The Strength Within

May 29, 2008 | Laughing Knees | 5 Comments 

Ever since high school where many of the all-​​male stu­dents used to test each other’s male­ness by beat­ing up the weaker stu­dents and com­pet­ing in he-​​man sports like wrestling and bas­ket­ball (the most pop­u­lar and highly funded sports in the school) to bol­ster up an im­age of glory and dom­i­nance, I’ve dis­liked, even hated, sports that em­pha­sized one person’s pre­em­i­nence over an­other. I’ve steered away from gyms where the odor of male sweat and the sight of men siz­ing up one an­other both in­tim­i­dated me and made me feel scorn­ful. And, af­ter, the bench-​​warming days of the high-​​school soc­cer team, where win­ning the matches played a more im­por­tant role in the ex­is­tence of the team than the en­joy­ment and par­tic­i­pa­tion of the sport that every team mem­ber had signed up for, I have rarely gone to mass spec­ta­tor games or found much in­ter­est in the super-​​hero ath­letes that so many boys get all starry-​​eyed over. All of it was an­noy­ing and point­less, with too much weighted to­ward croon­ing over men who spend their lives kick­ing or throw­ing a ball, rather than giv­ing equal re­spect and praise to­ward those who might pre­fer to use their minds. I have noth­ing against peo­ple who do amaz­ing things with their bod­ies and take care of their health in a bal­anced way; I just have lit­tle pa­tience for peo­ple who spend too much time think­ing about win­ning and losing.

I guess these are some rea­sons why, ever since I can re­mem­ber, the equally phys­i­cally de­mand­ing sports like hik­ing and moun­tain climb­ing, bi­cy­cle tour­ing, and kayak tour­ing have al­ways held such great ap­peal to me. They don’t re­quire that you com­pete against any­one but your­self, and they rarely come with re­wards other than the ac­com­plish­ment of reach­ing a peak or sim­ply be­ing im­mersed in the el­e­ments, feel­ing alive. I still have high school class­mates who snicker when I tell them I love back­pack­ing, think­ing that what I do is some­how not cool or that it is wimpy. But that’s the thing about such ac­tiv­i­ties: I have noth­ing to prove to any­one. And so their com­ments slide off, sound­ing silly and ig­no­rant. I doubt most of those for­mer class­mates could keep up with me on the hills.

Over the last few years I’ve let my body run down, though, and for the first time in my life I’ve gained weight. This is due mainly to the amount of in­sulin I have to take, which causes me to gain weight even on mod­est amounts of food. With my desk job and dis­tance from the moun­tains (the near­est moun­tains are two and a half hours away by ex­press train and those are not even the real moun­tains I love walk­ing in… it takes me at least four hours to go to the bases of the near­est higher peaks and about six or seven hours to the places I’m most in­ter­ested in… all of which makes it hard to get out to where I want to be on the week­ends, es­pe­cially since I’ve still got to climb those slopes!) it is harder now to get the moun­tain train­ing I need, but I’ve also slacked off from sheer lazi­ness. De­pres­sion had me ly­ing about too much, get­ting soft.

Back in Jan­u­ary, though, I, and some of my uni­ver­sity col­leagues, got to­gether to learn and train with Cross­fit, a train­ing reg­i­men that fo­cuses on all-​​around fit­ness by con­cen­trat­ing on in­tense, short work­outs that vary day-​​to-​​day, and are scaled ac­cord­ing to one’s level of fit­ness and abil­i­ties. It is quite de­mand­ing and never easy, but the re­sults have been as­ton­ish­ing. My mus­cles have grown and the strength of my twen­ties is slowly re­turn­ing (though re­cov­ery is tak­ing con­sid­er­ably longer). I sur­prised my­self the other day by be­ing able to do 53 pull ups with­out overly strain­ing my­self. And last Sun­day I did a 10 kilo­me­ter run dur­ing which the old rolling, smooth glide over the ground, where my legs feel as if I am fly­ing with­out grav­ity, some­thing that I hadn’t felt since 1997 when I used to run every day, re­turned. The fat has yet to re­ally come off, but that is only a mat­ter of time. When I vis­ited my di­a­betes doc­tor last month she an­nounced that my blood he­mo­glo­bin (the mea­sure of the sever­ity of the di­a­betes, with 6 be­ing nor­mal and 10 to 12, which I had been at for over seven years, be­ing close to dan­ger­ous) was bet­ter than it had been in seven years. At this rate I will be able to scale the more dif­fi­cult peaks this sum­mer, some­thing I had al­most given up on in the last few years.

The funny thing is, I en­joy head­ing to the gym now. Hav­ing those young, an­noy­ingly fit judo fight­ers and gym­nasts from the uni­ver­sity pump­ing weights along­side me no longer both­ers me. For the first time I see their world a lit­tle bit more from their point of view, and it isn’t so dif­fer­ent from mine. Maybe it’s just Cross­fit, which dis­cour­ages too much com­pet­i­tive com­par­i­son with oth­ers, or maybe it’s be­cause I feel stronger and com­pe­tent enough to chal­lenge those young­sters should I de­sire to.

What­ever the rea­son, it’s just good to be in shape and feel­ing good about my body. If only they had taught this back in high school!

Friends and Community

May 18, 2008 | Laughing Knees | 8 Comments 

I re­al­ize that I have been away a long time. Lately I am find­ing it harder to get my thoughts to­gether and to sit at the com­puter, writ­ing. I start putting a few words down and then just give up. I be­come rest­less and dis­tracted, feel­ing per­haps that the time I sit at the com­puter is time wasted from an ac­tive en­gage­ment with the real world, and as the years go by this time in the real world has grown with poignance and significance.

At the uni­ver­sity that I am work­ing at I’ve made a few friends with whom I get to­gether three times a week af­ter work to do Cross­fit work­outs. Be­sides be­gin­ning to fi­nally get my­self back in re­ally good shape (af­ter 24 years I did my first 53 pull ups again the day be­fore yes­ter­day), the time spent with these friends has made all the dif­fer­ence in emo­tion­ally han­dling be­ing in this place. I find my­self ea­gerly look­ing for­ward to the work­outs and even when I am not feel­ing too well I try to make it there just to hang around with everyone.

It is al­most as if I’d for­got­ten just how im­por­tant other peo­ple are in my life, how much they re­flect who I am and help me find pur­pose in mak­ing it through each day. I’m find­ing that so much of my rea­sons for get­ting so de­pressed and de­spon­dent over the past two years had to do with be­ing alone and spend­ing too much time with my own thoughts. Now I fi­nally have peo­ple I can laugh with and share com­mon ex­pe­ri­ences with and both let out the pain I am feel­ing and to lis­ten to theirs. I still don’t like this place and the work, but with these friends it has all be­come a lot easier.

So two weeks ago when Kevin from Bastish​.net in­vited me to visit him and his wife To­moe on their farm in Nagano, north of here, I was both ner­vous and fas­ci­nated about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of what a dif­fer­ent lifestyle, one based on shar­ing and stick­ing close to one’s be­liefs, might be like. For a long time I had won­dered if it would be pos­si­ble to find a place in Japan where peo­ple still took care of one an­other and lived close to tra­di­tional Japan­ese val­ues, in part a place where the land still meant some­thing deeply spir­i­tual and sus­tain­ing to those who lived on it.

For three days Kevin and To­moe took me into their lives and showed me just how rich such a com­mu­nity could be. It seemed every mo­ment of the day had some neigh­bor vis­it­ing or stop­ping by or say­ing hello on the street or dri­ving by to of­fer some veg­eta­bles or bread or rice cakes. The other peo­ple Kevin had in­vited and I joined Kevin and To­moe for walks in the hills to gather wild ed­i­ble fid­dle­heads, or dig out rocks in their fields, or take a stroll through the town to look at the old farm houses and tem­ples. There was talk of the hard win­ters such as this last one where the snow reached three me­ters (in 1945 the snow reached 7 me­ters deep!) and every­one had to pitch in to make sure all every­one could get through the win­ter. The first night three friends of Kevin and To­moe, a fam­ily that sup­plied the vil­lage with de­li­cious, home­made bread leav­ened with ap­ple juice, dropped by sud­denly and the mod­est din­ner im­me­di­ately turned in to a feast for nine. We laughed and joked and drank cham­pagne and beer and wine while gob­bling down bar­be­cued lo­cal pro­duce and I have not felt so at home and peace­ful and sat­is­fied in a long, long time.

It is what I long for.

I don’t know if I can be sat­is­fied be­ing a farmer, or if liv­ing in a such a rural com­mu­nity with­out ac­cess to books and talk with non-​​Japanese can be re­ward­ing enough for me to put down roots in such a place, but it def­i­nitely is the right di­rec­tion. LIfe is still un­cer­tain for Kevin and To­moe, and they both strug­gle with how they are go­ing to make a liv­ing once their sav­ings run out. But per­haps that is part of what liv­ing in such places en­tails, that you find a way to live there and that is what makes you strong and that is why you rely on the com­mu­nity to make it through hard times. It feels right.

That is the di­rec­tion I want to go, and though, like Kevin and To­moe, I am un­cer­tain about how to go about do­ing it, I think my life will be the richer for bring­ing in com­mu­nity as the slate of my way of life. And I think it is the fu­ture for us all.