Sometimes I think sittin' on trains...

"You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits."

Winter has arrived in Ape Town and I'm really enjoying the cool freshness. The rain is wonderful and the sound of it makes for excellent sleeping. The excuse to sit around all day watching movies is a nice bonus too, as the beligerant sun and smug blue sky of summer can get a bit much for moody old Britt. However, sitting around is not one of Chui's favorite ways to pass the hours (neither is spying her shadow in the sun and descanting on her own deformity, in case you were wondering), so today, contrary to the dour protestations of my much-deserved, most-unwelcome hangover, I went to the gym.

Rutam is a big fan of the gym these days, because she gets to go and hang out in the children's zone, where all is fun and games, of course. Why do we do this to children? We welcome them into the world with warmth and tenderness; we ply them with games, rhymes, toys, and balloons - and they think, "Hey, this being alive thing is pretty great. I like it here. The people are nice, they're entertaining me constantly. The food's pretty decent, if not great. But, hey, I can't complain. I don't have to lift a finger." And then, they get older and we give them chores and force them to read "Treasure Island" in seventh grade and after that they're on their own. Party's over, pal. The V.I.P. room is now closed.

Anyway, back to the gym. At certain times, there is no more bizzare an activity than whirring away on the elliptical, observing your fellow apes gasp and sweat and grapple with their own mortalities on the other motion machines. Today was one of those times. The scene was ludicrous: a man running up and down three little steps over and over; an enormous personal trainer crouching lasciviously over his petite, well-toned client (ostensibly helping to "release her hamstring", I'm sure); a dude swimming laps with a snorkel. (What was so terrific down there that he just couldn't bear to take his eyes away, even to draw a breath of air? The concrete? The blue line?) Not to mention, of course, the rowing machines, the ellipticals, the treadmills and the stairmasters. Rats in a lab, all of us.

I had Hector's ipod with me, which usually gets me pretty pumped about the trial, as it were, of lab rat-ism. He has some sweet tunage on that thing, bro. However, today, with the albatross of last night hung snugly about my neck and face (and inner ear, apparently), I just couldn't seem to jump over or duck-dive through the great waves of physical and emotional duress that were rolling my way from a vast ocean of real and imagined hideousness. I was by turns extravagantly dizzy, inexplicably sad, giddily nervous and very hot. Visibly, redly, highly unattractively hot. And that was just the first two minutes; they seemed to last longer than the wedding scene from "The Deer Hunter". Also, I was perfectly incapable (for the first seventeen minutes or so) of finding any tunes that would elevate, or at least stabilize, my mood. I listened to (in order): Bad Sun (The Bravery), The Horizon Has Been Defeated (Jack Johnson), Take Your Mama (Scissor Sisters), The Passenger (Iggy Pop), Rise (Eddie Vedder) and... wait for it. You can see how I was all over the place, listening-wise, entertaining a range of idioms and tempos. It wasn't until the very end of my elliptimania that I found (finally!) a piece that put me in the mood to get past the nuttiness of the human animal in the gym (and out of the gym: They had one TV tuned to Sky News (like British CNN - basically shallow, repetitive, sensationalist news coverage dressed up like serious reporting) and the next to some ghastly VHI entertainment involving something they called "reality", though I didn't recognize it as such. One of those shows that gives you a superiority complex, because you can't help but think, "Are other people really this dumb?") and actually go for the burn. The song was "Paper Planes", of course. I find it near-impossible not to grin like a loony when I hear that one. It goes straight to my brain and suddenly we're all just decent and healthy grown-up kids who think running is fun (because it's faster than walking, duh) and being able to see under water is absolutely fantastic, even if you're just in a pool. Everyone's a winner! Next time, I will go directly to M.I.A.. I will not pass Go. I will not collect $200.

At some point during the song, I realized that I was too tired to go for my usual 20 minute run, but I was keen enough on the whole elevated heart-rate business to keep with the cardio. For about thirty seconds, I toyed with the notion of getting on one of the rowing machines, until the (usually) still small voice inside me piped up, "What a silly idea! You suck at rowing!" (Was that my voice or God's? Does God think I suck at rowing?) Somehow, magically, possibly even divinely, "Paper Planes" finished exactly as my 20 minutes on the elliptical machine also came to their end. What bliss! What next? Without the song, the gym resumed its air of rampant strangeness and my body began again its unsettling flirtation with various air-headed fugue states. I needed to be alone, I realized. I needed to sit and stretch, to be good to my spine.

I went into one of the big studio rooms they use for classes. When empty, these are great oases of calm and gentle dimness and relative privacy within the loud, hectic and sometimes overpopulated terrain of the Virgin Active. Today, this one contained only two other people, both women. They were not exercising, but gabbing away gaily about one of their pasts as a burlesque review artist (I think). They were discussing costumes and props (Chinese fold-out fans). It seemed as though one were advising the other about something, but I couldn't be sure. I was in the farthest corner of the room from them, hanging upside-down like a bat. I was very content, positively wallowing in the serenity of the place. My spine was purring like a kitten, my neck was humming "Ode to Joy" and my hamstrings - well, let's just say that I don't need any "help" releasing my hamstrings. (Is this getting weird? I feel like it is.) At some point, as I gladly bended and twisted, another two people came in, a man and a woman. They got into some sort of his and hers lunging routine involving dumbbells and grunting. I liked them; they seemed earnest. All was fine. All was good health, peace and light. Until - the jump-rope guy.

He entered the room with unremarkable civility; I barely even felt his presence. But then, suddenly, without fanfare or warning, he commenced his terrible drill. I guess I've never really been in the company of an unbelievably aggressive jump-roper. I have certainly been delighted in my life to have known a few infectiously enthusiastic double-dutchers, but never a sole jumper with this kind of intensity. The man was a maniac. In that whole huge room, sparsely peopled by just five other souls, he somehow found it necessary to get as close to me as possible, without actually singeing me with the rope. (A point about this room - it has mirrors that run along two long walls so that one may admire one's lats or correct one's form, etc.) He positioned himself directly behind me, so that his head was eerily aligned with mine (on the vertical) when I looked in the mirror. He was jumping with such speed and ferocity that the whir of the rope in the air made a high pitched noise that sounded like the theremin in the theme to the second season of The Outer Limits. The snap of it on the ground was the vigorous clacking of a speeding train. The Jumper was oblivious to all of this though; the thin white wires ran from his ears. You know the ones. The thing was, despite his energy and obvious passion- he was skipping the crap out of that rope - he was not exactly Muhammad Ali in the skill department. He kept screwing up and tripping and that was even more calamitous than when he was actually on a roll. It was all very worrying. Just when I thought I was over feeling fragile and threatened by the presence of strangers (for the day), this guy had to come along. I moved to the other end of the room and found a bit of solace in draping myself hither and thither across a giant rubber ball. Nothing too perverse. The others in the room seemed untroubled by The Jumper's mad antics and I wondered if I might be being a bit sensitive. Perhaps my only-child privacy and space issues were cropping up somehow. Maybe I should just get used to oblivious, effectively crazed, frantically rope-jumping men doing their thing dangerously close to me. Not sure. Will have to have sleep on that one.

Eventually, The Jumper tired of his deranged activity and moved on, as did I. I was through with the gym for the day. I went to fetch Rutam from the children's fiasco area. She was drooling, as usual, though this time the... stream (? What does one call a rivulet of drool?) was a charming shade of lavender thanks to the chalk she'd been munching on. The child minders assured me it was non-toxic. Possibly I will rather eat chalk the next time I find it necessary to consume an ungodly quantity of red wine. Red wine is most definitely toxic.