The Peaceful Warrior

Today's wonderfully enslaved and ultimately guilty and satisfying pleasure was to buy a bunch of songs I'd wanted for months, load up the iPod, roll out the BlockRocker, kick back with a Rolling Rock, and wash first my new car, then my dad's classic roadster.

The realization didn't hit until the second beer and the second car.

Throughout the entire car washing project, I had multiple flashbacks to the [original] movie Karate Kid, where Mr. Miyagi instructs the young boy on precisely how to wash all his cars. The circular motion, unbeknownst to him, is meant to teach him some of the fundamental flows of kar-a-tey.

Rocking to that wonderful soundtrack, I embodied all my best dance, yoga, and martial arts moves as I circled, squatted, and polished the cars. And sometime in the midst of the roadster, I felt this wonderful feeling overwhelm me, of service, of gratitude, of fun. Yes, I was washing my dad's car. No, I didn't need to. Yes, I was enjoying it. And I glowed in the light of the service, son to father. Me getting my workout, him getting his roadster sparkley clean.

When I was done, music still playing, he came out and I gave him the honor of inspecting my work. He shook my hand, and like a little kid, without hesitation, with a huge grin on his face, hopped in, put the top down, and sped off into a new adventure... like it should be.

Vision into Life

VISION:
dream night of May 23, 2012.

a woman's body truly is a cockpit.
an space within which you can drive at high human speeds, with a platitude of controls, dials, and knobs.
some are junky old cars with torn seats, others are modern machines with heated leather. take your pick.

TRANSLATE VISION TO REALITY.

THREE DREAMS:
L. NY. the 100,000 years spaceship dream.
C. SF. the twin hoops rainbow dream.
A. JB. the vivid beach teleportation dream.
        > supporting cast: KH, SR, AC, TJ

based on last nights dream, the Alison Dream, one solution I see is to drive all night and arrive in Florida in the morning. Yet I loathe this idea, the hard drive. In the dream, no drive was required. In the dream, I simply placed my credit card on the table outside my Dad's house, went to sleep in my own bed, and woke up the next morning outside the condos in Jax Beach, with my credit card sitting on the same glass table, there. I explained to Alison that I was dreaming, that I was actually in DC, that I had somehow mysteriously teleported to the beach and might disappear at any moment.

another solution is to email Lila and accept her open offer to travel to Montreal in a car from NYC. Yet I fear this idea, the spontaneous trip.

i am so tired from randomly driving hard. from spazzing. from ending up in places and situations and wondering how i got there.

the AT was designed to calm me down.
so was marathon training.
so is triathlon training.

they were also designed to purify my temple, my body, to cleanse it of the alcohol dragon, to maximize my lungs and muscles and mind / muscle connection.

those things, walking is a metaphor for driving, and driving is... intentional.
driving is harnessing the power of evolution and machine and fuel to move in a given direction, efficiently and quickly.

how intriguing then, apart from the AT, which was a clear directed vector North, that the races bring you full circle... though, perhaps, you are a different person when you finish, then you were when you started.

The Fractal Nature of Things

I just had a major life realization.

For the past 5 years, I had told myself that I was claiming my divine mobility by shedding myself of material things. I let go of my house, my furniture, my wife, everything; all attachments. I reduced my possessions to those things that would fit into a backpack. literally. and hiked. and worked. and got healthy.

Now I am digging through my very austere, very organized things, and think: I need to go through all of this and throw out some pieces of it. And I realised all the sudden: there is no effective difference between sorting through a garage, a storage compartment, or a backpack. In fact, at any scale, material things only fall into a few core categories:

• sentimental
• necessary
• luxury
• tools
• toys

...these categories simply expand and contract with wealth and stability. A home is simply a very large, very rooted tent... a container in which to hold possessions and within which to seek shelter and safety.

The irony is that I've learned that safety is everywhere you bring it... and no where. I've successfully fended off 350 pound wild bears while camping in the wilderness, and been overwhelmed with armed force breaking down the locked door of my 'secure' apartment.

So, here's to responsibly building up the fractal of material possessions again... and to always remembering my humbling moments of need and poverty, and to fundamentally CHANGING THE METHODS BY WHICH I INTERACT WITH THINGS.

It is, after all, not the things we have, its how we treat them, how we use them, and how they effect our interactions with the most important thing in the universe, our fellow humans.

What things do you have in your life that hold you back?

What things do you have that help you relate to others?

Reality Speaks Loudly

When you die,
you're gonna regret the things you don't do.
You think you're queer?
I'm gonna tell you something, we're all queer.
You think you're a thief?
So what.
You get befuddled by a middle class morality?...
get shut of it!
shut it out!

you cheat on your wife?
you did it.
live with it

You fuck little girls?
So, be it.

There's an absolute morality?
Ha, maybe.
And... then, what?
If you think there is,
go ahead, be that thing!

Bad people go to hell?
I don't think so.
You think that?
Act that way.

Hell exists on Earth?
Yes.
I won't live in it.
That's Me.

Tri Training Revelations

Back into the swing of tri-training. Finally got my bike shoes and clips the other day. Very much a transformation of the bike experience. Ability to deliver 100% power to the wheels, with near perfect efficiency. Can now focus completely on optimal form / minimization of lateral sway / cadence.

Trek 1000 on Fit Sport. Mobile Base One.

Today was the very first day of transition training. My original intent was simply to see how fast I could get into running shoes from the bike. That exercise proved trivial; 8 seconds flat. Then I realised the real point of transitioning: not how fast you could prepare for the next phase, but actually how fast you could enter it. So it was that 12 minutes later, I began a brisk run.

That's where it hit me: this is going to be a challenge. The run felt hard. My legs, spoiled by the even and perfect circular flow of the bicycle, were now being forced into a concussive hammering, left right left right left right. I realised the real art wasn't the micro transitions between legs, but rather, the actual physical phase transitions of the muscles from one hyper-regular activity to the next.

Metaphors run deep.

T minus 91 days and counting to Boulder.