About
So, Who am I?
I am many things. I am the life of the party. I am the loner that ignores everything. I’m remarkably dependable and just as equally as flakey. I have a great big heart and I’m able to shut it all down in nano-seconds. I am all things and I am none. I can’t decide. Or, once I decide - I change my mind. I am chaos amid the order.
This last year and a bit I have been trying to figure out what it is, exactly, that I am. It’s very very difficult. I have discovered that catching yourself not being yourself is easy, doing something about it is not. So I am a work in progress. I am an adult, of sorts, and a child at heart. I have given it my all and always kept something in reserve. I choose every option and in so doing I choose none. I am a prisoner in a cell of my own design and now I want out!
What am I doing about being me?
Well, for starters I’m seeing this girl. She’s great, she’s amazing, she is - for all intents and purposes - The One. And I want to have babies with her. Mostly girls, I admit, but a boy would be pretty damn fantastic too. There’s only one small, teeny, tiny problem with all this though… we don’t speak the same language. Sure, both of us use English words, but I’m all about using the least words and reading into it and she uses precise words and doesn’t. Dana (like banana, only with a “d” - baDana) is the most literal person I know. It’s very difficult for me to communicate with her because, well, because I listen between the lines. Which is fine if you are talking to someone who speaks between the lines, but when the actual meaning of the sentence is the same as the words in it, I tend to add things to her sentences. And, of course, I don’t tell her what I actually mean, because I’m used to people looking for the hidden meaning. It’s all very frustrating. While we are relaxed and able to adjust our language for each other, we do well, but when either of us gets stressed we slip into what we know and things get, generally, worse. It’s a work in progress, but it’s slow going and always easier to say, “Why don’t you just talk like me?” which doesn’t help either of us.
I have discovered Yoga, at the W.A. School of Yoga. One of the teachers there is particularly brilliant and he helped spark my interest in the spiritual side of the Yoga experience. One 14 day Yoga in Bali trip and a year or so of steady weekly classes has helped me develop a better posture and stronger body. Recently during a Summer Intensive course at the school, I was able to reach something like Pratyahara (where I was able to observe the observer) for a few short and very amazing seconds. I was so happy and full of energy for the next three days that I couldn’t do it again! Having experienced it now, or having begun to experience it, I find that yoga is the way to inner peace and that while the road is difficult and full of (my own) obstacles, there is something more to All This.
I am a student of Aikido (Butokuryu Aiki Jujitsu) and am enjoying my recent return to bi-weekly training sessions. After a period away from the club I found that I still hungered for the Aikido way. In my study of the martial art I find many similarities to the ideas held within Yoga. The steadfast application of effort to attain perfection and the admission that perfection is unattainable (there is always something else that could be added, removed) directly parallels the yogic way. Both systems have underlying ideas that closely resemble each other. Admittedly, Yoga is a peaceful path to enlightenment and Aikido seems quite violent, but at the higher levels of skill, Aikido teaches the idea of using your skills as an absolute last resort for self protection. Yoga surpasses that idea to the level that eventually one’s actions will not create any Karma and therefore one would never be in that position.
I’m also into Japanese culture. I like their style and I like their food. I’m studying Japanese at TAFE and am happy to report that while the first couple of courses were quite difficult to get to (organisationally) I have now pretty much got it all sorted. Technically bi-weekly also, I have to miss the first lesson because of Aikido training. I am really enjoying being able to understand some Japanese and when I go to Japanese restaurants, I’m generally trying out a few phrases here and there. I have yet to order completely in Japanese, but that day shouldn’t be far off. It’s mostly just nerves!
And I read! I read books, I read websites, I read some news. I’m slowly moving back into awareness of the society around me, even though many of it’s idiosyncrasies really bug me.