profound insight number 47

I was playing basketball, at a YMCA type scrimmage which isn't the best way to do the thing, I know. At my age I get my fix anyway I can. So be it. There I was on the tail end of an extended period of excessive physical stimulation. Dead man walking, sometimes running, all the time repping it for the old school white boys who wish they had game. Is that racist? Probably. You know I always say that if I was black, 6'8, 260lbs, and my name was LeBron James, I'd be playing in the NBA. It makes you think doesn't it? My gene sequence could have been entirely different. Well, I turned out white and not in the NBA. Oh well. It's always there wafting like an unidentified floating object through my water. If things had been just a little different this may have been a splendid glass of water, as it turned out things are the way they are.

The point Loren? If any? Ah, yes basketball, that most musical of sports, resplendent in it's grace and beauty and barbarism. Anyway, I was half-assing it, because I've got a reputation to uphold; perennial slacker, the uber slacker, the slacker of all slackers, "running" up and down the court and then this: What if I actually tried? Like the whole time instead of the usual randomly occurring spurts. Even when I'm tired and such, What would happen? What if I really run, the whole time? Facticity be damned. I was reborn in that moment.

They say you need to save secondary performances (and/or efforts) for secondary occasions (is there such a thing as a secondary occasion?). Nietzsche said live each moment as if you were doing so for the second time (thus undermining any need for regret). You always go with Nietzsche, especially when the alternative is advice from they. I feel real zen right about now.

warning: this was written on April Fool's day

the story of stories 1

What makes up a story and why are they so pervasive?

At a meta-level they happen within the limits of time -- which is to say that events within them are arranged in an order, which is dictated by the infrastructure of reality (e.g. the arrow of time, even if in the telling these events are not always chronological) -- and mind space. They communicate an idea or several from one mind to another or several. With me so far? No? Good. Other elements include characters, themes, memes, arcs, parts and much, much more. "That's right Steve if you order now we'll throw in" *ahem* Stories are everywhere. I would argue (without offering much in the way of evidence) that much of the appeal no matter what their makeup, whether explicitly or implicitly, stories present us with ways of making sense of human experience. What do we crave more then anything in an absurd world? Why meaning of course! (some say happiness, Nietzsche dismissed this utilitarian notion as folly: "Man does not desire happiness. Only the Englishman desires that." Silly English people, don't mess with Nietzsche, he's got a really big moustache).

The saga continues later...

being and becoming

I am sitting down finally. The haze of sheer exhaustion from this week has been washed away momentarily by the torrential down pour during footy training today. There's no real reason why rugby league should be called footy. The ball for 90 percent of a game is kept in hand. It's one of those things that has always puzzled me. Before the weight of my specially cultivated malignant tiredness resumes, I sit and reflect. I'm human. All too human. This is a trait I'll never overcome. I sit and imagine things different, as they could possibly be if I were not the person who was fantasizing about alternate realities.

I feel like I learned something today. It's one of those lessons that you already know, but only on an intellectual level. I don't say this dismissively, I'm all for cold calculating irrefutable logic, but there are certain phases that an idea needs to pass through before it attains apotheosis. It's not quite out of the chrysalis for me yet; still digesting, to mix a metaphor. I'm reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, a literary savant from Japan. It's a memoir of sorts about running and the writing life. The lesson was simply this: when he does something he puts everything into it. This guy runs marathons for fun. It's crazy, there really are no secrets to success.

what I talk about when I talk about working out...

(A1) bp 80kgs/3*8

(A2) chin, n-grip me/2*8;6

(A3) row, seated, v-grip 55,60,65*8