Tag Archives: love

Love of Movement

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Tonight, I got double fulls for the first time.

It’s one of the tricks I told myself that, once I got them, I would be able to rest easy and stop tricking.

That was a complete lie. I’m not about to stop tricking.

Perhaps it was related to getting a double full, but I had a thought about dance that I posted on Tim Tang’s Facebook Group, Insight. I said “All movement is dance.” I had immediate misgivings about the way I phrased it as I took a shower and added a comment to clarify. As it turns out, I had it backwards. All movement can be dance, but not all movement is dance.

Movement is everywhere. The arc of an arrow in flight, the vibrations of an atom, a ballerina’s elegant, pointed toes. I realized that there is nothing to differentiate the radiation signature of a red dwarf star from the ballerina – all just molecules. What really makes it different is that someone appreciates the ballerina. Not to say that no one appreciates the star. Actually, someone does appreciate the star and its radiation signature.

That’s what makes dance different. The human element. The human appreciation of movement. This appreciation is what makes sports entertaining. This appreciation is what makes the arc of a rocket as it escapes Earth’s orbit a beautiful, man-made gift to the heavens. This appreciation is what makes bboying, ballet, and tango irresistible and captivating to watch. As the music moves us through time, the dancers move through space. It’s why they call it a “movement” in music composition, is it not?

Maybe I am alone in this nearly universal appreciation of movement. After all, I am the only person I know who will stare at an iMac’s screensaver for over ten minutes, mesmerized. I played with Google’s bouncy bubble logo for 45 minutes. I have a witness to my weirdness.

But if anything, I think I’m just an extreme case. Everyone has some sort of appreciation of movement, unavoidably. Everything in our universe is in a state of change. So while you admire the football player’s charge toward the endzone, you may equally enjoy the wild stallion’s charge through a racing river, and the sure, rolling thunder of a bowling ball headed for a strike. A dancer may duck and dodge like a football player, charge like a stallion, or even roll like a bowling ball. Even if you don’t appreciate the similarity the dancer will. She will appreciate the movement that she is trying to bring to life for you.

Try. Please. For your own sake. The entire world, and every instant we spend in it, is full of opportunities for enjoyment and amazement. And it’s all in the appreciation of movement, whatever that movement may be called. I’ve been calling it dance, but I’m beginning to think that there might be a better term.

What would you call it?

The Worth of a Word

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Family comes first.

I carefully wrote down each thought, each idea, each quote. They were like little gems handed to me from ages past, from the greatest thinkers and the wisest sages.

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

The little shreds of paper were like oversized fortune cookies. It was somehow disappointing that these ideas would even deign to fit on them.

 Be yourself and I promise people will enjoy it. And if they don’t, forget them.

Each one fluttered to the bottom of the bin in a different manner, some twirling like helicopter blades, others tumbling, some dropping directly while others looped in circles.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try.

My hand was beginning to cramp up. I hadn’t written anything in a long time. Nothing by hand, anyway.

There are three choices in life: Be good, get good or give up.

I swept my arm against my shirt to soak up the sweat. The sun arched overhead, hot and humid.

Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.

When the wind picked up, it was like a giant dog panting at my back. I could feel the air, heavy with its slobber, wetting my clothes against my body.

Love is wanting others to be happy.

I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. The metal bin was filling up.

What would you do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow? In a month? A year? Everyone dies. Only a few truly live.

Sometimes I didn’t realize where the thoughts had come from, or how they’d affected me.

People first.

Sometimes, I didn’t remember who had said it, where I’d read it, what it even meant. Just that it was important.

Courage, originally meaning to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

Like tattered photographs of relatives I barely remembered, but photographs that made my lips turn upward in a smile nonetheless.

Who would you be, what would you do if you could not fail?

I took one final look at the words that provided guidelines for my life, words that have comforted me in times of sorrow and driven me to strive against my limits.

Ideas are worthless.

I took one final look into the bin and then lit the match.

Execution is everything.

New World Order

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I was just going to move the phone. Where it sat on the floor, in the middle of the piles of books, clothes, and other pieces of my life, just wasn’t very accessible. Ironic, because its enormous dial pad was adorned by inch by inch-and-a-quarter numbers. An elephant could use it to dial home. Somehow, I had more doubts as to the abilities of the aged demographic it was targeted toward than the elephant’s.

The problem wasn’t the phone. It was the trio of tennis balls right next to it. If I could just leap to the phone over the pile of belongings I had left on the floor my Sophomore year and not land on the tennis balls, I would be alright. Or maybe it was my Junior year, piles and piles of papers I would never look at again, stacked against the wall, that was the limiting factor. Or the two mattresses from the bunk bed I had disassembled when I was bored. They took up a good chunk of my room and they weren’t even particularly comfortable.

I had to move the phone.

So I had to move the tennis balls. And in order to clear a path to the tennis balls, I had to shift my Sophomore year out of the way, and to really clear a space, I had to get rid of Junior year, too. And while I was at it, I tossed Senior and Freshman year in the trash. My fifth year in college didn’t count – I had checked out by then. I had graduated on time, I was just bogged down by bureaucracy for a year after that.

I bumped into middle school and elementary school and found them a home with college and high school. They had swirled around, vagrant for decades, and only now could I usher all these scraps, like little puppies yipping for attention, into their respective cubby holes. I gave each a reassuring pat on the head before I bid it good night, to be cherished another day. What remained, I simply tossed out. I didn’t have time for memories that didn’t love me back. And I didn’t have time for objects that didn’t have memories associated with them.

I tore down the corkboard in a fit of pique and discovered a hole in the wall that my house uses to breathe. The picture I hung over it flaps idly with the house’s tidal exhalations.

I stood back and looked at the work I’d done. My room stood, empty and barren, like the first time I’d seen it at seven years old.

I lay down in the middle of the blank room and looked up at the ceiling. The tiles were scarred by a sabre blade. Some things, you couldn’t get rid of. You just had to clear your mind, mind your scars, and move on. After all, there was so much more left to do. So many more things, carefully chosen and carefully placed. It was the beginning. Another beginning.

It’s time to start again.

The phone would need a desk to rest on. It was a rather large phone, after all.

Family

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Whenever people ask how it’s been living with my cousin, I’ve found it pretty difficult to explain. I instinctively want to say, “It’s like living with family,” but I’ve found more and more over the years that family, tragically, does not mean to others what it means to me.

My earliest memories are of family. They are of kissing my newborn cousin. Running with my cousins through the halls. My uncle’s scratchy mustache. My aunts and my grandmother cooking, beautiful aromas wafting through the house. My dad coming home at 11:30 and me and my siblings staying up (so late!) to surprise him. Running underneath the tables of a restaurant during a family gathering, playing tag with my sisters and cousins, and then being carried out of a car, only semi-conscious, afterward.

Then, as we grew up, we cousins figured out how to buy candy for each other. Remarkable how money worked to share joy! And then we grew into our other shared passions – pogs, Pokemon, and videogames. We held sleepovers as much as possible when we discovered how the phone worked. My aunt’s house is the first number I memorized, and it’s still in my muscle memory. In this day and age, where cell phones dial for us, I still remember most of my cousins’ house numbers.

To me, it’s simple. Family, and I mean my extended family as well, means tranquility. Peace. That is our shared story. I can always tell my family the complete truth. I hold no ill will toward any of my family, and none, I hope, hold any toward me. I have been amazingly lucky and blessed.

I recently graduated. It’s a turning point, I suppose. But I have such a strong sense of peace from the idea of returning home that I feel relief and joy rather than fear, as so many graduates do.

So when people ask me how it’s been living with my cousin, Kevin, I respond, “It’s like living with family.” And I know that I need to explain that, but I don’t. There’s too much to explain. Too many funny stories, too many family camping trips, too many proud moments.

Thank you. You are my family. You made me who I am. You inspire me to be someone better.

And sometimes you forget and leave me in gas stations, but that’s alright.

It builds character.

Four Hours. Thirty Minutes.

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I am a marathoner.

Started the day with less sleep probably than I should have gotten.  Woke up, ate a hearty, multi-part breakfast. Then I saran-wrapped my blister and headed to the start line. There were FedEx trucks for drop bags, so I dropped off my gear. Meanwhile, I was freezing to death. I hurried over to Houlihan’s the restaurant attached to the iHotel, and huddled there, waiting for the marathon to start. I met an ultramarathon runner there named Judy, which was pretty awesome. I had no intention of meeting people. I was too damned cold.

When I finally headed out, there was less than a minute until the marathon started. I went out to the 4:30 and 5 hour pacer groups and ran into Justine and Kim, which was perfect. The race started and we were off. I had to pee almost immediately and lost sight of Justine.

The rest was 4:28:40 of experiences, so it’s hard to encapsulate. I’ll just use bullet points.

  • Some guy answered a call which happened to be the wrong number…while he was running the marathon. It was pretty ridiculous.
  • I FOUND THE SILVER BULLET BAR. Let’s never go here.
  • I remember the dogs along the route so much more clearly than the children.
  • I think I 100% genuinely thought, “I like dogs better than children”
  • GU is a energy supplement, basically liquid calories, and it has a disgusting texture. Kinda like toothpaste. I must have eaten 8 of those = 800 calories. I found out later that it was only recommended to eat 2 during a marathon. What?!
  • I ended up stopping a lot. For water, Gatorade, and GU. Unfortunately, the primary method of disposal was to throw stuff on the floor, which I hated. Absolutely hated. However, I caved. Just more convenient.
  • One of the entertainers was setting up beautiful, long-tailed kites that you could see from miles around. The wind was a boon to the kites, and the kites were a boon to my spirits.
  • Kim would later comment on Facebook that I looked energetic and free. I think that surprised a lot of people. I took time to smile at people, and it was really encouraging to see them smile back.
  • Met Jim, from Chicago. He was cool. Stocked up on Gu, must have had 8 in his pockets.
  • Eric Gaussman – I ran with this gentleman of 50 some years for the last half. He was a machine. I probably would have run the marathon half an hour slower if I hadn’t encountered him. We talked for a good long time. I was just absorbing his wisdom.
  • John, of the class of 89 or 92. And then his wife Pat, of whichever one John wasn’t. John commented on my Vibrams.
  • Jim Hayes. Beasted the half marathon…barefoot.

Lots of really awesome people. The entertainers, the spectators, everything was awesome. In the last quarter mile or so, as the assembly hall was in sight, Eric told me to give it what I had, so I boosted all the way to the finish.

When Eric crossed the line, we shook hands and hugged. We might never speak again. I sure hope we do.

And now I’m almost recovered and ready to run again! Perhaps I’ll bandit the Chicago marathon.

Life is Full

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     I guess a quick recap of my life so far would not be out of order.

     Running continues to be a boon in my life. Not so much running, as the excuse to get together with some buddies and chat while crunching miles. I’ll admit, I’m a social runner.

     Tricking is becoming a really big part of my week. With open gym available 4 days out of the week, conditioning Tuesdays, and open session on Fridays, there’s a lot of shit that I could be busy with. Not to mention trying to get the club to a point where I’m not afraid it will implode like ASA. Okay, ASA didn’t implode, but I don’t recognize it anymore.

     Dance remains as fickle as ever. But I think we’re drawing closer, she and I, in her own distant way.

     Working at the dining hall has taught me so many things. But chief among them is that, I don’t need to care about the job to work there, just the people. I LOVE my dining hall buddies!

     In the process of breaking my no-employment rule. I just suck and have not gotten around to it. I have very little time. The time usage transition will probably be very rough and I’ll need some solitude in order to get everything straight before I go for employment.

     I think I’m beginning to feel where I want to improve myself and where I’d be happy to let other people help me. I want to keep improving at dance, singing, spoken word, and being a better friend/person. Finding awesome people. What else? Writing. I’m on the fence about writing code, but I’ll probably go for it. In fact, I will. And let’s see…math up to DiffEQ and Linear Algebra. Other than that…I’m not entirely sure.

     People are always worth it. Taking more chances. Vulnerability. Courage. Stories.

     That’s my life.

Money

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     I have a problem. I don’t know what to think about money.

     On one hand, I believe that it is not necessary. There are many accounts of this, so I won’t go into detail. My basic hypothesis is something like this: The good that people can do for each other is incalculable in terms of economics. For example, a baker can make bread. He can either sell the bread for $2 a loaf, or he can give it to someone who is starving. For the person who is starving, the bread is worth infinitely more than $2. And the baker makes more than one loaf of bread per batch. Therefore, the baker regularly creates an infinite supply of value.

     If basic needs can be met this way, our wants can be met through time expense or bartering. We want what we can’t have. What we can’t have is that which is outside of our expertise to acquire. What we are paying for when we pay for a service is time – time spent learning, time spent executing said skill, time spent building or crafting. In this equation, time is almost literally equivalent to money. In an ideal world, bartering would work perfectly.

     Of course, I’m a dreamer. This shit doesn’t work. Just ask Communism. The root problem is that our needs and our wants are not entirely separable, as sad as that is to me, and those who won’t give up their wants for others needs jeopardize the entire system. But, as a dreamer, I would like to see the world progress toward the ideal. Someday, maybe, we can figure out how to get rid of this money business.

     On the other hand, if I am to follow the herd and begin to acquire currency, then I have to have justification for it. I have to have things that I want to spend money on, and this is primarily the reason that I’m awake and writing right now. What do I want money for? This is a basic question, but it conflicts with my other view that money isn’t necessary whatsoever. If I go with my usual answers, I will have to ignore that belief, which is a source of dissonance for me.

     Let’s do it anyway. What do I want money for?

  • My debts and my family members’ debts.
  • Basic needs
  • Food – because the appreciation of food is its own aesthetic
  • Creative ventures – cool, funny, or weird ideas I want to make reality and share with others
  • Among creative ventures we might as well place businesses and art.
  • Art – experiences that I appreciate.
  • Gifts – things or experiences that make people happy.

     A lot of those are almost interchangeable. Basically, in order of importance: basic needs, debt, and Art, though the latter two are arguable. Philosophically, I would prefer Art take precedence, but realistically, debt and repayment is more important to me. I can’t conscientiously ignore my debt to someone and continue on as if that extension of their faith meant nothing to me.

     On a side note, I like the definition of Art as an experience that is appreciated. With that definition, it makes a gift the natural expression of Art and Love, which, according to the Buddhist definition I subscribe to, is wanting others to be happy.

     That said, I estimate basic needs once I’m fully operational to be:

  • Rent (or equivalent): around $800 per month.
  • Food: Around $50 a month.
  • Water: Roughly $15 a month.
  • Annual total: $10,380

     Hypothetical debts for my entire family are probably…nearly incalculable. However, let’s just count my siblings. I’m going to assume $50,000 debts for college for all of them, excluding myself, because I will be at around $14,000 when I graduate. $164,000 for myself and all my siblings. And let’s say theoretically that my parents maxed out a business banking account for loans at $500,000. So, all in all, debts number around $664,000.

     In order to meet basic needs and debt, I would have to pull in $674,380 in a single year, or $2593.76923 per day, or $324.221154 an hour, assuming 8 hour work days and 260 work days in a year.

     I wonder how I could do that. Then again, assuming that all four of my siblings tackle it, it would be significantly easier. We’d only have to be fully employed at roughly $80 an hour.

     Anyway, once that debt is gone, I guess the rest of life begins.

     Suddenly, I am having doubts about my earlier prioritization.

The Art of Seduction

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     A few years ago, I was challenged by a friend to read Neil Strauss’s book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick Up Artists. Basically, it followed the journey of the author, Neil Strauss, as he struggled to gain mastery over the art of picking up women. He made himself into a new person, with a new name: Style. No woman could resist Style.

     After reading through this tome and following the progression of Style from a zero to a pick up pro, I began to apply the concepts and strategies to my own life. It was difficult at first. It seemed like how to be rejected was the only thing I was learning. But slowly, I began to have minor successes, which snowballed into major successes and before I knew it, I had 9′s and 10′s fighting over me in clubs and making me eggs in the morning.

     Yeah, that was all bullshit. A nice story, though, right?

     I read the book, but what I took away from it was at once more and less than the Art of Seduction. What I took away from it was more like footnotes for something more important to me – the Art of Life. What had happened to change Neil Strauss was entirely his doing. The person he had become was completely himself, yet completely and thoroughly put together in a conscious way to attract women. This resonated with me on some level, but I wouldn’t know how to put the pieces together until I talked to a friend about it much later.

     Pickup made me uneasy. Pickup artists struck me as inauthentic, craven beasts who calculated every move. I would read someone’s opinion online that pickup artists viewed women as nothing more than masturbatory aids, and I agreed. It felt that it was demeaning to women and dehumanizing. There was a part of me that was tempted to try it out, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It didn’t fit with what I believed, it could end up hurting people, and I was too scared.

     Years later, I would meet a real pickup artist, though his days were behind him, at least for the moment. We became good friends. Finally, when the topic came about during a long drive, I asked my friend how pick up artists could be authentic, to which he responded that it was “about being yourself…about being your best self,” and furthermore that people only got hurt if you failed to communicate your intentions fully. He said he looked at it more as bringing adventure into girls’ lives. I began to realize that this was something I might be able to get behind. I began to realize that pickup and seduction could be a positive thing.

     But the biggest takeaway for me was that it was about becoming a better person by dint of your own hard work. “Better” was whatever you wanted better to mean…for pickup artists, that meant they attracted women. For me, while that may have played a part, the message was that wasn’t the best me that I could be…yet. And having a clearer idea of who that person was to me was a good first step. I figured if I was my best me, there’s no way I couldn’t also be attractive. Just live my life the best way I can think of, and everything else will fall in order. I still believe it.

     Recently, I began to delve into reddit’s seduction sub-community. After reading this guide and poking around the community for a bit, I found a post asking how pickup artists reconciled their seductive ways with long term relationships. There was a response about how everything was about power, which I didn’t think fully explained how an enlightened PUA viewed it. So I responded:

I’m responding to you because you seem to find this a place of darkness. Some things you should read up on:

Seduction – meaning “to lead astray,” or “to attract,” courtesy of quazzy.

Lifers v Gamers – Lifers use the game to better themselves, gamers use the game to take advantage of people.

With that out of the way, how I reconcile seduction with a real relationship very much so adheres to the definition of “to attract” and the goals of a “lifer.” The primary message of seduction, for me, is “to attract” by being yourself…not someone that you discover somewhere in the hinterlands of your soul, but someone who you create. It’s an uplifting message – that, whoever or whatever you consider yourself now, you can forge someone better out of it, better by standards that you set yourself.

I believe that you do not discover yourself. You create yourself. There’s a great book called “It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be,” and the same goes for your personality. It’s not who you are, it’s who you want to be. If you have that going for you, your confidence will be attractive by itself, and if you want to be even more attractive, you can be that as well.
As for how this works out for long term relationships, the more comfortable you are being yourself, the more agency you have in your personality, the more likely you are to click with the right person, because you are putting out 100% your own personality. The only thing left is to find the right person. And getting to know someone, getting them to open up, is an important part of that.

There is a positive, affirmative way to look at seduction. Just ignore the gamers and the gamer mentality and seddit won’t be as dark a place anymore. I strongly hope that makes you less depressed about this subreddit, especially if you’re going to stick around.

     Basically…the way I see seduction is that if you’re good at life, you’ll do just fine at love.

     Tweakin’ out because I haven’t slept in 25 hours, so I’ll just leave it at that.

On Failure

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Fear is frustrating. Fear of failure…Fear is paralyzing.

Inadequacy drives me. Drives me forward like a slave driver, a whip of failure.

There is a direct correlation between the rate at which you experience failure and how fully you are living life, a direct correlation between your discomfort and the amount you’re growing. Do more. Do the unusual. Do everything. Finish things. Live more!

You will win this challenge, and then you will move onto the next challenge, and you will fail many, many times, if past history is any indicator, but then you will succeed. This month, you rewrite the endings to all your stories.

Again, I need to fail five times faster than your average person in order to learn the same stuff. So let me make a mistake.

Make a mistake.

Right now.