One of the first consequences of a highly heartening and favorable prognosis of time and circumstance was an awareness of both physical and mental well-being. For the first time in my life, beyond the general, unreflective feelings of well-being I experienced in Africa, I became objectively aware of the coordinated efforts of my limbs. In other words, how my legs strutted forth and how my arms moved, and in a more general sense, how the knee bone was connected to the thigh bone and how the thigh bone was connected to the hip bone and how the hip bone was connected to the which bone?

Indeed, it was the independence of my limbs in expressing their welcome release from the tyranny of a life of hitherto unfulfilled dreams that first caught my attention and prompted me to look down to regard my joyful and sprightly feet and conclude that it is man’s duty to walk with dignity, tall and straight, but not with his nose in the air. The experience was one of awakening sensibilities and enhanced self-awareness, which was both objective and informative.

Having once loosened up with all installed programs working correctly, there’s no going back to swagger slouches or nervousness of any description. A pleasing symbiosis of mind and body is indeed a wondrous experience not to be equated necessarily with the achievements of athletes, gymnasts, or ballet dancers, who may be remarkable in their bodily feats but lacking in mental equanimity. The symbiosis to which I am referring, based on personal experience, concerns not just the ability to run a fast circle, perform cartwheels, or spin on one’s big toe but also the civilizing aspects of good comportment and deportment. Lightness of foot, physical strength, and agility are no doubt good qualifications for a cat burglar. A man of character, however, excels also in posture, gait, and bearing and is habituated to elegantly entering buildings and rooms by the door rather than the window, and to ascend gracefully by staircases rather than by drainpipes.

How rarely do we see a gazelle flitting among the crowd, how seldom a self-possessed gentleman, a beautiful smile, or a truly handsome person? In these postmodern, dysfunctional deconstructionist times of artificial living, is it a wonder that people are moving around with all the grace of physically challenged robots? What is to be expected when a veteran driver with an untarnished record receives twenty-six pages of fine print from an insurance company? We are informed by manufacturers that hot can burn, water makes wet, and confusing the top with the bottom may result in personal injury or even death. What is to be expected when the instructions, directions, and advisory documentation are couched in language that defies logic, challenges the laws of intelligibility, and is generally beyond the scope of semantic analysis? If you cannot read between the lines, you’re done for, and if you try, you’ll likely end up a basket case. The worst-case scenario not involving physical injury is that you have to engage a lawyer to make sense of it all, in which case, you are really done for, mentally challenged, and broke.

What is most surprising is that millions of people can raise themselves from the horizontal with even a tad of enthusiasm to meet the dumbfounding illogicalities and complexities of the day, when a serious challenge may be getting your product out of its container.

The British army had three parts right: head up, shoulders back, and belly in. At least that would get you to the front lines with the least effort, but not necessarily with the most grace. One two, one two, one two. Look alive, stand by your beds.

And so with the gracefulness of a born-again pedestrian, one day I found myself exploring the small river that ran into the ocean just past the Casuarinas. Descending from the heights of the dense interior jungle, it ran for a distance beside an old quarry, then fell over a rock escarpment before finishing the short distance to the sea.

The results of quarrying had left, rising directly up from the valley floor, dramatic, gently sloping platforms of rock that Tarzan might have swung to on a vine, for an elegant laze with a monkey or two. Needless to say, Tarzan was not there, but there was one monkey. Guess who?

My boisterous senses could not resist the temptation. The pleasure of lying on one of the large slabs of smooth, golden rock had a feel of something forbidden and illicit. I looked around to be sure that nobody was witnessing the indulgence. Why should the feel of smooth stone against the skin cause guilt? It is indeed a gross form of sensuality. Given a few peanuts to shell, a bright red bottom, and considerably more hair, I might have got by without censorship, but I was an Englishman taught to keep his elbows in at the dining table and to be an orderly participant in queues. There had been no instruction on what to do if you find yourself briefly clad on the top of a large slab of rock in a tropical jungle with the sunlight unimpeded by endless banks of gray cloud. What could I do?.

Above the quarry, the path began to diverge from the river and enter denser undergrowth. As the way forward became unclear and the melodious sound of the tumbling river grew ever fainter, I decided to retrace my steps to flatter ground. It was then that my feet decided of their own accord to test the nimbleness of newfound elegance. Proceeding onto the smooth river rocks, they moved from one to another, gradually picking up speed until, with no margin for error, the thrill of the moment became exhilarating. Like a grounded Orangutan on the run, I leaped from one stone to the next, my sights focused well in anticipation.

But what was this insinuating itself into my vision? Two people were sitting quietly on the left bank. Modesty at this point might have slowed down, but I defiantly succumbed to a gross exhibition of agility and fearlessness. I flew past them, pectorals, femorals, and all visible brawn flexing and glistening in an exhibition of egoism. I think I said a brief hello as I passed by quite close. But no acknowledgment came from the dumbstruck couple, as they rightly understood that any distraction would have ended disastrously in a rearrangement of my biological configuration. Man, I was flying.

I apologized to them later for the indulgent display. “What was that?” the lady asked, as if she did not know. Whilst the man remained her silent, anonymous admirer, she confessed to having been employed on the set of a Stanley Kubrick film. Her drawn countenance bore testimony to the fact that the filmmaker must have been, as she described, an exacting perfectionist taskmaster and the cause of her flight to Paradise for a bit of rest and recreation.

Fear not ye pigeon-toed and knock-kneed, and other gangly and oversized brethren, freedom from inelegance is at hand for you also, providing you do not relent before achieving your Paradise.