Martin
7-17-16, 2:11pm
Hello,
one of my pastimes involves investigating and writing about, well, just anything that sticks in my head awhile. Sometimes these mediocre musings get into small magazines and local papers, as they are glad of anything that comes free.
Here is a short piece about a simple pleasure that I thought might be relevant to this forum.
Have you any ordinary activities or experiences that you quietly enjoy, whilst everyone else goes for the max?
AN INDULGENCE.
After years of living at 90 m.p.h. and thinking I was getting a life, my rather less racy indulgence in these days of slow, slow, restitution, is to take a bath.
Keith Richards does it; the Dalai Lama doesn't, but has two showers a day. Madonna does, with bubbles. But back in less fastidious days, Michelangelo didn't even take his boots off for a year, which set me wondering about all the things a young man could get up to in the course of a year, whilst still wearing paint spattered boots. Or, indeed, all the things he surely did not get up to, whilst wearing paint spattered boots.... even in Italy. ...still, he was quite busy.
Especially when my eyes ache, which they do when someone mentions quantitative easing, then, I like to sit in the bath for a while. A good while. My remedial bathing is done in monkish silence, apart from the spiders clumping about.
I have done the mixed sauna thing at various camps but sweat lodges never appealed. Turkish, Scandinavian and Japanese cultures all feature very hot cleansing and, I'm sure they leave a body feeling good, but are they natural? Where is the instinct that guides creatures to seek heat stress?
I have just stopped taking hot baths as I could feel my heart working much harder and I would get out having washed all my energy down the plughole. I could have used that to lift a cornflake.
Eskimos, and this is not altogether surprising, also disagree with me about hot cleansing. They have sauna type cabins, for men and women and, in the macho version, the stove is stoked until the pipe glows red.
Traditional Chinese philosophy holds that rinsing out over-used brains is just as important as physical cleaning, and a relaxing, quiet bath really does it.
I very often find, that when the monitoring of sensory inputs from the skin is cancelled out by warm water, my brain cell gets bored, hanging around with its hands in its pockets, and downloads some interesting ideas from somewhere. Archimedes had the same experience.
There's an art to good bathing and the Japanese are masters of it. Their pools are stunningly beautiful. If you Google "Japanese bath house images", you might be similarly impressed. The rituals are very refined and include the expectation that you are clean before entering, communally.
Native Americans were called savages by settlers, but the Americans were a lot more fastidious about keeping washed. According to the Encyclopedia Virginia, the whole tribe bathed in the river before dawn, in all seasons and, at sunrise, they made a ritual offering.
I'm well past naked communal bathing but, I can, if modestly covered in a wet suit and an overcoat, go in my local leisure centre, which has a choice of pools.
Science says that water immersion is, indeed, therapeutic and effective at reaching connective tissue. Water has properties which are unique to liquids, and astonishing discoveries are still being made.
So I don't like to sully my aquatic immersion with the slimy foam that makes me slither about in an industrial ester-scented waste of money. Just plain water will do.
In warm weather I have windows and doors open to let the breeze cool my head and shoulders. What is there not to like?
Spock.
one of my pastimes involves investigating and writing about, well, just anything that sticks in my head awhile. Sometimes these mediocre musings get into small magazines and local papers, as they are glad of anything that comes free.
Here is a short piece about a simple pleasure that I thought might be relevant to this forum.
Have you any ordinary activities or experiences that you quietly enjoy, whilst everyone else goes for the max?
AN INDULGENCE.
After years of living at 90 m.p.h. and thinking I was getting a life, my rather less racy indulgence in these days of slow, slow, restitution, is to take a bath.
Keith Richards does it; the Dalai Lama doesn't, but has two showers a day. Madonna does, with bubbles. But back in less fastidious days, Michelangelo didn't even take his boots off for a year, which set me wondering about all the things a young man could get up to in the course of a year, whilst still wearing paint spattered boots. Or, indeed, all the things he surely did not get up to, whilst wearing paint spattered boots.... even in Italy. ...still, he was quite busy.
Especially when my eyes ache, which they do when someone mentions quantitative easing, then, I like to sit in the bath for a while. A good while. My remedial bathing is done in monkish silence, apart from the spiders clumping about.
I have done the mixed sauna thing at various camps but sweat lodges never appealed. Turkish, Scandinavian and Japanese cultures all feature very hot cleansing and, I'm sure they leave a body feeling good, but are they natural? Where is the instinct that guides creatures to seek heat stress?
I have just stopped taking hot baths as I could feel my heart working much harder and I would get out having washed all my energy down the plughole. I could have used that to lift a cornflake.
Eskimos, and this is not altogether surprising, also disagree with me about hot cleansing. They have sauna type cabins, for men and women and, in the macho version, the stove is stoked until the pipe glows red.
Traditional Chinese philosophy holds that rinsing out over-used brains is just as important as physical cleaning, and a relaxing, quiet bath really does it.
I very often find, that when the monitoring of sensory inputs from the skin is cancelled out by warm water, my brain cell gets bored, hanging around with its hands in its pockets, and downloads some interesting ideas from somewhere. Archimedes had the same experience.
There's an art to good bathing and the Japanese are masters of it. Their pools are stunningly beautiful. If you Google "Japanese bath house images", you might be similarly impressed. The rituals are very refined and include the expectation that you are clean before entering, communally.
Native Americans were called savages by settlers, but the Americans were a lot more fastidious about keeping washed. According to the Encyclopedia Virginia, the whole tribe bathed in the river before dawn, in all seasons and, at sunrise, they made a ritual offering.
I'm well past naked communal bathing but, I can, if modestly covered in a wet suit and an overcoat, go in my local leisure centre, which has a choice of pools.
Science says that water immersion is, indeed, therapeutic and effective at reaching connective tissue. Water has properties which are unique to liquids, and astonishing discoveries are still being made.
So I don't like to sully my aquatic immersion with the slimy foam that makes me slither about in an industrial ester-scented waste of money. Just plain water will do.
In warm weather I have windows and doors open to let the breeze cool my head and shoulders. What is there not to like?
Spock.