Only Human
You might notice a recurring note in a lot of my entries... "only human." I end up using that as an excuse for a lot of things I see in life... I don't use it as an excuse for myself, because it's a flaccid copout for taking responsibility for one's own actions, motivations, and character. I end up using it for most other things, though, because anyone with a sense of humility knows how hard it is to rise above one's less noble emotions or impulses and put one's foot down in the name of principle. Understanding how difficult it is to reject expedient or short-sighted temptations makes it easier to excuse others for stumbling from time to time.
But there's also a much simpler side to being "only human." Not all of life is so metaphysical. I'm limping back to my room on injured legs, and as I head for the elevator, I see a pink sign taped to the elevator door:
"
Please do not use until
VOMIT
has been cleaned up.
- maintenance
"
(the sign is repeated verbatim; 'vomit' really was in allcaps.)
Egh. Sometimes, it's gross being organic. I limped up the stairs.
Saturday, March 01, 2003
High Impact
Friendships can get stale, especially when you feel taken for granted. Friendship is reciprocal; you understand the other's quirks and faults, and forgive them because it's so nice to feel appreciated, or to serve as a confidante, or just to share your free time in good company.
Friendship isn't selfless, though... I have thoughts on altruism and selflessness, but I'd have to say that friendship, by definition, is not selfless. Love perhaps is, depending on the person. But while friendships may contain many a selfless moment, their foundation is one built upon reciprocation. This does not mean that my conception of friendship is that of a selfish or self-serving relationship. Far from it. Reciprocal does not mean quid pro quo, or tit for tat. I do not keep score.
But a friendship decays when you feel taken for granted, when the other doesn't show understanding, or when there's little no affirmation on the other side that your presence in the other's life has any particular value. I have a lot of patience that way. Friends are still human; they have weak moments, they act thoughtlessly, they lose patience; these aren't really faults. Almost everyone is like that from time to time, and a good friendship is a durable one. Small things are recognized for what they are; individual instances of annoyance don't break a friendship. If they do, it's not a real friendship. Real friendships are not petty; they take a lot of investment, a lot of effort, and generate a lot of payback; small stuff is a drop in the bucket compared to the weight of the history, and if you throw away a valued friendship for petty reasons, you leave yourself the poorer for it.
Build up enough of that, though, and any friendship gets tested. I'm going to intentionally be vague and not discuss examples from my personal life at this point in time.
I can, however, analogize it somewhat to a problem I have with wushu practice . Last night, I went to practice at Hearst Gym in Berkeley - where I had started learning wushu. I've gotten older, it seems - the hardwood floor at Hearst Gym is easily two or three times as hard as almost any floor I've practiced on for a long time. The passage of time has rendered most of my early memories of training pain rather misty and vague, and I sit here typing and wondering whether or not it had always been like this. My left foot is bruised, my right hip is slightly messed up, and I did *nothing* different from what I do when I practice elsewhere. Soreness is one thing, but bruises and jarred joints are another.
I used to practice at Hearst all the time... it's where I started learning wushu in the first place, and I practiced there time and again years in the past. But while I usually complain about the people, today I'm just complaining about the floor. It hurts. Talk about high impact - the floor is ridiculously hard! It's obscene. It's a *bad* place to be doing anything athletic. Basketball, volleyball, martial arts - you name it, this floor is *not* for it; the hardwood is lined with cement harder than granite. Fond memories aside, I can't continue to practice there. I'm almost a decade older than when I started, and the gym is not forgiving. Several times in the past year, I have practiced there only to come away the next day with aching knees and bruised heels, and sometimes pulls and strains in my back or hip, things that do not happen when I practice elsewhere. Each and every time. I'm too old to sustain this kind of damage from a regular practice.
I think it's time to stop practicing there. I've been voicing my doubts to some of my fellow martial artists, but I think this last night decides it for me. My friendship with Hearst Gym has gone stale. Perhaps I will drop by from time to time - there are some things that I like, such as the stretching bars, and forms practice is usually ok. But no more basics and no more jumping... I can't take the pounding, and that means I can't go to practice and try to grit my teeth through the whole thing over and over again.
Friendships can get stale, especially when you feel taken for granted. Friendship is reciprocal; you understand the other's quirks and faults, and forgive them because it's so nice to feel appreciated, or to serve as a confidante, or just to share your free time in good company.
Friendship isn't selfless, though... I have thoughts on altruism and selflessness, but I'd have to say that friendship, by definition, is not selfless. Love perhaps is, depending on the person. But while friendships may contain many a selfless moment, their foundation is one built upon reciprocation. This does not mean that my conception of friendship is that of a selfish or self-serving relationship. Far from it. Reciprocal does not mean quid pro quo, or tit for tat. I do not keep score.
But a friendship decays when you feel taken for granted, when the other doesn't show understanding, or when there's little no affirmation on the other side that your presence in the other's life has any particular value. I have a lot of patience that way. Friends are still human; they have weak moments, they act thoughtlessly, they lose patience; these aren't really faults. Almost everyone is like that from time to time, and a good friendship is a durable one. Small things are recognized for what they are; individual instances of annoyance don't break a friendship. If they do, it's not a real friendship. Real friendships are not petty; they take a lot of investment, a lot of effort, and generate a lot of payback; small stuff is a drop in the bucket compared to the weight of the history, and if you throw away a valued friendship for petty reasons, you leave yourself the poorer for it.
Build up enough of that, though, and any friendship gets tested. I'm going to intentionally be vague and not discuss examples from my personal life at this point in time.
I can, however, analogize it somewhat to a problem I have with wushu practice . Last night, I went to practice at Hearst Gym in Berkeley - where I had started learning wushu. I've gotten older, it seems - the hardwood floor at Hearst Gym is easily two or three times as hard as almost any floor I've practiced on for a long time. The passage of time has rendered most of my early memories of training pain rather misty and vague, and I sit here typing and wondering whether or not it had always been like this. My left foot is bruised, my right hip is slightly messed up, and I did *nothing* different from what I do when I practice elsewhere. Soreness is one thing, but bruises and jarred joints are another.
I used to practice at Hearst all the time... it's where I started learning wushu in the first place, and I practiced there time and again years in the past. But while I usually complain about the people, today I'm just complaining about the floor. It hurts. Talk about high impact - the floor is ridiculously hard! It's obscene. It's a *bad* place to be doing anything athletic. Basketball, volleyball, martial arts - you name it, this floor is *not* for it; the hardwood is lined with cement harder than granite. Fond memories aside, I can't continue to practice there. I'm almost a decade older than when I started, and the gym is not forgiving. Several times in the past year, I have practiced there only to come away the next day with aching knees and bruised heels, and sometimes pulls and strains in my back or hip, things that do not happen when I practice elsewhere. Each and every time. I'm too old to sustain this kind of damage from a regular practice.
I think it's time to stop practicing there. I've been voicing my doubts to some of my fellow martial artists, but I think this last night decides it for me. My friendship with Hearst Gym has gone stale. Perhaps I will drop by from time to time - there are some things that I like, such as the stretching bars, and forms practice is usually ok. But no more basics and no more jumping... I can't take the pounding, and that means I can't go to practice and try to grit my teeth through the whole thing over and over again.
Demon Spawn
You can try to define true love any way you want, but chances are, the words are going to fall short of the true definition. You could attempt to write a Hugoesque treatise on it and still not manage to quite capture it. You could try to craft a terse, Gumpian morsel made of economized wit and poignancy, but fail to do justice to the flood of emotions love entails. If love were easy to quantify, perhaps people wouldn't need to write about it so much, and yet here it is, being written and spoken and blogged about ad infinitum.
Or perhaps not. How many people try to define it, after all? A lot of people write about it just because it's a big part of their lives. They need to write about it. They want to write about it. It's not about waxing metaphysical, or demonstrating wisdom or experience. It's just... being human, I guess.
It has been an evasive subject for me as well - though I realize that a lot of my entries to date have at least tangentially been on the topic. I skirt around the edges most of the time, quite frankly, because I don't have that much to write about. I can't talk about it as directly as a lot of other people do. My understanding of it arrives only in the smallest of hints. Like an elusive deer, it lopes away from me with ease, betwixt trees in a dark forest full of danger and threat, leaving me naught but scarce tracks to follow. I have doubled back and again on the same trails, often without knowing, led astray by a quest far too wily for me and my loud, clumsy footsteps.
But it doesn't seem fair. I've learned so little, but why should that matter so much? Certainly knowledge and understanding are no prerequisites; attraction asks neither wit nor wisdom. Maybe it's entirely glandular. Maybe there's no intellectual aspect to it at all. Maybe the better analogy is not that of the hunter, but of the hunted, stumbling through the forest thinking I have some idea of what I'm looking for, only to be easily tailed by that blasted cupid, being shot through the heart from behind, his cruel, barbed arrows dripping the venom of spite and the poison of pain, snagging in flesh. Every time, I've had to rip those damned arrows out, leaving torn, jagged, unsightly wounds, gushing blood that feeds the forest floor.
But it's cupid's fault, for being a horrible, sadistic little imp. My image of cupid is that of a bat-winged brat slightly older than the cherub that typically portrays him. His mouth is frozen in a rictus grin, baring yellowed and jagged teeth in a smile remniscent of the schoolyard bully who pulls whiskers off kittens and pours salt on snails. His skin is sallow and stretched taut over wiry muscles and protruding bones, marked by the anomalous and distended belly of starvation and disease. Horrible, tangled scrags of greasy hair bristle from his armpits. He is so foul that flies, attracted to his stink, buzz their last and drop dead upon touching the aura of his malice. He's not an angel, or a Greek child-god... he's a demon. A reject outcast. The Furies' irritating kid brother, who stalks the unaware and shoots them in the back like the cowardly, honorless assassin that he is.
And yet... it's not like that. I have enough friends who are so happy in their relationships... I'd never wish them any less than that. I suppose we truly are in Plato's cave. For them, cupid's shadow plays against the wall and shows them something beautiful, makes them smile and sigh. His shadow is a nightmare for me. I have to change where I am... I have to get out of this part of the cave.
You can try to define true love any way you want, but chances are, the words are going to fall short of the true definition. You could attempt to write a Hugoesque treatise on it and still not manage to quite capture it. You could try to craft a terse, Gumpian morsel made of economized wit and poignancy, but fail to do justice to the flood of emotions love entails. If love were easy to quantify, perhaps people wouldn't need to write about it so much, and yet here it is, being written and spoken and blogged about ad infinitum.
Or perhaps not. How many people try to define it, after all? A lot of people write about it just because it's a big part of their lives. They need to write about it. They want to write about it. It's not about waxing metaphysical, or demonstrating wisdom or experience. It's just... being human, I guess.
It has been an evasive subject for me as well - though I realize that a lot of my entries to date have at least tangentially been on the topic. I skirt around the edges most of the time, quite frankly, because I don't have that much to write about. I can't talk about it as directly as a lot of other people do. My understanding of it arrives only in the smallest of hints. Like an elusive deer, it lopes away from me with ease, betwixt trees in a dark forest full of danger and threat, leaving me naught but scarce tracks to follow. I have doubled back and again on the same trails, often without knowing, led astray by a quest far too wily for me and my loud, clumsy footsteps.
But it doesn't seem fair. I've learned so little, but why should that matter so much? Certainly knowledge and understanding are no prerequisites; attraction asks neither wit nor wisdom. Maybe it's entirely glandular. Maybe there's no intellectual aspect to it at all. Maybe the better analogy is not that of the hunter, but of the hunted, stumbling through the forest thinking I have some idea of what I'm looking for, only to be easily tailed by that blasted cupid, being shot through the heart from behind, his cruel, barbed arrows dripping the venom of spite and the poison of pain, snagging in flesh. Every time, I've had to rip those damned arrows out, leaving torn, jagged, unsightly wounds, gushing blood that feeds the forest floor.
But it's cupid's fault, for being a horrible, sadistic little imp. My image of cupid is that of a bat-winged brat slightly older than the cherub that typically portrays him. His mouth is frozen in a rictus grin, baring yellowed and jagged teeth in a smile remniscent of the schoolyard bully who pulls whiskers off kittens and pours salt on snails. His skin is sallow and stretched taut over wiry muscles and protruding bones, marked by the anomalous and distended belly of starvation and disease. Horrible, tangled scrags of greasy hair bristle from his armpits. He is so foul that flies, attracted to his stink, buzz their last and drop dead upon touching the aura of his malice. He's not an angel, or a Greek child-god... he's a demon. A reject outcast. The Furies' irritating kid brother, who stalks the unaware and shoots them in the back like the cowardly, honorless assassin that he is.
And yet... it's not like that. I have enough friends who are so happy in their relationships... I'd never wish them any less than that. I suppose we truly are in Plato's cave. For them, cupid's shadow plays against the wall and shows them something beautiful, makes them smile and sigh. His shadow is a nightmare for me. I have to change where I am... I have to get out of this part of the cave.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)