May 25, 2020
“Was that fun”, my daughter asked?
“Did you have fun?”
“Yes.”
We stared, and finally I said, “Good” with the punctuating mark used by parents to mask their confusion sometimes anger.
What is fun? A moment before we realize we just had it.
I held pads for B. last night, a trainer and fighter at my gym. This was his second class after returning from a year long lay-off due to a series of serious injuries. When he hit my liver through the belly pad I wanted to vomit. Again when he kneed me to the gut. Pride kept me from dropping the pads. I counted seconds in my head as he joked and laughed. His girlfriend was now calling him Daddy Jiggles or something. When the round ended, I kept smiling just as you do in a fight (never let them know you’ve already quit).
He hurt me and the body responded with fear. The autonomic fear the most difficult part of the experience. The burden of emotion, not the physical pain, the hardest to conceal (an urge to cry and sit down) . . . Surprising how quickly I wanted to concede. This is training – fear in a controlled environment.
Why did I feel peaceful after this encounter? I’ve spent hours thinking about it, and I believe it was because I had encountered something I could not mystify or dismiss with daydreams.
Sometimes what affirms who we are is an interaction with a force we thought we understood. Mystery as certainty. The negation of my fantasy affirmed the me that exists and generates the fantasy. Stripped.
The effect of anxiety on life? Nothing. Nothing! Life vibrates energy until death and leaves nothing.
“You also write with your butt.” Piglia, The Happy Years
Some lives favor narrative; mine did not. This fact is not on account of what did or did not happen; but, my experience of it: sublimation, rejection, drugs. A compelling narrative would be a lie.
