Anything is Possible
I'd better rant today before I go off to class. I haven't been able to get online at home yet so I might as well take advantage of the 'net at work.

Yesterday I spent a few hours at the gym working out... aside from being an utterly Euphoric experience as usual, several notable instances of synchronic randomninity occured... simulated enlightenment, I guess. The first strange thing of note is that while I was working out, I noticed someone unusual in the gym. It was the "bag lady." For those of you unaware of her presence, the Bag Lady is another campus regular, much like Unicycle Mike, though I doubt she is a student. The bag lady rides around on a bike with two huge baskets in the back that look like they are full of tarps. Her hair is often unkept, though she ties it up with scarves. She mumbles to herself and is known to be confrontational, though I do see people talking to her every now and then. My guess is that she suffers from schizophrenia. In any case, there she was at the gym, a strange enough place for her to be.... The first thing I noticed was that she was working out wearing a heavy winter sweater. I was sweatting into my eyes in just spandex shorts and a top- it was hard for me to imagine how warm she must have been. Secondly, I noticed that she was working out on a recumbent bicycle. This struck me as REALLY odd because she spends most of the day riding around on her strange contraption of a vehicle. I watched her for a while and then got carried away with my own workout. When I looked up, she was gone.

It's funny, the way our bodies reward us for doing something good for them. When I work out, I see things... I leave myself and enter a world of light, vision, euphoria... possibility. Primarily this happens when I've been running for a while and under the influence of heavy industrial music. It's a form of escape and meditation and therefore it reveals to me both hidden truths and the obvious things that I've been ignoring. Yesterday, while I was filled with the music, I also became filled with the people in my life. We were all together, laughing, the center of joy was within us and our differences were without us. But we were joyful because we were different. We loved each other because we suffered and failed and because we could never understand each other. I have loved many people for many days. I have loved liars and theives, conspiracy theorists, masochists, nymphomaniacs and prudes, fetishists, furries, lesbians, suicide survivors, christian fundamentalists, experimentalists, realists, the fantasy-minded and both those who embrace the light and those who revel in the darkness inside themselves. I have made lovers and enemies of friends. Together we have all pined, hated, lusted, tried, failed, loved... succumbed to the flesh and mastered the mind and spirit.

We are so diverse.
We are anything we want to be, but we still cannot see what we are.
Still, in this moment, I knew who they all were and how I loved them.... I saw it all
and Smiled
and knew I still couldn't see myself.

But
The energy runs through me
The Music runs through me
The air is as ribbons of light through my splayed fingertips.

I lie, I love, and I laugh.
Anything is possible.

(most of this is what I wrote after I got off the treadmill yesterday... my body knows how to reward me, ne?)

Lastly, while I was finishing my workout, an attractive late-20-something man came over and motioned for me to take off my headphones so he could speak to me. I had noticed him watching me on and off while I was working out but I was still surprised he came over. It's rare that anyone talks to strangers in the gym, but here he was. I took off my headphones and he said, "do you watch french films?" I was still startled but said yes, I had seen a few... and he asked me if I had seen "Manon of the Spring." I said no but he advised that I should see it. Apparently he thinks I look like Emannuelle Beart. (She was in Mission Impossible with Cruise) I fail to see the resemblence but I was, and am, nonetheless, flattered.

I love the gym!!