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02.06.2003 - 10:18 a.m.
Thursday
Oh my god, ya'll. The pain.
The sheer, tortuous, unending pain.
(I can say "ya'll"
because I was born in Manassas, VA, which makes me technically
From The South, right?)
So Body Pump? Holy shit. Just
- holy shit. Take a girl that hasn't done anything more strenuous
than clicking "refresh" in like 6 months, subject to
said girl one (1) class of Body Pump, observe the excruciating
results. The only part of my body that isn't in pain right now
are my toenails, because they didn't have to lift anything.
Fuckers.
I've actually taken this class
before, but it must be like childbirth where the memory of just
how hard it is fades over the passage of time. You have a barbell,
and you put weights on it according to how strong you are. In
my case, this resulted in me sneaking looks around the room and
putting on what I thought the majority of people were using.
Of course, they had actually
been taking the class for a while.
Unlike me.
So the instructor, who looks
a bit like a pro wrestler, screams and yells and flexes his humongous
muscles and plays a series of loud and pounding songs (one was
a mix of "Ice Ice Baby", I shit you not) and you heave
the barbell around. Your arms start to ache. You do lunges. Your
legs start to ache. Sadly, this is 5 minutes into the class and
you've got 55 more to go.
I took this class on Tuesday.
Today is Thursday. I cannot lower my rear end to the toilet without
trembling legs and a little shriek of pain accompanied by an
undignified thud as my muscles give out and I crash onto the
seat. I can't make a sharp turn in my car without making a high
pitched keening sound. I'm shuffling around like Ozzy, moaning
and whimpering.
This class literally embodies
the phrase 'that which does not kill you makes you stronger'.
I mean, stronger eventually. Right now a naked mole rat could kick my ass.
:::
And now, because I can't think of anything else to write about
except how sore I am, which is bound to get quite boring after
a while, here are first lines, or first paragraphs, of some random
books from the first and second shelves of the bookshelf in my
guest bedroom - an idea I got from Victoria.
--
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood.
I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance.
I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been
born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both of my
hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with
what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I
like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita
phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family
is dead. - We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley
Jackson.
Here was this man Tom Guthrie
in Holt standing at the back window in the kitchen of his house
smoking cigarettes and looking out over the back lot where the
sun was just coming up. - Plainsong, Kent Haruf. (You
have to read this book. Seriously.)
Alice was beginning to get
very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having
nothing to do: once or twice she peeped into the book her sister
was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and
what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without
pictures or conversations?" - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
Lews Carroll.
During the first part of the
interview, when we are sitting on the porch looking down the
valley, I try for exactitude more than anything - $343.67. -
Good Will, Jane Smiley.
I have been afraid of putting
air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw
Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign.
- The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver.
I can feel the heat closing
in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their
devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper
I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile
and two flights down the stairs, catch an uptown A train…
- Naked Lunch, William Burroughs. (I've just decided
to re-read this, because I haven't in years and I forgot how
fascinating it is.)
The world had teeth and it
could bite you with them anytime it wanted. - The Girl Who
Loved Tom Gordon, Stephen King.
He understood what they were
thinking, and saying: Old man that he is, what's to become of
him? Let's talk it out, they were saying cautiously. - To
Dance With The White Dog, Terry Kay. (Oh my god, this
book made me cry and cry and then cry some more. So good.)
The fortune teller and her
grandfather went to New York City on an Amtrak train, racketing
along with their identical, peaky white faces set due north.
- Searching For Caleb, Anne Tyler. (She is, I think,
my all-time favorite author. For my birthday one year JB got
me all of her books in hardback.)
Everything's fucking beautiful!
I'm so in love. I've just met Candy, it's been a month or two.
Candy's just discovered smack and I've just discovered she's
got a bit of money. Keen as all fuck to get dirty. - Candy,
Luke Davies.
"What are you wearing?"
he said. - Vox, Nicholson Baker. (I'm just going to
say this: best wank book ever.)
The ghost was her father's
departing gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure
lounge at Narita. - Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson.
(He's got a blog! And I guess he's going to be in Seattle
today. Weird. I saw him do a reading once before, at Powell's
in Portland. I saw Clive Barker around the same time. Clive was
better.)
Suppose that you and I were
sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping
at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that
had happened a long while ago, and I said to you, "That
afternoon when I met so-and-so…was the very best afternoon
of my life, and also the very worst afternoon." - Memoirs
of a Geisha, Arthur Golden.
I planned my death carefully;
unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another,
despite my feeble attempts to control it. My life had a tendency
to spread, to get flabby, to scroll and festoon like the frame
of a baroque mirror, which came from following the line of least
resistance. I wanted my death, by contrast, to be neat and simple,
understated, even a little severe, like a Quaker church or the
basic black dress with a single strand of pearls much praised
by fashion magazines when I was fifteen. No trumpets, no megaphones,
no spangles, no loose ends, this time. The trick was to disappear
without a trace, leaving behind me the shadow of a corpse, a
shadow everyone would mistake for solid reality. At first I thought
I'd managed it. - Lady Oracle, Margaret Atwood. (I
worship her - don't you?)
go back :::
forward
0
comments so far.
I have moved. - 1.03.2005
Obviously, a work in progress. - 12.27.2004
Happy holidays! - 12.24.2004
Listen, I am not a complete dick, it's not like I want Joe to die alone surrounded by cats or something. - 12.23.2004
Plus I am convinced my butt is extra big when it's upside down. - 12.22.2004
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