I’ve learned something interesting about writing in these past few weeks. Factoid number one: my creative brain turns to apple sauce during times of high stress. Factoid el dos: sometimes it’s best just to step away from the keyboard if it feels like the words aren’t working. As such, I now have half a dozen different posts in various stages of incompletion, some which may yet become a real boy sooner or later. But for now, they languish as I move on to greener pastures full of tastier verbiage.
This morning I woke up to the sound of raindrops hitting the skylight overhead in relentless watery waves. Since this is Seattle, it shouldn’t have surprised me too much, except that this storm felt much more determined than most, like it actually meant it. Back home in Massachusetts, when it rains, it tends to really really rain. Out here it’s more of a constant sullen drizzle. It inspired a pleasant sort of nostalgia, and I prepared for a day spent mostly indoors.
“Okay,” I told myself intrepidly, “this is a great chance to get some work done, exercise a bit, and do some serious writing!” Then I realized it was two hours later, and I’d been playing peggle for most of them. At that point, I found some motivation hidden in the couch cushions, and took advantage of an empty house to practice some karate.
Due to a night of odd sleep, my hips and shoulders were tighter than usual, requiring me to carefully coax them into loosening up while going through the movements of several kata. It’s a strange process, taking a tally of what different muscles are doing, attempting to impose conscious control over physiology that really just wants to do its own thing. While unknotting and realigning, I found myself walking through a hypothetical question, “How would one explain this to an engineer?”
Eschewing the more esoteric outlook of flows of energy through the body, or achieving a oneness of experience, you’re left with some interesting parallels to mechanical engineering. When tweaking a mechanical system, you want to make it more efficient, eliminating wastes of energy. The difference is, of course, that if a bearing or coupling isn’t working as well as you want, you redesign and replace it, but with the human body, you have to experiment, gain an understanding of what’s going on (why the hell do I feel off balance when I step forward in this position?), figure out how to correct it (ohhh, I have too much weight on my left leg), and practice the correction until it’s fluid and usable (hurray, I’m not off balance anymore).
Yes I agree, swapping your limbs out for robotic replacements that follow easy to input Java language programming would probably be a whole lot less work. Intelligently design my ass.
Following that thought, it’s even stranger from the software engineering standpoint. You’re starting out with a system (your mind and body) that was cobbled together over millions of years of evolution, a gigantic hodge-podge of genetic code assembled at random by throwing traits at the wall and seeing what stuck. It’s like working with Windows ME. The horror. So, the process of figuring out what processes are currently at work (muscular, skeletal and nervous systems), analyzing what functions control them (conscious and habitual thought), and then altering them greater efficiency also sounds like a tremendous pain.
But that’s where it gets interesting. By becoming aware of precisely what the body’s doing, how it’s doing it, and what thoughts are driving it, you’re achieving that oneness, though in less mystical sounding terms.
Really, it’s the equivalent of gaining root level access to the human operating system while playing with the hardware’s voltage for optimal performance. It’s not just exercise and practice, it’s hacking! Fun times!
Courtesy of the fantastic webcomic XKCD.
Unfortunately, I had this mental conversation with myself in the middle of my workout, and my right shoulder is still tempting me to just pony up for the cybernetic replacement. But fortunately or not, it’s still dreary as anything outside, so you may find me back here sooner than usual. For now though, I shall bid you adieu.
