Athletic Fragments.
Fragments from my Notes App. Musings all orbiting around one same coordinate; the loss of and struggle for purpose, to soooooothe the mind.
I am Beckham. I am Stallone.
calzi as all that they are circa 2007
I decide I am no longer going to deny myself joy, so I dance on the way back from the gym. Granted, I got spooked and stopped when the cyclist when past; but I then carry on, dancing. I have to.
It’s the same with swimming, which I’m doing more regularly now; deliberately, to see what effects it has on my body and mind. Swim consistently for 3 weeks. An experiment to keep myself to. I like swimming the most when I get disturbed. A young German couple asking me to take their photo, ja naturlich… or that border collie who wanted me to throw his frisbee. Nice. ‘‘What if this feeling of doom, is actually the possibility of arrival’’. What if going swimming, shocking my limbs into a grin, is actually the possibility of grounding. What if swimming, the submersion of self, is all but showing me that not everything is permanent, and everyday is flippable. I decide I am not going to deny myself joy, so i swim upside down, dive deep, point my legs and then my toes and let out some chthonic yelps. Pure glee, at times.
I think I love people a lot, and sat here on the side of our road, pavement smelling slick with asphalt (tarmac), I can’t help but wonder if it’s an addiction; or perhaps like writing, a practiced habit. There is nothing worse than loving someone and it not being returned, and I’m not good at meeting indifference with indifference. I will be nobody’s fool. It’s like having a beautiful gold watch that doesn’t work, or only your feet being run over by a Honda civic and nothing else. I was once described as a positivity satellite; that when I’m feeling sad I’d beam out and up into the cosmos, find someone to help, to love etc. O god. It’s feeling very Holden Caulfied.
I write better outside when I’m moving . Freeing up the brain.
Keep the dance!
Sat on the bus, sickened by the dark chocolate cake I ate, I mourn the loss of friendship & how desolation comes like a wave.
Sat, rolling forward as ever, the leaves have turned a gold. Blood boiling like sweet jelly, I am turning my life into a Bon Iver song. Ew.
I invent a cabin hidden amongst pines and mountains. The air is lined with smoke like white fur on the inside of her coat. I’m hidden. Hardly any people are around. Plunge myself into the lake. I receive a text ‘ very red berries today’ , and I am once more reminded of her casual magic.
Each day contains so many tiny desolations. Splinters, fractures; they come running at me like you late for the bus. And with each I am crushed.
But too, that infinitude. that potential for resolution, consolidation, love. Flipping the day. So many tiny victories that I shouldn’t lose sight of.
My brain is often against me, but I’m trying to allow myself more joy. writing this - a huge heat comes over my scalp, from deep down in my back. And since childhood, I know that means I’m on to something.
Just be nice to myself. I know who I am. Living in the grips of despair. No longer afraid to use superlatives. I have a predilection that imma get hit by a car.
Suicidal ideation is not something that I’m a stranger to. Now I know for readers - especially those who care for me, this might sound alarming. But it shouldn’t. Ideation in the sense of intrusive flashes of thoughts butting in here and there. Not actual desire prep or planning. Never. I want to grow old. But I feel it’s important to write on this to demystify, to properly show each gnarly root of my brain. That sometimes it works against ‘Me’, against ‘Itself’?. Just like the many other pretty grim themes that intrude in my brain, suicide ideation is ego-dystonic - it cuts firmly against my ego - my self - who I am. It’s antagonistic and antithetical - and so I can deal with it. I’m at a loss of how to write more floridly about this, how to make it beautifully crude. Not quite sure - but wanted to say, that this is an occasional part of my cognition, my mental universe etc etc.
so the mantras say
I am beautiful
I am kind
I am a good person
I am loved
I deserve love
I will be loved
I can do anything
And perhaps to that I should add I am worthy of life - and allow myself to be okay with ease. An easy life. But that’s what I’m struggling with - moving here. Having much more empty quiet days. The amount of work we had to do all gone.
And so I suppose this is my undying project - to be better at doing nothing - or rather finding purpose in less, in quiet , in empty. Saying that, I did just apply for a Masters Course lol.
But I’m doing better - I’ve improved so much since childhood - so I know there’s room for growth even further.
last few months has been a wrestling match in my head.
in times without or scrambling for a purpose - i now understand my turn to obsessive athletes. those who devote themselves completely to a transformation of self into whatever it is. football, boxing, lifting machine. balboa beckz arnie. Autopoietic streamlining towards a singular purpose. so maddeningly impressive to me, and simultaneously worrying, revolting, incomprehensible. I watch incredulous with starry eyes. O to be damaged so as all your flesh is a burning up. ‘A man’s reach should always be farther than his grasp’ - great words which they live by as if tattooed on their foreheads.
It’s mesmerizing to me, a young boi cast aside, out of formal education and institution - for the first time without a known or felt direction. Rudderless is perhaps the best worst to describe it. Thus, this looking to makes sense. Nausea and awe mixing like off white emulsion. Oil and water.
Most days these last few weeks I’ve gone swimming gone running or hit gym and have seen a transformation in my body. But I’m not really like them, I can never quite commit fully to that as my whole purpose. Never completely possessed by a Spartan self-machination. The road to 1-0. bigger better higher stronger. free kick after free kick. 20 sets, pumping iron. that’s never quite fully been me. I’m it-adjacent and can applaud and ogle. But now it’s not fully me - which explains why the presence of gym, mountain and sea at my door step is never fully a complete medicine. Transformatory physical motion never a panacea. Never quite all consumed by one purpose, ( the enlargement or refinement of body) but I’m so down for it. Autopoeisis, the making of self, it’s poetry and super queer. The singularity of one purpose which is so curious and sickening to me.
Thus, I sit on the toilet typing this, with plans to eat more cake and cream tonight. comfort food - a podcast. With each spoonful I do wonder if I’ll ever become Ivan Drago fully formed.
calzi as beckz circa 2009
yes to be nice to yourself ! your writing is honey and tarmac ! beaut
also lol @ "or only your feet being run over by a Honda civic and nothing else"
Also what masters!