The Mellow Memories of My Muzzled Muscles.

After watching Srama meekly subjecting herself to the will of a Muscle with a Memory, I hurried to inspect the state of affairs closer home . It had never occured to me before now that my Muscles could have a personality of their own . Some fundamental facts of life go unnoticed unless pointed out by someone.


The idea of Muscles having a kind of consciousness, in the form of Memory, spooked me. Bunches of fiber being autonomous entities within the Body Republic ! If that is not creepy , what is ! ....omg, i can feel them inside my limbs now, like those ghastly body- invading Alien critters from BGrade Hollywood, scheming colonisation by insidious infiltration .......yech !


Nature must have had a quirky sense of humour when She endowed muscles unnecessarily with something that would have been hugely beneficial , and endlessly thanked for, had it been granted to the Brain instead. You know, there used to be talk once that the Brain is a muscle too. But somewhere along the way, someone must have woken up to the fact that while Muscles in other locations never forget anything, the Brain does lose files now and then . And so it is that the Brain stands excommunicated from the Fraternity of Muscles, though it has the same slimy, ashen complexion of its erstwhile cousins downstairs and the same tendency to laze and fall asleep if not slavedriven to labour at least a few hours a week.


Memories are dependent upon Experience for their very being. So, while my calf muscles have memorised walking and shuffling , they are quite innocent of Running. I am not famous for prescience , but I am quite pleased with myself for not having burdened my leg muscles with bitter childhood memories that would scar them for life . The last time I Indulged in a motion called Running was when my instinct for self preservation ordered me to make myself scarce from the playground , where a stray dog had mistaken my kind present of a Rusk for an abusive rock and had indicated he was not amused. I was then a frivolous seven years old and my equally young and frivolous leg Muscles failed to upload this experience into its Memory Archive. Perhaps as a post-trauma memory-blackout reaction.
I havn't Run since then . Neither out of own Free Will ; Nor driven by any OCD afflicted Muscles . No Running Races at school. No Robber-Police games outside it. A Dream Run of a life !


Which brings me to an as yet unsolved puzzle .
Why does Running continue to figure as a Sport in schools ? I can understand 'schools ' in ancient Hunter Gatherer societies teaching the young ones skills indispensable for their living. Javelin throwing and Running would have been Top Curriculum. With no food bounding away from our grasp, and no potential food streaking after us in hot pursuit, we now have little use for the same in day to day transactions. Yet, along with the three Rs, this fourth R is also being so religiously trained into kids , that when the poor sots grow up, the wretched, remembering leg Muscles give them no peace till they do their bidding : Run .
On Pavements at dawn, on treadmills during noon , in Marathons on occassion. People run. Driven by Memories that are not even their's but their Muscle's ....... The tragedy of Human Bondage.


It gladdens my heart to report that I have tamed the shrewish Independent Will of my Muscles and have successfully trained them to do only precisely described chores . And not any other pointless activity : Like donning tracksuits and fleeing from phantoms . Or hurtling on highways, in half drawers , with one thousand people not getting anywhere, purportedly spreading Awareness . Of Breast Cancer/ Rights of Girl Child / Endangered Animals / pickyourcause ( Which Awareness can be spread through mobile phones , as per the idea of a certain Sirji, with more effective reach and less wear and tear to tendons. )


My sheltered and cosseted Muscles, unplagued by nonessential Memories, cheerfully keep to their pavlovian brief of cooking, cleaning, banking, shopping, driving, pretty much all homemaking, leaving me free to do what I enjoy most : Daydreaming and searching for Myself.

 

Dear Jayasala


Its good to be reassured that my brain muscles are healthy, even if my leg muscles may not be.
Your kind hint that I could be more accessible in my posts is taken in the right spirit ; will try to rectify the deficiency in future writings.
Thank you for the feedback, Jayasala

 

Thats my girl, Srama ! An expectedly spirited tract the Running society will be proud of. Loved it. Always nice to see the view from the otherside and understand what makes people tick in predicaments...sorry...situations , the experience of which i am never to know. I have nothing but admiration for your Running Meditation but, all the same, much prefer having a Meditation running in my mind , even as my pampered muscles warm the old sofa.:hide:


Ah, yes, the money . The Ends are Important of course . But it occurs to me that
a) Marathons were once run with no monetary goal in sight and b) Donations for Causes pour in even when people just sit or hug or sing in Public Squares , with a Sign Board in the background. Anyway, I have no qualms in admitting that I have given the occassional cheque to Marathoners too. I dunno about others, but in my case its like outsourcing unpleasant work for a reasonable fee.


Keep working,nay, keep Running towards your goals, my good Srama and if yourOlympian friends do crack any mysteries , kindly pass on the knowledge to benighted me .
Thank you ,Srama.

 

Dear Vishwa,


I am familiar with Bruce Lipton and his Biology of Belief. The animated charts he uses during his talks help even scholastically challenged people like me to clearly understand his theory. But those coloured pegs and cogs are not as creepy as the idea of muscles with Memory.
That certain functions of the human body are self regulated, ( Autonomic , Sympathetic , funny names like that ) was part of the General Science I learnt in 8th standard ages ago , when Lipton was just a tea . The idea implanted then was that the HumanBody is a cleverly constructed machine. It is only now ,with the emergence of Artificial Intelligence, that people seem to want not only man made machines , but naturally created machin parts too to have Intelligence and consciousness and memory and stuff ! I even came across a modern Primer that talks of Rubber having Memory because it regains shape after squeezed . Its the Nomenclature, see ? Perhaps Digital Age youngsters are comfortable with it, but to oldtimer me, it just feels spooky.


Not heard of that Kabbalist . But will explore right away. In anycase, the idea that the further into science one dives, the closer to Eastern Mysticism one arrives is as old as Robert M Pirsig, if not Einstein and Oppenheimer themselves. ( the latter ,allegedly ,having remembered the Gita :" Now I Am Become Death" when the first atom bomb went off ) And then, there are the transplanted sons of our soil, physicist Mani Bhaumik and neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran giving us uberscientific lenses through which esoteric vedic knowledge and spirituality can be understood more clearly.


Back to Muscles and Memories now, there is no need to indict 7 year old me for failing to make my good intentions clear to the recipient stray dog.
Action was right, aim went wrong. :bonk


Thankyou, Vishwa.