From the Mundane to the Sublime. Exercise, and Dreams. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako



In a video, the young lady does the piriformis stretches for thirty seconds. Or something like that.


I do two or three for four seconds. Another one or two for six or seven seconds, and one, holding it for ten seconds. I do that for each side. When I pull the first one on the left side, as often as not something goes 'clunk' in the lower back. Also noted that rolling to the right to get up off the floor caused a bit of pain as well. 

(Solution: get up to the left side.)

This is why, as a sixty year-old man with back injuries, I design my own routine. Some thirty-five year-old trainer, bristling with energy, would probably set the bar too high and I would inevitably injure myself. I might go for a walk. I did get on a bike, and over a year or two built up so I could do fifteen or twenty k without too much pain. I am never going to run, ladies and gentlemen. The impact on joints and vertebra is simply too great for someone way out of shape.

If I had an actual bar-bell, I would stick with forty pounds. Oh, if you get stronger, simply add reps—not weight. Some asshole bench-pressing five hundred pounds is not a good model for what I am attempting to achieve. I don't expect to be Mr. Universe. How about Mr. Reduced Level of Pain??? That sounds good to me.

#exercise

Louis Shalako We're about two months in, and really only just starting to feel the results. As for losing weight, or changing my appearance in the mirror, that is a much longer-term project.

***

My dream from a few nights ago was nuts. Just nuts. I was in one of those maze-like cities that just don't make any sense. I was popping wheelies and cat-walking through intersections on a road racing bike. I was wearing cycle shorts, and them odd-ball shoes...a jersey (which I couldn't read upside down), and a helmet. Everyone was dressed for Carnival...kind of a mix of Venetian masks, and Cats, and Birds of Prey. People are covered in glitter and make-up and having one hell of a good time.

Not impressed, I'm looking around with a kind of amused contempt.

At some point I'm lining up behind some other guys in cycle garb. The guy ahead of me is waving a business card at some baldy-headed guy in a back office. Disappointed, he turns away. I'm towering above them all, chest rippling with muscles, (which is one way of knowing that this is indeed a dream). I wish I had that kind of confidence in real life, but the guy takes one look and says 'You'll do."

And that's how I made the team, which in this dream world is a full-contact cycling team, and I'm the enforcer. My specialty is body-checking them other bums out of our lead guy's way.

#dreams

The one girl-cat was clinging on to me something fierce. Kind of cute in a fetal-alcohol-syndrome sort of a way.

***

The only thing I can really recall about last night’s dream, is that I was in a canoe. It was very dark. Some guy in another canoe was chasing me across a lake, splashing madly away behind me. The shore was blackness, but the sky and the water were lighter. As I got closer, I remember thinking how nice and ‘hard’ the water was. A powerful paddler, the boat was very small. It was like it was on rails, or running in a groove or something…an island standing offshore becomes more distinct, and at that point, there is a bit of a swell. Not even waves, and at that point, the boat slows down, begins to wallow. Whoever is chasing me is catching up, and I’ve got water coming in over the sides.

That’s it. That’s about when I woke up.

They say dreams are our subconscious mind sorting and filing and making sense out of the day’s events. I get the impression my subconscious mind is so fucking bored, it’s just making shit up for its own amusement. Other than that, when you’re driving in a long, skinny car, on a road that’s just a bit too narrow, and you go to make a right turn, and the road goes about five feet and then just plummets…downwards at seventy or eighty degrees, just keep going. 

You don’t want to know where that one ends.

END

(Note: he's talked about his dreams before. If he can write down enough of them, he will have the world's first completely plot-less novel. - ed.)

Louis has all kinds of books and stories on Kobo.

Image: Louis

Thank you for reading.