Well, I finally did it. I joined a gym. After cracking untold numbers of jokes about people who line up to sweat on cue, I am among them, sandwiched between the fat and the vain. This is not the first time in recent months that I have found myself a member of a club that wouldn’t used to have had me as a member, or rather, it’s not the first time lately that I will have become one of those people fun of whom some former incarnation of myself that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remember always used to make. This is one of the pitfalls of having a memory like a small sand pail with a hole the size of a large sand pail in the bottom: As one changes and progresses, as all people do (or at least should) in one way or another over time, especially those for whom change and progress are such important components of being alive—whether they take the long and winding road, as I have, from one identity to another by means of yet others as they search and wander, often forgetting where they came from or who they were intending to become by the time the next crossroad approached—I’m reminded now of one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, from Remain in Light (which was produced by Brian Eno and thus had a sound much different from most of the Talking Heads albums which might come to mind when the name is first mentioned) in which David Byrne sings

He would see faces in movies,
on TV, in magazines,
and in books.
He thought that some of these faces
might be right for him.
And through the years,
by keeping an ideal facial structure fixed in his mind,
or somewhere in the back of his mind,
that he might,
by force of will,
cause his face to approach those of his ideals.
The change would be very subtle.
It might take ten years or so.
Gradually his face would change its shape:
A more hooked nose,
wider, thinner lips,
beady eyes,
a larger forehead.
He imagined that this was an ability
he shared with most other people,
that they had also molded their faces
according to some ideal.
Maybe they imagined that their new face
would better suit their personality,
or maybe they imagined that their personality
would be forced to change to fit the new appearance.
This is why first impressions are often correct,
although some people might have made mistakes.
They may have arrived at an appearance
that bears no relationship to them.
They may have picked an ideal appearance
based on some childish whim, or momentary impulse.
Some may have gotten half-way there,
and then changed their minds.
He wonders if he too
might have made a similar mistake.

—as I was saying, as one changes and progresses, it’s difficult, even with a perfect memory and a mindful approach, to get a clear view of the series of incarnations through which one has passed and thereby deduce just a bit about one’s own overarching, lifelong development of self that is never quite apparent except perhaps at best as a symptom or a shadow in any particular phase of one’s life. ‘Incarnations’ may be too strong a word, but ‘personas’ is too weak, and ‘selves’ is too cliché, but there’s a real question there, and we all have to wonder from time to time: Who was that high school poet with a predilection for hallucinogens? Who was that naive girl who married the jerk? Who was that man who wanted so badly to become a photographer? There’s a tendency, after we grow up, change directions, or trade in old stale dreams for new ones, to write them off as immature or ignorant. But to dismiss with a wave of the hand and a “What was I thinking?” someone you used to be—someone whose only real fault is a lack of the hindsight that allows you to sit in such comfortable judgment now—is an ineffective attempt to pack the past up in a box, label it, shove it in the attic, and pretend that it will stay in the past. Those old misguided selves don’t disappear in the transition, and they shouldn’t be allowed to. They continue to hint and whisper and offer necessary advice as you continue to make silly decisions you may later regret. But then you have to wonder: Is there some culmination of self, toward which people work—drift? evolve?—or is it just a series of isolated events? You know what I’m getting at. Is there a main course? Or is this just one long hors d’oeuvre table? (“Ooh, the salmon plate is coming out. I’ve been waiting for this moment ever since the mini-wieners.”)

This is not the first time I’ve joined a gym. I tried it once before. I plunked down some embarrassing amount of money for three months of unlimited use of the Genoveva Chávez center (the first word of which, until I called there once, I did not realize is actually pronounced HEN-oh-vay-vah in Nuevo México. I’m sure I went at least five times during the first two weeks, and then suddenly I became very busy—frightfully busy, if I remember right, superhumanly busy. Busy men with much to do, important men rushing from place to place like the wind on a really windy day, or a recently-decupboarded cockroach in a tap dancer’s kitchen, cannot make time for exercise when the rest of the world demands so much of them so often.

But this time things are different. The shoe is on the other foot. I can feel it in my bones. Because it is quickly becoming apparent that the life of a research analyst is not one in which the heart beats regularly, if at all, in the course of an average day (nor do the eyes blink, but that’s not a condition for which exercise is an appropriate remedy), and possibly more important to the motivation of this particular research analyst, because there are only so many hours in the day that one can spend writing code and scrolling through data tables, some with literally 50,000,000 rows or more, something must happen in the middle. Don’t get me wrong: The job is interesting, challenging, and cool, on a level more abstract than that to which I have become used, as the accomplishments now accomplish themselves (with my help) on a scale of weeks or more, rather than in hours or minutes as it has been with previous jobs.

It also helps that this particular gym is more like a “health club” than a “gym.” At times I find myself worrying that they’re going to figure out soon that I snuck in and am using the whirlpool, but then I remember that I’ve paid for it, and that no one is coming to kick me out. Long gone must be the days when my friends and I would pack a backpack with swimsuits and six-packs, tuck our least crappy shirts into our least crappy pair of jeans, stroll confidently into the El Dorado hotel, acting very much as we imagine four-star hotel patrons act, and immediately take the elevator up to the rooftop pool, to which we would gain access using a key card stolen years before which had been passed down through numerous hands as carefully as the last frozen embryo of an extinct species.

The floors at my new health club are made of marble, and there are lots of plants and executives strewn around. And so it is that I now spend half of almost every lunch hour running on the running machine that’s not quite a treadmill, but nor is it a Stairmaster—because I have quickly deduced, from curious glances thrown my way when I did use one, in combination with my own observations, that only women use Stairmasters. So many rules to learn in this new and foreign world with its gender-specific exercise equipment! After spending some time trying to read the daytime TV closed-captioning as I bounce up and down on the gender-neutral running machine I chose in the end, I move over to the weight room and work out the pecs, abs, and lats for another half an hour or so until I hit the steam room, the showers, and then return to my computer and spend the afternoon finding new and clever ways to kick the data’s ass. It’s a nice existence, but one that I never before really considered would be mine.

But there’s some bad news, too. I had my first of three complimentary consultations with a fitness trainer yesterday, and can you believe it? He told me, after pinching me here and there with some device that supposedly measured my body-fat percentage, that I’m “out of shape”? In fact, he said, judged by body-fat percentage, my health is “poor” (the worst of the five possible health categories). He even showed me a chart that laid out the various health categories, and pointed to my position at the bottom. And so I have to ask, as one whose trade is in tables and charts: Isn’t health too esoteric and nebulous a concept to be shoved into rigid categories such as “good” and “poor”? Isn’t that just one more example of arrogant monkeys thinking they can dissect the knowable world into little chunks that their puny little monkey brains can digest? I think so anyway, and I’m sure you agree.

in czech, the word for "strong" is also used for "heavyset" so you could always just come back. forget about those dumb monkeys: poor indeed! you are STRONG! and then, once you're here, i'll let you use my bike and i promise not to laugh at you for using the girly equipment.

as much as i love that song, i always have a weird feeling: why would anyone want to change himself into that description? it's like: sir? you absolutely have made a similar mistake! sorry!

Well, you learn something new every day. I had no idea that Stairmaster(TM)s were only for women. There is one in my house that I never use. I thought it was simply because it seemed like an incredibly boring way to spend my time, but it was really my innate primitive masculinity asserting its presence. On the other hand, I can't quite explain why I am usually the only guy in my Cardio kickboxing class at the park district.

Quote - 'it’s not the first time lately that I will have become one of those people fun of whom some former incarnation of myself that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remember always used to make'

'nuff said - MDO