Sunday night I found myself in the gym walking slowly and reading the current issue of the New Yorker. It was about 8:30 and I needed to walk. I had tried walking around my apartment complex; the air was still and calming; I thought the night air would be soothing. But there was too much human disturbance--an altercation involving several police cars at one building, a fighting couple outside another--I retreated to the silence of the gym at night, not all that silent as the tv was on, although I focused on my reading and not the talking heads on the screen.
I needed to be walking that evening because I had been working in the small patch of garden that remains untouched by the construction at my house, a job that has become far more all-encompassing than I had originally imagined. So much for control. I managed to plant 400 bulbs Sunday afternoon, and Sunday evening my back was stiff and sore. I knew I needed to walk. A slow walk on the treadmill was all I needed, not pushing myself to go faster, but just moving, with gentle focus on small things like rolling my hips properly, not falling into a sciatica-induced marionette-pace, and breathing through my nose, calmly and evenly, my pulse remaining low, in the aerobic zone, focusing on releasing and unkinking. The process was effective, I loosened up, although once I was no longer focused on back pain I realized how exhausted I was overall, and went to bed.
In fact, I have become a regular at the small gym that is part of my apartment complex. I've not really been using the weights, although I might. Mostly I've been walking on the treadmill, walking slowly and deliberately, focusing on stamina, endurance and health rather than fitness. I've been focusing on breathing only through my nose when walking, focusing on breathing and keeping my pulse low, in the aerobic zone instead of the anaerobic zone, and it has not been as easy as I had assumed. Because this form of exercise is different than anything I've done in recent years, I've also returned to reading light fiction. I used to read on an exercise bike at the gym; this was when I lived in New York State. Now I read on a treadmill. Treadmills are boring and I do not find the television to be a motivating factor. With a book on tape I go too fast. With literary fiction I tend to want to stop walking altogether.
Hence there will be an increase in the number of "bicycle books", being read, books I now think of as popcorn fiction, a term I borrowed from someone, somewhere. I started with the last of Marie Bostwick's Cobbled Court series, Apart at the Seams. I read most of the cobbled court series between 2010 and 2013, before this book came out. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the series, the friendly camaraderie of the ladies whose lives revolve around the quilt shop. Better yet, the book got me through several hours on the treadmill.
When mom was here she read one of Stuart Woods' novels Unbound. It is part of the Stone Barrington series, although Stone appears only briefly. It is more about a character named Teddy Fay, who appeared in an earlier Barrington book, and who apparently now has his own series. I read the book after mom, and I enjoyed it. It makes no demands, moves fast enough to hold my interest, and led me to revisit the series, starting back with the first Stone Barrington novel, New York Dead, which reminded me why I liked Stone to begin with. I still like Stone, and I think Woods has created an appealing protagonist here. It is not an introspective and that is perfectly fine with me. I never read all the books in the series--there are over 40-- and they will keep me happily in bounds, at least until I can get back outside.
But at the moment my ability to breathe through my nose and walk, which I find impossible if the air is chill outside, is keeping me in the gym. I've been looking into the different ways breathing uses our lungs, and realizing that I have been a mouth breather for decades, even when at rest. It has been commented upon by doctors and trainers, but everyone assumed that I had to breathe through my mouth because of the way my scoliosis had partially crushed and twisted my lungs. I am not so sure that is true, the part about breathing, not the part about my lungs, I do not have full lung capacity and never will, but I am seriously beginning to think I can improve the function of what I've got by focusing on how I breathe. I realize that I my level of health may not be another person's, but I want to pursue being the strongest, healthiest person I can be, and I have come to realize health and fitness are not the same thing. So for now I am slowing down, looking to eventually find balance, but before balance can come I must first build the fundamentals and undo decades of habits.
And therefore I have been searching for light reading. I am sure I will be perusing the paperback best seller lists, but also exploring older books which I may have neglected recently. I picked up a new-to-me series, a knitting mystery series by Maggie Sefton. I read the first two books, Knit One, Kill Two and Needled to Death. I am not yet sure what I think. I like the lightness of the books, I sometimes find the main character, Kelly, frustrating and none too bright, and the books are light on the mystery side as well, but I didn't really dwell on those things while I was actually reading. The books remind me of my favorite knitting groups, calming and supportive places of acceptance and companionship, not big issues. I realize I may place greater expectation on a character in a novel than I do on people I actually meet and converse with in life. For me the book was more about the circle of friends that are formed, about those non-judgmental circles we form in our lives, where we meet and support other people we might not have met otherwise, where we expand our horizons and form new friendships, where we actually become more accepting individuals.
Well, that is too much to put on a book. But I am reminded not to niggle. I am reminded to read and to walk and to generally move forward, occasionally backward, without rushing and without judgement. I am seeing progress.
