Wednesday, July 29, 2009
29th July
Wednesday's I go down to a gym in Leith for cardiac rehabilitation.
There's a core group of us, every wednesday, who get into the gym for a reduced price and row on imaginary rivers, cycle up imaginary hills, walk along imaginary pathways, and run along imaginary tracks.
To rehabilitate our hearts.
There's a kind or comraderie to this, because we have all faced death, and we are all engaged in warding off her further attentions.
And maybe it's because this activity brings me face to face with my body's decay, and reminds me of my fragility: that i am so aware of the old people in this still rather poor part of town.
Of the grizzled prostitutes in hot pants, the old men smoking in pub doorways, the isolated old women struggling along woith their shopping bags and zimmers.
All engaged in the same ferocious, isolated, and largely uncelebrated battle: against decay and dying.
Such a fierce, lonely battle, with its setbacks and victories. Its acts of cowardice and heroism.
A battle uncelebrated in this death denying world.
And I wonder how it will be possible, whether it will ever be possible, to create a voice, devise a language to record and celebrate it.
Wednesday's I go down to a gym in Leith for cardiac rehabilitation.
There's a core group of us, every wednesday, who get into the gym for a reduced price and row on imaginary rivers, cycle up imaginary hills, walk along imaginary pathways, and run along imaginary tracks.
To rehabilitate our hearts.
There's a kind or comraderie to this, because we have all faced death, and we are all engaged in warding off her further attentions.
And maybe it's because this activity brings me face to face with my body's decay, and reminds me of my fragility: that i am so aware of the old people in this still rather poor part of town.
Of the grizzled prostitutes in hot pants, the old men smoking in pub doorways, the isolated old women struggling along woith their shopping bags and zimmers.
All engaged in the same ferocious, isolated, and largely uncelebrated battle: against decay and dying.
Such a fierce, lonely battle, with its setbacks and victories. Its acts of cowardice and heroism.
A battle uncelebrated in this death denying world.
And I wonder how it will be possible, whether it will ever be possible, to create a voice, devise a language to record and celebrate it.
Labels: fighting against decay
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