STUDY WITH ALFONS

This morning I thought it’s no good to go from my apartment building straight into Starbucks, and sat down on a bench next to the pond, the one in front of Starbucks. I took a moment. A quarter attempt at stopping time. I waited until I could feel my posture, the bench under my behind, the way I held my chest and balanced my head on top of it, how the wind brushed gently over my cheeks, the warmth and moisture in the air, the smell of the trees and fish and algae, the distant sounds of cars and construction workers drilling, always hammering away with the dreams of the rich.

As I was indulging in my senses I was thinking of a recent email from Simon, from the North. I have no user tracking and no Google analytics on my blog, so I do depend on emails from readers for feedback. It’s nice to receive friendly, compassionate, like minded emails. Not for business, just a sharing amongst humans. 

As I was sitting at the pond I was thinking of language, and that the Vietnamese language is indeed such a distant accent of English, that linguists would go as far as calling it a different Sprachraum altogether. I giggled. How pretentious! I still had Neil Oliver in my ears, and how he pronounces “to go home”. I love the simplicity of the Scottish “o”, how it beams straight forward to the next letter, whereas the English perform some complicated artistry with the vocal apparatus in order to arrive at the end of it.

As so often these days, I was thinking of my childhood. “You’re different”, “You’re not like us”, “Alfons. Your name sounds strange.” The things the other kids living on the countryside said to me. “Where did they hear that first?” I’m thinking now, “Where did they learn such phrases? What happened to them, what was their harsh fate, in order to be able to think like this, in order to be able to talk like this?” My chin was leaning on my hand, my elbow on my thigh, my foot up on the rim of the pond. With my eyes I followed the goldfish in the pond. “There’s so many different types of goldfish in this pond.”

Castleton Green is a type of green color, dark green. Green is associated with nature, harmony, balance and youth. It fits the pond, and is a nice play on today’s blog title and the color Scarlet, my thinks.

Yesterday night I read stories from books written by a German lawyer, Ferdinand von Schirach. Fähner, The Cello, Funfair. True crime stories, touching stories, and quite shocking. Schirach seems to write from a perspective where he protects and sugarcoats for the ones he deems to be the good, the innocent, the victims, the righteous. Strange stance, for a lawyer, if you’d ask me. How can we overcome experiences of harassment and negligence? I think Moshé Feldenkrais had a lot to say to that account. A string with a noose is just a very poor choice. In fact, no choice at all. “Death is the end of all suffering, and all good things as well,” Moshé Feldenkrais used to say. Moshé Feldenkrais said we need choices, that’s why he’d been teaching so many ways of one movement. Only with a multitude of choices can we truly choose, and are we truly free.

A short goldfish with a very red and very big and very round head surfaced from the Castleton green water and nibbled at some debris that’s been pushed around by the light breeze. Food, not food, food? His big round mouth opened and closed and opened and closed.

They somehow failed to process me in school. They failed to make my mind compliant. They failed to make me trust and believe in them. How many of my kind are there? Scrap goods. But unlike waste, scrap has value.

This morning, before coming down to sit at the pond, I was listening to the podcast episode History, Truth & the imagination by Neil Oliver. He talked about Homer, and how Homer was one person or maybe many people, and he talked about the moment The Iliad was put to writing. Somehow that stroke him as the most important thing of it. The writing. But as I was listening I was waiting. I was waiting for Neil to come through with the story of The Iliad as it was before writing. But he didn’t mention it. Not a word of it. I felt being sold short, sourly so. I don’t know why, why didn’t Neil mention it, he of all people. “Why didn’t you mention it, Neil?” Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote it down, though, in her book The Enchanted Hour:

“In ancient Greece, a rhapsode did not read from a book. He was the book. His memory held, among other works, the two great epics of Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey. He would pull them from the shelf and read them aloud, so to speak, when he recited them.” 

“Today, if you pick up a printed and bound copy of The Iliad or The Odyssey, what you may notice first is not the richness of the storytelling but the sheer size of the thing. It is still incredible to think that once upon a time people commited them to memory. Not only would a good rhapsode have both stories stored in his head, but he would be able to pick up either tale at any point and recite onward without a hitch. This is mastery of a sort that has become foreign to most modern people [..] few of us today have anything approaching the interior resources of a rhapsode.”

Well, maybe rhapsodes existed only after the books were written. Tomaito tomato. I shall read a bit now. Sherlock Holmes The Complete Novels And Stories is the book I purchased yesterday, I passed up on Homer. Even though the book with its golden covers and carefully crafted typeset looked gorgeous on the shelf. No, the English tongue it is, or should I say the Scottish, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887 A Study in Scarlet, “What say you to that, dear reader?”

As I awoke this morning I found myself lying on my belly with my feet hanging over the edge of my bed. Obviously I don’t have a pet cat. I wiggled my toes, then the ankles of my feet. “Mm hm.” My head was turned to the left, easy for me. “I haven’t put my hands on my back in quite a while,” me was thinking. And I was surprised by the lack of range of motion when I did. My right hand could slide a bit to the left and to the right over the small of my back, but couldn’t slide up between my shoulder blades, let alone touch its fingers to my neck.

“We haven’t been on a beach vacation in a long time!” Would that expression be equivalent to that of the hands on the back traveling up to the neck? Can our hands take journeys over our bodies just like our bodies take journeys over the physical world, The planet Earth, that sprouted our bodies?

And what if, let’s say, if there’s a road block? What-if there’s no roads at all? How would we get anywhere? Put a jungle machete to the undergrowth? Force the convoy over the mountain? How will I make my hands travel up to in-between my shoulder-blades on my back? Would a long and far journey of the hands to regions less developed for tourism take a longer, more thorough preparation and longer traveling time as well?

I was just flipping through Thomas Hanna’s book, Bodies in Revolt, and couldn’t figure out what the title is playing on. I was thinking there might have been a popular book called Minds in Revolt, the mindset of the human race in the 1960ties and 70ties viewed from a philosophical angle, but I couldn’t find such a title.

Freud, Reich, Lorenz, Piaget, Nietzsche, Feldenkrais… as I was turning the pages of Thomas Hanna’s book I started to wonder, again, Why bother? Why bother in this world we’re living? Why bother with anything of any depth, when everybody else is hooked on scrolling Insta and Tik Tok? Why do people look for exercise programs when what they really are looking for is being heard, acknowledged, integrated in a community, loved? And maybe the one thing that would sooth their pain is the one thing they refuse to even look at?

Well for me it’s more difficult. I can’t seem to find deliverance and absolution in barbells and steamed chicken breasts. I slid down a rabbit hole of sorts and I can’t help but wonder how deep it goes. Might be this rabbit hole doesn’t end in a heap of sticks and dry leaves and another long passage, though. Might be it’s just a hole in the ground. A hole filled with trash, like most everything in nature that was once pure and pristine and stunningly beautiful.

Asian workers are strong. Stronger than anything the Western world of athleticism and fitness has to offer. At least that’s my opinion. And they sport far stronger, more natural looking bodies too, in my opinion. Asian workers work 7 days a week, only god knows how many hours per day, and most of the year round. They work hard manual labour with little help from large scale industrial machines. In the past few centuries they built thousands of miles of high-speed railroads in Asia, millions and millions of residential buildings, many of them 30 stories high or higher, a million miles of roads, hundreds of airports and large scale train stations, and they did put the cables in the ground as well.

Asian workers are the pinnacle of human strength and endurance. Yet they look nothing like the Western ideal of strength and fitness. Asian workers are slender and can wear shirts without filling the upper sleeves like bloated sausages. Despite their mind boggling strength and endurance they can stand tall and relaxed and they can squat. Indeed they can squat. They can work in a squatting position for hours. The squat is not a constraint, but a very flexible starting and resting position for moving into a large variety of demanding other postures. Asian workers are flexible, strong, well coordinated, and very creative in their movements.

Asian workers define the rules of Western Biomechanics that say, “The human spine can’t be flexible AND strong.” And yet here they are, flexible AND strong.

Meanwhile, there’s a flood of famous Youtube fitness trainers teaching How to squat. And in doing so—some of them—make more money in a month than the average Asian worker makes in a year, maybe even in a lifetime. When I look at these famous fitness Youtubers I can’t help but wonder, “Will the West finally forget how the Asian squat even looks like?”

In the light of this rather dramatic forgetting… I mean… why is this even happening? Is it the lockdowns? Do Western people not travel to Asia anymore? Do Asians living in Western countries not squat in public? Are Asians who work in Western countries as landscapers or contractors, do they not move like Asian people? Is nobody paying attention anymore? Or is nobody looking at each other anymore?

I thought I might go around here—in Vietnam—and film and shoot a little bit of local people squatting, make a video on that… but then I realised that my contribution will be naught in comparison to big fitness Youtubers. I would spend an entire week of work and then probably get a thousand views and that would be that. And it’s not like Western culture and society isn’t falling apart anyways. What is a woman? Why would anyone care about real Asian squats and manual labour and culture in Asia? Why should I bother?

Well, of course. Because I do care. And I love to share. And I love to think that someone is listening, someone who is compassionate, and understanding, and is not afraid to look at the world as it is. There is beauty. There are things that make sense.

Here’s a few photos I took in the past couple of weeks I would love to share with you. They are from my life, moments that I felt, that touched me. Maybe they might mean something to you too. Have a great day, my dear.

A fisherman on Phu Quy Island, Vietnam, “preparing” Sea urchins, and a tourist watching him work. It’s one of the most loved local-tourist attractions on this small island to wander the ocean floor at low tide and look for Sea urchins, collect them, and have them grilled for dinner. For us Westerners the fisherman might look to have a somewhat bent or broken middle back, but after 20 minutes of working in this position he stood up to stand tall and upright and relaxed just fine, showing no signs of fatigue or sourness.

A couple of kids running to go catch some Sea urchins. The beach is very busy during low tide. Even some stray dogs are out and about to forage on that strange ground.

Anne and Linh squatting, resting, looking at an interesting thing they have found, sharing findings.

Linh squatting down to get a better look at the Blue starfish we have found. Squatting is a good method to get the eyes a bit closer to the floor.

Two early birds sitting at the beach side at 5:30am, chatting, and watching their friends taking a bath. If you look closely, the woman on the left is sitting on a thin cushion.

Thư looking at tiny oysters. I too didn’t know that there are mini versions of oysters, but of course, small comes before big. I was shocked to learn that all of them have already been cracked open and collected by local fishermen.

Thư sitting on the floor for resting, then coming up to squatting and finally standing.

And last but not least me myself, with my stiff legs and all, I too enjoy a good squat, to the best of my abilities.

For most of human history walking was not a fitness exercise. Mankind walked and ran to get from one place to another. It was a means of transportation. Only recently walking and running was turned into fitness. 10,000 steps a day to keep you fit. Nordic walking. Jogging. Running. The Ultra Marathon. Walking became the means to its own end. All fair and good. In the same spirit I don’t think that the Asian Squat per se is a fitness exercise. I think it’s a posture of daily life, a posture for action, for doing something, even if that action is just looking at something, or resting and enjoying a breather. It’s a posture like any other, like standing, or side-lying, or kneeling. And is probably best maintained by including it in one’s active movement repertoire, and by not being stressed out over it, me guesses.

Doctors always told me that you can only get sick if you’ve been infected or in contact with a virus. I want to tell them that if you drive your motorbike along the coastline of the Pacific Ocean for 4 hours in a sweaty T-Shirt and a sunburn then you can get just as sick, virus or not.

Actually it started on the ferry (Phu Quy Island to Phan Thiet). The day was stormy and all ferry rides but one were cancelled due to the strong waves. Inside the ferry every passenger seemed to fill half a dozen small plastic bags, a smell I couldn’t bear and I didn’t want to contribute to. So I was sitting on the upper deck outside, my once windproof jacket getting soaked with sea water, my hoodie fluttering hard against my ears, and two dozen Vietnamese men struggling to keep their cigarettes alight.

Even after all that I did somewhat well. But of course, the next day I needed to catch the first sunlight at 5am and walk along the windy beach, sweaty all over again, here it’s always around 30°C (86°F). Also, here in Vietnam at 5am the beach is already very crowded, people of all ages are out and about doing exercise, chatting, bathing. I’m pretty amazed at how well seniors can move here, I would say most of them are stronger and more flexible in their hip and shoulder joints than I am. How could I miss to see that? Of course I went out to the beach, despite my beginning cold, and joined in with a bit of head and shoulder circles.

Finally, the 3rd day in a row of strong winds, strong sun, and wet clothes did me in. I haven’t been sick like that in a decade or more. I think the last time was food poisoning in China, in 2008.

Anyways, I was lying flat like an overcooked zucchini, with my eyes too painful to keep them open, but I had my feet hanging over the edge of the bed and did hours of movements with my ankles and toes. These movements were easily available to me and I enjoyed exploring.

I was thinking of a French guy I saw at the beach. For most of the day I seemed to be the only foreigner around, so he immediately drew my attention. I saw him from his back at first, and was thinking, “Well that’s unusually inflexible feet, the entire legs actually, like two wooden sticks. How could a Vietnamese have such stiff legs?” Vietnamese people in general are very flexible, and exercise their flexibility all day round. You hardly see a Vietnamese person in a stiff position like us Westerners for any length of time. Only when the guy turned around I though, “Oh,  french”. Not that I knew, but I knew that back home in central Europe we don’t squat much. The British high society considered squatting impolite. It would actually be interesting to read a historical record/account of why people in central Europe don’t squat, and why a certain aristocratic stiffness of all joints seems to be the more appropriate body posture than a flexible one.

Anyways, I found interesting questions concerning the bending of my knees (after the feet movements, in lying prone on my belly, I was playing with pressing one or both knees against the bed, to see how this relates to my hip joints, shoulders, and feet). I was still thinking about my previous post, and the lack of dreams and mystery. I was a bit unhappy of how that writing came out, and was looking for a positiv turn, light, hope, something uplifting, with joy.

There’s a way of moving that can lead us into the unknown, into the realm of mystery, into making great, unexpected, meaningful discoveries about movement and sensing and feeling and thinking. And I suspect that this path does not reveal itself with common instructing nor exercising. There’s more to movement than the feeling of victory when having aced an instruction or struck a new personal record. Concerning teaching, the fitness instructions I see on Youtube—by most influencers and fitness professionals—are like the sun: with the sun out it’s impossible to see the stars. On the other hand, to stick with that sun and stars metaphor, we need light to see things. Although, however, we can still think and feel and sense and move under the light of the stars, me thinks. Probably there’s a time and place for everything.

I have the feeling I’m getting better again. Yesterday I couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to even read a single page, but now, look at me, I finished a blog post! Wish you a great day, or night, my dear.

So… I was browsing the winner’s list of the Hugo Award for Best Novel (an award given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories.) I first clicked on titles I’ve already heard of, like Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and then also peeked into the Wikipedia pages of titles I’ve never heard of before.

I looked at the dates, 1953 onwards, it seems to me that there was a theme—an air and dreaming—of the development of humankind. If we humans had evolved just a bit more, we would have developed telepathy, levitation, bilocation, telekinesis, precognition, instant and remote healing, eternal youth, freedom of the mind and body (and all that) and many psychic powers as listed so eloquently in, for example, various Indian religions that seemed to have influenced Western dreaming.

Fast forward to the year 2022. Nowadays people dream of being able to have a safe place to sleep without having to worry about next month’s rent, being able to afford electricity, food, medical services and their data plan. And as far as the development of humankind is concerned: being able to sit and walk without being crushed by pain, maybe even being able to perform some Insta-worthy acrobatic feats, and being somewhat free of common chronic diseases, including restlessness and restless legs—this sort of things—seem to be the height of all striving. What a harsh adjustment of dreams for society in general, me thinks. Where’s the mystery? Where’s the unknown? Where are our dreams? What is life without dreams and visions and goals for humankind?