More About Peter
As for learning, this is an endless endeavour that often occurs alone. I enjoy reading, writing, listening, talking, sitting, moving, and in every one of those things I seek to understand them better. I can give the example of three books I read this weekend, “Paths of Glory” by Humphrey Cobb, “Emotional Blackmail” by Susan Forward, and “Traction” by Gino Wickman.
Exercise is a meaningful piece of my life. For the past year and a half, I have been practicing bodyweight strength training. Ice cream makers and planches and front levers and handstand pushups. There is nothing usual about any of it, and perhaps that’s what I enjoy about it.
Eating well takes so many forms. To me it means surviving. I do not cook elaborately nor do I eat excessively. I basically mean to eat what is on my plate and nothing more or less than that. My friends and family therefore get my greatest compliments when they introduce anything beyond food for survival. I had a meal with a childhood friend in his new home of Park City, Utah. We went out to the nicest restaurant in the state, The Mariposa, and we had hours of food. I measure it by time because the individual meal items, while gourmet and delicious, are not what I remember. I remember the time laughing and sharing stories with my closest friend. Today I eat mostly by grace of the services provided by the restaurants and chefs of Syracuse. They all know that I love them because I say as much every day, sometimes multiple times a day, when I place an order.
Slacking off is the least of what matters to me. It is what I do when I am energetically, mentally, and physically unable to do anything else. In these moments I am often in bed and listening to some YouTube. Last night slacking off looked like listening to a lecture by English economist Paul Collier on his views of the state of capitalism. Earlier in the month it was listening to the House of Representatives hearing featuring the world’s leading technology CEOs.
For an alternative picture of what slacking off looks like for me, a group of us neighbors get together to make each other laugh, to eat some bad pizza, tell inappropriate jokes, and bond for no other reason than we live within two miles of each other.
Where does this book, Bien, fit into my life? I am as uncertain of that as I am the answer to, “where does this book fit into the audience’s life?”
With Autumn approaching and Winter coming fast after that, I will be changing along with the seasons. This book, however, will be a piece of me that does not change. It may be read by others and may even be critiqued, yet it will not change. So for you and for all readers, it is the true story of who I am today.
-Peter, Sunday, August 23, 2020, 12:06 PM