Yearly Archives: 2007

Thanksgiving Weekend '07

Ah yes. My first trip “home“1 in about a year and a half, since my par­ents got divorced.

The entire­ty of my trip was in the com­pa­ny of Andrew and Alex, who host­ed me for the week­end. Pictures tell the sto­ry.

Drinks at the Madison

Thumbnail: Wide-angle Madison
Thumbnail: Jason and Kerry
Thumbnail: Alex and Emily
Thumbnail: Anne
Thumbnail: Rob and Sampson
Thumbnail: Alex and Kerry

On Friday night, we went to The Madison to catch up with their old drag­onboat team­mates. The Madison is a mas­sive pub, made from two or three amal­ga­mat­ed hous­es in the down­town dis­trict. A very pop­u­lar spot, which was appar­ent from the amount of peo­ple in it as the night went on.

I had­n’t been out drink­ing in…two years? Something like that.

Continue read­ing “Thanksgiving Weekend ‘07”…

  1. I’ve decid­ed that from now on, the quot­ed “home” will refer to Toronto, and the unquot­ed home will refer to Ottawa [↩]

The God Ritual

I saw her there again, wear­ing the same clothes, with her life in two new gro­cery bags. On the same night of anoth­er face­less week, except the tem­per­a­ture dropped, and I was stand­ing out­side in my bomber jack­et, look­ing in. This time, she was sit­ting upright and silent, unmov­ing, hat draped over her eyes.

Crashing inside, I thought.

Her hands were cracked and dark from expo­sure. How I want­ed to reach out, and straight­en the tan­gled skein of her black hair. But what could I do?

God isn’t here any­more.

Grey And Undecided

It was grey today.

Grey from morn­ing to night. Grey inside and out.

I strolled home from work amid the rain­fall, with Sara Melson and her sac­cha­rine lyrics in my ear­phones. Words sung unre­strained, clichéd almost, like any oth­er love song, but with an expe­ri­enced matu­ri­ty nonethe­less.

Now my hands are worn, my clothes are torn
A few of my dreams have been met with scorn
And I don’t have too much time left to bor­row
But still I’m gonna love you like I’ve nev­er been hurt before

Drawn to her voice more than her face, sug­ary sweet mixed with a hint of strength. Guilty plea­sure? Maybe. Not that I mind any­more.

But it was still grey today, and I was still unde­cid­ed.

I'm Up

Yes, I’m up again. Not even, but up.

I think it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that I don’t think straight when lack­ing sleep. I get very grumpy, and Bronwen knows not to get in my way when that hap­pens (and not to call me “Mr. Grumpykins”). Still, even with enough sleep, I don’t think it would have changed how I was feel­ing.

So I picked myself up by read­ing the para­bles of Chuang Tzŭ1. Though it’s still well beyond my grasp, I’m slow­ly learn­ing how to achieve utter empti­ness and sin­gle-mind­ed still­ness.

I like to think that I’m aware enough to know that I’m not delud­ing myself into this state-of-mind.

Sometimes I won­der if I sound like a born-again Christian, only with Taoism. One of those peo­ple who gets preachy, where every­thing they say relates to their new-found faith. It’s as if my brain process­es every­thing through a Tao fil­ter, and I see every­thing in a dif­fer­ent way. I try to be con­scious of it in con­ver­sa­tion, to avoid bor­ing some­one who would­n’t real­ly under­stand any­way, but I can’t help but write about it here.

Nevertheless, I feel enlight­ened, though still human2; I’m not sure if I’ll get the rug pulled out from under me again. It’s a strange feel­ing. In this mind­set, it’s as if noth­ing can stop you. Until some­thing hap­pens.

Part of me wish­es I was­n’t feel­ing this high. That I was more even, like Pat. It’s a bal­ance of emo­tion that I seek, not the dra­mat­ic ups and downs. I’ll be con­tent when I can achieve that.

Hence it is para­dox­i­cal­ly said, “Perfect hap­pi­ness is to be with­out hap­pi­ness; the high­est praise is to be with­out praise”.

  1. Dave helped talk some sense into me as well. I think part of my recov­ery was that our dis­cus­sion led me to feel as if he’s a kin­dred spir­it. [↩]
  2. When look­ing back on this entry, I real­ized that I wrote about pick­ing myself up twice in one month. I don’t even remem­ber writ­ing it the first time. [↩]

A Feint Within A Feint Within A Feint

Knowing where the trap is — that’s the first step in evad­ing it. This is like sin­gle com­bat, Son, only on a larg­er scale — a feint with­in a feint with­in a feint…seemingly with­out end. The task is to unrav­el it.

—Duke Leto Atreides, Dune

A feint can be used as a test, to gath­er infor­ma­tion, or a trap, to get some­one to do what you want them to do, or both.

The most impor­tant part to under­stand is that the oppo­nent is inher­ent­ly involved in the sit­u­a­tion. You can only gain advan­tage from a feint depend­ing on the way he or she (re)acts.

A savvy per­son will react with exact­ly the right amount of effort, espe­cial­ly impor­tant because a feint is only a mock attack. In Tai Chi terms, they bal­ance an oppo­nen­t’s yin (expan­sion) with yang (com­pres­sion), and vice-ver­sa1. In Taoist terms, they act like a mir­ror, reflect­ing only that which is in front of them, noth­ing more and noth­ing less. With a savvy per­son, the feint fails, and noth­ing is gained.

An igno­rant per­son will fall for the trick. They over­re­act and unbal­ance them­selves2, expos­ing their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. Without under­stand­ing true inten­tion, with­out see­ing the big pic­ture, they get played like a suck­er.

And the more they react, the more ridicu­lous they look.

  1. Hence the empha­sis placed on stick­ing and yield­ing; a phys­i­cal con­nec­tion is need­ed to know where the cen­ter of an oppo­nent is at all times [↩]
  2. In Tai Chi terms, this is con­sid­ered overex­tend­ing or col­laps­ing the struc­ture of the body or limbs [↩]