Vacationing in my own misery

I guess I havn’t posted often enough for a real blog. It’ll take me a while to post more regularly, but I’m sure I will. I’ve been working for a Landscaper and concentrating on Tai Chi and Kung Fu and Art.

The Landscaping gig has been very interesting. The guy I work for went to culinary school then moved back to his home town to marry and start a restaurant. He tried restauranteurship for a brief period which required to many hours managing and cooking by himself. No one in his small coastal city in NC needed a chef as there are no decent restaurants there. However the city has been developing rapidly so there is a need for landscaping. So he’s been doing that for the past five years. He does allot more hardscaping than what I’m used to, so I’ve been learning a bit. We’ve been installing paver walkways, sod, and retaining walls, as well as plantings. The planting style is more mainstream, less aesthetically and horticulturally developed than I’m used to. The plants are different to some extent because it’s a different bioregion.

About Kung Fu; I must look like a total psycho to my neighbors. Nothing new there I guess. I practice four to six days a week, usually at dusk. I wait til dusk because that’s when I’m off work, but also because I have to practice in the back yard. Pick up trucks are driving by one after the other, and I know what there thinking. “Look at that psycho, who does he think he is, the Karate kid, p@#*y.” So my philosophy on it is this; screw em’ I can kick their asses. Hopefully as the light get’s low I’m less visible.

I’ve been working on flexibility allot lately, which is funny. I feal like gumby. I got a few instructions from, http://www.martinvidic.com/martinvidic_en_2006/flash_mavi/index.htm. I can do good cartwheels,  and a pretty good front split, working on handstands, all with deer hunters and farmers riding by, gawking, on their way to Christian Men’s Fellowship, or Clive’s BBQ or whatever.

I recently obtained a pair of Tiger Claw Wushu Shoes. I love these shoes. Get some, they’re like 20 bucks. Weird thing is they came with an ad for the Tempe Arizona police department. Oh well, they’re great, cheap, cool looking shoes, they get sweaty after a few hours though so they’re stryctly exercise shoes, not for general wear.

Today I went to the Carolina Garden Expo at Greenville Convention Center and the Antiques Show at the New Bern Convention Center. Le’me tell ya, a whirlwind tour of small city convention centers. I have to say CGB was a let down. They allways over promote these things. There were a good number of nurseries represented, but nowhere near as many as there are in the region. Only one really had a catalogue. I only found a couple of growers very interesting, one of which is Southview Greenhouse where thay had full grown Burgmansia Dr Seuss, much bigger than I could find in the triangle last year.

There were plenty of Antiques in New Bern I recommend it. Greenville seems to try really hard to get use out of it’s convention center. New Bern’s has some City offices in it which I think is a good way to get use out of the building. I think the Chaimber of commerce meets there which is also a good idea. Both convention centers are eyesores though. New Bern’s presents some particular aesthetic problems because it’s right on the waterfront so it ruins the small colonial city’s skyline which is seen from the giant bridge intersection monstrosity that connects it to the rest of the world. New Bern truly has some gorgeous buildings in it. It has potential to be a beautyful place, as does the general area between New Bern and Oriental. New Bern has a large recreational harbor filled with sailboats and yachts on it’s waterfront, but a couple of the new big buildings just don’t quite fit. Greenspace would have been much better, with the monster buildings pushed back a few blocks into the city. I can’t wait for modernism and funstionalism to finaly give up the ghost.

Spring is on the horizon so I’m sorting my cache of seeds (if i can find it) and getting ready to plant a garden in my parents yard. It’s strawberry time! I’m gonna try out plants for market gardening next year. Next year I will have a couple acres of my dad’s farmland to use if I want, to do a CSA or if I want to rent a stall at the farmer’s market.

I’ve had allot more time to draw and paint lately. I’ve been filling a sketchbook with drawings of may hands and a tobacco barn behind my house. I also cut and painted a corsican gourd to look like a purple coneflower.

I‘ve been real into tea lately. I got a gaiwan and a couple varieties of oolong tea, most notably some anxi oolong tea that’s pretty good. Ive been drinking a cheap green tea as my regular tea at work. Green tea may help with weght loss so it compliments my weightloss diet I’m working. Not that I’m over weight, just too damn single, so I’m trying to get ripped. I figure as weird as I am I need every advantage.

The diet goes like this; I’ve been eating Pineapple for snacks because it contains bromelian which is supposed to help break down proteins and fats. I have bran cerial for breakfast and snacks, because it’s supposed to release serratonin which makes you feal full, it’s also good for the colon. I try to squeeze in chili pepper because capsaicin raises the matabolism as does the hot mustard on my sandwich at lunch. The capsaicin in chili also helps with my sore back as does birch bark tea. Ginger to aid my liver, matabolism, and for energy. Lemon juice to get my liver going in the morning. Chickweed goes in my salads for weightloss. I’m eating more roughage and protein and less fats and carbs at supper. I’m also adding garlic to everything the help prvent colds since I’m out in the cold windy weather.

So all of this brings me to my Kinston Chai ™ weight loss anti cold tea recipe.

in one tea ball

1/2tsp minced ginger

pinch cinnamon,

1/2 tsp lemon zest

a little minced garlic (you’ll get used to it, don’t be a spoil sport)

pinch lemon grass,

2 cloves,

4 black peppercorns,

pinch (or as much as you want) ceyene powder or crushed red pepper ,

1/2 bay leaf,

a bag of your favorite green tea

pour one half cup boiling water over the tea ball let sit for two minutes then add the tea bag wait a minute add the rest of the mug full of water which has cooled for three minutes now. let stand for one or two minutes. It’s great when it’s cold out, make you grow hair on your eyes, good for what ails ya, etc.

Transitioning

A couple of days before I moved my Sifu (Kung Fu teacher) Chris made one of those David Caradine-esqe statements that kind of resonates so much that you catch a bit of an echo effect. Later the statement continues to come-up in your mind because of it’s usefulness and so it continues to echo in your consciousness in a way. We were practicing Taan Sau (wooden dummy) forms on the pine trees we always practice on in the park. He was describing the usefulness of repeating 10 to 20 movement forms. It’s not to repeat the exact form in a fight, rather it is to practice transitioning between movements. Eventually you change the sequence of movements but certain movements fit together better then others kind of like dominoes.

Anyway he said ‘fighting is all about transitioning smoothly’, and of course in Kung Fu fashion opened the metaphor up to extension, saying ‘life is all about transitioning smoothly.’ I think he was right. Things are always changing. Often sweeping changes seem to come out of the blue. Like what if you suddenly find yourself in a relationship. One day your minding your own business, a couple of days later your all hot and bothered with some random chick. Next thing you know a couple weeks have gone by, you’ve just opened yourself up and she turns all psycho on you. So you have to take it all in stride. Keep your priorities in your head and just shift a couple of things in your life, but keep your balance. It’s philosophically related to Tai Chi.

Tai Chi is a simbol the yin and yang, oposing forces that create change. So Tai Chi is all about keeping your ballance while things change. It really is, that’s why it’s slow, all of those exercises are about ballance and perceiving what your body is up to.

So sometimes you see thing’s are going to change dramatically, you see it way off on the horizon. Nevertheless you don’t pay any attention to it. You don’t worry about it. You decide how you’re gonna handle it when it comes. You hope it’s not gonna happen soon, but when it does you have a plan, then you just have to follow through. Keep you balance, or your point of view, or your center.

Fighting is a metaphor for life. Survival is a struggle. Keeping healthy is a struggle. Nothing new there i guess. It’s just that that’s what I’ve been doing lately, just keeping my balance.

I havn’t fealt like blogging. My politics have changed allot and I’m not sure how I want to express my fealings about things. I guess I will later but that won’t be a blog post it will be allot bigger than that. Then again I might not at all, nobody really needs or wants to hear about my dissallusionment with Anarchism or politics in general. So anyway, whatever. Fuck it, when I feal like saying something I will.

In other news

I really want an iPhone. They really look sweet. I’ve always wanted an ipod and I’ve been thinking of leaving sprint anyway. The damn thing’s an mp3 player, camera, web browser, email, same os as my laptop, blue-tooth. Not to mention it has the smoothest look of any phone with the touchscreen and animation that looks like it came out of star-trek it’s nicer, sleeker, prettier than anything else out there.

Two big drawbacks though. It’s not 3g and it’s doesn’t allow install of software. Although I imagine it can be hacked. If you want my attention buy me that phone.

Relax and Fight

Relax and Fight

Proper relaxation can increase you success rate in allot of situations. Samurai practiced meditation and trained themselves to relax very deeply in the midst of combat. As swordsmen, they did this to enable themselves to strike their enemies down in the blink of an eye. Relaxed muscles are much quicker, as is a relaxed mind. The warriors of feudal Japan, influenced by Zen Buddhism, practiced breathing techniques to calm themselves. They also payed close attention to their states of mind during meditation, martial practice, and sparring. This enabled them to train their minds to relax during combat. A good experiment is to examine the way you breath when you are very relaxed, like before bed, or in the tub, then when you feel stressed breath that. You should find that this helps you calm down.

If you have the military channel on your tv, you can watch the specials on navy seal training they show over and over again. Seal trainers simulate extremely stressful combat situations by depriving soldiers of food and comfort to the point of complete exhaustion. This way the very core of the soldiers mind; the lizard brain, brain stem, or muscle memory is trained to relax the body in stressfull situations. You can mimic this type of training by keeping your face and breathing calm while exercising. After all exercise is stress. If you watch boxing or Mixed Martial Arts fights such a UFCs, you can really tell the most relaxed person has an advantage. This is especially apparent in amateur competitions where there can be a large gap in the skill of adversaries.

Exhaustion and stress are extremely hard to subdue. One minute things may seem fine. You may think “I’m tired and hungry but I’m happy”. You can go on like this and before you know it you are completely exhausted. Suddenly something unexpected and frustrating happens. Without realizing it you become very frustrated and react badly. This could result in making a bad choice and endangering yourself, or yelling and hurting the feelings of someone you love. You disn’t realize it but you were suddenly not yourself. You truly didn’t intend to make such a mistake, maybe you never thought you could. None the less the damage is done, and all you can do is try to get hold of yourself and repair it. You may need to remove yourself from the situation, practice breathing techniques, analyze the situation logically, or have a drink etc.

So what if this happens when you’re in a dangerous situation, like taking a direct action, or if you’re lost in the woods. If you find yourself in dangerous situations, high stress situations, you have to pay attention to your state of mind. Hopefully you can learn to become aware when you are frustrated or disoriented. The only tool you have to monitor your mind is the mind itself. So you should pay attention when you are relaxed to create a point of reference for your mind. You should feel unnatural or off balance when you lose your relaxation. You should develop a mental signal for yourself, like the thought “I’m frustrated I need to eat some carbs, I need to RELAX!” You should practice being relaxed under stress. Everyone should. If everyone would relax and concentrate while drivingg the world would be a better place.

That’s what I was thinking about this weekend when I took part in an amazing direct action, in the midst of the coal mining country of western Virginia. The action went off without a hitch because the wonderful, devoted people who enacted it had learned to keep cool heads in stressful situations. After hours of discussion, plagued by hunger and sleep deprivation, in the middle of the night with six hours before zero hour, the action plan had to be overhauled due to equipment failure. These folks put all of the formalized discussion, process, and ego aside. They pooled all of their energy together. Like true professionals they pulled off an incredibly sophisticated action. With detention looming I might add, personal freedom on the line.

The action was an amazing success. The power plant was blockaded all day. Not a single activist was detained, not even those who had locked down. I watched afterwards when the pressure was off and folks lowered their guard. Some began to unravel emotionally. The stress and exhaustion overwhelmed them. Some began to act goofy, fuss, or simply passed out. I certainly lost it a little while we were packing up to leave, with a five hour ride in a full pickup ahead of us. Seeing this made it all the more impressive, so much self control must have been exerted during the action.