The gym. Good for my A$$, bad for my craft?

I started this entry at 9:15 from Starbucks. I usually make it to Starbucks, or the library, or the park, or some little hole in the wall by 9:00 A.M. to begin my workday. "Work", as I facetiously refer to my practice, is usually the first destination I drive my car in the morning. However, the last couple of days I've added a stop on my futile road to success...

Kimmy, (Wife), and I recently obtained a membership to a Gym. My in-laws joined a gym. As their 'spare tires' have gone flat, they've been made acutely aware of how over-inflated mine is. A few weeks ago, Sir, (Father-in-law), came home from the gym and vocalized in a resolute manner,

"You guys need to get in there. Kam, you've got to get in shape and be there for your girls!"

Mama J(Mother-in-law), quickly joined her husband on the exercise soapbox and after very little input on my part, Kimmy and I were suddenly in exercise gear, riding side by side on two stationary recumbent bicycles.

Kimmy, of course, really took to it on the first session. She turned on the lowest setting and started off. I looked over at the woman pedaling next to me. My wife was maintaining a pace as if she were intent on barreling through Northern California, Washington and Oregon, to reach Vancouver by the end of the night. Kimmy looked back at me and smiled. We were using our 'Us Time' which was normally set aside for television, to torture ourselves in that forsaken place. I thought since she was happy, I might as well put on a happy face. We turned away from each other and looked back out ahead of us.

A panel with a bunch of buttons and numbers was attached to the handlebar. Upon further examination, I found the panel displayed distance travelled, calories burned, elapsed time, and intensity... There was a rocker switch attached to the bottom of the panel. Moving it up and down adjusted intensity across levels from 1 through 16. Well, 16 wasn't quite for me. But 1 was just going through the motion of pedaling. I tried 8 for a while. 8 was good. challenging, but doable. The elapsed time reached 60 minutes. We only had an hour to be at the gym. Back home.

Sir and Mama J looked us over to see how we coped with the exercise. I gathered all of the strength I could muster to pretend the outing was enjoyable.

The next session, I sat on my bike. I looked over at Kimmy, then back out to the screen on the handlebar. I started asking questions.

Why was I there? Well, that was easy to answer... Sir had just shelled out the initiation fee to add Kimmy and me to their family plan.

Why did they do that? That one wasn't so easy to answer. I had no clue what screw wiggled loose in both Mama J and Sir's heads to be so unattached to wealth, yet they somehow always figured it out financially. I knew they considered the family of 10 that they built together as their wealth... But still, I knew it would be a tremendous effort to find and turn that same screw in my own head.

What could I get out of this gym pass?

I knew I'd look like an ungrateful $h!t if I didn't go after they paid for it. Whether I liked I or not, I had to go every day and spend an hour at a place that I'd never otherwise patronize. Sir wasn't wrong when he called me out on my portly girlish figure. Since I was there. And it was free. And I could lose weight...

What couldn't I get out of it?

I looked around the gym. I got up from the recumbent bike and walked around. My questions still reached from my mind, around my eyes and floated into my peripheral vision.

I examined all of the gym equipment. I took the elliptical for a spin. Maybe once I had more balance, I could figure out that machine. I looked at a row of treadmills. Walking sucked. Why do it on a stationary belt? Nuh-uh. The Stair Master. I wanted to exercise, not walk up a bunch of imaginary stairs. After I made an anything but thorough audit of all of the fitness equipment, I came back to the recumbent bike. It was in a gym, so it had to be beneficial, but it was easy. Boring.

I met Kimmy's gaze, and then I looked beyond her. Next to our machines, I completely missed the presence of a set of 4 traditional stationary training bicycles. The bikes had panels on them, similar to the one I'd been using. After a second, I walked up to one. A moment of contemplation and an adjustment of the seat height put me back on a seat of a bicycle.

I hadn't been on one in years- since I met Kimmy. As they say, it was just like riding a bike. I set the resistance and started pedaling. This was different than a real bicycle.

After a few minutes, the questions I'd been kicking around in my head gave way to deeper thought. The revolution of the pedals kickstarted an old engine in my mind. An engine that I didn't know, or long forgot I possessed.

The tension in my muscles grew as I processed through muddled, vague emotion. The emotion was raw and abandoned, not attached to any specific event or subject in my life, but it was very much present. My heart told my body it needed more. Setting the resistance to 12, I was sure I couldn't keep a pace. Anger pushed an unknown accelerator. I got back to a steady 14mph pace.

Our time ended, but I knew I wanted more of whatever that was. I also knew that I couldn't access, teardown, and rebuild the engine I discovered unless I was alone. This was "Couples Exercise". I'd have to come back alone. I couldn't do what I wanted to do accompanied. I needed to come back to the machine-shop when nobody was present. I needed to chain my heart to the engine hoist and examine my mind. That would be the only way I could understand and repair whatever was causing the misfires.

The next morning at 6:00 A.M., I saw it standing there. waiting for me. The engine hoist. The bicycle I would use to figure myself out. I mounted and

started to pedal. After I got to up to speed, I adjusted the resistance. Continuing to pedal forward, it came. I felt it. The accelerator. I intentionally lost myself in my thoughts.

They say that exercise helps depression. It improves mood, etc. That is wrong. at least with me. As I pedaled, the only thing that happened was emotion came up to the surface. It doesn't just magically go away with a bike, treadmill or rowing machine. It gets pumped up to the surface, like oil. but it isn't refined or burned. It just is removed from deep places beneath my crust. The oil is removed from my mantle. Perhaps I am better with this emotion on the surface. It wasn't doing me any good, residing so many layers down. But now I am met with a problem.

What do I do with it? I can't just let my emotion sit on the surface. This oil will poison my family. It will spill and stain my loved ones if I don't take the care to handle it properly. The gym brought my emotion to the surface, but now comes the processing. The refining... which brings me to where I am now, at this remarkably small table in a coffeeshop.

This action of putting my emotion, my thoughts, my pain, my joy, my Soul- onto paper in the common language of human feeling... this is all I can do.

I know there is a storm coming. Whether it be caused by my illness, an act of God, or my obsession with the written word, I know it will come. As I sit at this table, I use my fingers and my mind to offer a prayer from my heart, that this emotion, this oil inside me, which I have chosen to extract from myself- will be used. I want my thoughts to be used as fuel to burn.

I feel we all have oil within us. Pumping said oil is both painful and difficult. Whether we recognize regularly its presence, we all know it is there, inside us. So. What to do?

I need to burn calories. The world needs to find awareness of their emotion. We all need to feel. I think there is room for me to set up one drill and start pumping.