A Letter

Dear CP,

I applaud your decision to finally enter this hitherto unexplored netherworld we call the gym. I am in admiration of the intransigence you display against the behemoth bar-bells, girded for all to see in only the merest of work-out smocks. With much self-deprecating applomb, you battle the weights and bull-doze the treadmill, ignoring how your limbs "hurt like a motherfucker" the next day, only to return unfazed for another gruelling Spartan ordeal.

But it is not the pleasure of physical pain you embrace that meets my deepest approval; it is your motive which aligns itself to my principals. You have realised, and none too late, that the fruits of the world are best enjoyed in the most able of corporeal forms, just as how Adam ran unbidden through the orchards of Paradise before he hid his nethers in fig leaves - not for want of shame, I suspect, but of restraint.

You realised how your lethargy, your desultory scrapings and somnambulant ramblings were but symptoms of a more pernicious ague: age - its inherent debilitations over body and spirit. Recognising such frail mortality, you have taken the tentative but courageous step to intercede. And to what end? Only to the cardinal tenet that grace is not merely the enlightened state of being, nor true magnanimity of deed; but health, abs, soymilk gossip and successful cruising.

Do I seem flippant? Do not be deceived! It is a carefully cultivated front; I am deadly serious. We are playing for the highest of stakes - the fulfillment of life's potential. We have practiced the honing of our minds since young; it is now time to dash our bodies against the anvils of the resistance machines, to temper our sinews into lethal cutting edges - the extensions of our undaunted will. So onward to victory, and pray not be discouraged. I remain, as always, your faithful gym companion.

T