online: 20 august 2010 modified: 19 august 2010 19 august 2010 west wind and new habit
Sandy Heath
...resting after a steep climb beneath trees... south west wind bringing grey and white clouds amidst sunshine... even a few spots of rain... though the forecast is for sunny intervals all day and no rain until evening...
...today i am trying out a new regimen of (1) exercise* before breakfast... and (2) a heath walk before lunch...
...for months (probably years) i've been going to bed often well after midnight... getting-up in late morning... and resting, walking and diary writing in the afternoon and evening... and then editing and other activities up to midnight or beyond...
...but today i am attempting a big difference... if muscles and circulation and 'mental energy' can adapt to it... (this pattern of exercise before eating was recommended in a recent science broadcast as a way to avoid or restore shrunken muscles in old age)...
...so far so good!...
...and now an insect (half way between daddy-longlegs and spider) appears among the crumbs of an apple cake i've just eaten... and now a fly lands on my left thumb... it jumps to my moving finger... and then to the handheld... and now it's flown away... (these insects seem to eat continuously)
...the sky and the forest... and insects in vast numbers... and only one human being here... writing this... and the seven billion of us in other places... perhaps creating more problems than we solve...
...but now problems are called issues... and in this change of language may be wisdom in perceiving that things we used to see as negative are merely things that happen to arouse or annoy (or even kill) some of us... and (as John Cage said somewhere) their purpose is 'to thicken the plot' of our inexplicable life...
..and at this moment (40 minutes after coming to sit here) i look about and see trees trees trees in all directions... and feel ready to move...
...after a few hundred metres beneath trees (growing in what used to be a series of sandpits) i come across two ancient trees (said to be three hundred years old) protected from people by a wooden rail and other trees by trimming or removing younger ones to admit more daylight to the old ones... (and i wondered about the morality of sacrificing the young to the old!)...
...this is described on a notice put here by the 'Woodland Trust' and their 'ancient tree programme'...
...also noted is their website:
http://woodland-trust.org.uk/ancient-tree-forum
(but today it's inaccessible from my computer)...
blackberries:
once away from the sandy ground a first pick of the season... large and almost falling off the branches after recent rain... and after weeks and months of exceptionally low rainfall and only small green and red ones to be found in the last four weeks...
in a supermarket:
remembered to take less soft fruit as i'd picked enough wild blackberries to make two or three flans...
...and then to eat lunch with some protein soon after walking... (keeping to this new habit, or regimen)...
...i slept for an hour or two in the afternoon and am now recovered from tiredness... and editing this writing with some pleasure... and now to bed before eleven if i can manage it?... [but i didn't]
21 august 2010:
after three days finding it difficult to maintain this imposed habit... don't know if if body is reacting against ridiculous regimen or naturally adapting to something novel but good?... decide to continue for a week and see what happens...
*for 3 to 5 decades i've been attempting a few easy exercises: yogic postures and breathing (from Pandit Nheru's physician Pandit Shiv Sharma), cardiovascular (from Canadian Air Force aircrew plan 5BX) and mind-body relaxation (from F M Alexander and Walter Carrington)... intending daily but averaging i suppose about half of that... most difficult is recovery after stopping (as now) for several days or weeks...
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