I gaze upon the luscious doughnut laying there in its box, beckoning me.
How soft and moist a perfect doughnut is the creature I affix into my gaze.
Though you, my doughnut, are only one of twelve, you are the only one for me,
until you have been devoured.
Your texture is soft and comforting,
And your taste is of fresh honey.
Your smell, enthralling,
And as I gaze upon you, a warmth comes over my soul.
Oh doughnut, why doust thine beauty tempt me so?
I am only a man, and therefore cannot understand
The desires of my selfish heart.
But I for one know, you will be eaten by no other.
For a quarrel will be had,
Nary a scoundrel try to steal away my prize.
When I lay up at night,
I oft’ think about what men shall remember in the times to come.
Would your form be as enticing after I have passed,
And dust rests upon my bones?
Would you give yourself to others when they beg and plead,
Or perhaps when they weep?
I fear, O doughnut, that our era
May fell the curtain abruptly.
And we shall depart each going our separate ways
To live on less in memory as time grows further on.
So just one morsel,
While we still exist in body
Your sustenance will not only suffice
But exceed.
Oh doughnut, a moment will come soon,
where you and I will become one in spirit.
Your ethereal form may vanish,
But your memory shall remain forever.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
This image, Copyright of Time Magazine most certainly tells a grim story indeed. U.S. Marine, Sgt. John B. Doe selflessly and heroically gave his dignity for the good of his unit. What you see in the image (warning: graphic) are his final moments of ever being taken seriously.
It started at 0400 hours when Sgt. Doe slept in only to wake up to find his unit had gone on a 12 mile training run. In a frenzy, he chased after them, recklessly knocking over some of his squad mates’ equipment in the barracks. This was the start of what would become a very difficult day.
He approached the tail end of the unit about an hour later and filled in to rank, but the Lt. was not easily fooled. He had known all along that someone was slacking. However, he kept this information to himself and instead of berating Sgt. Doe, he just picked up the pace.
A mile later Sgt. Doe started getting sluggish, and tripped up the marine to his front, a quarrel broke out, and the Lt. settled it by making everyone do 300 press ups. The fatigue started hitting everyone hard. By the time they were done with all the press ups none of the soldiers could hardly breathe, but the Lt. pressed on even harder.
Staggering and weary the group finally made it back to base. Some of the soldiers thought they could rest, but they were mistaken. The Lt. immediately had them start doing partner squats till they couldn’t feel their legs. After that, the entire squad was subjected to an array of humiliating exercises designed to break their spirit and cause them to turn on one another.
A base camera caught some of these on tape:
Link
Link
Link
The soldier you see in that last video was none other than Sgt. Doe. After that ordeal he thought it was over, but the Lt. had other ideas. He was still perturbed at Lt. Doe making the other soldiers laugh so he devised one final challenge.
“Which one of you soldiers will volunteer to eat this scorpion? If no one steps up the entire squad will perform today’s training twice tomorrow. The person who volunteers will have to hold the scorpion in his mouth while giving me 100 press ups, and afterward he must chew and swallow.”
Doe, feeling guilty, volunteered. The details of the act are too gruesome to describe in words, but the picture is worth a thousand of them. His heroic actions means he will never be taken seriously again, but his honor will live on in the hearts and minds of those he served with.
Thank you for your sacrifice.
It started at 0400 hours when Sgt. Doe slept in only to wake up to find his unit had gone on a 12 mile training run. In a frenzy, he chased after them, recklessly knocking over some of his squad mates’ equipment in the barracks. This was the start of what would become a very difficult day.
He approached the tail end of the unit about an hour later and filled in to rank, but the Lt. was not easily fooled. He had known all along that someone was slacking. However, he kept this information to himself and instead of berating Sgt. Doe, he just picked up the pace.
A mile later Sgt. Doe started getting sluggish, and tripped up the marine to his front, a quarrel broke out, and the Lt. settled it by making everyone do 300 press ups. The fatigue started hitting everyone hard. By the time they were done with all the press ups none of the soldiers could hardly breathe, but the Lt. pressed on even harder.
Staggering and weary the group finally made it back to base. Some of the soldiers thought they could rest, but they were mistaken. The Lt. immediately had them start doing partner squats till they couldn’t feel their legs. After that, the entire squad was subjected to an array of humiliating exercises designed to break their spirit and cause them to turn on one another.
A base camera caught some of these on tape:
Link
Link
Link
The soldier you see in that last video was none other than Sgt. Doe. After that ordeal he thought it was over, but the Lt. had other ideas. He was still perturbed at Lt. Doe making the other soldiers laugh so he devised one final challenge.
“Which one of you soldiers will volunteer to eat this scorpion? If no one steps up the entire squad will perform today’s training twice tomorrow. The person who volunteers will have to hold the scorpion in his mouth while giving me 100 press ups, and afterward he must chew and swallow.”
Doe, feeling guilty, volunteered. The details of the act are too gruesome to describe in words, but the picture is worth a thousand of them. His heroic actions means he will never be taken seriously again, but his honor will live on in the hearts and minds of those he served with.
Thank you for your sacrifice.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
So I have been finding myself delving back into many of my old hobbies, most notably: music composition, and card magic. In the time that I'm not working on assignments or playing video games I find myself with nothing much to do, so I open my second drawer down to find an old pack of cards I'd left there for a rainy day. I open them up and pull out the 56 cards inside, discard the arbitrary cards and start to get a feel back for handling the deck. Each card still has a finish like it just came out of the box for the first time, and as I fan them out each card separates just as much as the one before it.
I start to run through all my basic techniques like my false shuffles, false cuts, jogs, breaks, and passes. I play around with all my sleights and flourishes and try to get back the feel for all the techniques I used to be able to perform flawlessly. Magic is both a science and an art. You must know the method for each move, but just knowing the method is never enough. You must also be able to use charisma and misdirection in subtle but powerful ways to guide your audience to the full effect of the trick.
As a musician I have 7 years of formal music training and I am capable of playing a variety of brass and percussion instruments, but obviously I don’t have a small band set up in my dorm, so all my music these days is done digitally on a program called FL Studio. This program allows me to control each step of the process with individual riffs on single instruments and combine them into rhythms, and then I can further add and subtract segments from my leads, basses, and drum kits to fit the style I’m going for. Furthermore, I can link my sounds to channels and set effects in those channels, so whenever I need a bass boost, or equalizer I can add one to the individual sound or group of sounds.
College has been interesting thus far, and I find it strange that in such new circumstances I start reverting back into some old habits and interests. I guess it could be a coping mechanism to the increased stress that is present in the new environment, but no matter what it is I am enjoying re-exploring these activities as if for the first time.
I start to run through all my basic techniques like my false shuffles, false cuts, jogs, breaks, and passes. I play around with all my sleights and flourishes and try to get back the feel for all the techniques I used to be able to perform flawlessly. Magic is both a science and an art. You must know the method for each move, but just knowing the method is never enough. You must also be able to use charisma and misdirection in subtle but powerful ways to guide your audience to the full effect of the trick.
As a musician I have 7 years of formal music training and I am capable of playing a variety of brass and percussion instruments, but obviously I don’t have a small band set up in my dorm, so all my music these days is done digitally on a program called FL Studio. This program allows me to control each step of the process with individual riffs on single instruments and combine them into rhythms, and then I can further add and subtract segments from my leads, basses, and drum kits to fit the style I’m going for. Furthermore, I can link my sounds to channels and set effects in those channels, so whenever I need a bass boost, or equalizer I can add one to the individual sound or group of sounds.
College has been interesting thus far, and I find it strange that in such new circumstances I start reverting back into some old habits and interests. I guess it could be a coping mechanism to the increased stress that is present in the new environment, but no matter what it is I am enjoying re-exploring these activities as if for the first time.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The Little Store
While reading Eudora Welty’s “The Little Store” I noticed she has an interesting control over the use of perspective compared to most objective writers. It’s quite a refreshing change, but it made things a little harder to read at times. I felt as though she was writing so that I may experience a childhood memory in close proximity to hers.
The opening of the essay sets the stage in a setting very familiar to her, her home, while relating the experience to her family. However, none of this seems to play into the rest of the essay, as it is about the store down the road, and the experiences she has had because of it. I believe she enters this way so that she can take a mundane tale about buying a few items at the local market, and turn it into something extraordinary, encapsulating the experiences each reader has had (for example, the fear of narrow, dark places e.g. the storm sewer) as a child while still keeping it all personal to her.
The story can connect with readers on many levels, but it is still unquestionably a story about her and her experiences and relationships. Everyone has experienced noticing a familiar person in an unfamiliar setting, although it’s a unique experience for every individual. In her case it is tied directly to the little store. She writes, “I ran to the store to discover…a grown person” and goes on to state, “It was the Monkey Man, together with his monkey…In my whole life so far, I must have laid eyes on the Monkey Man no more than five or six times.”
Welty seems to consider the store itself as something symbolizing her youth, that the Little Store was inexplicably tied by some thread to most, if not all, of the enjoyment she experienced during her time living near it. The road she played games on as a child is not just a road, but "the road that leads to the store" which ties her recreation time, directly to the time she was at the store. “I knew even the sidewalk to it as well as I knew my own skin. I'd skipped my jumping-rope up and down it, hopped its length through mazes of hopscotch, played jacks…” exemplifies how Welty describes everything in her memories in relation to the store.
This is a rare form of writing in which the centerpiece is not the narrator or the person that the story refers to most, but an object, idea, or place that ties a multitude of emotional threads together. I think this was Welty’s goal, as the store relates to happy moments, sad moment, wondrous moments, and confused moments. She uses her perspective as a child flawlessly to engage the reader using his or her own childhood experiences.
The opening of the essay sets the stage in a setting very familiar to her, her home, while relating the experience to her family. However, none of this seems to play into the rest of the essay, as it is about the store down the road, and the experiences she has had because of it. I believe she enters this way so that she can take a mundane tale about buying a few items at the local market, and turn it into something extraordinary, encapsulating the experiences each reader has had (for example, the fear of narrow, dark places e.g. the storm sewer) as a child while still keeping it all personal to her.
The story can connect with readers on many levels, but it is still unquestionably a story about her and her experiences and relationships. Everyone has experienced noticing a familiar person in an unfamiliar setting, although it’s a unique experience for every individual. In her case it is tied directly to the little store. She writes, “I ran to the store to discover…a grown person” and goes on to state, “It was the Monkey Man, together with his monkey…In my whole life so far, I must have laid eyes on the Monkey Man no more than five or six times.”
Welty seems to consider the store itself as something symbolizing her youth, that the Little Store was inexplicably tied by some thread to most, if not all, of the enjoyment she experienced during her time living near it. The road she played games on as a child is not just a road, but "the road that leads to the store" which ties her recreation time, directly to the time she was at the store. “I knew even the sidewalk to it as well as I knew my own skin. I'd skipped my jumping-rope up and down it, hopped its length through mazes of hopscotch, played jacks…” exemplifies how Welty describes everything in her memories in relation to the store.
This is a rare form of writing in which the centerpiece is not the narrator or the person that the story refers to most, but an object, idea, or place that ties a multitude of emotional threads together. I think this was Welty’s goal, as the store relates to happy moments, sad moment, wondrous moments, and confused moments. She uses her perspective as a child flawlessly to engage the reader using his or her own childhood experiences.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Where are you from?
Where am I from?
What is where? Is it the place that is important or the atmosphere surrounding the place, or perhaps the events that happened there? “Where” is a question that can have a lot of different implications. I’m sure if someone were interested enough they could find the exact grid coordinates of the locations of all the notable events in their life. However, I feel that answering the question in that manner detracts from the original purpose.
If someone were to ask me, “Where did you grow up?” I suppose I would have a difficult time answering. The concise answer, “Walnut Grove, GA” hardly gives any insight into my personality, and most assuredly would not answer any other questions aside from the one just stated. The “Where” is less of a place and more of a memory every day.
I am from the place where fires burn in barrels, doors always stay locked, and people avoid making eye contact with one another. A place where the sun shines, but no one seems to take notice unless it furthers their own goals. A place where people used to have pets, but now they just run free as strays to cause trouble for everyone. A place where I learned self defense, but the lessons were free. This place where I came from had the word “struggle” on everyone’s daily agenda.
Yet I also came from a place of freedom for someone my age. I could come and go as I pleased so long as someone knew where I’d be. I made my own choices and fully accepted the reactions from my action whether positive or negative. I am from a place that instills great strength upon someone on both the outside and the inside, but that strength also comes with its weaknesses. The place I was from has also branded me with many inerasable scars.
I am from a place that taught me not to hold on to people and places. In that place the only thing that mattered was the present, and the choices you make right then.
Where I am from has been the single biggest event to shape my character in my life. I believe that it has changed the way I view the world permanently. That place has instilled in me quite a few traits that still help dictate how I see the world. An internal fortitude, mixed with a gritty realism, and a suspicion that borders on paranoia are traits that exist in my day to day life, and they may never go away.
Since then, I have been in much nicer places, with much better people, but when I think of “Where” I’m from, that is the place that exists to me.
What is where? Is it the place that is important or the atmosphere surrounding the place, or perhaps the events that happened there? “Where” is a question that can have a lot of different implications. I’m sure if someone were interested enough they could find the exact grid coordinates of the locations of all the notable events in their life. However, I feel that answering the question in that manner detracts from the original purpose.
If someone were to ask me, “Where did you grow up?” I suppose I would have a difficult time answering. The concise answer, “Walnut Grove, GA” hardly gives any insight into my personality, and most assuredly would not answer any other questions aside from the one just stated. The “Where” is less of a place and more of a memory every day.
I am from the place where fires burn in barrels, doors always stay locked, and people avoid making eye contact with one another. A place where the sun shines, but no one seems to take notice unless it furthers their own goals. A place where people used to have pets, but now they just run free as strays to cause trouble for everyone. A place where I learned self defense, but the lessons were free. This place where I came from had the word “struggle” on everyone’s daily agenda.
Yet I also came from a place of freedom for someone my age. I could come and go as I pleased so long as someone knew where I’d be. I made my own choices and fully accepted the reactions from my action whether positive or negative. I am from a place that instills great strength upon someone on both the outside and the inside, but that strength also comes with its weaknesses. The place I was from has also branded me with many inerasable scars.
I am from a place that taught me not to hold on to people and places. In that place the only thing that mattered was the present, and the choices you make right then.
Where I am from has been the single biggest event to shape my character in my life. I believe that it has changed the way I view the world permanently. That place has instilled in me quite a few traits that still help dictate how I see the world. An internal fortitude, mixed with a gritty realism, and a suspicion that borders on paranoia are traits that exist in my day to day life, and they may never go away.
Since then, I have been in much nicer places, with much better people, but when I think of “Where” I’m from, that is the place that exists to me.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Seeing Parkour
Seeing Parkour
Parkour is a physical discipline characterized by its goal: to overcome any physical obstacle with fast, efficient movement. You may have seen parkour in the media from time to time, or you may have never heard of it. For most people, their exposure to the activity is limited, and as such it is a difficult concept to fully grasp. The practitioners of parkour are called traceurs, a term derived from a French word meaning: to trace a path.
One interesting aspect of parkour is the effect it has on the way traceurs see the world around them. The longer you train, the less you stay confined to accept that the world around you is exactly as it appears. Pathways open up, both physically and mentally, the route from point A to B may alter depending on circumstance. A traceur finds himself looking up much more often, wondering where and how. Practitioners of this art/sport/discipline never run out of places to go.
"We miss a great deal because we perceive only things on our own scale." So how does parkour change the way one “sees”? When a normal person looks upon a stairway, they see an integral part of the way society changes elevation. A stairway is so commonplace, that no one questions its purpose or the way it works. This stairway is obviously the most efficient way to traverse this span. When a traceur looks upon a stairway he “sees” each individual step as contributing something to the whole, he takes note that only one in every 3 steps are needed, he takes into account the entire vertical drop. Traceurs still miss a lot though, because we are always comparing. That is why the truly innovative perceive with no scale.
Ann Dillard writes, “I see what I expect” and the same is true with traceurs, traceurs simply expect to see differently that most people. A traceur can see any object in his environment as a tool of movement, exercise, or recreation. No one else looks at the lines between parking spaces and uses them either as a game, or a marker to track self-improvement, except maybe children. I am personally amazed at some of the things children can see. I relate to children in that I also love playing on the monkey bars, except usually I’m balancing atop them.
"It's all a matter of keeping my eyes open". Monkey bars are meant for swinging, painted lines are meant for parking, staircases are meant for climbing, handrails are meant for safety, and walls are meant for fortification, but when you try to perceive things in a different light, new usages for common objects arise. Keeping my eyes open means actively looking for new methods to accomplish the same goal. Those are only more common purposes, but nothing is exclusive, not in design, not in practice.
"If I can't see these minutiae, I still try to keep my eyes open." In parkour, what are the small details? What difference do they make? In parkour, being able to see the minutiae means the difference between going home tired and going home in a cast. The activity is dangerous. It isn’t just about being able to see new heights, but also about paying attention to what you’re standing on. A person can “see” cold metal, tiny specks of sand, and a loose rock so long as he is looking for it. A misplaced step, off by a mere half an inch can send a person tumbling to the ground. When I see my destination, I see the exact point where I wish to land.
In parkour, the mindset is different, but understanding why it is different or what exactly is so different about it is a complicated ordeal on its own. “I reel in confusion; I don't understand what I see." (AD). For example, when I was training out side the business office near the stairs and the tall wall, what exactly do I see? I focus on pathways through, over, and around and I think about ways to emulate what I see myself doing. I see the effects of gravity, of leverage, of hand placement and foot placement. "Still, a great deal of light falls on everything."(AD). Still though, it isn’t required that I understand why I see the world this way; it is still illuminated to me.
I guess I’ve always had this mindset, it just required taking action to bring it forth. When I was younger I loved climbing, as most children do. I’ve always been active, and I guess the combination of the two along with a likeminded community really brought me into this discipline. "I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until that moment I was lifted and struck."(AD)
Parkour gives one a mindset of new possibilities. I can see myself in new places, and now I can go there as well.
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