Monday, March 10, 2003
First, the heavy stuff.
At some point in a long, emotionally-invested relationship it seems that parts of your life can go to hell and come halfway back in almost no time at all.
In like 3 days, for example.
It can feel like your guts are getting raked very slowly across something very painful; it can fuck with your mind, your sense of reality, and your ability to love and care about things because when such an awful fights break out there's almost never a clear right and wrong, and the effort to get around all the screaming and bitterness and resentment ages you and wilts your spirit.
A bad thing about my life is that i'm in my second of these long. emotionally-invested relationships. I've gotten my head kicked around so much in the last 7 years that now I compartmenalize that "girlfreind trauma" and stuff it away somewhere. It's sick and discomforting that I do that, but i'ts been the way that i can get stuff done after things take a turn for the shitty. That well of bad feeling and confusion always makes its way back out later, and it's never completely hidden, but i can make it so it just feels a little heavy and dull - locally anesthitized. So instead of the world crashing down around me, it all sort of feels like an overcast day where I know rain is coming but it hasn't come yet... so it's not getting in the way right at the moment.
That's where i'm at now i suppose - this whole week might be cloudy days, i dunno. Maybe i'll get really drunk and get it all out of me, or get in a good fistfight, or have some stupid epiphany. Regardless, there's alot of work to do, and that will thankfully keep me from being consumed at any one moment with the very hard and very uncertain decisions i'll have to be making about my relationship.
In other news: I went to the weightroom tonight.
The walk to campus was unfairly cold - I thought breifly of those kids who skipped off to warmer climates as I literally leaned into the 30 mph winds... I mean, today maybe reached 50 degrees, but it had to be below freezing by 8. The place is a ghostown, which i like for whatever reason. A really goofy looking guy and his goofy looking girfriend came into the weightroom and began stretching right around when i was finishing up, and with a stupid little smile to myself i mocked them in my head. I did this because for some reason working out in a public environment is subconsicously like a being in a big schoolyard competition. It' s a ridiculous "look what i can do" self-assurance festival that comes with the added bonus of getting excercise, and even though its rarely blatant, everyone's measuring themselves up at some point while they're there. Myself included, of course. I go lift to make myself feel better - and to try and wear myself out so i can actually sleep, but I feel bad for the really skinny or goofy kids who might come in and feel shame because they pick up on all that bullshit competitve testosterone flying around. I mean, the music is bad enough.
But back to the couple that walked in the door:
The goofy guy was in his mid twenties and i kept imagining that he looked like Jared, the Subway guy. He, and his short-haired, homely, asian girlfriend, were both pear-shaped, their small torsos extending subtly outward to the hips and legs and finally to their oversized goofy tennis shoes. "Hee hee hee" i think.
As i'm smiling to myself, i watch in the mirror as the girl gets into the squat cage and proceeds to squat press around 200 lbs.
That's alot for a goofy girl.
That's alot for most people.
AS she's doing this (and she adds weight as she goes...), i notice that Jared is over by the Calf-raise machine ( a machine where you sit and place your knees under a bar and lift whatever weight you place on it with your calf muscles alone).
Now i am staring.
My goofy man Jared, who probably couldn't lift the single wieght of either of his gargantuan legs, is putting Everything he can find onto this machine. He stops with 180 pounds on each side. I shit you not.
His girlfreind is on like her 6th set of squats, and he is busy calf raising 360 pounds as i sheepishly get dressed and make my way up and out of the athletic center.
So there's not alot of story here.
Just maybe that Jared could kick my ass.
But only with his legs.
I sat outside the Athletic Center for a few minutes waiting for a shuttle to pick me up since the birds were freezing in mid air and there was no way i was walking all the way back to Calvert Street . A pack of asian kids, 4 guys and a girl, come out a few minutes later, chattering excitedly and laughing. I make a guess at them being Korean, but of course i suck at guessing that stuff. I'd seen them on the Basketball court earlier messing around. They were all sweaty and tired-looking, and I thought they'd probably been playing for a while. As they huddle in a tight circle to ward off the cold, one of them pulls out a pack of cigarettes and they all scramble to take one. There is a brief war of words as the last cigarette is taken, a lengthy wind-shielding process as they each light up, and then there are a few moments of contented puffing silence.
A cigarette would have killed me at that moment, but there they were.
I guess it's not that wierd.
My roomate sometimes laces up his shoes and walks out the door, runs 3 miles, stomps back up our stairs, flops down on our couch and immediately lights one up - before going for a glass of water.
A cigarette for the sporting smoker would be killer.
I could market it like they market Michelob Ultra.
Imagine the commericals: a big guitar driven montage of sweaty underwear models running around playing basketball and doing extreme mountain biking amidst shots of cigarettes lighting up, finished with some ridiculous tag line like "Give your game some flavor" or "Smoke the competition".
the new, Marlboro Active 100's.
awesome.
I should be sponsored by 'the Truth'
they clearly have money to waste.
SO I was also gonna talk about that new crazy guy who works at the laundrymat on Saint Paul and who pretends like he's very busy and owns the place, but there's not much to say there. He looks kind of like a hobo, and he's always dressed in hunting clothes. He talks incessantly about all the things that need to get done (which i assume means emptying the garbage cans and sweeping the floors), and makes everybody's business his business by shouting at you about closing time or dryer ettiquite.
But he' s probably just a lonely old man.
It's not a new story, and in the scheme of things, i guess it's a forgivable crime.
Maybe he'll even get rid of the roaches under the washing machines.
And have a cigarette.
Clean crazy hobo, clean.
At some point in a long, emotionally-invested relationship it seems that parts of your life can go to hell and come halfway back in almost no time at all.
In like 3 days, for example.
It can feel like your guts are getting raked very slowly across something very painful; it can fuck with your mind, your sense of reality, and your ability to love and care about things because when such an awful fights break out there's almost never a clear right and wrong, and the effort to get around all the screaming and bitterness and resentment ages you and wilts your spirit.
A bad thing about my life is that i'm in my second of these long. emotionally-invested relationships. I've gotten my head kicked around so much in the last 7 years that now I compartmenalize that "girlfreind trauma" and stuff it away somewhere. It's sick and discomforting that I do that, but i'ts been the way that i can get stuff done after things take a turn for the shitty. That well of bad feeling and confusion always makes its way back out later, and it's never completely hidden, but i can make it so it just feels a little heavy and dull - locally anesthitized. So instead of the world crashing down around me, it all sort of feels like an overcast day where I know rain is coming but it hasn't come yet... so it's not getting in the way right at the moment.
That's where i'm at now i suppose - this whole week might be cloudy days, i dunno. Maybe i'll get really drunk and get it all out of me, or get in a good fistfight, or have some stupid epiphany. Regardless, there's alot of work to do, and that will thankfully keep me from being consumed at any one moment with the very hard and very uncertain decisions i'll have to be making about my relationship.
In other news: I went to the weightroom tonight.
The walk to campus was unfairly cold - I thought breifly of those kids who skipped off to warmer climates as I literally leaned into the 30 mph winds... I mean, today maybe reached 50 degrees, but it had to be below freezing by 8. The place is a ghostown, which i like for whatever reason. A really goofy looking guy and his goofy looking girfriend came into the weightroom and began stretching right around when i was finishing up, and with a stupid little smile to myself i mocked them in my head. I did this because for some reason working out in a public environment is subconsicously like a being in a big schoolyard competition. It' s a ridiculous "look what i can do" self-assurance festival that comes with the added bonus of getting excercise, and even though its rarely blatant, everyone's measuring themselves up at some point while they're there. Myself included, of course. I go lift to make myself feel better - and to try and wear myself out so i can actually sleep, but I feel bad for the really skinny or goofy kids who might come in and feel shame because they pick up on all that bullshit competitve testosterone flying around. I mean, the music is bad enough.
But back to the couple that walked in the door:
The goofy guy was in his mid twenties and i kept imagining that he looked like Jared, the Subway guy. He, and his short-haired, homely, asian girlfriend, were both pear-shaped, their small torsos extending subtly outward to the hips and legs and finally to their oversized goofy tennis shoes. "Hee hee hee" i think.
As i'm smiling to myself, i watch in the mirror as the girl gets into the squat cage and proceeds to squat press around 200 lbs.
That's alot for a goofy girl.
That's alot for most people.
AS she's doing this (and she adds weight as she goes...), i notice that Jared is over by the Calf-raise machine ( a machine where you sit and place your knees under a bar and lift whatever weight you place on it with your calf muscles alone).
Now i am staring.
My goofy man Jared, who probably couldn't lift the single wieght of either of his gargantuan legs, is putting Everything he can find onto this machine. He stops with 180 pounds on each side. I shit you not.
His girlfreind is on like her 6th set of squats, and he is busy calf raising 360 pounds as i sheepishly get dressed and make my way up and out of the athletic center.
So there's not alot of story here.
Just maybe that Jared could kick my ass.
But only with his legs.
I sat outside the Athletic Center for a few minutes waiting for a shuttle to pick me up since the birds were freezing in mid air and there was no way i was walking all the way back to Calvert Street . A pack of asian kids, 4 guys and a girl, come out a few minutes later, chattering excitedly and laughing. I make a guess at them being Korean, but of course i suck at guessing that stuff. I'd seen them on the Basketball court earlier messing around. They were all sweaty and tired-looking, and I thought they'd probably been playing for a while. As they huddle in a tight circle to ward off the cold, one of them pulls out a pack of cigarettes and they all scramble to take one. There is a brief war of words as the last cigarette is taken, a lengthy wind-shielding process as they each light up, and then there are a few moments of contented puffing silence.
A cigarette would have killed me at that moment, but there they were.
I guess it's not that wierd.
My roomate sometimes laces up his shoes and walks out the door, runs 3 miles, stomps back up our stairs, flops down on our couch and immediately lights one up - before going for a glass of water.
A cigarette for the sporting smoker would be killer.
I could market it like they market Michelob Ultra.
Imagine the commericals: a big guitar driven montage of sweaty underwear models running around playing basketball and doing extreme mountain biking amidst shots of cigarettes lighting up, finished with some ridiculous tag line like "Give your game some flavor" or "Smoke the competition".
the new, Marlboro Active 100's.
awesome.
I should be sponsored by 'the Truth'
they clearly have money to waste.
SO I was also gonna talk about that new crazy guy who works at the laundrymat on Saint Paul and who pretends like he's very busy and owns the place, but there's not much to say there. He looks kind of like a hobo, and he's always dressed in hunting clothes. He talks incessantly about all the things that need to get done (which i assume means emptying the garbage cans and sweeping the floors), and makes everybody's business his business by shouting at you about closing time or dryer ettiquite.
But he' s probably just a lonely old man.
It's not a new story, and in the scheme of things, i guess it's a forgivable crime.
Maybe he'll even get rid of the roaches under the washing machines.
And have a cigarette.
Clean crazy hobo, clean.
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