The Body and Motion

 

There used to be a time, so long ago that if you’re under a certain age you likely won’t remember, that air travel was glamourous. Yes, indeed. We dressed up to board a plane. No shlepping on board in baggy pants and sneakers. You walked on with wonder and anticipation. Everyone was unfailingly polite, and the flight attendants (air hostesses in those days), were like movie stars, stylish creatures from another planet.

And now? A slog through an airport, long lines, hauling out your liquids in little plastic baggies, being barked at to remove your shoes, and then the actual flight itself in a cramped seat with your head jerking and bobbing as you attempt to sleep, is something to be endured, something you’d give your eye-teeth to avoid, but how else are you going to hop across the pond?

When I was a child, living in Bahrain, we went every two years to Karachi for the summer, first by ship (which took a week) and then by plane (only a few hours!). The seas were often rough and choppy, and there was one time in particular, that every single person on board, other than the crew, was sick in their cabins, stomachs heaving. Everyone except my father and me. I seemed to have an iron stomach as a child, and my dad and I roamed the ship freely, enjoying the deserted decks and dining rooms and thrilled about being invited to the Captain’s quarters.

When we began flying, I transitioned smoothly to being a good flyer as well. While my sister barfed into her bag next to me, I enjoyed my meal, and then hers. The mode of travel was the adventure, arriving at the destination was a bonus.

Fast forward a few years, and suddenly, while on vacation in Mexico, out with my then husband on a chartered deep-sea fishing expedition, just the two of us in a small boat with a local fisherman, my tummy began heaving. I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging over the side of the boat, feeding the fish the contents of my stomach. The two men did catch a marlin, which a local restaurant prepared for us that night for dinner. I fully recovered the minute my feet hit solid ground. There’s a lot to be said for having your feet on terra firma. I’m a fan.

Then air travel too started to affect me, and I began popping Gravol before every flight to quell nausea (a condition I passed down to my daughter). I cannot read in a moving vehicle. I dislike being on the water in a vessel smaller than a ferry.

Isn’t the body a mysterious yet marvelous thing? One incident, and wham, it goes off on a different trajectory and suddenly motion sickness becomes something real and not something other poor suckers must endure. But the body moves and changes and recovers in even more inexplicable ways. Once I got pregnant, had my baby, air sickness just upped and vanished (and landed in my daughter). Another wondrous facet of our inner workings. No longer did I need Gravol on flights. Which is a darn good thing because I love to travel, but now it’s the destination that beckons, not the journey of getting there.

I am flying across the pond soon, and will be wandering around in Scotland, eating porridge, sampling whisky (not my beverage of choice), keeping my body and curiosity in motion, but only after I haul my sleep-deprived self out of the cramped airline seat, reminding myself that the body will recover.

If it cannae be the journey, then it will be the destination.

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A book I recently read and loved, and because it has the words BODY and MOTION in the title:

 

THE MOTION OF THE BODY THROUGH SPACE by LIONEL SHRIVER.  Remington (grandly named after a typewriter) and Serenata are a couple in their 60’s (already refreshing). He’s lost his job (and ergo his identity) and throws himself into training for a marathon and then a triathlon, urged on by a narcissistic personal trainer, putting his marriage in jeopardy.

This book is a satire on the cult of extreme fitness, the glorification of personal bests and counting steps. Shriver constructs the most glorious sentences as the main character, Serenata, mocks those “whose concept of self-improvement is integrally bound up in diet and exercise.”  Serenata, who previously ran and invented exercise before anyone caught on, but now has bad knees, derides “the language of vainglorious positivism”.

Shriver can write! If you are earnestly and utterly devoted to a fitness regimen, you may be miffed by the biting social commentary in this book, although it’s very cleverly done. You will surely though admire the ferocious wordsmithery.