I thought a few of you would get a charge out of this
exam time shuffle
10 months ago
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Sunday, March 21, 2010
one year - barefoot run - healing - E2-55-18W4
Yesterday marked one full year without touching so much as a drop of alcohol. The questions I'm always asked are 'is it hard to resist temptation' and 'what about peer pressure' and aren't as connected as they might appear. It's strange because I have only felt like having a beer maybe three times and the feeling always faded pretty fast. In situations where one might expect a little peer pressure, usually I just explain that I quit for complex reasons which mostly boil down to being because I thought I was wasting my time and people rapidly sympathize. Strangely the person whom I felt most connected to over this is a friend from the US military, who seemed to understand deeply, as he proceeded to share some great chewing tobacco and talk about his time in Iraq - it's own form of devotion that like quitting drinking, doesn't always make sense to people, and which I began to understand in my own right. Anyways, all in all, it's been a great year, thank you to all my friends who have encouraged me along the way, (or at least refrained from pressuring me!)
I had been feeling really sick and kinda down as well this whole week, with a heck of a flu that just flattened my energy - the sort of flu where even your hands feel weak. I had tried to throw in a few workouts to pick my body up but mostly they just got knocked me down again. And I think I am also going through a bit of the blues about not knowing what I am going to be doing in May - the dark side of the excitement that I feel about it as well, that comes from expectations (my own and others) and the costs of potentially pursuing certain opportunities. But Saturday afternoon, I started feeling good again! The boys and I tossed around the old pigskin and then I went on a run sans shoes. Something in my crazy Tao dirtbag side told me that I needed to do it, and feeling the earth under my feet again was absolutely fantastic! I was by the tennis courts next to Scona high school when I saw this puddle, bordered by snow on one side with a slushy bottom, and I thought to myself "this was meant to be" and ran right through it giggling like a school girl at the sensation of the slush and water (which wasn't as cold as I was anticipating). And I didn't need to drag any squelching sneakers along with me, my feet were dry in an instant. So from then on out I ran through a bunch of snow banks and puddles and generally had a total blast, laughing my head off and drawing a few funny looks from my neighbours.
This weekend I was lucky to have Megan staying with me when she was on a course in town, and I think that having her around played a big part in why I started to feel a lot better on Saturday. I let her have my room, and took the living room, so I also have her to thank for making my room smell less like old socks. She was starting to feel pretty under the weather so I thought I would make her some jambalaya and we made an evening out of watching about a dozen episodes of 30 Rock - a pretty good tv binge if I do say.
Today I had some thinking to do, so I headed out to near Chipman for a run, destination, the land where my Opa was born and raised. They farmed a half section out there, himself being one of six children, growing wheat and barley through the Depression, with a few cows and chickens around and a big vegetable garden. They didn't have running water or electricity (used a windmill to charge up the radio batteries now and then). Anyways, the run was very relaxing and definitely eased my head. Part of me quitting drinking was that after he died I thought that it was time for me to be more like him, grow up and help my family out more - though it took a while to figure out how the two worked together, I think that it makes sense now. The last day he ever talked he told me about the first time he ever had a drink, owing largely to the fact that for hardscrabble dirt farmers like his parents, alcohol was unaffordable and never made an appearance in their home. No wonder my Great-Grandparents lived to be 99 and 96.
I had been feeling really sick and kinda down as well this whole week, with a heck of a flu that just flattened my energy - the sort of flu where even your hands feel weak. I had tried to throw in a few workouts to pick my body up but mostly they just got knocked me down again. And I think I am also going through a bit of the blues about not knowing what I am going to be doing in May - the dark side of the excitement that I feel about it as well, that comes from expectations (my own and others) and the costs of potentially pursuing certain opportunities. But Saturday afternoon, I started feeling good again! The boys and I tossed around the old pigskin and then I went on a run sans shoes. Something in my crazy Tao dirtbag side told me that I needed to do it, and feeling the earth under my feet again was absolutely fantastic! I was by the tennis courts next to Scona high school when I saw this puddle, bordered by snow on one side with a slushy bottom, and I thought to myself "this was meant to be" and ran right through it giggling like a school girl at the sensation of the slush and water (which wasn't as cold as I was anticipating). And I didn't need to drag any squelching sneakers along with me, my feet were dry in an instant. So from then on out I ran through a bunch of snow banks and puddles and generally had a total blast, laughing my head off and drawing a few funny looks from my neighbours.
This weekend I was lucky to have Megan staying with me when she was on a course in town, and I think that having her around played a big part in why I started to feel a lot better on Saturday. I let her have my room, and took the living room, so I also have her to thank for making my room smell less like old socks. She was starting to feel pretty under the weather so I thought I would make her some jambalaya and we made an evening out of watching about a dozen episodes of 30 Rock - a pretty good tv binge if I do say.
Today I had some thinking to do, so I headed out to near Chipman for a run, destination, the land where my Opa was born and raised. They farmed a half section out there, himself being one of six children, growing wheat and barley through the Depression, with a few cows and chickens around and a big vegetable garden. They didn't have running water or electricity (used a windmill to charge up the radio batteries now and then). Anyways, the run was very relaxing and definitely eased my head. Part of me quitting drinking was that after he died I thought that it was time for me to be more like him, grow up and help my family out more - though it took a while to figure out how the two worked together, I think that it makes sense now. The last day he ever talked he told me about the first time he ever had a drink, owing largely to the fact that for hardscrabble dirt farmers like his parents, alcohol was unaffordable and never made an appearance in their home. No wonder my Great-Grandparents lived to be 99 and 96.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
I'm feeling rough I'm feeling raw I'm in the prime of my life
'There was no music, just the faces of the mountains that gazed down on him with some funereal solemnitude, passive despite being covered by uncharacteristic July snow, they were not all-knowing but they were strange passive gods exhibiting the seafloor of vanished epochs, unafraid of their nakedness, their knowledge.'
This is a really short passage from what I have been working on a little here and there lately, and I like the sound of it, let me know what you think. I think one day it will be something of a book, but what's the point? It's all bullshit anyway you slice the cake, literature, science, law, anyone tells you different is selling something, so essentially I write for myself and maybe a few of my friends - note I am leaving this at a short excerpt. I can't even read most of what passes for literature these days, it's just painful, I can't wait for the rubbish to be forgotten over and above the efforts of these fools to canonize continuously. There's a few people I have time for, and for the most part I can see their limitations: Cormac McCarthy, W.P. Kinsella and Annie E. Proulx, that's it. I don't even want to weigh in on some of the other trends in literature (Da Vinci Code filth, Twilight, accepting novels that revolve around magical items of clothing). I'm still trying to get my head around how people are treating the Lord of the Rings trilogy as though it were some sort of high art and actually worth a read. I just wonder when people are going to wake up and realize, 'Margaret Atwood is a shit author.' Because she is. That goes double for Douglas Coupland and half for Yann Martel. There's nothing there, no honesty, no curiosity, no imagination. Just navel-gazing, a real world continues to seethe and foam while Atwood makes some dry joke and appears supremely owlishly intelligent about some environmental catastrophe that will never materialize, that she has never questioned and doesn't understand anyways - that's called running with the herd. Meanwhile in Nuevo Laredo a bunch of high school kids get their brains blown out over some coke deal. That's why I love Cormac McCarthy. He understands the fundamental savagery of human beings, and by drawing it out in such an extreme fashion lends a miraculous intensity to even the smallest of humane gestures. Our lives are a narrow interlude of softness in an incredibly brutal history, and we are so clueless as to cripple ourselves for that reason.
As for myself, I think that there needs to be something of a balance between the sort of Appolonian sides of my daily life, that is studying the law, which is really going well this semester, I am especially enjoying corporate tax and think I am really starting to figure out how to figure these things out and then take that creative next step, and the Dionysian which I have essentially cut out of my life owing to the fact that the strongest thing I drink is Dr. Peppers and I am rarely out late. So basically exercise and writing qualify as my Dionysian side these days.
Anyways, workouts have been going ok. Haven't been running lots, but have been doing good core work and a fair amount of kettlebell which is going awesome.
I'm back in Calgary and hung out with Graeme, Emily and Cousin Jon last night. Jon and I went and checked out some bands for a bit, mostly just chilling and talking. I'm really happy to see the true colours of the European coming out - anti-democratic and hypocritical. I hope that that whole superstate system collapses over this row surrounding Greece. Here is Germany pointing the finger at America for it's own problems, and while discussing global bank taxes and regulation aren't even willing to give Greece a hand up. So we know how the new world order of von Rompuy and the EU will work out, this is the sort of 'global cooperation' that clearly works so much better than the USA that it should be extended to encompass the entire globe?
This is a really short passage from what I have been working on a little here and there lately, and I like the sound of it, let me know what you think. I think one day it will be something of a book, but what's the point? It's all bullshit anyway you slice the cake, literature, science, law, anyone tells you different is selling something, so essentially I write for myself and maybe a few of my friends - note I am leaving this at a short excerpt. I can't even read most of what passes for literature these days, it's just painful, I can't wait for the rubbish to be forgotten over and above the efforts of these fools to canonize continuously. There's a few people I have time for, and for the most part I can see their limitations: Cormac McCarthy, W.P. Kinsella and Annie E. Proulx, that's it. I don't even want to weigh in on some of the other trends in literature (Da Vinci Code filth, Twilight, accepting novels that revolve around magical items of clothing). I'm still trying to get my head around how people are treating the Lord of the Rings trilogy as though it were some sort of high art and actually worth a read. I just wonder when people are going to wake up and realize, 'Margaret Atwood is a shit author.' Because she is. That goes double for Douglas Coupland and half for Yann Martel. There's nothing there, no honesty, no curiosity, no imagination. Just navel-gazing, a real world continues to seethe and foam while Atwood makes some dry joke and appears supremely owlishly intelligent about some environmental catastrophe that will never materialize, that she has never questioned and doesn't understand anyways - that's called running with the herd. Meanwhile in Nuevo Laredo a bunch of high school kids get their brains blown out over some coke deal. That's why I love Cormac McCarthy. He understands the fundamental savagery of human beings, and by drawing it out in such an extreme fashion lends a miraculous intensity to even the smallest of humane gestures. Our lives are a narrow interlude of softness in an incredibly brutal history, and we are so clueless as to cripple ourselves for that reason.
As for myself, I think that there needs to be something of a balance between the sort of Appolonian sides of my daily life, that is studying the law, which is really going well this semester, I am especially enjoying corporate tax and think I am really starting to figure out how to figure these things out and then take that creative next step, and the Dionysian which I have essentially cut out of my life owing to the fact that the strongest thing I drink is Dr. Peppers and I am rarely out late. So basically exercise and writing qualify as my Dionysian side these days.
Anyways, workouts have been going ok. Haven't been running lots, but have been doing good core work and a fair amount of kettlebell which is going awesome.
I'm back in Calgary and hung out with Graeme, Emily and Cousin Jon last night. Jon and I went and checked out some bands for a bit, mostly just chilling and talking. I'm really happy to see the true colours of the European coming out - anti-democratic and hypocritical. I hope that that whole superstate system collapses over this row surrounding Greece. Here is Germany pointing the finger at America for it's own problems, and while discussing global bank taxes and regulation aren't even willing to give Greece a hand up. So we know how the new world order of von Rompuy and the EU will work out, this is the sort of 'global cooperation' that clearly works so much better than the USA that it should be extended to encompass the entire globe?
Monday, December 28, 2009
Strange Night in Didsbury
Went out to Didsbury Boxing Day to see some friends and listen to a sweet band. It felt good to get out on the open road, which was clear and dry. The band was playing a hotel in center of town, which gradually filled up pretty good, like an annual high school reunion complete with parents and underage kids. Watched pensively from along the brick wall much of the time, chatting lightly. Tried to project an image of boldness, helped along by my stache, which got me some handshakes and impressed a 17 year old relative (who at 6 something looked at least 20) no end. Good people. Tell some funny stories, hear some good ones about girls fighting, am slightly disturbed. Friend disappears, I find out later she is sick from drinking too much. Nights such as these, filled with friends and relatives and nostalgia that may not even belong to you, were made for running away from you. I've been there. Alcohol can help overcome reality, help reconnect to a past that was not yours, and could not be so idyllic as you dream it, but the illusion, however comforting, is hollow, temporary and ends with the bruising reality of vomit and cold air. I head home at 11:45, fairly tired from the holiday crunch. On the way home I see a shooting star that lasts for probably 3 seconds with a small intermittence, pointing down at Calgary. I am still pondering this omen and its potential significance.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Now that's what I call getting the heck outta Dodge...
You heard it hear first pardners, after cowboyin up and writing 5 exams in 5 days I packed my clothes, including my sweet brown suspenders and hockey gear, cleaned the house some for the boys as they is still busy a-writin exams and left Edmonchuk in my dust - good riddance you government/union loving punks! My eyes was bleary from book-learnin, I had a headache and was running on just a bowl of oatmeal, and had taken a few body blows on that last Conflicts exam but I managed to make er down to Cal-grizzy in about four hours on those snowy, wind-blown roads (ain't that bad), to a heapin helping of my Mom's shepherds pie. Yum. My old man and I had us a good chat about the oil business and the stock market and what it means to be a climate sceptic (how people have forgotten that the arguable existence of 'expert consensus' means absolutely nothing to the scientific process is beyond me... I blame our lazy, conformist society and inability to question received knowledge) and how that works in to our heretic Dutch (home of the Anabaptists... temporarily) ancestry (wooden shoes, wooden head, wouldn't listen). I went to bed early, couldn't sleep, finally fell asleep, got up early, tried to lie in bed because it's Saturday and I don't need to get up, said heck no, got up and wrote this.
For everyone in Calgary I'm back and will be hooking up some runs and what not this week so heads up. For everyone in Edmonton I didn't say goodbye to, I ain't good at goodbyes so please accept these early tidings of Holiday Cheer!
Adieu
For everyone in Calgary I'm back and will be hooking up some runs and what not this week so heads up. For everyone in Edmonton I didn't say goodbye to, I ain't good at goodbyes so please accept these early tidings of Holiday Cheer!
Adieu
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Two poems and an update
Hello friends, in the spirit of putting it on the line, please see the poems below, one written by Catullus, the other written about a week ago by myself as a bit of an escape from exam prep mode. A big thanks to my friend Jamie Weikum for his encouragement and kind criticism. I'm back to exercising after two weeks off everything (except biking to school) and feeling great. Yesterday was 30 minutes super easy, really focusing on mechanics, followed by some a-skip/march, then some abs/lifting type stuff. Felt super! Listening to some great tunes now as well... I'm the last person on earth to get into MGMT but there you have it I know that this is a flashback to two years ago but whatever. Also, Tears for Fears 'Head Over Heels', what a cool track, this is everything melodramatic and cheesy and awesome about the 80's that I always thought Jason Lindsay was crazy for liking, and now love myself as punishment.
A young cutthroat shivered up the clear stream
I watched, squatting, then standing, shook the water from my hand
Brilliance of red slash on white throat
How will these waters, these mountains mark me?
Grass rustling dry on jeans
Galaxies of flies flit in the dusk
Great riverbank cedars
Cottonwoods speaking of mute Mississippi
A young bear shuffled up a tree
Forest cracking with branches broken by tremendous wrists
Suspended in silence of sinew
The blue sky and dissonant sway of tree
Face to face with my brother across the river
I turn, looking at his feet, repeat his name, back away
Drinking from my hat, the river, golden
Threaded its’ way through strewn boulders
I came back and you were here again
My world stopped, cars filling the ditches
Blizzard propelling me on reckless to you, to death
-Sean van der Lee
Angst
ennui & angst
Consume my days & weeks,
and you have nott written
or done anything to soothe my illness.
I am piqued.
So much for our friendship.
Ah! Cornificius,
a word from you would cure everything,
though more full of tears
than a line from Simonides.
Catullus, trans. Peter Whigham
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Another day, another fifty cents
This is an old saying my ol' pardner Greg Properzi espouses. It expresses his worldview perfectly, aged 25 with a wife, practicing law in a small town, gradually buying up a family farm, and looking variously to start up a butcher shop or greenhouse - nothing but hard work, intelligence and getting your hands dirty. Like Dangerfield: I can't get no respect. But at the end of the day, the fact is that I don't want any. I'd rather have a farm and grow my own food and be my own master and be forgotten.
I am taking a week off of exercise. After Stewart my calf was bugging me, but I tried to do a bunch of easy runs, concentrating on foot placement, with a large amount of form work, core, and calf strengthening. Things were going well, and I felt like the range of motion in my ankles was really opening up and that other aspects of form were coming right into line. I am kicking myself for not putting in a regimen of lower leg hops, bounding in all season (not to mention core work and a-march). But the calf was still bugging me in a low level way. I figured it's been bugging me for 10 weeks no matter what I do for it, why not take a week's rest, as I haven't really taken a prolonged break (over 2 days) since early February.
I'm not satisfied at all with how slow I ran this season (in fact it pisses me off pretty bad) but I am happy to say that it was awesome to be back working hard and training systematically, and that I learned a lot from the trials and tribulations along the way. A big thanks to all the people associated with DA BEARS, especially the coaches Georgette, Glen an Guy for coming out all the time and being there for me. Not to forget the physio guys etc, and DA BEARS themselves who accepted me like one of the pack from day one and are all badass dudes. Faster times to come. Gotta trim down my legs. It's funny but I trimmed down the arms/chest/stomach really fast but my legs are still way too bulky. It's gonna take swearing off olympic lifting, keeping with better diet and some solid miles (maybe on bike) to get rid of the excess. Well looking at starting up on Saturday and seeing how the body feels.
Have been taking the opportunity to ramp up the school work, but I'm also just getting excited about other things that are filling the temporary void left by some time off running. The other day I really felt like just doing some hard, heavy work, like framing. That led into some thoughts of making some money and buying a farm way out on the frontier, or buying some stock again.
Basically to make a long story short I figure I've spent enough time licking my wounds from the job market over the summer and feel like getting back in there for some more punishment. No-one else is gonna make it happen but me. It's strange, I think 'A River Runs Through It' was really to the point on the topic of help. The chances we have to actually help someone are sacred, that is to be able to help when someone needs it, with what they actually need. A lot of people have tried to help me get a job and in some ways I have been unfair to them by refusing them, not wishing to impose owing to my own stubborn notions of self-reliance - meanwhile I did nothing. I wasn't ready to be helped, and however kind, most of the offers couldn't have really helped anyways. But who knows. Now it's time for me to help myself, and maybe then I can accept some of those kind offers, from friends that are too good for me. One of the nice things about getting to work where I did this summer was that it finally lent me some certainty with regards to the idea of where to start my career, which I can't say I had before.
I would also like to note that I have been doing some writing of late. A little poem, a short prose piece. I'm not sure where any of this is going but for now it is satisfying some urge and releasing a little tension (hard with no exercise). Maybe I will post some of the stuff one of these days.
Thanks for reading
Keep the shiny side up amigos
I am taking a week off of exercise. After Stewart my calf was bugging me, but I tried to do a bunch of easy runs, concentrating on foot placement, with a large amount of form work, core, and calf strengthening. Things were going well, and I felt like the range of motion in my ankles was really opening up and that other aspects of form were coming right into line. I am kicking myself for not putting in a regimen of lower leg hops, bounding in all season (not to mention core work and a-march). But the calf was still bugging me in a low level way. I figured it's been bugging me for 10 weeks no matter what I do for it, why not take a week's rest, as I haven't really taken a prolonged break (over 2 days) since early February.
I'm not satisfied at all with how slow I ran this season (in fact it pisses me off pretty bad) but I am happy to say that it was awesome to be back working hard and training systematically, and that I learned a lot from the trials and tribulations along the way. A big thanks to all the people associated with DA BEARS, especially the coaches Georgette, Glen an Guy for coming out all the time and being there for me. Not to forget the physio guys etc, and DA BEARS themselves who accepted me like one of the pack from day one and are all badass dudes. Faster times to come. Gotta trim down my legs. It's funny but I trimmed down the arms/chest/stomach really fast but my legs are still way too bulky. It's gonna take swearing off olympic lifting, keeping with better diet and some solid miles (maybe on bike) to get rid of the excess. Well looking at starting up on Saturday and seeing how the body feels.
Have been taking the opportunity to ramp up the school work, but I'm also just getting excited about other things that are filling the temporary void left by some time off running. The other day I really felt like just doing some hard, heavy work, like framing. That led into some thoughts of making some money and buying a farm way out on the frontier, or buying some stock again.
Basically to make a long story short I figure I've spent enough time licking my wounds from the job market over the summer and feel like getting back in there for some more punishment. No-one else is gonna make it happen but me. It's strange, I think 'A River Runs Through It' was really to the point on the topic of help. The chances we have to actually help someone are sacred, that is to be able to help when someone needs it, with what they actually need. A lot of people have tried to help me get a job and in some ways I have been unfair to them by refusing them, not wishing to impose owing to my own stubborn notions of self-reliance - meanwhile I did nothing. I wasn't ready to be helped, and however kind, most of the offers couldn't have really helped anyways. But who knows. Now it's time for me to help myself, and maybe then I can accept some of those kind offers, from friends that are too good for me. One of the nice things about getting to work where I did this summer was that it finally lent me some certainty with regards to the idea of where to start my career, which I can't say I had before.
I would also like to note that I have been doing some writing of late. A little poem, a short prose piece. I'm not sure where any of this is going but for now it is satisfying some urge and releasing a little tension (hard with no exercise). Maybe I will post some of the stuff one of these days.
Thanks for reading
Keep the shiny side up amigos
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