Parables at the Gym

At the gym, I end up on a stationary bike right next to a man because the first one I choose needs maintenance. Normally, I listen to a podcast or a book on tape while I workout. The earplugs making it clear I’m not here for socializing. But today, I need something else.

Normally, I don’t choose to be right next to someone else because it feels like an invasion of space when there are other options (for instance, this long line of bikes in different sitting styles which usually lets a person stay far away from others). But today, circumstances require it.

As I adjust the bike to my height and fix the pedal straps, the man acknowledges that the bike I’d first chosen usually doesn’t work and that he had worried that I’d take his spot (he’d arrived just as I was settling in on the broken bike). 

“I see you here almost every day,” he says.   

Normally, I’d be wondering how to avoid having to talk but today, I could use a conversation. I make some idle chat about how it would be nice if the gym would perform regular maintenance on the machines. I’ve got strong ideas about how places/systems/the world should work and it’s not how places or systems or the world actually work.

In a perfect world… but it’s not perfect and I’m having a day when I’d like to complain. Which is why I haven’t called any of my friends because who wants to hear complaint? I don’t. Not even my own. Especially not my own. Besides, I can’t justify disturbing any of them during work hours (and if they don’t answer, I’ll feel even worse). Even while I know that sometimes the release of a disgruntled feeling allows fresh ideas to come in. It’ll just take too long to get the disgruntle out and no one has time for that.

I’d had an opportunity to talk things out earlier when my sister and I spoke on the phone and she’d asked cheerfully what I was doing. I’d said in an unenthusiastic tone, “Working on some writing and trying to figure out my life,” but I’d been unwilling to inflict my mood on her day (which perhaps sounds more altruistic than the reality of my reasons) or to take the time to acknowledge my irritability and work it out in a constructive manner (yes, I’m the heart of my own problem).

While I’m finally tapping into the part of writing that excites me again (the first time in a while), figuring out my life feels impossible. I can’t see it. Obstacles keep piling up and tripping me.  

It’s no wonder that I’m wanting a conversation. The one going on in my head is negative and while I know all the motivational, self-help, positive aphorisms, I don’t want to hear them (of course, I know that perspective is everything. Where my focus goes, the energy flows. Change my thoughts, change my world. If I don’t like the way something is, change it. Blah, blah, blah). It’s obvious to me that I’m vibrating at a bad frequency (disgruntled, complaining, self-pitying, blaming) and I’m hoping that a bout of cardio will jolt me into a better version of myself.

I set the resistance up a little and start pedaling.

“Don’t let anyone tell you that you can do whatever you want when you retire,” the man says. “I retired and then all I did was sit and eat and eat.”

Now, instead of that, he comes to the gym three hours every day.

“You really are a gym rat,” I say. “That’s great.”

He asks me what I do and I say I work from home. He asks what I specifically do and it comes out that I write (though I qualify, as I usually do, that I don’t make money from that) and I’m currently working on a novel.

“Is it a romance?” he asks.

“That’d be a good way to earn money with books, but no, I write literary fiction.” Then I explain what that means – stories that are more about a character and what happens to them internally than, say, external motivators such as car chases and gunfights.

“People want gunfights,” he says.

Yes, they do. We briefly discuss violence. Then he tells me he had a friend who wrote a book but wasn’t able to do anything with it.

“It’s a hard market to break into,” I say. “What was your friend’s book about?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “She sent it to me but it was something you click on the computer and I deleted it. Is your book a paperback?”

I tell him that I convert my stuff to efiles because printing them out would cost money though it would be fun to have something to have in hand. As we go along talking, it’s simpler to let him continue to assume that this book is my first novel and that it’ll be easy to publish it once I’ve finished it. It’s easier to let him assume many things such as that I’m as young as he is thinking I am or that my gym membership isn’t going to end in a couple of weeks.

“I like short stories,” he says. “There are two I really like. The first one is about an old man and a leaf. There’s a boy who meets with an old man and he sees a leaf and he asks the old man, ‘Should I move it off those branches? and the old man says no. A little bit later, the boy asks, ‘Should I move it off the rocks?’ and the old man says no. “You are worried about things that haven’t happened,’ the old man says.”

Or maybe he says the man says, “You are worried about things that might or might not happen.”

Or maybe he says the man says, “You are worried about things that won’t happen.”

It’s a truncated story, but I get the gist (I imagine that the leaf is rushing down a river. I can see it, the old man, and the boy. It’s like the story about the old man, the young man, the feathers, and the words that can never be gathered back up again, it’s like the adage of not being able to step in the same river twice, it’s like the parable of the two wolves and which one is fed). Anyway, I see this for what it is. A message to me. Because in trying to figure out my life, I’m also worried about things that might never happen. I’m worried about things that haven’t happened. I’m worried about things I don’t seem to be able to make happen. Things that won’t happen. Things I want to happen. Things that are currently happening. Etcetera.

In my current phase of trying to figure out my life, all I can see is the leaf caught up on the branches, the leaf plastered up against a rock.

Should I move it? Should I move it?

The message of the story is no. The message of the story is to stop worrying about silly things.

I’d been wanting a sign, some help, something (for once in a long time) to go my way. And perhaps this is it. This story. A reminder. The comfort of a conversation with someone on a day when I needed a conversation.

“What is the second story you like?” I ask.

“It’s about mean women.”

“Oh?” I say, surprised.

“About a woman who preys on men and when she sucks them dry, she leaves.” He moves his hands as if he’s fishing, and I think the term “catfishing” as vividly as if he’d embellished this story with all the details. Even so, it’s such a turn of the tables from the previous story that I am stuck in a kind of stunned silence. I can’t even say catfishing out loud.

Not at a loss because of my loss of words, he tells me he’s thought about writing a book but then let the idea go. 

“It’s hard work writing,” I say, really meaning it’s hard work to write something that’s good.

“I have crazy dreams,” he says. “I think about writing those down. In dreams the spirit travels to other places.”

And suddenly, I am thinking of my dad and the spirit world and visions and shamanism. Not of dreaming, but the waking world, or some other world. I’m thinking of the dreams—sleeping, waking, and in that in-between place between the two— that my dad had had while he was alive. I’m thinking of life, death, and spirits. A swirl of images and feelings that fill me up. Again, I say nothing about my thoughts.

“The flesh sleeps while the spirit travels,” the man repeats but with a shifting of words.

“It might not want to go to the places of nightmares,” I say.

“Nightmares are interesting places,” he says. And from the tone of his voice, I wonder what delightful nightmares he’s had for they haven’t left him in terror. 

“My mother used to read the cards for people,” he tells me. Somehow it fits the conversation. We might have said something in between, concluding thoughts about dreams and writing. But I can’t quite remember how we get to this. “But she only told them good things. She only told them the good things.”

“Like Tarot cards?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he spreads his hands out like he’s showing cards. “Cards. But she only told the good things.”

It’s nice to know the good things. It’s nice to be reminded of good things.    

The man’s bike ride is a warmup while my bike ride is my workout. When he’s done, he begins to gather his things. “Who was the boy in the snow?” he asks. “Frost maybe. Who said, ‘It looks so beautiful here, but I must move on.’”

With those as his parting words, the man leaves the cardio area to go downstairs to the weights.

I keep on riding. When I’m done, I take my things and head for the exit. He sees me as I go and we wave at each other. Gym friends. And today I’m grateful. For thanks to him and his conversation, I’m left with more hope than I’d had when I arrived while the leaf floats on down the river.