A Deft Thought

As much as I loved reading Everything Is Illuminated, what I’m looking forward to most this summer is getting back into the Song of Ice and Fire series. Does that make me a bad English major? I know I’ll make time to read the next great Postmodern text. And of course they’ll be thought provoking, engaging examples of advancements in human thinking. Really looking forward to House of Leaves and Infinite Jest.

But Jon Snow, man. Jon Snow.

Early this year, my roommate brought a book from home called Felon Fitness. I thought it pretty dubious at first. With a tag-line like “How to get a HARD BODY without doing hard time,” and “Work out with conviction!” puns, I figured that sticking with the core training exercises I’ve familiarized myself with was just more sensible. And then I read it.

The book is very practical and gives a wide array of exercises to employ. It covers primary and secondary muscle groups while giving enough selection to vary up your routine. What grabbed me most was the clarity of Felon Fitness’s writing. There’s an emphasis on employing ingenuity in your training and why gyms can be a bad place to start. Training gyms are popular and helpful, but I’ve seen a lot of people screw up their form when using machines. Injuries are not an infrequent end result of training with equipment. Not to mention while the overload principle (the idea of using extra weight from equipment in order to develop muscles further than body weight can contribute) is well and good for bulk building, nothing beats the simplicity of lunges or push-ups for keeping the body toned.

As I’m more concerned with functional muscle than building for appearances, the book has been a great source of structure for my routine. It comes with a set of Work-outs from the inmates who composed it which are interesting if not difficult to keep up with. Several are scheduled as all day routines, which is nice but a bit impractical for everyday use. There’s also this neat little weight called the “Prison Dumbbell” for the exercises requiring weights. The Dumbbell is more like a set of magazines taped together (and measured with a scale, of course), than it is a dumbbell, but it terms of functionality and working with limited resources, its a pretty damn good idea. Luckily I have a set of weights to use.

Check the book out. Its an excellent resource.

Back on track today for my new workout schedule. Been an off week and ended up missing several days but at the very least I have a routine I’m confident that I can keep.

Mon., Wed., Fri:

• Biceps, Triceps, Quadriceps
• Roadwork - Sprints/Lunges & Shadowboxing 
• Abdominal Exercises

Tues., Thurs., Sat:

• Chest, Shoulders, Back
• Stamina - 3/4 Mile Run
• Abdominal Exercises

Details in the future as the end of this routine progresses.

(Picture taken by an anon of a road in Pripyat. I do not claim it as my own.)

I Walked With Giants: A work of mine that I entered into two short story competitions for local literary magazines. Didn’t make it into either, sadly. Seems to be a problem of mine when I write fantasy fiction. I find the genre is a hard sell for publications that don’t specifically look for fantasy/science-fiction. The experience has taught me quite a bit about revision and drafting projects so it was far from being in vain. Next time, expect to see my work in print! Until then, enjoy after the jump.

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I’m intense. When I say, “do you have a minute?” I mean the next two hours. I ramble, I get loud, I get passionate. Often that throws people.

For a long part of my young adulthood, I was quiet. I didn’t think what I had to say mattered. I wrote instead. For as long as I can remember, writing has served as my voice. But I speak now. Loudly. And in that same fashion, my writing has evolved. When my voice fails me, when language fails me, my means of giving voice to thought is through word. This is a very difficult process but if I did not do it, I would go insane.

Creatives are like that. At least, that’s what I hear. From my mom. She’s a smart lady though, so I trust her.

I’m writing a story about a sadomasochist. His name is Amal.

Writing outside of my “knowledge” tends to be my regular practice. In fact, research becomes one of the most engaging parts of any bit of writing I do. Especially when it comes to making a character feel real. Fleshing out each individual “why” in a backstory, defining the purpose or intent of even the most minor and mundane actions, uncovering the dirty little secrets of the faces in the words is the author’s privilege. Sometimes characters come naturally. Often the people I write come from observations and dreams. And occasionally I find myself developing a voice that unnerves me a bit. Right now, that’s Amal.

I don’t know where he came from, exactly. I started writing this story about two and a half years ago. It started with a name: Sacred. The protagonist believed he could find God through suffering, so he got into street fights. After I finished editing I Walked With Giants, the first work I turned to was Sacred. When I read through what little I’d written, I scrapped it, grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote the following:

“It was a bad night. I kept trying to remember, flexing my fingers, letting that white heat fill up my head, tasting metal in my mouth, working my tongue over my split lip and swallowing red, red, red. Remember. It was raining. Little beads drummed on the asphalt. Sharp. Clear. The air was cold. I watched my breath steam. My hands stung. Wet with rain and blood and spit. Not mine.

It was a bad night.”

The character I started with was very different from what I had now. His voice has been working itself out. Amal is not a good person. He wants to be good but he fights too much. He likes hurting people too much. In trying to find out why, I find myself researching masochism. The psychology of pleasure through pain and control bleeds through in his voice.

It’s been interesting research. There’s a diverse amount of information on the mentality, from the sexual (things like rough sex to full BDSM), to behavioral studies in men and women, to sport martial arts.

Now, I practiced martial arts all through my childhood. I boxed for a bit before an injury forced me to stop. And I could understand the rush of fighting, the full feeling in my body when I sparred. But I drew a clear line in my head—sport fighting wasn’t about hurting people. It was the challenge. And then Amal came through my pen.

I haven’t yet figured him completely out. Maybe he’s is one of my own less acknowledged voices. One that shoots down the semantic language used to justify people beating the crap out of one another. That’s the joy of writing—navigating the space between author, character and narration to bring a voice to life. Especially when I don’t agree with the voice speaking—it challenges me to do a character justice and to tell a story worth reading.

Sometimes its nice to take a break. Between reading modernist poetry and prose, and sloughing through Spenser, I’ve been having a hard time with my reading list. Every year I set out to read some number of books. During the course of the year, the list gets bigger and bigger, primarily due to recommendations and my own curiosity when poking around bookstores. Next on my list was ingesting Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s been a wild trip through that book and I’m loving it to death. Being an author who I’m coming to admire, I really want to take the time to enjoy Pynchon. I had the leeway to do so with The Crying of Lot 49. But my semester keeps dragging along and I know I’m not going to give this book the attention it deserves.

So I’m reading a mystery anthology. A collection in the “Best American” series of works. All short stories of varying length but in a genre which I’m not familiar with. I mean, The Crying of Lot 49 sure as hell was a mystery, but that tense whodunit atmosphere has eluded my reading diet (didn’t read much in my adolescence which makes discovering authors a lot of fun now). And now I’m taking the plunge into relatively unexplored territory.

After I finish, expect a review. Maybe I’ll even try my hand at a little mystery fiction.