Finally, the little jobs that hung over from the "official" last day at work are all done, and except for volunteering on Thursdays, Shawn is no longer to be found at the museum. Her successor has been discovered and hired, appears well qualified and confident, and the life of the world goes on, while the life of what started as a fully contemplative community, almost forty years ago, and operated as such for a decade before it was interrupted, returns to normal. For both economic and social reasons that interruption would seem to have been necessary, and we're all enormously proud of what my wife accomplished, but nothing equals the contemplative life, especially when the crew is up to full strength, and with the world insisting on becoming a more and more dangerous place to live in, it needs all the full time prayer persons it can get. It is not simply a coincidence that I found in my morning perusal of my journals for these dates of the month a note from John Paul's trip to India in the 80's. The Pope said "The world needs men of prayer more than it needs men of work."
* * *
And going by God's recent behaviour in my head, this must be so.
As I've said before, I ordinarily cycle the upper three of John of the Cross' four major texts, with occasional side trips to the Ascent, or other contemplative writers. (A nice little week, recently, with Teresa's Mansions.) But for the past three or four weeks, the concentration has had to be on certain parts of the Dark Night, with especially one paragraph in Book One, and two chapters in Book Two.
The purpose, it seems, is to acquire a full command of the language that deals with the fundamental and irreconcilable differences between meditation and contemplation, not only in general, but as they have occurred in my own life. As our fundamental personal nature never changes, and as mine is that of the quintessential rugby player habitually getting the wind up over the next game, I sniff the wind about what this might mean, suspecting that God is up to something a little different. Not completely different, but a little different. Part of me would like to put a complete end to outside activity, part of me has begun to wonder if there is not a possibility of returning to a bit of the good old days, when Nelson was in the first stages of building its reputation as an usually cultural minor metropolis.
I use the plural of "stages" advisedly. There was the nine years before the seventh mansion took over, and then there were nine years afterward. And then there were the almost thirty years of relating exclusively to the Vatican.
* * *
On Friday I had a long chat with a sound engineer, visiting with a relative. We talked technology, and the satisfaction of the teamwork involved in making good records, and then we drifted into the spiritual life, with the Almighty deciding to make the discussion more than academic. From how this lad brought back the memories of the Mrs Buckley's Tea Chest days, I wondered to what degree he might be a sign of the new times. But there is, of course, the parable of the sower, and there is also the image of Abram, very much alive in one of this morning's readings, and how he never saw the nation God promised him. But this morning after mass I ran into another veteran of the media, older, and with one hell of a track record. If a third turns up, the musical Olympics might come sooner than I expected. All that gold could be just a sign of even bigger Canadian successes. I am honour bound to remember that so often in the past a very nice period of contemplative solitude was followed by an outburst of profoundly useful art of one kind or another.
Meanwhile, a third of us leaves for Calgary tonight, to be with a girlhood friend dying of cancer. Providence is always interesting. Shawn is finished work just in time. It is the story of our lives, the story of those who get out of bed in order to live God's will one day at a time.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
The Art of Breathing
I'm just home from booting it up the Silica Street hill, two-and-half blocks of an incline that challenges any kind of biker and also serves as the lung efficiency test for the household, especially when it's done with a backpack full of groceries. It was back in the spring of 2000 that this slope began to make me wonder if my wind was falling off, which set me up beautifully to give Dr. John Douillard's ayurvedic researches a very attentive and grateful ear. (I must be writing for Americans. They're always more impressed by that Dr. thing. Or perhaps it's just that I really do want people to listen up. We owe it to the health system.)
Anyway, by the time I'm into the last block I notice that my breathing is very easy, and it's not because I'm dawdling. In fact, having begun the day with a very leisurely 300 cals on the Concept 2000, and just finished a three mile walk with my not-quite actually retired yet other half, split by a coffee on Baker Street before she headed for the museum, I've definitely got that "I'm in the ZONE" mood that JD has studied so thoroughly, and I feel as if I could go on for hours. I'm increasingly confident that I finally have the handle on my own personal best fitness methodology, thanks to the Seahorse - mind and body and spirit have finally become a true trinity, seamlessly harmonious - and now the fat will really take a hike.
And then I notice that my lips are sealed. Not even a hint of having to open them now and again to catch up on the air. Three steps in, three steps out. Then I try two steps in and three out, and that too is comfortable for most of the last part of the block. I've written earlier, months ago, about how I finally realized that by insisting on sticking rigidly to the shut mouth I was creating tension problems in my chest, so I've changed my routine, focusing on making sure I exhale for the full count. The real priority is not actually nose or mouth. The real priority is time for the oxygen to be fully processed in the alveoli at the bottom of the lungs. But the more the nose is involved, the more accurate the read on what the system is really doing, with a lot less chance for being fooled by temporary euphoria or the often false information we get from being fairly well warmed up.
The nose pings when the oxygen supply is actually inadequate - or at least mine does, basically the right nostril - and this simple little indicator warns us not to go too fast too soon. This always means at least ten minutes of relaxed and easy warm up, something we should have learned by watching all those professional baseball players out of the field before the game, except that I don't have much confidence that they were taught anything about the rights and wrongs of breathing.
Part of today's breathing discovery might have had something to do with the fact that because this morning's was my fifth straight rowing session - with an extra 200 c's thrown in yesterday afternoon - I was for once in the perfect mood for taking my first 100 at a 450 cals per hour pace, a rate I stopped thinking about after the first couple of weeks on the erg, and I never really got up to 550 until the third century. And then only because I was crowding MT's slot, and thus, oh gaffe of gaffes, delaying breakfast.
But even at 450, I tell myself, I'm melting more lard than I would get from the same amount of time walking, by up to 50 percent. I can walk at four-and-half miles per hour, but not nearly as easily as I can row for the same result on the scales.
But I was going to speak about the best rhythm for breathing. I've never actually studied the manufacturer's advice, but MT told me they recommend exhaling on the pull, inhaling on the release. Thus out, in, out,in, etc.
This may be necessary at the end of a race, perhaps. But it is not sound advice for genuine conditioning, according to Ayurveda, Dr. Douillard and my own experience. Getting the lungs to work comfortably and honestly at full potential has to be a priority of any fitness process. I like to inhale on the pull, because the chest is naturally open, exhale on the release, then virtually rest from deliberate breathing on the second set of pull and release. This makes for a four-stroke engine as it were, with only one stroke committed to taking in oxygen.
This is probably easier to say than do at the beginning, but I'm convinced it's pretty much the way the biology works the best.
Anyway, by the time I'm into the last block I notice that my breathing is very easy, and it's not because I'm dawdling. In fact, having begun the day with a very leisurely 300 cals on the Concept 2000, and just finished a three mile walk with my not-quite actually retired yet other half, split by a coffee on Baker Street before she headed for the museum, I've definitely got that "I'm in the ZONE" mood that JD has studied so thoroughly, and I feel as if I could go on for hours. I'm increasingly confident that I finally have the handle on my own personal best fitness methodology, thanks to the Seahorse - mind and body and spirit have finally become a true trinity, seamlessly harmonious - and now the fat will really take a hike.
And then I notice that my lips are sealed. Not even a hint of having to open them now and again to catch up on the air. Three steps in, three steps out. Then I try two steps in and three out, and that too is comfortable for most of the last part of the block. I've written earlier, months ago, about how I finally realized that by insisting on sticking rigidly to the shut mouth I was creating tension problems in my chest, so I've changed my routine, focusing on making sure I exhale for the full count. The real priority is not actually nose or mouth. The real priority is time for the oxygen to be fully processed in the alveoli at the bottom of the lungs. But the more the nose is involved, the more accurate the read on what the system is really doing, with a lot less chance for being fooled by temporary euphoria or the often false information we get from being fairly well warmed up.
The nose pings when the oxygen supply is actually inadequate - or at least mine does, basically the right nostril - and this simple little indicator warns us not to go too fast too soon. This always means at least ten minutes of relaxed and easy warm up, something we should have learned by watching all those professional baseball players out of the field before the game, except that I don't have much confidence that they were taught anything about the rights and wrongs of breathing.
Part of today's breathing discovery might have had something to do with the fact that because this morning's was my fifth straight rowing session - with an extra 200 c's thrown in yesterday afternoon - I was for once in the perfect mood for taking my first 100 at a 450 cals per hour pace, a rate I stopped thinking about after the first couple of weeks on the erg, and I never really got up to 550 until the third century. And then only because I was crowding MT's slot, and thus, oh gaffe of gaffes, delaying breakfast.
But even at 450, I tell myself, I'm melting more lard than I would get from the same amount of time walking, by up to 50 percent. I can walk at four-and-half miles per hour, but not nearly as easily as I can row for the same result on the scales.
But I was going to speak about the best rhythm for breathing. I've never actually studied the manufacturer's advice, but MT told me they recommend exhaling on the pull, inhaling on the release. Thus out, in, out,in, etc.
This may be necessary at the end of a race, perhaps. But it is not sound advice for genuine conditioning, according to Ayurveda, Dr. Douillard and my own experience. Getting the lungs to work comfortably and honestly at full potential has to be a priority of any fitness process. I like to inhale on the pull, because the chest is naturally open, exhale on the release, then virtually rest from deliberate breathing on the second set of pull and release. This makes for a four-stroke engine as it were, with only one stroke committed to taking in oxygen.
This is probably easier to say than do at the beginning, but I'm convinced it's pretty much the way the biology works the best.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The Athlete in Lent
Whew!
For a few days there, I had to wonder if the recent ability to be more constant with the fiction had put paid to the Ranger. The fiction goes pretty steadily, for a contemplative - on Saturday I came with nice fat installments for both streams - and I must say that I've never found the process easier. Famous last words, of course, but there are also a number of reasons for thinking that the writing room is in the best order it's ever been. After all, "Contemplatives" has already been written once, so the immense pressure of raw invention in a completely new genre is over; and, a further contentment for my easily scrupulous soul, I have realized that the difference between a redaction and a rewrite means that I can cheerfully ignore the chapter sequences whenever this is appropriate. And NWTA will possibly set a record as the novel that required the least invention whatsoever.
But now back to the gym.
When I first began to run, inspired so profoundly by the film "Chariots of Fire", back in 1982, my motivation were disgust for my own sloth after watching David Puttnam's actors pounding along that English beach, and sensing that I needed to build up my own body's strength, after popping a hernia carrying a cast iron heater down three flights of stairs. The heater was part of the set furniture for my last play, Agatha Christie's "Mousetrap". There was no question whatever of exercise for the purpose of weight control. In fact I was underweight, as the hospital scales so cruelly showed. Who could be overweight, having walked an average of fifty miles a week for a decade?
But the domestic schedule began to change, through a variety of causes that much diminished the opportunity for keeping my shoe repairman in business, and the middle-aged spread began to creep into view. That which I assumed would never happen to me, did, and I began to learn how much easier it was to put weight on than to take it off, once all that walking was no longer reasonably available.
On the other hand, I've never been obsessed with the idea staying slim. I don't have any professional obligations that require this, like an actress who plays romantic leads, or a male model, and I'm sensitive to health theories that suggest, or even insist, that a little too much fat is healthier than too little. Nor do I object to those with ampler figures. There is a kind of beauty in the variety of shapes, as Nature obviously teaches, and then there is the science of the doshas, as taught by Ayurveda, that details mental and emotional qualities that intertwine irremovably with the original created design of a particular body shape. Thus the debate over what is ideal, or even normal, in the area of body weight, is not a simple one.
So my attitude toward my own extra lard - and there are debates about how much of that is actually disproportionate - is as much a matter of philosophical, scientific, interest as it is personal and subjective. As a writer, what am I supposed to think about it? What am I supposed to do about it?
These questions emerged in my professional considerations once the running began, and continued, with greater or lesser efficiency, through a lot of experimentation and study, but never with any complete answers, until I seriously launched into the rowing programme. I got a very good list of answers, some of these permanent solvers of certain physical problems, but never a definitive solution to the weight problem.
For me, a definitive solution meant a method that made the exercise virtually something I barely had to think about, something that did not, could not, interfere with my preferential option for mental activity, believing as I do that the body was made to serve the soul and not the other way around.
"All physical movement passes through the heart."
Because in my first years as a Catholic I read Thomas as constantly and naturally as children - at least of my generation - read the funny papers, I read these words of his and took them for granted, so obvious that only the stupidest of human beings would contradict them. After all, the heart's physiological job is to pump blood throughout the body, it is the body that moves, so the heart knows about the movement. But I don't know if I would have understood them as applying to the question of exercise until I had gone through all the research I commenced upon when I took up running, to any degree at all, and especially not at any thoroughly comprehensive level until my starting up a gym schedule and then immediately lucking into John Douillard's "Body, Mind, and Sport".
As it's been John of the Cross that has been my daily bread for decades now, I don't roar through Thomas as I used to, and I don't know how it was that I was inspired to pick him up and find that passage about the heart. Was it two years ago? Three? Certainly before I took up rowing regularly, but after I'd learned how ayurvedic breathing and other wise old Indian doctrines on the para-sympathetic nervous system could make wise men out of air-headed jocks.
John of the Cross, for all that his first book implies the exercise known to alpinists, in its title, says nothing directly to athletes of any description, except the immensely pertinent advice to those under the mystical influence that if God is not pleased with your team attitude He'll find ways to bench you so abruptly, and forcibly, as to make Vince Lombardi look and sound like a palliative care giver.
According to the ayurvedic logic of the doshas, I happen to have a lot of pitta in me, so I have the attitude problems of the ambitious. I don't automatically think in terms of less is more, and once I'm warmed up I automatically think of getting as much out of the moment as I can.
Thus, with the rower, as I grew stronger week after week, always with that Boston row-off record in mind, I naturally racked off the fast intervals as quickly as I felt the inspiration. Up to the point, this was excellent, and totally natural. We have the right to be as strong as we naturally can be. But what is to be understood as natural? And is the old "mind over matter", or "no gain without pain" an element of natural thinking, or madness?
I certainly was having a good time, and with lots of excellent reading, between all those lovely intervals. But I also had to admit that I sometimes made myself too tired to write or study the keyboard for some time afterward, and I wasn't getting the spiritual feel for the longer rowing sessions necessary for real progress with the midriff. The blast-offs were giving me, on average 200 calorie days, and at the best, only four days a week. Not much pudge put down since Xmas. Some, but not what I'd expected.
And then came the thoughts of Lent that show up at this time of the liturgical year.
I mean, what the hell, Lento means "slow" anyway, so plainly it makes good spiritual sense to drop back to maximum comfort and the extra room for sober thought. The brain is connected to the heart as well as the body is, so let's see what happens.
Honestly, I must admit to being surprised. All those intervals, as much as I enjoyed them, were actually interfering with the real wisdom of the process, and I seem to be learning something about the positive psychological effects of concentrating on endurance. If the body/mind combo knows it can't quit for half-an-hour, it will find ways to make that stretch pleasurable, therefore endurable.
So, four straight days now of 300's, and I can't even think of needing a day off.
At this rate, I'll not only be down some real ounces by Easter, I'll perhaps be light enough by the Ascension to perform in an aeronautic fashion myself.
And stay tuned, because if you think this is an anti-Western sermon, wait until next time when we address the issue of breathing properly while riding an erg. It's not what the maker's literature tells you.
For a few days there, I had to wonder if the recent ability to be more constant with the fiction had put paid to the Ranger. The fiction goes pretty steadily, for a contemplative - on Saturday I came with nice fat installments for both streams - and I must say that I've never found the process easier. Famous last words, of course, but there are also a number of reasons for thinking that the writing room is in the best order it's ever been. After all, "Contemplatives" has already been written once, so the immense pressure of raw invention in a completely new genre is over; and, a further contentment for my easily scrupulous soul, I have realized that the difference between a redaction and a rewrite means that I can cheerfully ignore the chapter sequences whenever this is appropriate. And NWTA will possibly set a record as the novel that required the least invention whatsoever.
But now back to the gym.
When I first began to run, inspired so profoundly by the film "Chariots of Fire", back in 1982, my motivation were disgust for my own sloth after watching David Puttnam's actors pounding along that English beach, and sensing that I needed to build up my own body's strength, after popping a hernia carrying a cast iron heater down three flights of stairs. The heater was part of the set furniture for my last play, Agatha Christie's "Mousetrap". There was no question whatever of exercise for the purpose of weight control. In fact I was underweight, as the hospital scales so cruelly showed. Who could be overweight, having walked an average of fifty miles a week for a decade?
But the domestic schedule began to change, through a variety of causes that much diminished the opportunity for keeping my shoe repairman in business, and the middle-aged spread began to creep into view. That which I assumed would never happen to me, did, and I began to learn how much easier it was to put weight on than to take it off, once all that walking was no longer reasonably available.
On the other hand, I've never been obsessed with the idea staying slim. I don't have any professional obligations that require this, like an actress who plays romantic leads, or a male model, and I'm sensitive to health theories that suggest, or even insist, that a little too much fat is healthier than too little. Nor do I object to those with ampler figures. There is a kind of beauty in the variety of shapes, as Nature obviously teaches, and then there is the science of the doshas, as taught by Ayurveda, that details mental and emotional qualities that intertwine irremovably with the original created design of a particular body shape. Thus the debate over what is ideal, or even normal, in the area of body weight, is not a simple one.
So my attitude toward my own extra lard - and there are debates about how much of that is actually disproportionate - is as much a matter of philosophical, scientific, interest as it is personal and subjective. As a writer, what am I supposed to think about it? What am I supposed to do about it?
These questions emerged in my professional considerations once the running began, and continued, with greater or lesser efficiency, through a lot of experimentation and study, but never with any complete answers, until I seriously launched into the rowing programme. I got a very good list of answers, some of these permanent solvers of certain physical problems, but never a definitive solution to the weight problem.
For me, a definitive solution meant a method that made the exercise virtually something I barely had to think about, something that did not, could not, interfere with my preferential option for mental activity, believing as I do that the body was made to serve the soul and not the other way around.
"All physical movement passes through the heart."
Because in my first years as a Catholic I read Thomas as constantly and naturally as children - at least of my generation - read the funny papers, I read these words of his and took them for granted, so obvious that only the stupidest of human beings would contradict them. After all, the heart's physiological job is to pump blood throughout the body, it is the body that moves, so the heart knows about the movement. But I don't know if I would have understood them as applying to the question of exercise until I had gone through all the research I commenced upon when I took up running, to any degree at all, and especially not at any thoroughly comprehensive level until my starting up a gym schedule and then immediately lucking into John Douillard's "Body, Mind, and Sport".
As it's been John of the Cross that has been my daily bread for decades now, I don't roar through Thomas as I used to, and I don't know how it was that I was inspired to pick him up and find that passage about the heart. Was it two years ago? Three? Certainly before I took up rowing regularly, but after I'd learned how ayurvedic breathing and other wise old Indian doctrines on the para-sympathetic nervous system could make wise men out of air-headed jocks.
John of the Cross, for all that his first book implies the exercise known to alpinists, in its title, says nothing directly to athletes of any description, except the immensely pertinent advice to those under the mystical influence that if God is not pleased with your team attitude He'll find ways to bench you so abruptly, and forcibly, as to make Vince Lombardi look and sound like a palliative care giver.
According to the ayurvedic logic of the doshas, I happen to have a lot of pitta in me, so I have the attitude problems of the ambitious. I don't automatically think in terms of less is more, and once I'm warmed up I automatically think of getting as much out of the moment as I can.
Thus, with the rower, as I grew stronger week after week, always with that Boston row-off record in mind, I naturally racked off the fast intervals as quickly as I felt the inspiration. Up to the point, this was excellent, and totally natural. We have the right to be as strong as we naturally can be. But what is to be understood as natural? And is the old "mind over matter", or "no gain without pain" an element of natural thinking, or madness?
I certainly was having a good time, and with lots of excellent reading, between all those lovely intervals. But I also had to admit that I sometimes made myself too tired to write or study the keyboard for some time afterward, and I wasn't getting the spiritual feel for the longer rowing sessions necessary for real progress with the midriff. The blast-offs were giving me, on average 200 calorie days, and at the best, only four days a week. Not much pudge put down since Xmas. Some, but not what I'd expected.
And then came the thoughts of Lent that show up at this time of the liturgical year.
I mean, what the hell, Lento means "slow" anyway, so plainly it makes good spiritual sense to drop back to maximum comfort and the extra room for sober thought. The brain is connected to the heart as well as the body is, so let's see what happens.
Honestly, I must admit to being surprised. All those intervals, as much as I enjoyed them, were actually interfering with the real wisdom of the process, and I seem to be learning something about the positive psychological effects of concentrating on endurance. If the body/mind combo knows it can't quit for half-an-hour, it will find ways to make that stretch pleasurable, therefore endurable.
So, four straight days now of 300's, and I can't even think of needing a day off.
At this rate, I'll not only be down some real ounces by Easter, I'll perhaps be light enough by the Ascension to perform in an aeronautic fashion myself.
And stay tuned, because if you think this is an anti-Western sermon, wait until next time when we address the issue of breathing properly while riding an erg. It's not what the maker's literature tells you.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Birth of a Salesman
While I'm not yet a threat in the under-75 class in the Boston row-offs, I have made a big jump - actually drop - in my own best time for the 100 calorie dash. That's five calories short of the total that by my calculations is how much bread and cheese you burn off while scooting the Olympic distance of 2000 metres, but it's a nice round number for my calculations and close enough for folk music. My old record was 8 minutes and 47 seconds, the new one is 8:33. The Boston clock for the 105 cals is around a flat 8.
I know, I know. In order to be the perfect flag-waving Canadian at this time in our history I should be doing something on ice, or out in the snow, not spinning a fly wheel in our attic. But the erg upstairs is the most efficient indoor fat removal device I know, and besides, when I get bored with things simply physical, as novelists and philosophers must do, I can pick up a book from the coffee table especially lofted into the top floor to be my reading desk. Or these days, interesting for utterly tragic reasons, I can look at the little image of Our Lady of Guadeloupe occupying the north-east corner of the table and ask her to help all those poor Haitians. And, anyway, I've already done my bit for the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics. Back in the clutch days, when the dignitaries were voting, the Almighty made it pretty plain that I'd better put my prayers into the balance if I thought Canada should get the Games rather than Austria or Korea.
Yep, the rowing machine is my baby, my sport of sports, my answer to every question I've ever had about a reliable fitness and weight-control programme, although it must be said, and must be said again, that I'm very grateful for all the general physiological instruction I've picked up via the recent years in the gym, Chi Gong class, some familiarity with yoga and dance, and a modest fortune willingly spent on books about it all. I don't think I'd want to row as much as I do without a good appetite for cross-training and intelligent stretching. As with every particular sport or working man's muscle use, rowing an erg is muscle, tendon, ligament, nervous system and organ specific, which means a good chance of disturbing the body's natural need for, and sense of, balance. Too much of these muscles, etc., not enough of that. Look like Popeye in one part of your anatomy, and a victim of rickets in another.
And because the rowing is obviously full of rhythm and motion, the opposite manouvres naturally conform themselves to the stillness of yoga. After all, you should be tired of movement after anything up to and past ten minutes of playing galley slave, so astute stretching simply feels good as well as saves your muscles from lumping like dried clay. My first move after I descend the ladder to and from the attic is to flop on the bed and fold up each leg in turn for the split leg child's pose, as I call it, but which is also known to more proficient yogis as the Pigeon. It's also a very comfortable way to say part of a rosary.
Which brings me to the main target of this sales pitch: clergy and religious with weight problems. The erg is the most perfect answer I can think of. The phone need never be out of reach, and the divine office and spiritual reading splice beautifully into a schedule of 10 to 25 calorie intervals. You speed up or slow down as instinct dictates, and the electronic chart tells you exactly how much lard you're burning, and all the time, if you've taken on a little reading on these question, you know that an erg is at least 50% more efficient, in terms of time over calories, than walking or jogging, without any threat to ankle and knee joints.
Take it from me: the good people at Concept 2 are not really people. They're angels, sent from Heaven to cure the West's love/hate relationship with fat and lethargy.
When I was a teenager, trying to figure out what I would be when I grew up, the one job I didn't want and wasn't going to have was that of a salesman. But I kid you not, I now could cheerfully drum from door to door with a handful of glossy Odes to an Erg in my eager hand. And so I do, through the kind offices of the good people at Blogger.com.
And by this time next year, I will be 75, and in an easier time category for the Boston row-offs. Bless me, Father, for a I have a most sinfully ambitious eye on the record, if only to prove the genius of Ayurveda and Dr. John Douillard on the subject of nasal breathing. On that score, Concept 2 is better at building than understanding.
I know, I know. In order to be the perfect flag-waving Canadian at this time in our history I should be doing something on ice, or out in the snow, not spinning a fly wheel in our attic. But the erg upstairs is the most efficient indoor fat removal device I know, and besides, when I get bored with things simply physical, as novelists and philosophers must do, I can pick up a book from the coffee table especially lofted into the top floor to be my reading desk. Or these days, interesting for utterly tragic reasons, I can look at the little image of Our Lady of Guadeloupe occupying the north-east corner of the table and ask her to help all those poor Haitians. And, anyway, I've already done my bit for the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics. Back in the clutch days, when the dignitaries were voting, the Almighty made it pretty plain that I'd better put my prayers into the balance if I thought Canada should get the Games rather than Austria or Korea.
Yep, the rowing machine is my baby, my sport of sports, my answer to every question I've ever had about a reliable fitness and weight-control programme, although it must be said, and must be said again, that I'm very grateful for all the general physiological instruction I've picked up via the recent years in the gym, Chi Gong class, some familiarity with yoga and dance, and a modest fortune willingly spent on books about it all. I don't think I'd want to row as much as I do without a good appetite for cross-training and intelligent stretching. As with every particular sport or working man's muscle use, rowing an erg is muscle, tendon, ligament, nervous system and organ specific, which means a good chance of disturbing the body's natural need for, and sense of, balance. Too much of these muscles, etc., not enough of that. Look like Popeye in one part of your anatomy, and a victim of rickets in another.
And because the rowing is obviously full of rhythm and motion, the opposite manouvres naturally conform themselves to the stillness of yoga. After all, you should be tired of movement after anything up to and past ten minutes of playing galley slave, so astute stretching simply feels good as well as saves your muscles from lumping like dried clay. My first move after I descend the ladder to and from the attic is to flop on the bed and fold up each leg in turn for the split leg child's pose, as I call it, but which is also known to more proficient yogis as the Pigeon. It's also a very comfortable way to say part of a rosary.
Which brings me to the main target of this sales pitch: clergy and religious with weight problems. The erg is the most perfect answer I can think of. The phone need never be out of reach, and the divine office and spiritual reading splice beautifully into a schedule of 10 to 25 calorie intervals. You speed up or slow down as instinct dictates, and the electronic chart tells you exactly how much lard you're burning, and all the time, if you've taken on a little reading on these question, you know that an erg is at least 50% more efficient, in terms of time over calories, than walking or jogging, without any threat to ankle and knee joints.
Take it from me: the good people at Concept 2 are not really people. They're angels, sent from Heaven to cure the West's love/hate relationship with fat and lethargy.
When I was a teenager, trying to figure out what I would be when I grew up, the one job I didn't want and wasn't going to have was that of a salesman. But I kid you not, I now could cheerfully drum from door to door with a handful of glossy Odes to an Erg in my eager hand. And so I do, through the kind offices of the good people at Blogger.com.
And by this time next year, I will be 75, and in an easier time category for the Boston row-offs. Bless me, Father, for a I have a most sinfully ambitious eye on the record, if only to prove the genius of Ayurveda and Dr. John Douillard on the subject of nasal breathing. On that score, Concept 2 is better at building than understanding.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The Second Redaction
Quite frankly, I have no idea what the other four crises were, and I have no interest at this time in spending any effort trying to identify them. All I know is that as I was returning to the current chapter-under-rewrite of "Contemplatives" - a couple of days ago - it came into my head that the very idea of so many quite significant changes to the 80-88 text was "the fifth major crisis of my life". Now as I was a dozen chapters on the downhill pull from this cataclysm, I was no longer in danger of any sort of trauma from mentally revisiting original scene of the stunning event - a total surprise when it came - but I did put myself to wondering whom I knew that had been made to face into something equivalent and I thought of our Bishop, plucked out of his very happy retirement amongst his beloved Toronto Capuchins and exiled to the diocese of Nelson, with its history of abusive priests and still-in-place experimental approaches to the liturgy. As a former minister general, he was a much-challenged administrator in one context, and now he is a much-challenged bishop in another. So he gets to do it all over again, but differently.
One also thinks of the Pope, for so long the fiercely attentive - albeit lovingly - doctrinal watchdog the progressives loved to hate -or feel superior to - now the main man himself getting to bless the sick and kibbitz with the kids and all that stuff that makes the whole man instead of just the cop on patrol be manifested.
There must be those who would say that I'm puffing myself up rather much to bring in those two comparisons, and possibly they're right, especially if they can prove that novelists are never as important as administrators, but I'll stick to my comparison not because of my own talents or lack thereof, but because of the subject material the Muse decided long ago it would be my lot to take on. It was definitely the Holy Spirit who wanted Benedict as Pope, then John Corriveau as Bishop Nelson, and only He could have designated a klutz like myself to wrestle with the problems of putting the Transformation on paper. (And now computeronics.) And having chosen such a klutz certainly only He could guide me through it all, with no little absolutely necessary help from my spiritual companions.
So, yes, "Contemplatives" is getting some significant reworking, more extensive I think than the two works of John of the Cross that experienced the same fate. (The Spiritual Canticle and the Living Flame) I think it's been freed up for this, in the mind of Muse, because NWTA has emerged. If the second novel better takes care of the actual history, the first can be even more ideal, more instructive in its use of the imagination more than memory. And readers have different moods. At one time they like to know how things could have gone, with sufficient intelligence and virtue in place, and at another they want to hear about just how much running room the Devil was allowed in the hearts of the faithless and the traitors.
Does this mean that the old version of Contemplatives is buried? Not at all. There is the tape of two-thirds of it, the readers' copy long circulated in the family, and the quite two-thirds in the Vatican Library, where the scholars can go to draw comparisons with the new stuff. This is what redactions are all about, giving the scholars something to do. This probability regarding my writing of the future I was well coached on in first year English, one of the few things that made university English different than that in high school. I could never think of myself as a scholar - and still can't - because my drive was character and plot, but it was interesting to think that a few people might find reasons to do all the scholarly stuff with my writing, eventually, and I took not of the anguish these ladies and gentlemen suffered when detail were missing. I would, I thought, try to keep my notes as best I could.
It's quite fascinating, of course, to ponder the great gaps in my knowledge of the then Church Militant as I was winding down to March of 1980, when Contemplatives finally saw the light of a "final" text. I did know our diocese was pretty rotten at the top, but I was not all that aware of how common our situation was throughout the Western Church. Because I had grown up in Vancouver and been converted there, and also because it is our neighbour diocese to the west, I was much aware of Archbishop James Carney and his predilection for his Catholics actually being Catholics. He expected them to read the directions when all else failed, or maybe even be smart enough to stay out of predicaments that guaranteed failure. I had some knowledge of Carney being considered "conservative" by most of his fellows, but I had no idea of the depth and breadth of their follies as a nationwide situation until we started to hook up, in a very practical and immediate way, with John Paul and the Vatican. That was at the end of 82, so previous to then, the tension of the Contemplatives plot was due merely to the immediately local enmity to Saint Thomas, John of the Cross and the Scriptures as they were read and understood by men and women of real faith.
My first real tip about the Canadian Church generally, and "modern" nuns specifically, did come about, however, because of the writing, and quite quickly after I started. That story later, but I mention it now because it shows that I was not totally locked up in my ivory tower.
Nor have I done a Lady of Shallot with the music studies. She who follows the web sites reporting instantly on the Church - I still prefer to peruse after the fact in L'Osservatore Romano - made my heart sing last night with a report that now that Rome has pretty well straightened out the translations battle - I hedge my bets because I remain convinced that only a half-wit uses the word 'humankind' - all half-wits invited to defend their reasoning to the Transformation, face to face - Rome will begin to deal with the music madness.
This may be the biggest single reason for the second redaction,thirty significantly painful years after the beginning of the first.
One also thinks of the Pope, for so long the fiercely attentive - albeit lovingly - doctrinal watchdog the progressives loved to hate -or feel superior to - now the main man himself getting to bless the sick and kibbitz with the kids and all that stuff that makes the whole man instead of just the cop on patrol be manifested.
There must be those who would say that I'm puffing myself up rather much to bring in those two comparisons, and possibly they're right, especially if they can prove that novelists are never as important as administrators, but I'll stick to my comparison not because of my own talents or lack thereof, but because of the subject material the Muse decided long ago it would be my lot to take on. It was definitely the Holy Spirit who wanted Benedict as Pope, then John Corriveau as Bishop Nelson, and only He could have designated a klutz like myself to wrestle with the problems of putting the Transformation on paper. (And now computeronics.) And having chosen such a klutz certainly only He could guide me through it all, with no little absolutely necessary help from my spiritual companions.
So, yes, "Contemplatives" is getting some significant reworking, more extensive I think than the two works of John of the Cross that experienced the same fate. (The Spiritual Canticle and the Living Flame) I think it's been freed up for this, in the mind of Muse, because NWTA has emerged. If the second novel better takes care of the actual history, the first can be even more ideal, more instructive in its use of the imagination more than memory. And readers have different moods. At one time they like to know how things could have gone, with sufficient intelligence and virtue in place, and at another they want to hear about just how much running room the Devil was allowed in the hearts of the faithless and the traitors.
Does this mean that the old version of Contemplatives is buried? Not at all. There is the tape of two-thirds of it, the readers' copy long circulated in the family, and the quite two-thirds in the Vatican Library, where the scholars can go to draw comparisons with the new stuff. This is what redactions are all about, giving the scholars something to do. This probability regarding my writing of the future I was well coached on in first year English, one of the few things that made university English different than that in high school. I could never think of myself as a scholar - and still can't - because my drive was character and plot, but it was interesting to think that a few people might find reasons to do all the scholarly stuff with my writing, eventually, and I took not of the anguish these ladies and gentlemen suffered when detail were missing. I would, I thought, try to keep my notes as best I could.
It's quite fascinating, of course, to ponder the great gaps in my knowledge of the then Church Militant as I was winding down to March of 1980, when Contemplatives finally saw the light of a "final" text. I did know our diocese was pretty rotten at the top, but I was not all that aware of how common our situation was throughout the Western Church. Because I had grown up in Vancouver and been converted there, and also because it is our neighbour diocese to the west, I was much aware of Archbishop James Carney and his predilection for his Catholics actually being Catholics. He expected them to read the directions when all else failed, or maybe even be smart enough to stay out of predicaments that guaranteed failure. I had some knowledge of Carney being considered "conservative" by most of his fellows, but I had no idea of the depth and breadth of their follies as a nationwide situation until we started to hook up, in a very practical and immediate way, with John Paul and the Vatican. That was at the end of 82, so previous to then, the tension of the Contemplatives plot was due merely to the immediately local enmity to Saint Thomas, John of the Cross and the Scriptures as they were read and understood by men and women of real faith.
My first real tip about the Canadian Church generally, and "modern" nuns specifically, did come about, however, because of the writing, and quite quickly after I started. That story later, but I mention it now because it shows that I was not totally locked up in my ivory tower.
Nor have I done a Lady of Shallot with the music studies. She who follows the web sites reporting instantly on the Church - I still prefer to peruse after the fact in L'Osservatore Romano - made my heart sing last night with a report that now that Rome has pretty well straightened out the translations battle - I hedge my bets because I remain convinced that only a half-wit uses the word 'humankind' - all half-wits invited to defend their reasoning to the Transformation, face to face - Rome will begin to deal with the music madness.
This may be the biggest single reason for the second redaction,thirty significantly painful years after the beginning of the first.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Incredible Retirement Two
"To those who already have, even more shall be given, while to those who have nothing, even that shall be taken away." Thus the Lord's advice on the subject of spiritual growth, something I have been blessed with all my life, even more after I became a Catholic, in exponential fashion, sufficient to let myself be persuaded that I was almost a master of the philosophy of God's ongoing generosity.
Hah!
Only an idiot would try to comprehend God, only an idiot would think he had Him in the bag.
Well, although I have never taken New Year's resolutions very seriously - as a Catholic you come to learn that it is the Lenten resolutions that God is looking for, simply because He set up a Church that is set up to provide the real help instead of the guff you get form the average self-help writer - but I have been persuaded, if not forced, to admit that there can be New Year's realizations. God invented time, He is the master of time, and therefore He has the right to start off 2010 with a fresh insight for everyone. Whether they take advantage of it is up to them, but He always does His part and makes the offer, and hopefully, by the beginning of Lent - February 17 this year - we have started to understand what it is.
Of course with Shawn's retirement process going full blast early in December, I had some clues as to what some of my particular realizations might be, and it is true that I had started the second available novel, "Not Without The Angels" by then. But everyone knows that a hurricane always has a direction. Those who have always lived east of it know what to expect if it suddenly decides to reverse its attention from things to the west.
It is not to be expected that Hurricane Shawn will turn her back completely on the local cultural scene, just so she can dote on the latest rumblings from the Parnassus across the morning pillows. Impossible, simply because she has too many friends within the Nelson creative circle, and everyone knows the value and need of the office emeritus. But her retirement does mean that she has more time and energy for some of my stuff and any connections that arise from it, and I have already been profiting from the two weeks that she spent tidying the archives, but without the public, so that more of her thinking went in the direction of the household and its concerns.
Initially, this might seem quite natural, and no doubt all sorts of couples digging in with their retirement situation have similar experiences. In a natural sort of way I was quite prepared myself. After all, "The prudent man is given foresight."
But what has taken me utterly by surprise, where my role as half-wit gets star billing, is the inescapable spirit of complete return to the mood of the days and weeks when we first met and I realized that my life had changed so much once again.
How else could it be explained except by saying that it had doubled? Where there had once been one of me, now there were two!
A lot of this, of course, I can blame on the usual suspects. (Interesting that a younger friend of the family, when last seen by Shawn visiting her in the hospital recovering from a quite serious ski-ing accident) was watching "Casablanca" on her lap top. "Round up the usual suspects." has always been my favourite line from that film.) But in this case the usual suspects are not the criminals of North Africa, but the Trinity, which for reasons much better known to itself than to me, have always played Pig-in-the Middle with my typewriter, binding or loosing the inspiration and permission of the moment in the most abnormal fashion. Not even Shakespeare, who penned "Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip" would have guessed how much his words would apply in my case. The Bard was most certainly king among the playwrights but he was no mystic according to the standards of the Carmelites. His writer's blocs came from Nature, not the iron heel of the Almighty having other, more significant, work in mind. Literature might entertain the universe, but it is prayer and contemplation that keep it from being destroyed.
And yet I have to admit that Providence did have a literary agenda as well, because it knows the lady's unique value to the writer. Nothing could be more valuable than her undivided attention to my concerns. It's probably going to take me six weeks to manifest, in print, what she accomplished along these lines in the first six days of the rest of our lives.
As anyone who has read the beginning posts of the Ranger knows, "Contemplatives" took eight years to complete. Most of the time the words came slowly. But there were also a few months when it went like greased lightning. With Shawn about so much now, that pace might be coming back, forked. The new and updated "Contemplatives" after all is a mere rewrite of sorts, with almost all of the hard labour of creation going into a bevy of fictional characters and situations. NWTA is little more than a stroll down memory lane, with a lot of holy and educated fun, interspersed here and there with just enough devils to make the thing realer, and stranger, than fiction.
And if I had any doubt about getting my butt into gear, it has been taken away by my writing daughters. They can't be allowed to take over all the history of the family, the province, and the culture of the recent decades.
Hah!
Only an idiot would try to comprehend God, only an idiot would think he had Him in the bag.
Well, although I have never taken New Year's resolutions very seriously - as a Catholic you come to learn that it is the Lenten resolutions that God is looking for, simply because He set up a Church that is set up to provide the real help instead of the guff you get form the average self-help writer - but I have been persuaded, if not forced, to admit that there can be New Year's realizations. God invented time, He is the master of time, and therefore He has the right to start off 2010 with a fresh insight for everyone. Whether they take advantage of it is up to them, but He always does His part and makes the offer, and hopefully, by the beginning of Lent - February 17 this year - we have started to understand what it is.
Of course with Shawn's retirement process going full blast early in December, I had some clues as to what some of my particular realizations might be, and it is true that I had started the second available novel, "Not Without The Angels" by then. But everyone knows that a hurricane always has a direction. Those who have always lived east of it know what to expect if it suddenly decides to reverse its attention from things to the west.
It is not to be expected that Hurricane Shawn will turn her back completely on the local cultural scene, just so she can dote on the latest rumblings from the Parnassus across the morning pillows. Impossible, simply because she has too many friends within the Nelson creative circle, and everyone knows the value and need of the office emeritus. But her retirement does mean that she has more time and energy for some of my stuff and any connections that arise from it, and I have already been profiting from the two weeks that she spent tidying the archives, but without the public, so that more of her thinking went in the direction of the household and its concerns.
Initially, this might seem quite natural, and no doubt all sorts of couples digging in with their retirement situation have similar experiences. In a natural sort of way I was quite prepared myself. After all, "The prudent man is given foresight."
But what has taken me utterly by surprise, where my role as half-wit gets star billing, is the inescapable spirit of complete return to the mood of the days and weeks when we first met and I realized that my life had changed so much once again.
How else could it be explained except by saying that it had doubled? Where there had once been one of me, now there were two!
A lot of this, of course, I can blame on the usual suspects. (Interesting that a younger friend of the family, when last seen by Shawn visiting her in the hospital recovering from a quite serious ski-ing accident) was watching "Casablanca" on her lap top. "Round up the usual suspects." has always been my favourite line from that film.) But in this case the usual suspects are not the criminals of North Africa, but the Trinity, which for reasons much better known to itself than to me, have always played Pig-in-the Middle with my typewriter, binding or loosing the inspiration and permission of the moment in the most abnormal fashion. Not even Shakespeare, who penned "Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip" would have guessed how much his words would apply in my case. The Bard was most certainly king among the playwrights but he was no mystic according to the standards of the Carmelites. His writer's blocs came from Nature, not the iron heel of the Almighty having other, more significant, work in mind. Literature might entertain the universe, but it is prayer and contemplation that keep it from being destroyed.
And yet I have to admit that Providence did have a literary agenda as well, because it knows the lady's unique value to the writer. Nothing could be more valuable than her undivided attention to my concerns. It's probably going to take me six weeks to manifest, in print, what she accomplished along these lines in the first six days of the rest of our lives.
As anyone who has read the beginning posts of the Ranger knows, "Contemplatives" took eight years to complete. Most of the time the words came slowly. But there were also a few months when it went like greased lightning. With Shawn about so much now, that pace might be coming back, forked. The new and updated "Contemplatives" after all is a mere rewrite of sorts, with almost all of the hard labour of creation going into a bevy of fictional characters and situations. NWTA is little more than a stroll down memory lane, with a lot of holy and educated fun, interspersed here and there with just enough devils to make the thing realer, and stranger, than fiction.
And if I had any doubt about getting my butt into gear, it has been taken away by my writing daughters. They can't be allowed to take over all the history of the family, the province, and the culture of the recent decades.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The Incredible Retirement
About this time a week ago, my beloved and I were strolling up Nelson's very own Ward Street, heading for home and supper, and ruminating over the just passed whoop up, in the main gallery of the new museum, concerned with her retirement as archivist and collections manager of the Nelson Museum, Art Gallery, and Archives Association. It had, of course, been nothing but a love-in, with lots of appropriate tears and laughter, the sort of thing that has to happen when you sort-of put out to pasture one of the greatest combinations of heart and brains you've ever seen and heard saunter through the universe at hand on a daily basis. This clambake, she hoped fervently, had finally brought to an end literally weeks of notice from the local news outlets, city council, and anyone else who could get into the act. It's one of the things we do in organized society - honour the souls who have served us well - but it's also a bit of strain on those who truly understand what it is to be useful. It's the job that counts and challenges and consoles, not the foofoorah that comes afterward.
Earlier than that, she had announced that we should attend the Nelson Choral Society's performance of Handel's Messiah, and I had bought tickets. This was before she realized, having her head down in the closing days of her work, that as she had two weeks of holidays coming to her, her first official day of retirement would be the Sunday of the Messiah performance. To tell the whole truth, it was not she that understood this simple principle of the ordinary work year, but her successor at the helm of the good ship Touchstones, who is very particular on all the management stuff, having a considerable bigger staff than Shawn used to have - except when Shawn had provincial and/or federal grants fueling activity at the old site - and also just super-efficient anyway, brought this particular revelation down to the archives basement.
Thus, 60 jubilant voices, four fine soloists, the twenty assembled musicians of the Selkirk Chamber Orchestra - containing two former members of the Vancouver Symphony - and a thunderously appreciative capacity audience were all on hand on the Sunday that marked her first official day of retirement. I didn't realize this myself until half-way through the first half of the performance, but when it did occur to me I was pleasantly struck by the auspiciousness of it all. God was not only good, but significant.
Later on, I realized that with the possibility of my wife being around the house a lot more, I was reminded of when we very first met, and felt as if I were twenty-two all over again, although happily a lot wiser. I hope.
And now I have just emailed the Columbia Basin Trust about its possible interest in the music publication aspect of the recent research. Some years ago, talking with a different government organization drew the most amazingly unintelligent response. It will be interesting to see if this group is more capable of actually thinking, especially with Herself around to help shed the light.
"And the government shall be upon their shoulders."
Earlier than that, she had announced that we should attend the Nelson Choral Society's performance of Handel's Messiah, and I had bought tickets. This was before she realized, having her head down in the closing days of her work, that as she had two weeks of holidays coming to her, her first official day of retirement would be the Sunday of the Messiah performance. To tell the whole truth, it was not she that understood this simple principle of the ordinary work year, but her successor at the helm of the good ship Touchstones, who is very particular on all the management stuff, having a considerable bigger staff than Shawn used to have - except when Shawn had provincial and/or federal grants fueling activity at the old site - and also just super-efficient anyway, brought this particular revelation down to the archives basement.
Thus, 60 jubilant voices, four fine soloists, the twenty assembled musicians of the Selkirk Chamber Orchestra - containing two former members of the Vancouver Symphony - and a thunderously appreciative capacity audience were all on hand on the Sunday that marked her first official day of retirement. I didn't realize this myself until half-way through the first half of the performance, but when it did occur to me I was pleasantly struck by the auspiciousness of it all. God was not only good, but significant.
Later on, I realized that with the possibility of my wife being around the house a lot more, I was reminded of when we very first met, and felt as if I were twenty-two all over again, although happily a lot wiser. I hope.
And now I have just emailed the Columbia Basin Trust about its possible interest in the music publication aspect of the recent research. Some years ago, talking with a different government organization drew the most amazingly unintelligent response. It will be interesting to see if this group is more capable of actually thinking, especially with Herself around to help shed the light.
"And the government shall be upon their shoulders."
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