Monthly Archives: February 2004

Characters At A League Meet

I went to the sec­ond league meet yes­ter­day, and it was def­i­nite­ly anoth­er expe­ri­ence. The diver­si­ty of all the play­ers is just amaz­ing. Their per­son­al­i­ties come out in every lit­tle detail, from their style of play, to how they lose a point, to how they serve.

There’s the team con­sist­ing most­ly of elder­ly ladies in their sweat pants, along with their lit­tle, sup­port­ive peanut gallery of friends who cheer and clap after every point. Sometimes the play­ers try to high five each oth­er when they get a good ral­ly in dou­bles, but end up shak­ing hands in a sort of awk­ward way. The most they ever say when they lose a point is, “Phooie!”, and fake an angry foot stomp, and are always the first ones to approach you for a hand shake. These are the ones who play social­ly, as some­thing to do on Sunday with their friends between what I’m guess­ing is tea and nap time.

On the oth­er end of the spec­trum, there are the play­ers who wear faces of dire aggres­sion as soon as the point starts, as if they’ll throw their pad­dles down and punch you in the face if you serve them an ace. These are the ones who intro­duce them­selves, state their provin­cial rank­ing, and imme­di­ate­ly ask for yours. They have no prob­lem with shout­ing one word exple­tives to release their frus­tra­tion when they’re los­ing, even when they’re play­ing next to the peanut gallery pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned. They don’t play for fun, they play to kick your ass.

Continue read­ing “Characters At A League Meet”…

Unsuprising Inevitable

Somehow, Aaron talked me into a doc­tors appoint­ment for a gen­er­al phys­i­cal exam­i­na­tion, some­thing I’ve been avoid­ing for years now. Turns out noth­ing is wrong, as far as the doc­tor can tell, and I opt­ed to skip the blood test. I brought up some issues I thought I might have, but he waved them off as being fair­ly nor­mal. I was­n’t too ner­vous because every­thing in my life seems to be going fine, so some bad news would­n’t have hurt (as opposed to before, where it would have been anoth­er prob­lem added to my list). I was look­ing for­ward to some bad news actu­al­ly, as if con­ve­nient­ly hav­ing it now would mean that I’d be free for anoth­er few years.

Like Toothpick Wrappers

Finally found some sweet pants, 28 28 29. They all need to be short­ened of course, one of the hid­den fees that always comes with my pants pur­chas­es and chick­en legs, but oth­er­wise they’re per­fect. I even found com­fort­able jeans that are wide enough at the foot. Orleans is a gold mine of mens cloth­ing.

Quartz

When peo­ple ask me what my favourite nov­el is, I tell them, “A Hero of Our Time”, and that’s been true for more than eight years now. It’s a prime exam­ple of Russian Romantic Literature, and I can appre­ci­ate that. It’s bril­liant, not only in it’s lyri­cal style but also for the com­plex­i­ty of the mind­set cap­tured by the pro­tag­o­nist, which makes it such a plea­sure to read through. It’s intel­li­gent, it’s inter­est­ing, it’s cre­ative, yet none of these things make it my favourite. It’s not even the book I’ve enjoyed read­ing the most.

It’s sim­ply been the most influ­en­tial.

Lermontov’s nov­el once offered me guid­ance (albeit blind­ly) when I need­ed it the most. His words have shaped me more than any­thing else I can think of, even though I’ve cast off most of my for­mer self relat­ed to this. I still see his work as being an inte­gral part of my devel­op­ment, in mak­ing me who I am at every chang­ing moment, and that is why I hold so much impor­tance in it.

All of it was a mat­ter of tim­ing. Otherwise, I’d prob­a­bly think that it was just anoth­er bor­ing book I was forced to read in grade 10 English.

The same goes with my rela­tion­ships, some­thing I would nev­er have thought was relat­ed to tim­ing. It’s fun­ny to think that my most sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ship was also my short­est by far, with a per­son who is most like­ly to think noth­ing of it at all. And every­thing that made it impor­tant to me was a com­bi­na­tion of a very spe­cif­ic mind­set I had at the time and the fact that this per­son was such a change from my pre­vi­ous girl­friend.

The same goes with my favourite movie and my favourite band. I’ve become a per­son who holds more sig­nif­i­cance in the things that change me than the things that please me.

And change is a prod­uct of time.

A Night Facing South

Crashed at Aaron’s last night, and my god how beau­ti­ful the sky was at his place. His unblind­ed win­dows were filled with an intense gra­di­ent, and it real­ly empha­sized the stark naked­ness of the trees that were bare­ly peer­ing above the hori­zon. It was the bright­est night of the win­ter, and the room was filled with orange-pink light. I lay on his couch, wish­ing I could keep my eyes open for just anoth­er sec­ond longer before I suc­cumbed to exhaus­tion.