rawlife’s BodyBlog

   Not too much to offer, haven’t been up to a whole lot but laying in the sun, working out a bit, and a bit of tree planting.  The norms. I don’t know how many people still visit my site from way back when I first launched it, but if there are any still around, they might recall that one of my hobbies is growing trees from seed.  I feel so incredibly connected with trees, almost in love with them, actually.  Some literally make me talk to them, they make me tell them how beautiful they are.  I really do, I can’t help it; think what you will. 

    Anyway, easily the coolest place I’ve ever been to in my life is Giant Sequoia National Park.  The energy there is something you can’t imagine.  It’s like walking back in time.  All the way back to prehistoric ages.  Just an incredible incredible feeling-in your lungs, on your skin, in your eyes, in your nose…everywhere.  You know you are alive in that place.  I have been planting giant sequoia seeds ever since my trip there.  I’ve had plenty of failures and a bit of success, as is usually the case.  Right now, I’ve got just under a thousand or so seeds going, along with some Ficus Religiosa and Ficus Bengalensis.  Those last two are both incredible incredible trees from India: enormous, roots everywhere, gigantic canopy, very flowing look…etc.  I’ve got quite a few of those growing as well.  Something really turns me on about creating like this, watching them grow and breathing them in.  I can almost feel it.  I’m really hoping that these sequoias turn out this time around-I am growing them outside, which I have had basically no success with in the past…but let’s see what happens. 

   In other news, I’ve been doing a lot of life planning lately.  Thinking about businesses, making money, thinking about bodybuilding, thinking about spirituality and religion, thinking about spirituality vs. religion…etc.  I grew up with a kind of praying obcession, a kind of real terrible fear of hell and God.  I got out of that and left organized religion in the dust until I was 22 or so.  Then after a couple of very strange occurances drawing me back to spirituality and religion both, I found myself very obcessed again.  As I’ve said before though, obcession seems to be life’s way of getting people to figure something out.  It’s like life telling us that there is something there that needs to be figured out.  The greatest things in my life, the ones I cherish the most are all the result of obcession.  Now they are normal beliefs or lifestlye choices, but they started as something that most people would call totally un-normal and something that should have been run away from.  I’m glad I didn’t go that route, I don’t think I would have managed it to be honest…I don’t actually think that anybody manages it. When life wants to get your attention, it has a way of doing so. 

   On the bodybuilding front, I’ve come to a few conclusions.  First, I really need to be more than just a regular bber.  I can’t do this just putting on muscle thing any longer.  It’s too ignorant of the rest of fitness and life, for my taste.  I’m really enjoying stretching and rolling lately.  I’m enjoying doing my back therapy-because it’s a kind of creation, a building of something.  What I’d really like to do is be a damn good athlete.  Fit, strong, very flexible, and painfree.  I know this is just my lack of understanding, but I still have a strong distaste built up towards just bodybuilding to get bigger.  This seems quite the opposite of what most of these guys claim to be or want to be:hyper-manly…this seems kind of hypo-manly…the same with chains, the same with tattoos, the same with everything else excessively macho.  None of this stuff represents testerone or masculinity-it all represents the lack of, imo.  I know, I’m making judgements….but just call them generalizations, I know there are exceptions.  If I were really forced to define it, I would say that masculinity is defined, not by the spirit, but by the animal; and it looks much like these things that a lot of guys make themselves into(that’s why they do it, that’s why I’ve done it), but it seems to come from a totally different place and manifest itself more subtley: it’s the difference between silent agression and a rage-aholic. 

   I went to see a very cool thing this weekend: an exact replica of a 1700s merchant ship called the Götheborg.  What was interesting was that it took them 9 years to build this thing, starting in 1995.  In the 1700s, the original Götheborg was built in 9 months.  I was talking with a client about this, about the fact that we don’t really have real craftsmen any longer.  The talent seems to have disappeared when it comes to physical work pertaining to arts or crafts.  I almost decided right then that that is a good way of describing what I want to be when it comes to be body-a kind of body craftsman.  One that works to truly perfect and creates a real piece of art-not just a big piece of art.  This piece of art is least 3 dimensional, so it has to be perfected from many angles.  It can’t just be big.  It can’t just be good looking through the eyes of a bodybuilder.  It has to be appealing to the athlete, the artist, and the layman alike.  And it has to actually work.  It has to be a holy creation, a temple. 

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 10:50 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.