Goines On: Exercise

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Goines reached out to his friend Zen, who had been awfully quiet for days. Was Zen okay? Had Goines offended Zen by telling him, after Zen had professed no interest in a project that meant a lot to Goines, that Zen seemed to be more of a taker than a giver?
    Zen made an effort to put Goines at ease by relenting to write that he had done an hour of spin class that day before playing two hours of competitive tennis, during which his team won one of the two sets, and it had been “good emotionally.” The wording seemed to imply that “it” was the winning – or maybe the socializing – that was the main thing, not the physical exercise, but Goines wasn’t sure. “Spin class” sounded like socializing too. Curious, Goines looked it up. He had been thinking that spinning involved whirling like a dervish to get high, but Wikipedia said it was riding a stationary bicycle. Mrs. Goines “spun” on her stationary Schwinn in the garage, but she had never referred to it as “spinning.”

Goines On: Reaching out

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Goines’ thoughts had been rushing like a waterfall for days, swirling like a vortex, fluttering like...he cast around for an image to capture the deluge. He felt unable to sort his thoughts out, assemble them, string them on a sensible line. He was more a passive spectator of his own thoughts.
    But something about today was different, and he sensed meaning, accumulation, order, and he wanted to embrace it, like Klara, the artificial friend in Ishiguro’s novel, hurrying to Mr. McBain’s barn to pray to the sun before it descended to its home in the West. (Klara did seem to be praying, even if she didn’t use that word.)