"When I said 'get your heart rate down,' I meant it, and now. Don't make me haul you off this machine and beat you." - Laura-the-trainer

In the week I've been working out, I've learned about as much about Laura-the-trainer as she has learned about me. Although I cannot definitively say what her waist size is (knowledge that she has about me), I can say one thing for her: she appreciates mornings almost as much as I do.

Which is to say, not at all.If I come in for an early workout, our exchanges are often more grunted than spoken. But she's there, and I'm there, and that's apparently what counts. However, when awake, she is fearsome.

I'd just finished curling my biceps into entertaining little squiggles and moved on to the triceps machine when Laura materialized to my left. She was grinning, in that particular I-have-an-evil-secret way that I've learned to recognize after less than a week.

"You'll never believe what I did last night."

There is one last Colorado story I plan to tell, and it's one that I've been holding close and quiet, because the time wasn't right to tell it. That is no longer the case.

In this life, at least, like attracts like. I won't say that most, or half, or even many of my friends have an extraordinary event in their past that affects their adult lives, but some of them do. For those who do, though, the friendship is subtly different; a different level of protection and guardianship than what is found among those who don't understand.Sometimes, you don't even have to know what the event was to recognize the effects. Our hobo language of survival isn't always visible to the rest of the world, but once you learn it, you know what to look for. The presence - or absence - of particular words. The inability to joke about a particular subject. A subtly self-destructive pattern of behavior.

My thoughts this week have been dark ones. My frustration with suddenly losing my job has been compounded with my frustration about my poor health since late November / early December.

It's pointless to rehash things that cannot be undone or changed. But I have spent a lot of time, especially in this past week, mulling over some things. We have a euphemism here in the States that we call "a moment of clarity."

Mine, I think, came in the midst of a 101-degree fever while lying in a hospital room. It consisted of a very simple thought that has stayed in my waking hours and my dreams ever since that moment:"If you do not find the courage to change your life, you will die before your thirty-fifth birthday."

I've only mentioned this to one person so far. It troubled me enough that I held it to myself for a while, trying to understand, trying not to let on to other people that something had happened that both confused and frightened me.