Yearly Archives: 2008

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. [↩]

Things I Learned At The Whiskey Bar

Outside The Whiskey Bar

Inside The Whiskey Bar

  • Everyone — and I mean every­one — between the ages of 25 and 30 used to watch The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air
  • The token Asian guy has a fra­ter­nal con­nec­tion with the oth­er token Asian guy in every clique
  • Fire has the abil­i­ty to bring out peo­ple’s pri­mal natures, and make them throw their hands in the air and wave them like they just don’t care (or some rea­son­able fac­sim­i­le there­of)
  • Some peo­ple think they’re nev­er too old to get hooched up for a Saturday night
  • A good DJ can make you feel like you nev­er left high-school
  • Even at 27, I still look like I’m 18, accord­ing to the bounc­er who card­ed me

Solo Artist

This week, the sound from my right head­phone start­ed crack­ling and prompt­ly died. I’ve been lis­ten­ing to my music with only the left chan­nel until I can find a replace­ment pair.

This has led to the unfor­tu­nate dis­cov­ery that when singing to your­self at a cer­tain vol­ume, OTHER PEOPLE CAN STILL HEAR YOU.