Make Muscle

A student’s all-nighter slips away unnoticed, but compare that with a carpenter’s and you won’t get any sleep if you’re in the vicinity. Students must get some credit for slipping away into the night without much notice, and carpenter’s must get more days, and more pay. That was bloody hard work that went on under my building last night which kept me awake till 4 am and I consequently didn’t attend the power yoga class as sleep had eluded me. There are enough things I feel miserable about but having to miss my yoga class should not have to be one of them.

I also had a nightmare last night. The specifics are too pithy but I woke up with a fear too strong for my mind to overcome. I couldn’t jostle myself back to being placid and I contemplated some serious life changing moves. All this and then, I calmed down a little. That’s when I thought of my yoga sir who always says the brain must control your mind and body and not the other way round. As I found out this morning, sometimes it’s really difficult to do so.

I’m not plagued by a host of things as I am pinched about a few smaller ones. Missing my class is one. Having to exchange my phone is another. And it pinches quite hard. I always write a post about the detaching activity I need to do every time I have to change my phone. This time, I’m just plain agonised about it. I have a Lumia that will be picked up in exchange for another phone and I am not the least happy about it. I have started moving my data and I feel overcome by a loss. It is safe to say that I am emotional fool.

What was that about embracing the glorious mess one is?

That.

I just wish my Lumia would work and I didn’t have to change it. I have written so many things on that phone and words are all I live by. The fact that it’s so sleek to hold helps too. But I am sad about it.

There are two kinds of misery. One that you can do something about, and the other that you can’t move outside your heart. I wish that all the Types 2s can be moved into Type 1 in some way or another. For example, about my phone, that’s Type 1. I’ll be able to push the feeling out of my heart. But the nightmare I had last night has seeds of Type 2. I don’t know how one eschews that slab of ache that has settled in your heart. I’m sure there’s a way of happiness gnawing at it. I pretty much want to believe it does.

And honestly, I need to work on that. To remove that ache of granite that has sedimented. Sometimes I fear it will take over everything that life will present me with. I recognise that I can’t live with that fear. It must go.

So, I look forward to my exercise (zumba) class tomorrow. There’s going to be exercise and a lot of movement. Signing off with something Prof Al from the poetry class once said about difficult poems:

“[Let’s] Cling to the chestnuts that we don’t understand. That’s how muscles get made.”

In poetry, in exercise, and in life, let’s make muscle.