experi-MENTAL

Bones Slamming on Asphalt

by Wolf Larsen on 10/05/11

Throughout school the call for running big lazy circles around the really could produce dread, because I couldn't do it. From fifth grade up into the last year of high school I would find myself running about last, and "running" was hardly the word everyone used to describe what I would invariably find myself doing. Panting was far more apt, and glowing red, and staggering, swaying, dizzy walking, and other absurd things that hardly resembled what everyone else was doing, and doing so easily.

Running.

It was not until I was over thirty years old that my symptoms were finally diagnosed. All that faulty running, all that sweating and gasping and coughing and spitting and, sad as it is to admit drooling, it was all the product of asthma. But in my younger years no one connected the dots. PE teachers just assumed I was a wimp, or a faker that would rather read books than run circles on the track.

I just figured I was a bad runner (which might have been at least part of my lifelong habit of standing and fighting, because mostly, I just couldn't run away, so at least it gave the appearance of bravery, courage, and other slow-footed virtues.

My high school years occurred in the late 1970s, around the time that jogging became a national obsession, and while I liked the pin-striped jogging suits with their slick nylon zippers, I never actually optimized them to their purpose, which is running.

My senior year in high school I did finally succeed in running a mile, although the time was so bad that friends joyously assured me that most people walked the mile at that speed. But I actually ran a mile, without stopping, without slowing to a walk. Yes, all the coughing, drooling, sweating, gasping, and wavering vision came along for the run, but I did it. Then persevered and hammered out distances of two miles, and finally three miles (I like to fantasize that I actually conquered five miles, then six, but sadly, I recognize the fantasy as fantasy, and that's no good, is it?).

After conquering three miles, I let running slip, and in the passage of twenty years, and twenty-five years, I knew my run-ability had gone sadly downhill since my running at 18 years of age, and possibly as late as 21 years of age. In my forties, I realized with grim certainty that running a block might kill me. Yes, I've been walking faithfully all of my life, still doing an average 2-mile walk through the seasons, but jogging?

About a month ago I began running. Okay, not running. But I began jogging, faithfully, every morning. And true to my expectation, I could not jog a block before my heart punched me in my face, and I must slow to a limping walk. But after a week of doing it, every morning, jogging/walking and jogging/running, I achieved a full-mile jog.

Isn't the human body miraculous? To adapt that fast. Believe it or not, after two weeks I managed a two-mile jog, and then a three-mile jog (with outbreaks of blatant walking). Under physical stress, the heart improves. The lungs start doing jumping jacks.

Yes, the body screams and wails and complains, but it improves.

Of course, it is me that is demanding the running, not a coach, and that makes a lot of difference with me, doing something out of free will as opposed to force, or law, or another's expectation. I kind of like running. There are those few moments in a three-mile jog where the mind does detach, and the pounding on the trail seems more like floating or flying, and the breathing comes easy (the asthma keeps its yap shut), and it is all kind of wonderful. Then that 30-second lapse ends, and the suffering resurfaces triumphantly.

Gasp, pant, whoof, drool and slam. The iPod helps, though.

Art et Amour Toujours

Douglas Christian Larsen

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Fighting the Flu with Herbs

by Wolf Larsen on 09/04/11

Let's face it, up front and honestly personal, nothing kills the flu virus. Nothing. There is no magic bullet, as I know full well. For me, personally, the common cold has always been a much fiercer opponent for me than the flu, because throughout my life I'd catch a cold two or three or four times a year, and each time it would cling and clasp and bite into me for a full three weeks, whereas on the off years (on a lifetime average, the flu stops in to say howdy, maybe every five years) that I catch the flu, my body suffers with it for a week, and then it is gone.

The NeilMed Nose Flush (or "nasal irrigation," for the easily offended genteel) has defeated the common cold for me. Seriously. At the first sign of a cold, I flush out my nose and nasal passages with a mixture of iodized sea salt and common baking soda, and I have not had a cold in the past three years. That's a big deal for me, from a rounded average of three colds a year to ZERO colds, that's a miracle. The nasal flush IS the cure for the common cold.

Unfortunately, the NeilMed Nasal Irrigation system is not a cure for influenza, although I find that it helps, greatly, in reducing nasal blockage (as well as mopping the floor of the nasal virus that camps out up deep in the schnoz).

Herbs do not kill influenza, but they help, and greatly, especially in preventing the flu. Herbs are much better than any flu shot or vaccine manufactured to date (those have all been placebos).

But you can't kill the flu with a pill or a magic bullet. You have to fight the flu, as I am experiencing TODAY, Louie, yes, today. Yes, I am fighting the flu, but thank God I have a three-day weekend in which to fight. The stinking influenza symptoms only first began to appear Sabbath morning yesterday (the ironic thing is the bone-ache symptoms were probably shouting at me all day Friday, as my legs and shoulders and ribs ached like crazy, but as I have just taken up jogging this past week I was sure that all the aching and throbbing of bones was due to the smash of shoe upon asphalt, and not the approach of the encroaching disease).

You have to fight the flu, and HARD. Do not give it any quarter, nor show it any mercy. Meet it on the field of battle and hit it hard, hand to hand and head to head. Throw ginger missiles at it, and lob oregano handgrenades into its face.

Lace the influenza front lines with nose flush machine-gunfire, and do not wait until you see the whites of their eyes. Pack some armor piercing Grapefruit Seed Extract (GSE) shells into your machine gun.

And rest, do not go jogging, even though your body is asking for a good heart-exploding run. Get into you comfy jammies and watch the complete extended Lord of the Rings Trilogy (that's what I plan to do today).

There is no easy solution to the flu. Fight it, and fight it hard. Don't give up, don't surrender...never, never, never, never, never, never and NEVER give up!

Blek. It ain't easy. I need to soak my headbone.

Art et Amour Toujours
Douglas Christian Larsen

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Thinking for Yourself

by Wolf Larsen on 09/03/11

We are all a walking collection of ideas, prejudices, running tantrums, and scary theories, endlessly repeating what we have heard, what we have seen, and a unhealthy forced programming, all of this rattling around inside us, shaken, rattled and rolled, and we call this thinking. We think we are thinking, but in reality, our "thoughts" are like the pus that oozes from a half-plucked scab. It is not us, but remanufactured, recycled excrement.

Get angry with yourself for spouting the poison you have been tricked into spewing. Then snap your lips shut.

Think about it. Where did all this nonsense squishing through my brains, eating into my soul, polluting everything and everybody, where did it come from? How can I get rid of it.

Yes, get angry. And then get busy. Only you can address the problem.

Set out to think for yourself. Sure, it is a journey of a thousand miles, and you have to do it on foot, and yes, it is a cliche to say that any journey begins with a first step. But you have to make that first step.

For your own sanity. For your own salvation.

It is up to you, and nobody can do it for you. There is no mentor that can shoulder your responsibility.

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The Main Problem with Depression...

by Wolf Larsen on 03/23/10

...is that you just aren't thinking straight when you are depressed. In fact, when depressed, you just might feel that you are thinking better, more clearly, than you ever have ever "thunk" before, but all the while you are not thinking clearly, because you feel that it is all useless, that there is no hope.

And there is always hope.

When you are clear of the depression you can see that you were not thinking clearly, that you were only seeing the dark side. And even if someone gave you some good advice, such as: "Go out and exercise in the fresh air," it would just sound like the dumbest thing you ever heard, even though it was exactly the thing that could free your of your own personal black tsunami.

Yes, life is full of bad things, very bad things, but these bad things, too shall pass.

Sometimes you have to ride out the rough storms, and sadly, there is no other choice. But happily, you truly are a stronger person when you climb dripping and cold off your weathered raft, and you have survived yet another personal black tsunami.

Realize that you are depressed, and that it will not last, and realize that you are not thinking clearly. And realize that it will not last forever, and remember that there is hope.

Keep hoping.

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