Music

I’m not going to lie:  I’m pretty damn bored here. Damn, damn, damn bored!  The weekdays have been too long.  I keep running into this unconscious and conscious notion in academia that suggests that a minute not taken up by lectures, debates, discussions, reflections, ad naseums, is a minute that might as well be spent sniffing the different types of Elmer’s glue.

This weekend—the  shinny beacon I’ve gazed at this week—has been nice in that I’ve slept and had some much needed alone time.  I also got to skype with the Noodle pack today.  But still, I miss Kate.  I miss my home.  I miss my plants, my dogs, my friends, my family; I miss “frijoles”, for here they eat habichuelas, and it aint the same; I miss getting tapped out by Jackson John Sales in a heel hook; I miss sprinting through the woods in Monteverde as part of our MMA conditioning regime; I miss sparing with Yanni, Nikko, the aforementioned Jackson, and any other one of the lads that rotates through are fight collective.  I miss being in weather less than 88 degrees Fahrenheit. 

But it’s all right.  We cope, we deal and we weave stories that suggest that we move forward, despite what Einstein and Kant had to say about time and space. 

Music.  Music is one hell of a coping strategy I’ve got, and I’ve all but neglected it until today.  Boom: it injects me, and shifts the running/workouts and martial arts training I’ve been doing into something inducing play.  With play there’s no need to cope anymore.

Today I ran for a warm up to UPR (at Cayey’s) campus.  Ten minutes in, I’m sweaty and I’ve tapped into that feeling that makes me feel like a freight train, ready to roll down anything shitty.  Ten minutes of sprinting up stairs, with light jogging in between.  Shadow boxing, and my spinning back heel kick is flowing.  Thirty full body dips on some nice parallel bars I come across, and more and more shadow boxing.  More and more of less than ever before, says Mos Def. 

Bruce Lee wrote that with each strike we should annihilate the ego.  Tao permeated his practice and I let it seek me too, till there’s no me worth seeking for.   On the way back, running on the sidewalk of road 14, annihilation begins when there’s no caring about shadow boxing in public.  An old guy, across the street is jovial to see me jab-jab-crossing: he stops in his tracks, shows some nice footwork of his own, and throws a jab-hook-jab combo.  We laugh and cheer each other.  Two egos KO’d with strikes through the air. 

I’m running, running am I.  “Same in the end” from sublime (link for song)  cycles through my MMA2 playlist on my ipod, and shit, why not sprint?  I can run people, I can run.  Who gives a shit? And I can run.  It’s the nice intersection of night and day too, two egos for the price of (n)one. 

Peace