i never got to talk to her nor get to know her as well as i wanted to. Sometimes i like doing nice things for people for no apparent reason because people have been nice to me and i like to pay it forward and because during this time in my life, i have a heightened sense of wanting to show someone that they’re appreciated.

I’ll post a better version of this later.

Shelly: good god. why are there still VGA ports on the newest IPS monitors????

me: why do chickens have nipples ? some things are just best left unquestioned, shelly.

Shelly: well yes, you do have a good point.

The principal of my school sent an e-mail with bad news.  One of our teachers lost control of his truck on a patch of ice on IH-84. While he survived, his seven year old son did not. Since the teacher is the head coach for our baseball program, his son was a school mascot of sorts and would often be seen in tow with other teachers during teacher work days.

I have been told that his trucks velocity was such that it not only broke the barrier and careened down to the Columbia river, but that the truck was found at a depth of 40 feet. He was not driving recklessly, by the way. He was driving the same speed as everyone around him was.

For years, i’ve heard people up here say how well they drive on ice. STOP IT. You do not drive well on ice. You have been LUCKY while driving on ice and nothing more.

As heartbreaking as this is for everyone, my message today is simple: ICE KILLS.

I do not give a fuck as to how well you believe you can drive on ice. I do not care if you spent your childhood negotiating country roads in the winter or how many times you’ve been over the same slice of gently iced pavement. By its nature, ice changes the car or truck you’re driving into nothing but a projectile.

And if you believe it doesn’t matter, it matters to someone else. Someone out there cares about you- not to mention that we are each responsible for the safety of others when we drive.

I drove to Olympia, Washington a few nights ago to pick up about two thousand comic books for a friend of mine. She lives in Texas and her dad died earlier this year. He left his stash of comic books for her in his will. I drove up there, picked them up and brought them back, not knowing what was in the collection.

I don’t collect comic books anymore. There was something about having my brain receive all the oxygen that it should have had (my BiPAP machine, which forces air into my lungs at night) that caused me to lose my sentimentality about comic books. But even when i was collecting, i never felt the need to go and buy the really old comic books that were originally sold for 12¢, 15¢ or even 25¢.

There were many, many titles published then with Jack Kirby at the helm and as i type this, i have several hundred of those books just a few feet from me.

Continue reading “silver age comics nostalgia”

A few days ago i wrote about how i was finally able to run… um, LUMBER like some obtuse, pasty marshmallow fuck for thirty fucking minutes on a treadmill. No, it wasn’t pretty but i did it, i did it, I DID IT !

On Thursday night/ Friday morning, my lungs decided to fuck me and give me the beginning symptoms of a lung infection. This is characterized by a sore throat and congested lungs. Thankfully there was no fever associated with it and i didn’t have the full-on body aches that would indicate something more troublesome like the onset of influenza. But there was no mistake- my lungs were GANKED.

But yesterday i realized my car was driving me to the gym whether i liked it or not. Thankfully i had my gym clothes with me. Next thing i knew, i was there again, doing those stupid goddamned planks and then to the treadmill.
Continue reading “fuck. i did it again. FUCK !!!”

I recently found myself at Frys in Wilsonville. One theory is that bachelors have to go to Frys every few days or weeks, at most, to recharge their status as bachelors and that anyone that wants to maintain their geek credentials, boy or girl, are subject to the same irresistible draw (and the hollow promise of decent prices on name brand merchandise) as are bachelors.

I’m perusing the cameras when a young’ish porcelain skinned brunette approaches me and asks if i need help. She’s sporting a tight blood red skirt and although she doesn’t have large hips, per se, they are slightly larger than what her frame might suggest and her skirt perfectly accentuates them. Her blouse is a gunmetal gray and both contour and fit against her figure with all the tightness of a well rehearsed jazz quartet. Her ass is slightly larger than what you would expect of a figure like hers and i don’t even try to hide the fact that i’m stealing glances at it when possible.
Continue reading “that is debatable”

For the last several weeks, i’ve been spending more and more time in the gym. Some days i do some weights but most of the times that i go, it’s so that i can work on my cardio. I’ll start by doing some planks. I’m up to one minute for at least two of those planks. They are excruciating.

I think i mentioned this in another post i made about transitioning from an XXL to an XL but i’ll repeat myself anyway.

I used to do a brisk walk on a treadmill for 30 minutes. Don’t get me wrong; it was a good cardio workout but it needed to be better.

In mid November, i dared myself to run for a bit. So i did. I made it ten minutes. I felt absolutely miserable. One week later, i was running fifteen minutes and feeling less miserable.
Continue reading “thirty minutes- finally!”

I’m sitting in the sauna in my gym. I can feel my heart rate is sustained at about 155 bpm and quite possibly higher. I am listening to the third movement of Low– a symphony originally composed by David Bowie and Brian Eno. This version is rendered by Philip Glass and is one of the most beautiful things i have in my music collection. Drops of sweat are falling off me with like leaves in autumn. I am drinking water but it feels as though i am losing it at nearly the same rate.
Continue reading “trading one pain for another (or how i have gone from an XXL to an XL)”