20 October 2003: A Curry, a Manifesto, & 6 Questions

Monday morning. Unemployment is making for peculiar changes in the rhythms of my life. For instance, Sunday tends to be my most heavily scheduled day now (and will be even more so next month), so I tend to find myself, during the weekend, looking forward to Monday as the day where I can have some time to myself to write and do laundry and such.

I'm also eating much better, because now that I have less money and more time, I'm making my own food most of the time instead of eating out. I usually eat meat only when I eat out; except when I'm cooking for other people who I know are carnivorous, my cooking tends to be vegan. Made a giant pot of vegan curry last night, because doing yoga makes me crave curry. Doing yoga makes me crave Indian food; aikido makes me crave Japanese food. Tae kwon do made me crave Korean food. Further research seems to be in order. I guess I wouldn't learn much from trying muay thai (Thai kickboxing), because I already crave Thai food most of the time anyway. Any of you capoieristas or Gracie jujitstuka out there notice post-practice cravings for Brazilian cuisine? What about you belly dancers - does it make you want Middle Eastern food?

Maybe someday I'll find someone to teach me savate, that old French kickboxing art, just to see if it makes eating snails seem any less disgusting.

Being unemployed (or nigh-unemployed - I'm still teaching aikido and I still have two reading students on Friday afternoons), gives me control over my own schedule, which has led me to the new discovery that mornings are my most productive writing time. This is an astonishing bit of news for me, and I feel a bit stupid looking back on a decade of trying to force myself to stay up late to write at the end of the day.

Today I began the practice of setting an alarm clock to wake me up at seven in the morning, so as to get more morning hours. Ironic - for over a year, I'd been arranging my work schedule such that I didn't have to be at work until ten, so that I could stay up late and still not have to set an alarm. Now I start using an alarm clock, when I no longer have to worry about getting to work on time. Because if I don't set the alarm, I'll sleep through my best writing hours.

On Friday morning I worked on the Aiki Arts website. Revised and expanded the Mission Statement, and moved it to the homepage. I pulled out the stops and got good and preachy and politically inflamatory. I was pleased enough with the result that I also posted it in the Notes section of this site, under the title “An Aiki Manifesto.”

My aikido feels good right now. I wish I was doing more of it. Yoga is producing interesting changes and breakthroughs in my aikido. Figured out how to do breakfalls from Sayu Nage yesterday. Taught it in the advanced class.

Argus sent a questionairre to the Moot email list. One of those things where you answer the personal questions and then send the questions and your answers to a bunch of people, and then they answer the questions and send the questions and their answers to you and a bunch of other people, and everyone learns interesting stuff about each other an has a lot of fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench.

A while back, I picked up from Yoko the idea of posting such questionairres (along with one’s answers) in one’s online journal, and encouraging one’s fellow online journalists to answer the questions in their own journals. Decided to do that with this questionaire – or rather, with the six questions (out of 25) that I found interesting enough to really want to hear my friend’s responses to. So here’s those six, with my answers:

1. If you could build a house anywhere, where would it be?

Crete. On top of a big hill.

2. What's you favorite article of clothing?

My Converse Chuck Taylor hightops with the Stars & Stripes pattern.

3. If you could have chosen your name, what would it be?

I did choose my name.

4. What makes you really angry?

A lot. Here's some of it, from bigger to smaller:

People who torture, abuse, coerce, and terrorize other people.

People whose greed or addiction to control leads them to behave in a way that impoverishes or enslaves other people.

People whose need for control leads them to suppress the beauty and creativity of others.

People who say shit like "That's just how it works," or "Everyone does it that way," or, "I was just following orders," rather than taking responsibility for their personal choices.

Transparently dishonest passive-aggressive communication habits, like when someone begins a long litany of complaints by saying, "I don't mean to complain, but...," or when someone says, "Just so you know..." when he doesn't just want you to know, he actually wants you to do something.

5. Do you believe in an afterlife?

I believe that linear time is a function of our perceptions while we are incarnate. Outside of the context of life, the concept of "after" is meaningless.

I do believe that there is a soul or essential self that exists outside of the boundaries of one's lifespan, and of which one's life is a facet or reflection in the same way that a character in a roleplaying game is a facet or reflection of the player.

I believe that souls tend to have multiple incarnations. This is almost like the Hindu notion of reincarnation, except that, because of my belief that linear time is a figment of subjective perception, I view these multiple incarnations not as sequential, but as refractive – i.e., the soul as white light, the incarnation process as a prism, the various incarnations as the various beams of colored light that the soul is refracted into by the prism.

6. The one person from the past you wish you could go back and talk to?

Rumi.