Sven Lindqvist

BENCH PRESS

Chapter 56

Having power means having power over reality. At first, that simply makes it more real. Reality is concentrated in the compression chamber of power.

But it doesn't last. With the next strike, reality is thinned down by the presence of power. It is sucked out of the power space and a vacuum is created, to be filled with thephantoms that grow out of power, bewildering it.

Power not only forces, but is itself forced. Soon it is no longer forced by reality, but by the phantoms. Then power misses the reality it has lost and sets out to look for it. It calls reality's name with increasing desperation.

In the final stages the phantoms act of their own accord. Very occasionally, a rattling sound is heard, like an empty seed husk. It is the rattle of the last, stunted remains of reality in the emptiness of the power brain.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

hello. power is born of repetitions. not just in the weight room. take conversation and social interaction. at first, as a child, there is fear. there is the unknown way to act. reality is strong but you run from its face.

when you find patterns and repetition you also slowly find power. you can stand listening to someone and look around you at reality feeling aware and strong and confident. there's nothing this person can say that you don't have a response for. there's no fear, and reality grows more real.

in time, your power becomes more interesting than reality. reality may start to fade then but not to your dismay. your power is interesting. but then, more time, and you find the limits of your power. especially limiting because reality has become repetition. you've limited yourself for the sake of power. you want to experience reality but you can't get out of your ego, your habit of repetitive responses. you don't want to sacrafice the power that you strained so hard to get. that you needed to ease your fear when you were young so that you could experience reality more fully. but you must give up power this time to again experience what you desire.

full reality may be like something you can only glimpse in passing. a parade, full of flowerful floats and decorated marching soldiers, the arrival of which you've had marked on the calander for months, and that you can now see coming from miles away, that comes and is powerful and beautiful, but then fades away down the street. you must wait for it to come again. but that's only a partial parallel, because to experience what you want to experience in reality, you must give back what you needed to obtain to experience it. the power was a tool you needed to aquire to get to your desires, but it should not be mistaken for what you desired, and so you must give it back and show that you are still clear-headed and right enough to realize what you really want and how to get what you want. you must reach back to your childhood fear if you want to see reality again, in the power that you want it to be.

so is this why he says the below? or does he return to the well because he is so full of power now that he wants to go back and conquer his fears?


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 49

I was born at the bottom of a well. I screamed in vain to make myself heard. I spent my whole childhood trying to climb out. When I had finally succeeded and was grown up, why would I voluntarily go back down?


----------------------------------------------------------------

it was interesting to find out that his book exterminate all the brutes actually began as the last chapter of this book bench press. and also, the other book i've ordered from him, desert divers, it turns out began as the final chapter of exterminate all the brutes.

it seems that at 53, when i think was when he took up body building (confusingly i had thought he said 35 earlier in the book), childhood dreams of the sahara that had been previously locked up, slipped out of his subconscious. he says his will was so preoccupied with strenous exertion that he'd see visions of forgotten memories.

lindqvist had been to nearly every other desert in his lifetime, but had, at 53, never made it to the sahara. the desert of his dreams. the largest desert in the world. the hottest desert in the world. his last trip through a desert put such a strain on his failing body that he felt that he made it across 'by the skin of his teeth.' weight lifting gave him back his ability and desire, and thus the creation of the three books.




in an amazing coincindence the day before bench press arrived in the mail, i rented Sahara, a movie about adventure. and not just your big-whoop new york city/tokyo/brokeback mountain location adventures. but an adventure in a new place. a novel location. a previously unexplored avenue where an adventure movie could be filmed. in short, an adventure that's destination is that place where not even george lucas could imagine to locate one - the desert! starring weightlifter extraordinaire, mathew mcconaughy, former tom cruise lover, penelope cruz, and funny man steve zahn.

wow, what a coincidence. the desert. and not just your run of the mill fear and loathing las vegas desert. but one in africa. the sahara. i mean, who remembers all those movies that also took place there? obviously not anyone involved in making that poster. i should make a movie and tag the poster with the caption: "space! where no movie has ever gone before!" or maybe: "a movie that takes on a subject never before explored on the big screen. a movie about love." anyway, i don't know where i'm going with all this. it wasn't a bad movie until the end. i can't watch the end of action movies anymore. just can't. fall asleep or fast forward through almost all of them now. sahara. king kong. the punisher. collateral. and possibly on and on.

so, the end.