Yearly Archives: 2003

Improving My Game

I spent the greater half of Saturday prac­tice try­ing to unlearn what I got used to with the 38mm ball. I’m prob­a­bly not going to use that size ball any­more, for fear that it’ll fuck up my game.

Yesterday I was able to play Dan for the first time, who hap­pens to be the best play­er at the club with good rea­son. He was the leader in the city ama­teur divi­sions at one point, and has won leagues, tour­na­ments, mon­ey prizes, even coach­ing vic­to­ries. The best part of play­ing him is his atti­tude. As far as I can tell, he’s the only per­son there aside from me, play­ing for fun. Everyone else is either play­ing to keep in shape or to win. It’s fun­ny to go against these young cocky guys who get angry when they miss a shot.

Dan is able adapt his style to his oppo­nent dur­ing ral­lies; for me he’ll go defen­sive and let me smash the whole time (which is my favourite part), though he does­n’t loop return as much as the pros. He’s amaz­ing at return­ing too…he’ll be backed up against the wall about twelve feet from the table, arc the ball ten feet in the air, and it’ll still land on my side. He even adds a crazy amount of side-spin to throw me off. It usu­al­ly takes about a dozen kill shots to actu­al­ly win the point against him, and since I go all out when I smash, I’m wast­ed after five min­utes of ral­ly­ing with him.

Charge

How odd that the themes of my writ­ings have most­ly shift­ed in one direc­tion. I always won­der what peo­ple think of what I say. I would imag­ine that peo­ple think I’m being melo­dra­mat­ic, that I’m look­ing for some sort of pro­tag­o­nis­tic pathos, or that I’m being some pre­ten­tious fuck.

It’s as if a sin­gle inci­dent has shift­ed my mind­set, that I just can’t seem to com­plete­ly get over what has passed. The hurt­ing has stopped, to be sure, but the think­ing isn’t done. I still get inspired by mem­o­ries, ideas, emo­tions, almost any­thing I’ve expe­ri­enced through this.

I was once scared that I would nev­er fall in love again, and I used to be emo­tion­al­ly numb. Perhaps all of this was sim­ply a result of a life of stag­nan­cy, of bore­dom. Now I can write again, I have things to think about, I have emo­tions to expe­ri­ence, I seem to have things to look for­ward to.

Can heart­break be so ben­e­fi­cial? I know that I can feel. I don’t need to force my artis­tic writ­ing. My mind seems to be filled with new end­less thoughts. I can even appre­ci­ate cer­tain music on anoth­er lev­el now. This com­plex­i­ty, this mys­te­ri­ous­ness is so inter­est­ing.

My only wor­ry is that this new vital­i­ty will lev­el off into noth­ing­ness.

Saturday Morning Ritual

I walked out this morn­ing in my linen pants and orange golf shirt in the 11°C weath­er. The sun was just over the hori­zon and a light fog was in the air, wash­ing every­thing in a thin orange haze. It was so refresh­ing to be cold again, to see my breath hang heavy in the air. Maybe I was just hyper from exhaus­tion, but it felt as if noth­ing could pos­si­bly be wrong on a day like this.

The sat­ur­day morn­ing rit­u­al is as fol­lows:

8:00 am — Wake up, get dressed, search change tin for $5.18 sand­wich mon­ey
8:15 am — Leave apart­ment for table ten­nis prac­tice, lis­ten to Billy Talent’s self titled debut album on the way there
9:00 am — Arrive at club, play for two hours, lose half of body weight in sweat
11:00 am — Curse how fast the time went by, leave club, lis­ten to Thrice’s Artist in the Ambulance album on the way back
11:30 am — Arrive at Centre, pur­chase roast beef sand­wich at Michelle’s Baguette. If answer­ing “please” to every top­ping sug­ges­tion, the per­son will go in the back and get the fresh­est let­tuce leaves
12:00 pm — Arrive home, put on bor­ing tele­vi­sion to fill silence but not dis­tract too much from the sand­wich, savour mul­ti-lay­ered taste of roast beef on fresh­ly baked pop­py seed bread with let­tuce, toma­toes, cucum­bers, and mayo, thank the gods of lemon iced tea
12:15 pm — Shower
12:25 pm — Go back to sleep

I Think She's Cute

I find that I’ve become more attract­ed to uncon­ven­tion­al beau­ty late­ly. Well, that’s not to say that my past propen­si­ties have been com­plete­ly tra­di­tion­al. Aaron thinks that my whole speech imped­i­ment thing is just me try­ing to be a unique per­son. I’m not real­ly insult­ed by this (even though I’d nor­mal­ly be, espe­cial­ly since I have a great respect for Aaron’s opin­ions) sim­ply because I think that if he had any…inter­est­ing tastes, he’d under­stand.

I once had a dis­cus­sion with Trolley about the fact that almost any type of fetish made sense to me — hair, loli­con, necrophil­ia, rape, scat­ol­ogy, plucked chick­ens — except for foot fetish­es. I mean, most of these all have very deep-root­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. Sex with ani­mals, for exam­ple, may turn some­one on due to feel­ings of dom­i­nance over an ani­mal, or a belief that they are mak­ing some­thing feel bliss­ful plea­sure (per­haps as a com­pen­sa­tion for inse­cu­ri­ty in being able to plea­sure some­one). Most any sort of fan­ta­sy can be rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly jus­ti­fied.

Aaron and I were even able to find a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for bad teeth fetish­es, which is an inter­est­ing idea since I know so many peo­ple who can’t stand crooked teeth. He knows peo­ple who only date oth­ers who are “less attrac­tive” than them, and we take this as a sign that these peo­ple may be inse­cure about their looks, and are turned on when viewed as the more attrac­tive per­son in the cou­ple. Of course, this can be relat­ed to any sort of “flaw” that may be found in some­one.

I once knew a girl who was turned on by guys using cal­cu­la­tors, and I can eas­i­ly relate this to my “girls wear­ing glass­es” pro­cliv­i­ty, inso­far as being extreme­ly attract­ed to intel­li­gence, both being a sort of phys­i­cal (albeit pos­si­bly soci­etal) man­i­fes­ta­tion of an intan­gi­ble thing.

Feet, how­ev­er, I can only jus­ti­fy when relat­ed to the trib­al tra­di­tion of feet-fore­head touch­ing. Subordination is rep­re­sent­ed in the younger peo­ple touch­ing the feet of the elders with their fore­heads. Perhaps some­one may be attract­ed to the fact that they are brought to the lev­el of the toe suck­ing, sim­i­lar to the idea of dom­i­nance. It’s hard for me to even see foot fetish­es on a basic phys­i­cal lev­el, which is eas­i­ly done for breasts or waists, etc. unless one con­sid­ers the impact of soci­ety on what peo­ple find attrac­tive.

I can just see all the hits I’m going to get from inter­est­ing search strings now.

Most of my propen­si­ties can be eas­i­ly explained, although I get var­i­ous odd reac­tions when peo­ple find out, and most are either laugh­ing too hard or too weird­ed out to allow an expla­na­tion. Speech imped­i­ments are some­thing I just can’t seem to jus­ti­fy, although such an inef­fa­ble thing has allowed me to more eas­i­ly accept the quirks of oth­er peo­ples tastes.

So there’s this girl who works at Folio and she wears glass­es and turtle­necks and is there when­ev­er I buy some­thing and I doubt oth­er guys would find her as attrac­tive as I do.