On Relaxation

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - On Relaxation

I spend most of the day on my feet, walking and carrying things. When I come home, I often put in further hours sitting upright at a computer. So when I finally relax, I want to be horizontal. When I had a standard couch in the apartment, I often found myself drifting to the floor, where I could "gap and stretch", and feel some freedom.

The couch is no more, chucked into the trash. I now have a futon that is never folded up in sofa position. Instead, it's unfolded in the "bed" position, permanently. My idea of living in a living room takes its cue from classical antiquity. The ancient Greeks had it right: relaxing, entertaining, and socializing are best done horizontally. That position keeps my proprioceptors happy. I don't really need to have slaves plucking grapes and dropping them into my open mouth, but I do want my alone time to be sensuous, self-indulgent, and free of stiff-necked discipline. The Epicurians had it right. None of that Stoic nonsense for me, and go tell the Spartans they're a bunch of goofs.

I'll never be one of those strange creatures who fills every minute with useful labour, and sacrifices pleasure for ambition. I have no more ambition than a daisy does. A little bit of sunshine in a meadow suits me more than standing on a podium and accepting an award (something I now doubt will ever happen). Competition leaves me cold. If I do something, I usually don't care if someone else does it worse or better. I enjoy my own knowledge and abilities, but don't see any point in finding out where they rank in comparison to other people's knowledge and abilities. School bored me to tears, marks meant nothing to me except irritation. Knowledge, from the moment I began to look and read, seemed to me strictly for my own private pleasure. Some nosy boob "evaluating" my knowledge, or urging me to compete with some random bunch of other people for marks or little tinfoil stars just struck me as idiotic. This view was firmly in my mind by at least the first grade. So was the belief that relaxation, the splendid art of doing little or nothing in the most enjoyable way, is a noble pursuit. Cats, nature's greatest masters of relaxation, should be our guides in this. When cats relax, their bodies dissolving into a semi-liquid state, they purr. Humans can, and should purr. Once a friend remarked that I was the only person she had ever met who really purred. I took this as the most pleasing compliment I have ever received.

Relaxation comes in two main categories: with friends, and alone. Relaxing with friends is subtler, because it needs a special art to maintain its purity and innocence. But I only wish to meditate, right now, on relaxing alone.

I've just finished a nice little bit of relaxation, and while my writing about it presupposes that I'm not actually doing it, I'll write about it in the present tense to evoke its texture:

On this particular occasion, all the elements of fine solitary relaxation have lined up like the planets in grand conjunction. The preceding day was exhausting, with a lot of hustle and bustle done in hot, humid weather. But now, I'm basking in air conditioned bliss. Let those who despise technology contemplate the world before air conditioning. (There's nothing more amusing to look upon than a profusely sweating luddite.) I'm freshly showered, freed of tormenting shoes and clothes, and gratefully sprawled on the futon. No pilgrim to Lourdes, throwing away his crutches, ever felt the gratefulness that I feel for that futon. If someone were to run into the room screaming that I've won the Nobel Prize, I would tell them "If I have to get up to get it, I don't want it."

Everything in my apartment, by slow evolutionary increments, has come to be in its most convenient place. Things I want practically leap into my hands unbidden. Even the pillows seem to want to fluff themselves. Later, perhaps, I'll watch an old science fiction film, or perhaps a harmless sitcom that a more serious person would sneer at. But at the moment, I'll let music wash over me like an incoming tide, and read something. First, Ralph Vaughan Williams' third symphony, the fine "pastoral" one. Then some old BBC Essential Mix from the golden era of 1993. Then some Ali Farka Touré.

Supper is already made and eaten. It was effortless: a lamb kebab pan fried with tandoori paste and tossed onto some couscous and peas.

The animals have tired of chasing each other back and forth, and have come to join me. The larger cat has curled up on the pillow to the left of my head. The smaller cat and the rabbit are stretched out beside each other next to my right lower leg. The bong and the stash are empty, and there's no alcohol in the house, but I'm in the mood for reading with a clear mind. Another time, a toke or a shot of scotch would hit the spot, but this time, a home-made malted milkshake it more to my liking.

Now, a situation like this needs the right book to make it perfect. I'm not in the mood for fiction, and definitely not in the mood for anything related to the article I'm writing. Fortunately, I have the perfect thing at hand, found in a small town bookshop: Aubrey Burl's Prehistoric Avebury. This allows me slip into a gentle reverie.

I'm very fond of Avebury, that most delightful of all prehistoric monuments. I've been there twice, but on neither occasion had the time or money to take it in properly. For Averbury is the focus of one of my best relaxation fantasies. If I could swing it, I would spend a week there. Every day, I would take my breakfasts in the bay window of the Red Lion Pub, which sits right in the middle of the great circle of sarcen stones. That's the special charm of Avebury. There's an English village right on top of it, mingling with the stones and avenues and the circular trench and embankment. Oh, it's all very fine for Stonehenge to loom mysteriously on the empty stage-set of Salisbury Plain, looking all spooky and oozing mystical oompah-pah. The hippies love it. But Avebury's magic is subtler, and appeals to me more. The domestic setting, with cottages, a pub, high street shops, and a church superimposed on the five-thousand year old megalithic monument, like an accidentally double-exposed film negative, makes for a powerful evocation of the depths of time. Perhaps human sacrifices were performed at the post office, and who knows what orgiastic, Pan-like rites were performed where now the Anglican communion is held. The wonderment is, like the Purloined Letter, hidden in plain sight, and all the more wondrous for that.

After each daily breakfast, I would amble casually to some of the archaeological items that lie scattered within a mile or two of the village. They are quite varied, and most of them are rarely visited by anyone but local farmers and archaeologists. Without background knowledge to give them meaning, most have little appeal to the day trippers and New Age innocents who are drawn to the big stones. Anyway, I would probably do this in the off-season. I'm Canadian ― I don't mind a little chilly weather, and don't enjoy crowds. When the sun goes down, I'll retreat to the pub for a pint of best bitter, and enjoy the pleasant talk of an English country pub.

Come to think of it, such a week of relaxation would be all the sweeter if I came to Avebury, not by bus (like the last time) or hitch-hiking (like the first time), but by walking the full length of the Ridgeway. This is the oldest known "road" in England. Actually, it's a humble foot-path that winds for 85 miles (137 km) from Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire, through the Chiltern and Berkshire hills, past the Iron Age fort at Uffington and the Vale of Whitehorse, and ends just to the south of Avebury, near Silbury Hill, the most mysterious of all British prehistoric monuments. Such a distance is nothing, for me, especially with regular opportunities for a ploughman's lunch along the way.

That little fantasy is in the spirit of some of my finest moments of relaxation. I have some real-life ones under my belt that equal it.

One I especially cherish in memory occurred in the desert and mesa country of northern Arizona. There was a hidden box canyon, well off any well-trodden trail, where was hid, at least for a brief season, a pool of crystal clear water under the shade of a red-rock cliff. Not orangy-brown, not sandstone red, but blood red, the cliff was. I spent two carefree days there, nursing a sprain and a broken toe. The splendid setting made the pain seem trivial. I did absolutely nothing except take dips in the cool water, tend the fire, and look at the stars. No wasted time was ever less of a waste. The solitude ended only when two Navaho shepherd boys arrived. This occured at the precise moment when it seemed right to break the spell of solitude. Since I was a trained shepherd myself, there was a commonality to ease acquaintance. I followed them out of the canyon, and up the mesa. But that starts another, irrelevant story.

Forests and mountains figure prominently in my catalog of Great Relaxations. One can be as snug and comfortable out of doors as in the cosiest of apartments, if the conditions are right. One British Columbia mountain meadow, with a breathtaking view of rainforest, glaciers, mist and sea, was so esthetically overwhelming that it often pops up in my dreams. The climb to it was exhausting, and I don't take well to thin air. Rest was a necessity, so perhaps I shouldn't count it as "relaxation". But I lingered past the strict necessity of recuperation.

Among fine acts of relaxation, I would definitely include pauses on journeys on the Canadian Shield. These have been too numerous to keep track of. They all contained the same elements: a lake, or a swimable river; precambrian rocks scattered about for furniture; a crackling fire cooking fresh trout; blueberries and raspberries handy for the picking; a well-made teepee; some ragged paperback books stained with sweat and crushed mosquitos; loons calling; whiskeyjacks singing; and a soft breeze to keep the blackflies at bay. What does civilization have that can compete with it?

Well, there is one form of relaxing that requires quite a bit of civilization to support it, and is hardly ever celebrated by writers and philosophers. I don't think Thoreau would approve of it. It's too mundane to attract the poets. But it's just as "spiritual" in its own way. I don't own a car, and it's been a long time since I have, but this is what I most miss about having one. It's extremely relaxing to drive your car aimlessly along country roads, with no timetable, no destination, no place where you have to be. Just driving for no reason, following a road because you like the look of it, playing roller-coaster on the badly graded hills and dips, kicking dust and pebbles behind you. That's when a car feels like a home, not a mere transportation machine. Better yet is to drive for hours, late, late at night, on a nearly empty highway, listening to obscure radio stations emerge from static, play some half-forgotten tune from another era, then ebb and fade back into the static sea. This is wasteful of gas, but fulfilling of the spirit. It works best in Canada, where empty highways snake mournfully across shadowy moonlit landscapes, and every Tim Horton's donut shop is an alabaster oasis in the ebon night.


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