Angkor Days

I food prep for each day. Sunday. For the week ahead. Control.   I have always struggled with weight.   Food is a coping mechanism.   I was at my heaviest in the late 1990s.   148 kg.   I went heavier. I just refused to get on the scales after 148.   I might have got to 160 kg.   Medication was required to manage hypertension. That is another story.   When you are in a bad place emotionally and physically, some people eat more, and others eat less. Some people drink.   It is all the same. Just a different path to numbness and trying to fill the emptiness. Pizza. Chocolate. Scotch. Heroin. Religion.   “It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behaviour.” – Gabor Maté When I had purpose, I was fine. My weight that is. My head was distracted.   In the early 2000s, I was back on the mats and boxing. I was making weight and training hard.   L...

“Tobacco is the plant that converts thoughts into dreams.” – Victor Hugo Stoicism tells us pleasure is fine, providing it is virtuous.   One of the stoic virtues is temperance. Self-control. Discipline.   Buddhism tells us not to crave material pleasures.   Thích Nhất Hạnh teaches that all material desires bring no pleasure, only sadness.   I am neither a stoic nor a Buddhist, even though I enjoy reading their philosophy and try to live a virtuous life.   There is nothing virtuous in the pleasure of a cigar. I lack discipline. I indulge. Occasionally I drink alcohol. Sometimes I smoke a cigar. Occasionally I… never mind.   They give me great pleasure. I feel no guilt in having them. They bring no sadness. Maybe they do?   Outside these occasional indulgences, I lead a disciplined life. Mostly. Virtuous. Who can say?   We are taught to partake. Everything in moderation is ok.   Just a tiny amount won’t hurt.   You deserve it. You have ear...

“it is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit. But you cannot see that if you are careless, for it will not come of its own accord.’ - Socrates Lifting is a thing I can’t do without. I started years ago to improve my wrestling.   Now I do it because I must. Shell is the same. She pushes me beyond my limits.   Our priority when we arrived in Phnom Penh was to find an early opening gym.   I am a morning trainer.   There are too many excuses not to train in the afternoon. We have not missed a session. When we visited Bangkok and Malaysia, we found gyms.   Training is beyond the way I look or the numbers. However, I do love being lean and strong. Shell certainly prefers it this way. And does not mind letting me know if it is lacking.   If I miss a session, I feel like shit. It is not guilt. I just feel better when I lift. Mentally. Phy...

You need to travel light when you move about as we do.   The book rule 'unless you read it more than once, you don't buy it'.   I thought Stoner was a book about weed. It sat on my Kindle for a month or so. I don't recall how it got there. I was in no rush to read it.   I started reading it and could not put it down.   In Bangkok, I went to the second-hand bookstore. They had two of William's books, Stoner and Butcher's Crossing. I grabbed both.   I am beginning to realise that 20th-century US literature is what I prefer. It is an impressive list. Twain, Steinbeck, London, Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Kerouac. On it goes.     More recently, Easton Ellis and McCarthy.   Easton Ellis wrote the introduction to Butcher's Crossing.   I recall my favourite McCarthy books. Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and All the Pretty Horses. Along with True Grit by Portis, westerns were written with a clarity and detachment to violence that I admired. ...