Light Posting

for the next few days, decided to take care of a few things, like read.

You know what I haven't done in a while...

Read a book. My brain is saying I have to read one right NOW. Seriously

Not pleased

Tentative Summer teaching schedule is one ten week course that meets in the evening, finishing just late enough to completely wreck two nights of dojo training. Grrrr. Turning my request form in early apparently counted for sweet fuck all. Better start looking for an employment plan B. Excuse me while I go brood in a corner.

Facing facts

If I don’t get accepted into am MFA program this year, then what? One of my recommenders is retired, out of the teaching game, out of the recommending game. And I begin to bore with this dance. I have to confess, renewed interest in pursuing an MFA has not wiped away old misgivings. The stuffiness of the ivory tower and the strange authoritarian disposition of some workshops makes me leary. My portfolio is essentially superhero poetry, fanboy inspired trauma writing. The academy tolerates biographic writing, autobiography, semi-autobiography, “literary” fiction, and “magical” realism. Those quotations connotate dubious skepticism: magical realism means something can appear to evoke fantasy without being fantasy—that or a fairy tale. In such case it must evoke a fairy tale rhythm, while maintaining a Marquez-ian posture. (I’m not knocking him as a writer, just sayin’) And literary fiction? I still don’t know what that means? Anti-genre? Whatever a selection committee likes so they may maintain a highbrow aesthetic? In the end, whatever it is, literary fiction is just another genre, one that is supposed to place a high emphasis on technical skill as supposed to plot driven story-telling…or something like that. As I said, I’m not 100% certain what it is anymore, but I think it’s become more vice than virtue.

Yup, I wrote about superheroes, and I crammed that thing with all kind of allusions that most committee members are not going to get. So much so that I decided to add footnotes! Shit, I look at the lit mags and e-zines, and I don’t have the faintest clue where I’d send this stuff. Does Patton Oswalt read poetry?? Because when I try to conjure up a receptive audience, one that might like what I’ve written, he’s what comes to mind.

Practice

Lately, I've felt impervious, I mean my ego has been impervious, to the tap-outs and the fuck ups and the overwhelming weight and strength and speed of my contemporaries, just another day at the office. This isn't to say I've burned out or don't care anymore, far from it, I'm handling defeat better. I haven't needed to feed off little victories the way I used to. They are still there, a slow improvement in movement,near competency with a couple of sweeps (basic, kimora), and a sense of...flow is beginning to emerge. Now if we had a true technique class I think it would emerge faster, but hey, I'm making the best of what I've got.

Off to JKD soon.

Verbal haymaker in the middle of the night

We were IMing. Things were going fine. We were talking of ice cream cakes and the beach house, the upcoming summer. This conversation made sense, I was happy, I thought she was happy. "It really hurts when I visit and you brush me off for the martial arts. You do a lot of that hurt me sometimes" I did not how to respond, I would not do so for several hours. Every possible answer sounded snide and cruel.

So I emailed her around 3 am. I asked the thing that scares me, the trigger that could end us, the question I didn't dare ask even here:

"If I cause you such constant pain and suffering, why are you still with me?"

She responded with an apology and stress over her thesis, but is that a true answer or a generalized response, an unmeaning evasion?

I cannot escape the accusation of betrayal and failure. I try to offer what I can, but it is never enough. The more I give, the less, it seems, it's worth.

Angst Overload

I am going to die alone, unpublished, insignificant.

Desire with teeth

The way we fuck is changing. It’s because of the rape, the torture, because of the strain of seeing each other 72 hours out of a month. I fear we are hurtling towards some grandiose rape fantasy where I where a black mask and break into the house and she screams and begs as I pretend to rape her. This is not unexpected; we’re not entirely unprepared. Fear is sexualized, traumas are sexualized. It’s a coping mechanism.

Rape victims developing rape fantasies or people in fear of rape, in awe of rape, needing the power of rape, cluster in little fetish subcultures where they play the rape game, the mighty magic safe word game. But I resent this coping mechanism. It has been thrust upon us. We had no say.
There are all sorts of maxims concerning the things people have no power over. "The two certainties in life are death and taxes". "You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family". "Life is a bitch, and the bitch is in heat". So now, to this list, do I have to add rape as sexual fetish. "All sex after rape is a desire for rape"??
Great wonderful, I’m sure the six year old version of me will be ecstatic to know he will graduate from the playground world of Transformers, He-Man, and other assorted branded kids’ fantasies to the wonderful world of Let’s Rape Julie! I have to explain rape to him first, which means I have to explain sex, but since the universe momentarily implodes to eliminate the paradox of meeting oneself at a different point in time this is all moot, or we’re trapped in a time bubble, a Donnie Darko scenario, and I’m perfoming this Moebius song and dance for the rest of eternity

It feels like I already have.

Future Sifu?

On Friday one of the Sifus--call him Sifu Shellshock--approached me about becoming an instructor, noting my pursuit of a broad based skill set and a short handed staff (I'm sure my teaching experience also makes me an attractive candidate). I'd love to teach for the dojo, but since my current status is King of the White Belts, there's not much I'm really qualified to teach. Guess I'd be playing junior instructor for quite some time. (But I do daydream a lot about establishing a true bjj technique class. Then again, I don't see why I couldn't teach a fitness kickboxing class or get a Crossfit cert and teach a straight conditioning class.

Would I be paid? Any extra cash is good cash.

King of the Whitebelts Forever

There was a test, an actual by god test, in JKD last week. New Year, new system, actual monthly tests. I didn't feel any real pressure for most of the test (except when Sifu did the feeding, mostly because it didn't even test up to the yellow belt level, so once again I am a two striped white belt in JKD, but I'm clearly the best boxer of all the white belts. Presumably, I'll be doing a yellow belt test at the end of this month. There is a good chance, I may make green belt by end of the year.

In Judo I'm moving towards my blue belt (white>>green>>blue). I'm in no rush right now to test; I think a lack of randori has hurt my development, and only having one guy who is over 6 ft has given me a few bad habits I have to correct. The good news here is we;re now trying to get in an hour of judo on Mondays and Fridays (I have this dream where one day practice will consists of more than me and the judo brown belt). I'm going to attend a judo camp in the summer, where I should get plenty of randori experience. After that, I'll test for the blue belt (am also hoping to do a judo tournament before that too)

BJJ? Who knows? I like the incorporation of wrestling, but we need more high rep drills, stuff like armbars from the bottom. I did a few in the beginners class and my legs felt like jelly after 10 reps, unacceptable. Are there any solitary drills for practicing those armbars? Would go a long way in developing the strength of my guard too (physically and tactically).

Oh while I'm thinking of it, Monday, the BJJ brown belt had us doing some scramble drills, and really opened up how to approach the mount. If no locks are available or if the person is about to escape, switch to knee to belly, side, back to mount, hell at one point he--how do I describe this?--it was a mount but he monetarily faced the other direction, weight near the chest (not the same as reverse mount in sambo, at least it didn't appear that way)

Coming clean?

I've been toying with the idea of outing myself. Looking at my internet foot print if you will, it wouldn't take much to figure out who I am. Then I had a second revelation, virtually no one reads this blog! What would I be doing? Outing myself to myself? I'm pretty sure I can handle the shock, but fuck it, why make things easier for the rest of the world?---the one that isn't paying attention anyway.

My not so secret admirer

...is only 17. A little surprised--no, more like disappointed--not that I ever intended to do anything about it; but you know a person still has a way to mature, when she can't answer truthfully about her age. Although, one could make the argument, seriously or facetiously, that women in particular only tell the truth about their ages from 18 to 25.

I had a really bad bad bad experience dating a girl who lied about her age, lied about everything actually. I met her on the internet in the wild west days of the aol chatrooms. She was pretending to be someone else, yeah it was downhill from there. Hmm, guess this one warrants it's own post at a later date.

I declare victory

Over the mysterious hip ailment, whatever it is, reclining has proven to be the best therapy.

While I'm thinking about it

Can't believe I'm saying this, but AvP:Requiem is entertaining in a shameless exploitation film way, and that's a good thing. It was almost, but not quite, Planet Terror-esque. It didn't pause to delight in ironic mischief the way PT did (not using ironic in a pejorative fashion here). We need more genre films willing to kill children and pregnant women.

Certainly better than the frustrating borefest of the first AvP. Sigh, it needed to be a Space Opera, an all or nothing war. Instead we got a watered down Chariot of the Gods Scenario (which sounds much cooler than it is.)

That Sinking Feeling

I feigned protest. Was supposed to wait and see Watchmen with Girlfriend, instead of in town with various nerdic brethren, but I was quite happy to see it with her, would be worth the wait.
My conscription has been waived. It scares me.

This isn't the Girlfriend thing to do; it isn't even the generic girlfriend thing to do. Something is rotten in Denmark.

On the phone she seems distant. Is this it? Is she giving up?
This is how the world ends....?

About that Cold

It wasn't the cold that did me in the following Monday, rather this mighty equation
(Maximun Strength Mucinex + Endorush)x Empty Stomach = Barf


And has been recorded before, I think, Radar detests the sound of me puking. I rushed home from Judo, as soon as I started he ran to Mom
s room and jumped on a pillow. Later, as I was puking in the kitchen sink, I could hear him barking his rebuke from my room. As far as barfing fits go this one was kinda tame. I puled mostly water. There was a a sensation of a demon buried deep with the trans-realities of the mystical digestive gradient swirling at the epicenter of the uber-tummy*

That wasn't as thrilling as the next equation.
(((Barf+Suppository){raised to Indignity Squared})X babykicker fit+papi fit+mom fit/Alien V Predator: Requiem)))-4 am Gatorade= Passed out for most of Tuesday

Really, why write at all when you can construct sloppy short hand equations with excessive verbiage?? Oh, by the way, that demon was brown.

*My Grant Morrison impression