I have whipped myself back into shape. about 4 or 5 workouts and my legs have recut themselves. I never marveled to think what my body is capable of doing until I was floating on the boat a mile and a half off the ocean floor scooping up rocks - it was then that I talked to Peter Michael about odd things: staying in shape, twisting things, breaking things. I've always had a fascination with individual parts of the body and maybe even its systems too, but I'd never thought to think of myself as a unit until talking to him. I don't know...maybe I had this image of just a bunch of things moving independently to create "me."

He told me how he'd wasted the best years of his life (physically) being a veritable couch potato and rather unfit and how he regretted it now, primarily because he's achingly curious to know what his body would have been capable of during its prime. There was also something in there about enjoying youth and the effects that it has on your body, knowing full well that one day every system will begin its accelerated march towards death.

Interesting too, to think about what happens to human relationships as we age. After a good friend of mine and I were unable to meet up (we're constantly in different cities, often countries) for the third or fourth time and were relegated to speaking on the phone, we talked about the frustration of having lives in divergent paths - the knowledge that effort alone wasn't enough to force us together for an afternoon was sobering. I spend far more time with "friends" who mean far less to me. It doesn't trouble me, though - she and I have a bond thicker than blood, forged in a mutual understanding of suffering and the inevitable acceptance and to know even if we spend an hour or two every year with each other, that alone is enough. Some years, the occasional email to document life's twists and turns is all that happens between us, and that means the other is fine and well and that life is moving smoothly. To know too that the other will be there for the biggest most important events in life is comforting, even if for the time being, mundane life gets in the way.

"If I am not for myself, who will I be? If I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?"
-The Talmud