Space invaders

There is a Japanese concept known as ma. A loose translation of ma might be ‘the space between things’. In Kyoto, at the temple of Ryoan-ji, is a famous Zen garden. It is a dry garden of 15 rocks positioned on a surface of raked gravel, symbolising clarity and openness. (One of the 15 rocks, however, is always hidden from any human vantage point on the ground.)

The exact opposite of ma would be the 15 or so fixed weight machines crammed into the small and stuffy space that is our local council-run gym. From the moment you drop your sports bag on the pile of other sports bags, under the eye-level notice advising you that it is a ‘Snatch Point’, you are entering a ma-less environment.

Our ‘warm-up area’ consists of three blue Duflex mats under a low, slanting ceiling. The other day I was on the middle one doing the Downward Facing Dog yoga stretch, when two biggish women came and slumped down on the vacant mats on each side. You could tell it was not often that either of them made the trip all the way to the ground. I’d seen parachutists jump out of a plane at 10,000 feet and touch down more gently. Once these ladies had got their breath back, they resumed the uninhibited, sexually explicit conversation they’d been having on the exercise bikes, and before that on adjacent rowing machines.

Basically, the Downward Facing Dog stretch is an arch and these women traded smut through my human archway as if through an open window. The bigger of the two did cursory floor stretches as she talked. The other simply lay on her side supporting her head with her hand.

I knew one of them by sight.