Cross-Fit and the Olfactory Sensation

Originally Posted Tuesday, October 14, 2014

I understand this.  I have some of that in me.  Maybe we all do.  It may be genetic or it may be cultural. I don't know.  It is about winning, I think, and we won't like it when other people do it.  I mean the other, those who are not us.

When the heathens are at the gate, those whose bodies are trained and whose minds are uncultured. . . Oh!  Did I just make an awful assumption?  Spartans, I think they were called.  Look them up. 

I have become more like the decadent Greeks, overly pampered, overly cultured.  I still have some athletic ability, but it is all natural and instinctual.  I have certain reflexes that are animal-like.  Some of them are actually useful in martial ways, I think.  I would rather not train as hard, though, and hope for a little luck.  Training for the apocalypse. . . well, I've been preparing in very different ways.  I don't pull for the best built fighter any more, the one with the look of the maniac all hopped up on speed and adrenaline.  There is a type.  You can find them in plenty if you look through the prisons.  No, I pull for the guy who looks like he trains a little but has just gotten up off the couch.  I want him to knock out the bully. 

It rarely happens. 

Funny how time changes things.  Still, I don't root for the new warriors sitting in a room in Washington directing drone strikes somewhere across the planet either. 

"I think we got 'em, Frank.  Can you hand me that Pepsi?" 

And yet. . . I am going in for my knee surgery after all.  I can't fix it.  I've tried.  It is starting to get worse, so I will schedule the arthroscopic thing to "fix" my torn meniscus.  I've talked to a number of people now for whom the surgery has worked.  I dread it, but I want to be thin and lithe again, a beautiful, shirtless man who is a miracle in the face of time.  It is all vanity, perhaps, but I want to be in some kind of shape when the cross-fit maniacs overrun the streets.  I'll be the guy eating the cheese and crackers and olives and drinking the wine that they have eschewed.  As my friend C.C. has recently said, fuck Spartacus.  He wasn't what you think. 

Here, rather, is the hope of the future.  Aromatherapy.  It is no joke apparently.  We have olfactory cells all through our bodies.  Sandalwood, lilies of the valley. . . all the old things have healing properties.  I used to wear sandalwood beads around my neck.  Perhaps I need to get back to my hippy ways.  I do burn essential oils, though I've been told something about that that I can't quite remember, something about temperature or purity, something that I am doing wrong.  I will find out.  I am suddenly more interested.  And all those cut flowers I have had over the years are better for me than I thought, too. 

Yes, wine and cheese and beautiful flowers and sandalwood beads for me.  Fuck cross-fit. They are dangerous maniacs.  They aren't even beautiful.  But I had better be prepared.  Perhaps I'll get me to a gun range.