words, words, words
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
If I begin to detail myself here, will you understand?
P. I am me
Q. I don't always know exactly who that is
R. I am Quaker
S. I like words and playing with them
T. I like genmaicha tea
U. I like the word napkin more than most others
V. I spend time walking my neighborhood
W. I cook rice often
X. I sleep well most every night
Y. I eat large amounts of fruit and vegetables
Z. I munch, sleep, write, create, cook, bike, watch, walk, listen, hope, learn, drink, live, breathe, touch, know, question, taste, copy, read, stare, carry, talk, dance, finger, try.
raisin@gmail.com
albums:
Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs
Erasure: I Say, I Say, I Say
Depeche Mode: Black Celebration
The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds
Marvin Gaye: What's Going On?
David Bowie: Hunky Dory
George Michael: Listen without Prejudice
George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Yo La Tengo: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
songs:
Wild is the Wind: Nina Simone
Come Undone: Duran Duran
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini: Rachmaninov
My Funny Valentine: Chet Baker
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate: The Flaming Lips
This Must Be the Place: The Talking Heads
Hyperballad: Bjork
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Thursday, June 10, 2004
When the season was over, I told myself I wouldn't play again, but before I really got a chance to think much about it, my dad started me on a workout program. He bought a weight set for upper body work and we went to the gym for lower body work. My dad worked with a lot of trainers, used a lot of pills and weight-gaining drinks to remake my body. for the next two years, i spent two and a half hours, five days a week, exercising, working out with him. At 12, I was just starting puberty, and my body expanded extraordinarily. i still have stretch marks from gaining 30 pounds of muscle in three months. I still remember teh wonderful black pair of jeans my dad bought me before I gained the weight that I only wore for two months.
Lifting weights was far easier than football, but I still detested my dad for it. I would hide when I got home from school, open the back door very slowly and quietly, hoping he wouldn't be in the living room and wouldn't hear me sneak into my room. He'd find me soon enough, knowing what time i got home from school, and we'd start the weights. oh we did weights, we played basketball, my dad had me wear these wonderful shoes that had a big heel on the front of the foot, so i guess it's not a heel, but it essentially was meant to work your calves, because you're forced to be on your toes. so i played basketall in the torture shoes, and felt like an idiot. here i am in a college gym, running lay-ups in ridiculous shoes. My only consolation came from the strength of my legs, which, thanks to the years of skiing and biking, after only a few months of doing squats, could handle more weight than most of the guys in the gym.
Of course, my dad tried to get me to play football again for eigth grade. He said I was stronger now and wouldn't get pushed around as much. I never minded being pushed around, it was having to fight back that i couldn't bring myself to do. He went as far as to offer me $300 to play that season, but i refused. I wouldn't have known what to do with the money anyway. What surprised me that year was my classmates somehow knowing that I was strong. i don't remember telling anyone before people started asking me about it. maybe I mentioned it to someone without realizing it, maybe my dad talked to people about it (he was always good with gossip), but suddenly, people began asking me how much I could bench press. i can't pretend that was a bad thing - they liked me for it, and everyone enjoys being liked. but at the same time, they liked me for something that clearly wasn't me. i wasn't the one dedicated to lifting weights so much or so hard. i was only resposible for obeying my dad when he told me to lift the weight, when he told me i wasn't working hard enough. The kids liked the part of me that I considered to be alien. The muscles I had were my enemy, the embodiment of forced labor, of submission to my dad's will. i was a stinking bookworm, a nerd whose closest friend was my english teacher. putting up with other guys' admiration stung because they liked nothing of what i was and only what my dad had forced me to become.
My dad and I didn't talk much while we worked out; I was mostlly sullen about what was going on. We argued over the word focus though - he would tell me to focus and concentrate on the weight i was lifting, and I didn't want to understand. Was I supposed to stare at the bar, think hard about the amount of weight i was lifting? The trick of obedience is to do the task but put your mind elsewhere. I had learned in class as any kid does, the freedom of daydreaming, of wandering off to somewhere else because you don't want to be where you are. You can't do that lifting weights, not if you expect to improve. My dad must have known i was somewhere else, wanted to be somewhere else, and so he began to work on my mind. Not only did he expect me to be there physically, but he wanted all of my attention.
2:22 PM
|
|
| |
|
|
|
