Yearly Archives: 2009

Documentary Night

Picking vinyl

Thumbnail: Banister kitty
Thumbnail: CD rack
Thumbnail: Playing Wii
Thumbnail: Tree piece
Thumbnail: Stealing kitty
 

A cam­era to mask my shy­ness, a lens to hide behind.

At Audra and Jesse’s I felt like I was back in uni­ver­si­ty. Meeting peo­ple, learn­ing names, throw­ing in for some piz­za. Except this time, I was­n’t being dragged, kick­ing and scream­ing to the par­ty. Maybe I was just feel­ing social, because I had­n’t seen my own friends in so long.

I learned that play­ing Punch Out on the Wii is as nat­ur­al to you as it was back when you were in your room back in ele­men­tary school, cry­ing because you were no one’s best friend. That watch­ing Air Guitar Nation — when it’s hard to tell how seri­ous­ly the con­tes­tants take them­selves — is much more enjoy­able with sar­cas­tic com­ments applied lib­er­al­ly from the audi­ence.

I want to know these peo­ple.

I want to find out what dri­ves them. I want to know why they cre­ate, why they’ve cho­sen their medi­ums. Why they hang out togeth­er. Why they stud­ied what they stud­ied. Why they have the jobs they do.

They’re well-read, edu­cat­ed, opin­ion­at­ed, cos­mopoli­tan. I felt some­what out of place. Topics of con­ver­sa­tion weren’t even close to my inter­ests. Concerts aren’t my scene. Politics con­fuse me. Things are hap­pen­ing to oth­er friends I’ve nev­er met. But when there’s this much to learn, lis­ten­ing is just as good as tak­ing part.

It was past mid­night by the time I got home, but I had hard time falling asleep. My brain was buzzing, try­ing to take in every­thing I had just expe­ri­enced.

Missing The Old

I’ve been read­ing Andrea’s blog late­ly. Normally, I don’t read blogs of peo­ple I’ve nev­er met1, and even though I’ve met Andrea, I’ve nev­er had a pen­e­trat­ing con­ver­sa­tion with her, let alone got­ten to know her. Andrea’s blog is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent though. To the unini­ti­at­ed, it’s a reg­u­lar jour­nal, but there are bits of insight and emo­tion scat­tered through­out that leave you feel­ing like you’re look­ing at some­one stoned, naked, and through their kitchen win­dow. The ordi­nary mixed with a dash of extra­or­di­nary is what tru­ly gives one a sense of empa­thy, and it was this that drew me in.

It’s been mak­ing me feel so fuck­ing nos­tal­gic.

I remem­ber being in that stage of life. Back in school. Getting drunk. Chasing girls. Unsure of any­thing but the way I was feel­ing in that exact moment.

It’s made me real­ize that I don’t write like I used to. My entries used to be so exper­i­men­tal. Aside from a sin­gle sen­tence as a last, con­clud­ing line2, and a pen­chant for being a lit­tle too per­son­al, I had­n’t devel­oped a par­tic­u­lar writ­ing style. Back when I post­ed some­thing almost three times a day because I had to. When my posts had no titles (the same way Andrea has noth­ing but an incre­ment­ing num­ber and loca­tion stamp) because they were about every­thing and noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar.

Now, there’s too much pur­pose to my writ­ing. Carefully planned out posts, try­ing to express some­thing spe­cif­ic, with­out the stream-of-con­scious­ness I used to enjoy. Lost is the old whim­si­cal nature, the ordi­nary mixed with the extra­or­di­nary. I nev­er used to care whether some­thing was sig­nif­i­cant enough to post, and would just write it and hit that pub­lish but­ton.

I miss it.

But I can’t tell if it’s the way I used to write, or my life back then, that I miss.

  1. Blogs rarely inter­est me when I don’t have a bit of per­son­al insight from a first meet­ing. [↩]
  2. Almost every sin­gle pots in this blog ends this way. [↩]

Tai Chi Deadline

I’ve start­ed learn­ing large san shou in my Tai Chi class. While it’s fun to be prac­tic­ing anoth­er inter­ac­tive form of the Yang style, it’s also a lit­tle scary to be learn­ing some­thing new as my teacher nears retire­ment (when he reach­es 60 in four years). I’m start­ing to wor­ry that I won’t reach a lev­el where I can prac­tice effec­tive­ly on my own before his time is up.

At 2 class­es a week, 52 weeks a year, and 4 years left to go, we can expect rough­ly 416 class­es total; every class is worth 0.24% of a very lim­it­ed resource.

A class­mate once told me that his com­ing retire­ment is a good thing. We’ll be forced to go else­where to expand our knowl­edge of Tai Chi, because we reach cer­tain lim­i­ta­tions when prac­tic­ing with the same part­ners, skill lev­els, part­ners, styles, body types, and even teach­ers. While I under­stand his rea­son­ing, it doesn’t change the fact that I may not be able to con­tin­ue learn­ing what I know now, if anoth­er teacher doesn’t offer the same cur­ricu­lum.

Added to this is the fact that mar­tial Tai Chi teach­ers are hard to find in a city as small as this. Good teach­ers, espe­cial­ly ones suit­ed to your learn­ing style, with the right bal­ance of patience and dis­ci­pline, are even less com­mon.

It makes me won­der where I’ll be with my Tai Chi progress in four years.

Back To Life

Christmas lights

Thumbnail: Present wrapping paper
Thumbnail: Cat under Christmas tree
Thumbnail: Scented infuser sticks
Thumbnail: Blue-pink gradient
Thumbnail: Powdered candy
 

The hol­i­days are over. I sus­pect that I’ve eat­en more choco­late over the last two weeks than ever in my life.

The two New Year’s par­ties were great, although I missed see­ing Rob at Aaron’s. I did get a New Year’s kiss though, some­thing I nor­mal­ly feel awk­ward about when the cou­ples are all par­tak­ing and I hide behind my cam­era.

The holes in my ceil­ings have yet to be fixed, and it makes me cringe every time I walk into my bed­room or bath­room, so I spent all my time in the liv­ing room. Every day, I’d wake up, eat, play games, watch movies, then fall back asleep there.

On occa­sion, I’d vis­it friends or see a movie, if only for the sake of get­ting out. Some nights, I’d open the blinds and let the burn­ing sky pour in, just so I could know that there was some­thing out there out­side of my lit­tle micro­cosm.

I’m glad to be back to life. I was feel­ing so lack­adaisi­cal and dis­con­nect­ed, drift­ing aim­less­ly with­out any rea­son or pur­pose. In a strange way, I feel recharged, if only because I had two weeks with­out a reg­u­lar sched­ule.