Crash Burn Slide

Last week of this 8 am death march. That's what I've been like, a stupid sucker on a death march in a trail of tears that is --well, it's a trail of tears for christ's sake.

Actually, tomorrow is the end of this terrible violent cycle of violent intellectual molestation. They can have thursday to work on their paper. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!


Funny enough I've got a back log of material, I just haven't had the patience and brain power to hammer out some edits. Good lord, you know I have material from over a year ago I haven't revised at all? Yikes! My head is going light n' wacky (don't ask me what that means I'm not entirely sure) Will lay down for a few minutes before going to the dojo.

Where Tigr stops whining, abruptly, and meditates on victories.

There should be forward motion in our life together, not inertia. We should be making plans to move in together again. Why aren’t we? Isn’t that the very first thing we should have done? Mariann still doesn’t have her thesis done. When will she defend, December? I’ve got work as an adjunct, but Jesus, I don’t want to a full time position at Backwater Tech, I want an MFA, I want to be writing, I want a degree that will give me more versatility in the leaning tower of ivory.

God, enough with the "shoulds" and the "why nots", and "I wants" my life is not at it's nadir. This isn't heroine sheik(sp?), this isn't a Greek Tragedy, or a Morality Play. On occasion, it may be something out of Satan Says, but those moments are brief, with the lifespan of a single firework; you see that red splash before you've heard the booming shriek.

Let’s not downplay the obvious victories here. One, we won. Doesn’t matter if there wasn’t a verdict, the defendants paid out six figures. Two, hello, we got a six figure settlement! We can lay down the foundation for a spiffy retirement plan. Three, our sex life is workin’ just fine thank you very much. Oddly enough, under all the pressure and strife, our sex life has improved. Four, we beat Super Mario Galaxy two days after the verdict. Yeah I know, talk about a little victory, but we did it together and it felt good, even if the substance of the thing itself is imaginary. Stoppin’ on koopas is fun. (Where were the Hammer Bros. in this installment?) Five, as far as PSTD goes, I think the worst is over for G (I hope). Six, I keep getting’ my ass whipped, but somehow I’m improving in bjj and judo and JKD.

Seven, I will be going to a four day Machado seminar in October providing me with intensive training so that I will improve even more (I think I can get that damn blue belt in under two years). Eight, I’m still writing on this here blog. Nine, I’m still writing poetry and prose. I’m on to something here. I think the superhero inflections of the poetry is slowly shaping into a shrewd cycle at worse and at best a book length collection at best. Nine, I’m living in exciting times for comic books films (and comic books in general) hell, whether I like it or not, I’m living in exciting times (ancient curse/blessing). And ten, that’s right ten, my overall level of conditioning keeps going up.

That’s how it’s done. That’s how you put the focus on the positive. It doesn’t kill the negative, but it puts everything in perspective. When I make alterations to my diet—and I use the term to mean a long term lifestyle choice not a temporary fix’er up’er—I focus on what I want in it, rather than what I take away. I need lots of lean protein, fats, fruit, and water, so I focus on consuming those rather than obsessing over not having pizza (hmm, so there is a context in which I DON’T obsess about things). I need to maintain the same outlook with the rest of my life. I cannot allow myself to navel gaze at the scars and traumas, that (to a certain extent) is what the poetry is for.

Bragging

I used the word "stentorian" in the post below. This pleases me greatly. It's one of those words you really like, but rarely have occasion to use (ex: exponentially, gargantuan)

Dreamless

When I was four I stayed up a solid 24 hours, dragging my poor abuelita past the midnight hour, storming through the blackness of 6 am. As a preschooler I despised nap time. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I hated nap timed. Hated, hated, hated it. I was wide awake in a room full of alphabet clouds and big bold blues, greens, and whites: summer, winter, fall and spring all at once on the poster boards. The cosmic balance of the universe, the barrier forming order out of chaos, a thin black cross, kept the sun from melting the ice which would have caused an avalanche, killing the roses and the little boy skipping to school in his shorts.
It was me alone in that quiet, motionless sea of young bodies wrapped in corduroy. My classmates floated in dreams, I floated on a red mat firmly rooted to the carpet. My only dreams were of the day variety; they were the only stimulus I had for two hours--those, and the questions. I wondered if the teacher knew she had the most beautiful legs I had ever seen, and if she realized I stared at them when she taught us the days of the week. Would the cafeteria serve the best brownies in the world tomorrow, served up on white paper discs? Is papi coming home with surprises hiding behind his giant mustache which unfolds upon the world like a pair of giant batwings [note to reader: do you know the Spanish word for mustache? I'm looking for a particular term that starts with a "b" it might be slang, or possibly a variation created by a 4 yr old mind]--long, dark, and curly?

I tossed and turned and fiddled, very much like I do now as an adult. Fingers twiddling frantically, a glass ball of lighting in a madman's lab. My legs would open and close, flapping without purpose, rubbing...rubbing. My penis caught in the cleavage of my inner thigh and underoos. In these long waitings I discovered myself accidentally. I do not remember the first time I masturbated, all I know is it was there, and it would become a daily activity (and nightly) as I tried to surf through the boredom. I enjoyed the tingle but desired no one.

I've often wondered if these habits said anything about me specifically. Was my sleeplessness at this age a sign of a specific personality? Did it imply something about my home life? Was it a signifier for a learning disability or worse?(My sister was tested, rigorously, and found to have ADD. Papi has an anxiety disorder. Our grandmother wandered the halls of schizophrenia in an asylum). At the end of the day, was it simply the sign of a stentorian imagination, already cultivating my first superhero myth-life?

One time, I wet myself because I had nothing else to do.

Pan's Hellboy

I saw Hellboy 2 this weekend with Girlfriend. I enjoyed it. It doesn't play like a superhero movie, rather it plays like a fantasy film that just happens to have superheroes in it. One of Del Toro's--who directed Pan's Labyrinth strengths as a director is his ability to create immersive worlds, rather than a pastiche of CGI effects trying passing itself off as an environment. This is one of those movies I would recommend to people who aren't fans of the superhero genre.
Del Toro is a gifted filmmaker who has the ability channel the old school: the golden age of monster movies, the black and white classics. Karloff, Lugosi, Chenney( Sr and Jr.) would all thrive in Del Toro's world; in fact, just writing that makes me a little sad that they aren't around to do just that.

THUMP!

Am back at the homestead. Things have changed drastically, yet there is no feeling of change, I've even started to break down what I'll be doing with a hunk of change, and things still don't feel any different.

My one concern with respect to the money is I fuck it up. I want to invest it, I don't want to do anything risky, but the market is doing a performance piece I like to call "Little Viet Cong Boy trips on land mine, plays hopscotch"

A quick word on a Major Victory

I can't say I believe in closure; I can't say I've ever experienced closure, but yesterday was a victory--a Major Victory--for both me and Girlfriend, one that has nothing to do with jujitsu technique. I've alluded obliquely to civil hearings on this blog. I don't want to say too much at the moment because I signed a confidentiality agreement, and anonymous or not, should honor the agreement in good faith. Until I figure out where "the line" is, I'll just say this.

The perps are still out there, but yesterday a specific entity learned the value (we hope) of real security versus the illusion of security.

I need to talk to my lawyer before saying anything else, and I've got reading (Faust) to do.
To quote Scott Hall, "survey says, score one for the good guys" (insert smirk here, throw toothpick at camera).

Tigr's definition of privacy

The ability to masturbate without fear of discovery.

A musing

I've been toying with an idea.

See, since I got this here fancy shmancy web cam I've been brainstorming ways to use it for the blog. One of my ideas, is to record yours truly (audio only) reading a few poems I've written since the torture/rape. There is really one thing stopping me--correction, two things. One, privacy.
Two, ::doing my best Gollum impression:: we hates the sound of our voice. It burns my precious; it burns! Smeagel loses all objectivity, everything sounds so nasal, precious!

I think it would be cool for the two people reading this blog to hear my voice, and a different, yet strangely obvious way, for me to play around with the performance aspects of writing. (Sidenote: my girlfriend has a fantastic reading voice: strong dramatic range, good sense of cadence and rhythm.)

Would doing so count as publishing a work? Hmm. I hate lit mags and their namby pamby rules. They burn! Gollum! Gollum!

1-2-3 Get off my grandfather's apple tree

Tomorrow, I turn around and go to Florida. I meet up with my Gal, and we prepare to do battle in that ugly ugly thing called mediation. Hopefully, this will symbolize the end of one battle in our search for justice. We have no wish to fight that even uglier battle often referred to as a "lawsuit"

Vacation

Beach was fun. Got to spend time with girlfriend. We made ice cream (Golden Oreo). We played Super Mario Galaxy, and yes, we even went to the beach, and we even went to the movies. (Wall-E is another Pixar homerun, filled with Kubrick homages, top notch animation, and that darn fine Pixar Wit. Despite this, Pixar makes what, for a "family film" is a deeply cynical vision of our future, but one with the ring of truth.) We got to be a normal couple for a while.

And Radar was a dog, spending his time in a way befitting a Scottish Terrier: barking at golfers. It was wrong and we wagged our fingers at him, but the filled me with impish pride.

In fact, by vitrue of shared heritage, Scottish Terriers should be the only living thing allowed to totally fuck up a game o' golf. If you screw up a shot or putt or whatever tough shit, you just got a scottish beatdown Radar style.

Think of the drama! You would never know when it would happen, only that it could.

"It's the eighteenth hole, Woods needs an eagle to win. He's about to--Oh! that scottie came out of nowhere!"
"Bob, the lil s.o.b was hiding IN the bag, he emerged from between the 8 and 9 Iron like some sort of demon"
"Ah, the ole Brown Sauce Voodoo , pioneered by that great warrior, Angus IV"
"It may be Brown Sauce Voodoo, but poor Tiger looks like he just received a big wet *Glascow Kiss!"
They laugh that snarky white laugh of the country club caucasian. I smile. You smile, and we all just grew a little bit as people. We've got the power to ward off Monday. Sports are back people, sports are back.

*headbutt, Radar has given me a few of those!

The next couple weeks

Posting will be light. Spending the 4th weekend with family and girlfriend at beach house. Lucky man that I am, I'll be attending a mediation. This means an extra dose of Girlfriend, also means an extra dose of what I hope will be the end of a legal battle. If things go my way, I'll be training at the Alliance dojo again.

Oh! Fifty if you're reading this I hope all is well, and you should make sure none of my emails are in your spam folder.

Double Oh! This guy is is good, and my ego usually prevents me from admitting that about anyone
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Tonight I unquestioningly had my best 3 min roll against Mr. Wrestling. Heck, it might be the best 3 min I ever had in practice (college wrestler, blue belt in 9 months, great conditioning, soon to be MMA pro. undefeated as amateur). He whips my ass on a regular basis, but tonight I mounted him with a Kimora sweep, got him in trouble with a guillotine, and ended the period with me working a kimora out of side control and what I THINK was a triangle. He wasn't going to submit, but I clearly had the offensive advantage at the end.