Machine Gun Anthem

I saw a sav­ior
A sav­ior come my way
I thought I’d see it
In the cold light of day
But now I real­ize that I’m
Only for me

If only I could see
Return myself to me
And rec­og­nize the poi­son
In my heart

There is no oth­er place
No one else I face
The rem­e­dy to agree
With how I feel

This beat, it moves you. It dri­ves a spike into your heart, ham­mer­ing impa­tient­ly — BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM — like 1,000,000 volts surg­ing through your chest to six­teenth-notes in a bar, and you’re left twitch­ing, won­der­ing how you’ll ever start your day with­out this again. It hits your ears like a wall of sound, with the synth ris­ing up, fill­ing your soul, and lead­ing your life.

This machine gun is an anthem.

The Ways We Grow Up

I remem­ber Christie once telling me that she always want­ed to bring presents to some­one’s house at Christmas. We were wait­ing at the train sta­tion to Toronto, our exams fin­ished, doing exact­ly that. Carrying bags with a fon­due set, maybe a can­dle hold­er, and oth­er assort­ed mis­cel­lany for my par­ents who already had every­thing.

As a sev­en­teen-year-old with an adorable baby-face, she was rarely tak­en seri­ous­ly as a mature and respon­si­ble per­son. I could tell that hav­ing this hol­i­day tra­di­tion was her way of feel­ing like an adult. Not the gro­cery shop­ping we would do, not the lin­gerie she would wear for me, or even the act of love itself, but a fam­i­ly to go to, gifts to give, a house to stay in, a lit­tle piece of matu­ri­ty.

Honda Civic 2008 exterior

Honda Civic 2008 dashboard

Honda Civic 2008 exterior

For me, it’s this car.

Not the bills. Not the house. Not the mort­gage.

It’s being able to get any­where. It’s feel­ing these keys in my pock­et and know­ing that they’re mine. It’s dri­ving home after class when it’s dark out, blast­ing a night mix on the stereo. It’s even look­ing for a park­ing spot down­town on a Monday after­noon, or get­ting stuck in traf­fic.

It’s hav­ing all these things that I’ve nev­er had before.

The Choice

I’m in a bad way

My sleep­ing sched­ule is upside down. I’m lovesick. I’m heart­bro­ken. I can’t eat any­thing with­out shit­ting blood. My lips are chapped. My teeth keep graz­ing my canker sore. I’m break­ing out. I’m dread­ing anoth­er day of work.

These are the times I tru­ly feel alone. I’ve nev­er been very good at tak­ing care of myself.

But I’d still rather be alone, than be with you.

Sarah and Louise

Sarah and Louise kiss

There’s a tremen­dous bond between moth­er and daugh­ter, some­thing unmatched by fathers and sons, or even mixed-sex parental rela­tion­ships. You can see it just from the way they inter­act.

As a male, I’ll prob­a­bly nev­er be able to ful­ly under­stand, but being able to rec­og­nize it and know­ing that such a won­der­ful thing still exists is enough to make me feel as if the world is in the right place.

A cou­ple more pic­tures behind the cut.

Continue read­ing “Sarah and Louise”…

Tai Chi Progress

My under­stand­ing of Tai Chi seems to come in the form of a sine wave: the more I learn, the more I real­ize I don’t know, and as I adjust for more and more details, oth­er details get lost.

For the last few months, I felt like I was get­ting nowhere. The con­cepts made sense in my brain, but not in my body. My teacher has said that Tai Chi is already too intel­lec­tu­al­ized, and as a per­son who’s nev­er been very phys­i­cal­ly co-ordi­nat­ed and tries to com­pen­sate in SHEER MENTAL POWA!, this holds true espe­cial­ly for me. Until I’ve mas­tered telekine­sis, how­ev­er, I’ll be reliant on more tra­di­tion­al means of move­ment.

In the last cou­ple weeks I feel like I’ve reached anoth­er lev­el of under­stand­ing, as rudi­men­ta­ry as it may be.

One thing that helped a lot is when a senior stu­dent showed me what ward-off (peng) felt like. As he stood with struc­ture in his body, I tried to push him1, but end­ed up push­ing myself off him and falling over. In order to move him, I was forced to use the prop­er tech­nique (since he’s con­sid­er­ably big­ger than me), and expand with my entire body — legs, waist, arms, chest, lungs — instead of sim­ply try­ing to move through him.

Then we reversed roles and he pushed me until I could chan­nel his ener­gy through my feet. It was the first time I ever felt ground­ed, instead of sim­ply under­stand­ing the idea. I still don’t real­ly under­stand it, inso­faras I could­n’t explain it to some­one else.

Adapting this all to the form is some­thing else. I try to focus on one thing at time2 but it falls apart in oth­er places. At this point, I’m just try­ing to get all the gross mechan­ics to be nat­ur­al with­out hav­ing to think about it, hop­ing that I’ll even­tu­al­ly be able to fine tune every­thing else.

  1. It remind­ed me of the feel­ing of squeez­ing a rub­ber stop­per, some­thing with give but not much, that becomes expo­nen­tial­ly dif­fi­cult to com­press. []
  2. Such as stay­ing at one lev­el with­out being rigid (con­sid­ered “breath­ing”), relax­ing my low­er back, think­ing of my body being anchored through my legs, and keep­ing struc­ture and intent in my palms. []