Trifecta challenge: Week Sixteen
Wretched pigeon : half
a beak gone, dead wing trailing
in oilslick puddle --
I gape, hasten past you. I
have my own bad luck to tame.
Wretched, not a word I would normally use. But there you go.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
PT, yoga, and overcoming body-hate
So I found out today that I'll probably be wrapping up PT right before we go to Vegas in March. I had mixed feelings about this. Part of me was like, "Are you kidding, two weeks more of this crap? I have better stuff to do, etc." The other part wants it to continue indefinitely, and here's why.
Of all the times I have been to PT, this is the place I've liked the best. I think because their focus is more on brain injury than sports medicine. Every other place I've gone, it's like they SAY "oh we're not just for athletes," but there's almost a tough love vibe like, "20 more reps, you pantywaist; go team!" It reminds me of this one therp, at a facility that shall remain nameless, who, as I lay on my back, pinned my shoulders flat on the mattress, held them there, and then let go. They sprung back up and rounded in. My muscles along my collarbones and in my chest were so tight. He pinned them back down again and said, "You know, if we could just put you in a brace to hold them like that for six months..." I must have muttered something like "yeah..." but what I was really thinking was, "oh yes, a brace will fix EVERYTHING, jackass. Stop touching me."
This place is not like that. I would describe the atmosphere as one of pleasant determination, rather than tough "love" or false cheerleading. I feel comfortable with my body there. If I am struggling with something that seems basic, there is someone else struggling with something that seems basic. If I am moving in a non-standard way, someone else is as well.
Now, I have the feeling this is how I'm supposed to feel at yoga, which I told my therp that I am going back to on Friday. In yoga you are supposed to "meet yourself where you are." But I have a very difficult time doing that. I'm always comparing myself to others, and I usually come out wanting. Or I am focusing on what I think the teacher wants, and I hurt myself. I am told time and again, that the teacher doesn't want anything, that no one is looking at me and judging, but I just don't believe it. It's not like I go to a yoga studio that's packed wall to wall with gym princesses or anything. It's just that I'm surrounded by lithe, supple, balanced bodies. There are some asanas I will never be able to do, because of the as-yet-undiagnosed brain damage I just call "my balance thing." I came out that way, just like with the blindness. I don't know how much it can ever improve. I do know that I was subject to humiliating pull-out sessions in my mainstreamed school, which took place in public spaces, like school halls, to work on my balance.
I know I still walk funny and I know I still hold my head funny and I am always, in public, excruciatingly self-conscious about it. A friend brought it up the other day as a kind of joke and I was like {cricket cricket} not funny. I can use humor to diffuse a lot, but not this.
Will I ever be able to meet myself where I am? How can yoga teachers do more to facilitate this? How can I?
I don't know, but it has stopped storm storm storming outside and the sun is trying to come back. Trying but failing but trying. And it's time to rest my spine now. Ow.
Of all the times I have been to PT, this is the place I've liked the best. I think because their focus is more on brain injury than sports medicine. Every other place I've gone, it's like they SAY "oh we're not just for athletes," but there's almost a tough love vibe like, "20 more reps, you pantywaist; go team!" It reminds me of this one therp, at a facility that shall remain nameless, who, as I lay on my back, pinned my shoulders flat on the mattress, held them there, and then let go. They sprung back up and rounded in. My muscles along my collarbones and in my chest were so tight. He pinned them back down again and said, "You know, if we could just put you in a brace to hold them like that for six months..." I must have muttered something like "yeah..." but what I was really thinking was, "oh yes, a brace will fix EVERYTHING, jackass. Stop touching me."
This place is not like that. I would describe the atmosphere as one of pleasant determination, rather than tough "love" or false cheerleading. I feel comfortable with my body there. If I am struggling with something that seems basic, there is someone else struggling with something that seems basic. If I am moving in a non-standard way, someone else is as well.
Now, I have the feeling this is how I'm supposed to feel at yoga, which I told my therp that I am going back to on Friday. In yoga you are supposed to "meet yourself where you are." But I have a very difficult time doing that. I'm always comparing myself to others, and I usually come out wanting. Or I am focusing on what I think the teacher wants, and I hurt myself. I am told time and again, that the teacher doesn't want anything, that no one is looking at me and judging, but I just don't believe it. It's not like I go to a yoga studio that's packed wall to wall with gym princesses or anything. It's just that I'm surrounded by lithe, supple, balanced bodies. There are some asanas I will never be able to do, because of the as-yet-undiagnosed brain damage I just call "my balance thing." I came out that way, just like with the blindness. I don't know how much it can ever improve. I do know that I was subject to humiliating pull-out sessions in my mainstreamed school, which took place in public spaces, like school halls, to work on my balance.
I know I still walk funny and I know I still hold my head funny and I am always, in public, excruciatingly self-conscious about it. A friend brought it up the other day as a kind of joke and I was like {cricket cricket} not funny. I can use humor to diffuse a lot, but not this.
Will I ever be able to meet myself where I am? How can yoga teachers do more to facilitate this? How can I?
I don't know, but it has stopped storm storm storming outside and the sun is trying to come back. Trying but failing but trying. And it's time to rest my spine now. Ow.
jeff noon
So I was gazing idly at my bookshelf the other day, wondering what happened to this amazing magic-realist-scifi(?) author, from whom I've read Vurt and Pollen. But then he fell off my radar. So I looked him up and found his website: Metamorphiction. There are boundless goodies within, but my favorite was this article "The Ghost on the B-Side: Remixing Narrative," in which he claims to take techniques used when mixing dub-step and apply them to the craft of fiction. Now, his fiction is quite lyrical, so this technique works for poets too. If you like creating odd juxtapositions of language (and I do) and you have some drafts hanging out that are behaving more like day-old coffee cake than the sweet tartlets you know they could be, perhaps his technique can kick start a revision. I've tried it with only one poem of mine so far, "Full-Blown Sugar," as yet unpublished... it's in the mail!
Have to sign off now because the cats are wreaking havoc on this warm rainy day. It's like they know it's almost spring or something. They are positively deviling my morning. Slam-crash-thumpythumpythumpy. I thought perhaps a generous infusion of catnip and "new" (marinated and then re-introduced) toys would let them let me write. I thought they might go crash around upstairs, but instead they're crashing around near the irreplaceables.
Have to sign off now because the cats are wreaking havoc on this warm rainy day. It's like they know it's almost spring or something. They are positively deviling my morning. Slam-crash-thumpythumpythumpy. I thought perhaps a generous infusion of catnip and "new" (marinated and then re-introduced) toys would let them let me write. I thought they might go crash around upstairs, but instead they're crashing around near the irreplaceables.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
note to self
- try not to panic when bureaucracy seems to trump your efforts
- for god sakes take a shower; that eye gunk is so unsexy
Monday, February 27, 2012
this morning
Still in my pajamas. Researched several journals for submission; haven't come to any conclusions. Wrote a long-lined long-narrative poem about candied chickpeas. Drafty draft. Messed about with art. It's sunny out but I haven't looked out the window much. The wind, which I hear constantly doing its inhaling/exhaling/whining thing, makes it sound gray, cold.
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