Before My Genes Were Mine

Finally, I’ve reclaimed a few pieces of my proper routine.  I mediated today.  Slow the heart down, savor the emptiness, or attempt to anyway.  At the end I stretched as I always used to.  Down in the basement I found a pair of twenty-pound pair of dumbbells and tried a dozen or so different sets.  Calisthenics?  You betcha.  And for cardio, pushed the button on the garage door and took the bike out.

Taking the bike down to the rail trail, I need to bike through the grass, which is overgrown and ought to be mowed to the head of the deer trail on our property.  And where there’s a deer trail there are deer ticks.  So, I consciously keep my feet pedaled horizontal as I sailed long as far as I could till I go to the fallen tree where I needed to walk the bike.  Perhaps it was the natural defense against critters that had me alert but as I crossed the log and pressed down in to the ground my eye saw something long and thick spin and I recoiled automatically, my whole body ready to do battle with snake, the way something deep below consciousness was trained to do, eons before my genes were mine.  I had only stepped upon and spun a stick and my body relaxed. 

I have fantasized about buying some of the large, ill fashioned terra-cotta warrior facsimiles they have along Jing Mi Lu in Beijing.  Do they make ferocious Si Da Gang as well, the four demons who guide the entrance to every temple?  Could I fill a shipping container full of these beasties?  Would it be prohibitive or justifiable?  If the latter, my fantasy involves putting one after another on to a hand truck and rolling the down here and randomly placing them in the wooded pathway.  I’d even cover them with some dirt, so they might look old more swiftly and begin to sport liken and moss. 

The path way is dappled in late summer sun.  Everything is still green.  The wet, jungle like growth of the North East summer has gone just about as far as it will go before the seasons will halt all expansion.  I consider the early part of this path that I’ve seen before, nearly always in summer and imagine how it will look in the covered in snow, bursting alive in the spring.  Unlike a roadside mall this scenery is too complex to process in one or two rides.

Tuesday, 09/03/19