Post: Frank Herbert’s Dune

What I really need is to avoid reading things, pretty much any things, when I want to write again. At the moment/for the past week I have been reading Dune and all its sequels, which is terrible. Or terrifying, probably both. I love Dune like a jogger likes running. It’s not actually pleasant but when it’s over you feel like a good person. For me, Dune is much the same, because it makes my brain ache. Currently I am working through (and it is work) God-Emperor of Dune. Aside from the common theme of politics and religion which deserves not a blog post but an entire bloody university’s output for three years, the topic de jure is about male vs female armies. And it’s getting really, really convoluted. All sorts of repressed sexual connotations and worship and the whole thing is tied into religion and shhiiiiitttt I’m not smart enough for this...

Dune makes me think. It doesn’t make me accept everything in the books as fact because that would be close to the ultimate insult to a critique on deterministic religion, but it does make me think. The problem is I have both lost my taste for intellectualisation and even the ability to do it properly. I feel on the precipice of a massive well of indescribability and I’m terrified of it, and terrified of my own terror.

I need to finish this book, quickly. I need to block it out because I am constantly in pain these days. Even the unpleasant exertion of pointless gym exercise is becoming a relief from my mental hurting. I hate Dune, for making me think.

Transcension

I was going to write a long and fairly impassioned (for someone with the general demeanour of a dead fish) monologue about transcending the physical and mundane and finding a new level of discourse, existence, whatever, before I realised that I would be farting against thunder. And maybe I will come back to the topic when I am feeling better and less angry, but for now, I'm going to exert some self-consciousness and talk about fitness instead.

For today, we will discuss something I read in, of all places, Men's Health: the perfect human body. Quite surprisingly for a popular magazine, the edition I held made the bold and counter-cultural claim that the young child completely at ease with his/her body has the perfect physicality. I will get to their explanation in a little bit, via a somewhat circuitous route, so bear with me, please?

Our bodies serve a variety of functions. For the moment at least I take the position of the detached observer, but we'll get into that later (or hopefully, not at all). Sometimes, and I think this is hilarious, we forget that our bodies are physical and not mental constructs. Our bodies are designed to do, and not to be. And this is from someone who goes to a gym for the sole purpose of crafting a body that is better looking, not better functioning. Thank you, I am aware of the irony.

Nevertheless, our bodies exist for us to do. Because of our strange position as largely civilised creatures, doing has become almost optional. Aside from walking, many of us use our bodies in extremely minimal ways. We tend not to carry things heavier than books, plates or clothes; instead, our arms and hands are most likely to be engaged in typing, writing, or other pursuits that are to physicality what golf is to sport. We don't even walk long distances, most of us. Public transport, or private vehicles, take away the responsibility of carrying our bodies from place to place. Engines and wheels help us in ferrying products around, letting even the terminally unfit 'carry' huge burdens of groceries, furniture, or whatever. We approach a curious position where our well-fed, pampered bodies cannot perform the basic tasks that were once necessary for our survival.

Anyway, the point is that the body is supposed to be used. And going to the gym does not count, at all. That is manufacturing, not exercise. Which brings me back to the child, running, playing, swimming, dancing. For the child, her body performs the tasks it needs to. Thought or impulse becomes action, smoothly and organically. Watch children at play, and you'll see how proficient they are with their bodies. They can bend and twist, dance, run effortlessly, swim, stretch, jump, climb. Their bodies express their desires and feelings.

So, I suppose, the lesson is this: use your body. Dance like no-one's watching, swim for the pleasure as well as the exercise, juggle and toss balls and jump and climb and crawl. Make your movement natural, balanced, and without thought.

Blah blah preach preach lecture lecture-

Health and Fitness: Practical Strength Building

There are a plethora of strength-building sites on this web, many of them from professionals, scientists, and steroid junkies, and to them I happily relegate all topics regarding pumping iron, reps, sets, and other weird terms. But, there are a number of areas these guys don't seem to address, some of them surprising oversights. One of them, an important one, is very simple: what does one do with all these muscles? And what does one do to build strength outside a gym?

For today, the topic with by simple digging. You think you're a tough cookie? Spend a day shovelling. I guess, in areas that snow, cleaning driveways and lawns would do the trick, to an extent, but for all people there is a much simpler one: making your own compost heap. Burying ones kitchen waste, mixing it up, watering it and letting it settle is not only prudent on an ecological scale, but also provides your garden with a supply of fertilizer which will help your rhubabr, plum trees or ornamental cosmos (it's a flower, seriously).

Okay, fine, but where does the strength come in? I'll tell you: dig a meter-cube hole, chuck waste and sand in equal layers, adding water, and repeat, and then tell me that garden work is not hard work. Take off your shirt and get a tan while doing it, even. Digging is an exercise that used muscles from thighs to shoulders, and if you stand in one place and use your hips to twist and toss the dirt, you'll activate side abdominals as well. Take it easy for the first few times though, as the constant bending will tax your lower back quite heavily. Make sure to stretch frequently. Carry a heavier shovel and take heavier loads for extra strength building.

What I'm saying, basically, is this: gyms frequently fail in giving fullrange of motion while exercising, especially in the weight training section. You can mix it up with some good ol' fashioned yard work, which not only will get you out in the open, but also give you the satisfaction at actually having accomplished something.

A Trip to Yon Gymnasium

I’m going to the muscle farm, muscle farm, muscle farm, going to the muscle farm, all the clink-clonk day...

“Welcome to the metal hell. Can we have your Token of the Damned, please? Okay, the demon will just... heh, that’s strange, it doesn’t seem to be working. Unions, huh, amiright? Ah there we go. Enjoy your brief sojourn of hell-before-death!

“First we have the array of sweat-squeezers, designed to not even give you the false sensation of movement while you race along, fixed to one spot, not unlike the hamster adaptation of Sisyphus: One Man Against A Pissed-Off Lightning God. Then, when you climb down from the sodden metallic horse-carcass, you have your choice of horrific machines or activities...” I tone out the marketing drone and gaze around the damp poorly air-conditioned chamber. Next to the hamster wheels are the treadmills. Let’s drink that in for a moment: tread mills. To tread, in a mill. I believe they passed laws against that stuff back in the heyday of the Industrial Revolution... and now we have the opportunity to do it for free. Without even the tiny pleasure of knowing your exertion will fuel some 19th century British capitalists hedonistic pursuit of top-hat and waistcost (pronounced 'wiskt') wearing. And finally, oh, so very finally, the rowing machines. Experience Roman Empire-era lives, from the very bottom rung. At least, you say with a twinkle in your eye, you don't have the ill health, close, sweaty conditions and ominous music in the background... oh, dear...

For the muscle-bound, there is a range of machines with enough pulleys, weights and flanges to make the Spanish Inquisition feel inadequate. Until, of course, the realisation comes that all the biggest, sweatiest guys ‘n gals are playing around with lumps of free-swinging metal, grunting and gasping and straining like sex-crazed elephants on musth. The 21st century, ladies and gentleman. The premier of physical fitness training is the lifting of barely tarted-up big rocks.

Of course, if you’re going for toning – still one of the most gnomic expressions in the English language, let alone the gym – we have another series of machines. In contradistinction to the simple elegance of the shoulder-pec-arm triad of infernal weight training engines, the toning circuit has such delightful devices ranging from the gynaecological (the ‘lift and spread’, the ‘yes I wore red undies today’), the proctological (the ‘ass in the air for all to see my lumpy butt’) and some which are just confusing. Of course, this ring of humiliation would not be complete without the obligatory metal bench in the middle of the track, knee-high to a Smurf. Some brave souls are willing to pretend to exercise by running up and down the three shallow steps, and then back down, repeating this bizarre ritual until shame and the judging eyes of the thigh-spreading, ass-thrusting crowd forces them away.

I got to experience a new slice of horror today. My left shoulder started acting up again... that bitch, hate it SO MUCH! RAGE! HATE! BILE!

Anyway, went to one of the orange-shirted, smiling, dead-eyed attendants and asked to be repaired. He gave me a condescending chuckle, refusing to make eye contact, and referred me to a handful of rubber strips. At this point I was looking for the hidden cameras and possibly leather-clad doms to appear, but apparently they were some sort of exercise.

I have to say, after pumping iron or fondling steel or fingering copper or whatever fraught expression one uses for exercise, these rubber bands nearly defeated me. Thankfully, there was no-one around in the wooden dance-floor except some woman trying to do situps while an overly-friendly creep refused to leave her alone, constantly badgering her about how she was from the area and he had seen her before. I idly debated calling the police, but eventually he left. As did I.

The sweet embrace of the cool air was heaven after the thirty minutes of perspiring judgement. Gyms – like being on trial in a sauna, and the only verdict is guilty. What a rush.