Small ripe avocados, dark and rough, yet inside a pale green, smooth and luscious. Pontiac potatoes, covered in red earth, powdery white yellow inside. Sugar snap peas, eaten whole, crunchy, marked with imperfections, the taste crisp, green, refreshing. Ginger, juicy, nobbled, growing in mishapen clumps, inside is almost green, piquant, invigorating.
This
shop had everything, colour, texture, touch and taste. All in a cardboard
box, paper bags and string. Doing my bit for the environment and enjoying
its textures at the same time.
My
shoulders are more noticeable, they are all bunched up; I can feel the
muscles pushing on my throat uncomfortably. The back of my chest feels
like there is a pressure pushing against it, I don't know what that's about.
So
I do what I always do when I feel this way - I should say, what I've done
for the past 12 years. My eyes close, I inhale deeply, letting my shoulders
rise up towards my ears, breath, breath, breath, all in, filling myself
to where is hurts the other way.
Then
HAAAAaaaah, let it all out. drop the shoulders down and back, let that
tension go, really check it, and chase it out of the muscles with sticks.
But
I'm at work, so I can't really do that. Weird looks if I go HAAAAaaaah!
in the middle of the office.
So
an abridged version, then. I drop my shoulders as I slowly exhale that
last breath, and feel fingertips of lost girlfriends tracing circles on
my skin. The tingle of their missing touch pulling stone from stress.
Three
more times, each exhale bringing more tingle, more feeling of a phantom
backrub.
An
expansion of my chest on the breath in, in all directions, filling my back
and sides as well as my chest, a tensing in my stomach to push the air
where I need it.
Feel that last breath hummmmmmm itself up and out of my nose, feel it deep in my lungs. Pull the stomach up, pull the chest in, the fire bruning away the last of the unused energy tightening me up.
And afterwards, I feel the same. Still tense, still a knowledge of pain in my lower back and neck. But it's a little quieter now. I can feel my injured knee reminding me to see the doctor, my broken throat warning me that again, tonight, I won't be able to swallow my dinner like a normal animal. Like a normal person.Even a chill on my forehead, that feeling you get just before you are caught cheating, caught with your hand in the cookie jar. That rush of fear and wrongness; and I have it sitting at my desk. Sitting in front of a computer making money creating nothing useful but by those who also sit and make money all day.
The
sun's going down. I think I'll leave a little early today, get home before
everything really ices over, so I can take care of the dog and eat dinner
before it's time to head over to the Karate Dojo.
Some
physical exercise to break the mode, destroy the day in a hundred pushups
and a hundred curls. Kicks, punches, chops, rolls.
Close
my eyes and go HAAAAaaaah without anyone looking at me funny.