Sports, Physical Education, etc…

shaking the habitual

In a conversation with a friend the other night, we were discussing our childhood and adolescence, being bullied by girls and general bodily awareness, etc. She pointed out something that I had never considered before — that, before a certain point in time, your body was just one whole part. You were you, that’s what you looked like, and that’s just the way it was. Until one day, someone makes a comment about your body, and suddenly your awareness heightens, and you start to question your body and the form that it takes.

After thinking about this, I realised that I can remember a very distinct shift from merely acknowledging that my body looked a certain way, to realising that my actions can cause my body to look different. It’s sad that, once you cross that line, there is no going back. Life used to be, oh, swimming training, ballet classes, run the 800m heats, blah blah, and all was well. Then one day, I realised, it’s all this swimming and ballet that has given me a really lean physique with strong abdominal muscles. That switching these two for hockey then gave me a thicker build, along with hockey thighs. That my gluttony over a few meals will amount to jeans being tighter or beers equating to a gut. And as a woman, these are consequences that are too hard to ignore sometimes.

Even though I don’t really “watch what I eat” and barely try to be moderate about it all, admittedly, one big reason I love hockey season so much is that I can then consume without as much thought as when it’s off-season — because it’s almost guaranteed to burn off. Case in point: in December I bought a beautiful pair of Rag & Bone jeans in New York, and this was right after a season of winter and summer hockey, and I’d walked and walked and walked on my trip. Then I get home, Christmas and New Years happens, with no hockey… and now I can’t fit them anymore. Hopefully if my coach continues her current plan of playing me on the left wing for the first sixty minutes (of a 70 minute game, ouch!) I will definitely be reaping in rewards in the form of muscle gain and fat loss. (Disclosure: I’m weird in that I gain and lose muscle easily so my weight fluctuates not 1-2kg like most females, but more like 4-7kg) But if I were ten again, I would just think, oh yay, I feel a bit fitter and lighter. Not, I lost muscle and put on fat, boo hoo, must reverse this. This body awareness thing was much easier when I only ate what my mum put on the dinner table, and did the amount of sports prescribed.

Also, I’d forgotten about these photos until I stumbled across these scans just before. They were taking during a jazz combo rehearsal at uni last year. Funny how I can forget about these completely, yet now that I’ve found them, I can remember what it felt like at the time, framing these shots in fairly quick succession, then putting the camera away to not be a distraction.

All taken on Kodak Colour Reversal film; Nikon F3.

But I’d love to see you before I leave, I leave next weekend, I’m not ready to go

Knowing that I’m a sleep-wrecking advocate of “trying to do it all”, my sister sent me some lecture notes from her religion class about how we simply can’t “do it all.” Whilst I haven’t gotten around to reading the lectures themselves (I think I can be forgiven, some days I have uni from 11am-6pm with virtually no break!), the email with her views on it have been really interesting. So I’ll rephrase — I’ll try to do everything I can. Good news is, I did make it back into the Division 1 hockey team after all, despite panicking about how badly I had trialled on the first day; I must have made up in round two.

Anyone who knows the boy and I quite well would know that we’re not advocates of marriage. I don’t even believe in little things working out, I’m such a bloody pessimist. Being the lofty thrill-seeking person I am, it’s surely no surprise that I always question the doctrine of monogamy. Without going on a huge tangent, I’ll clarify that I’m not about to ever be a swinger, and I simply couldn’t deal the jealousy and uncertainty of being in a “relationship” that isn’t monogamous. But I often encounter existential issues like “what’s the point?”, or my strong belief that I can’t be with someone unless, for its duration, I believe that I’ll always be with them, and will always want to be. Regardless of if that actually plays out in reality, I feel like, if that’s not how you feel when you’re together, then WHY would you bother being “together”?!

Some time in 2012 I devised a test for “how I may one day use to gauge whether or not I will accept someone’s proposal for marriage” — this is, assuming that anyone would ever be crazy/stupid/brave enough to stick their neck out for slaughter like that. The test is, I’d ask myself whether I would be willing to get a tattoo related to the person. It doesn’t have to be their name or anything, just, something sentimentally, symbolically, intimately related to them. Everyone knows that it’s a dumb idea to get a lover’s tattoo (sorry for the grand generalisation, though I’m not sorry if anyone actually thinks it’s a great idea), but regardless of if I’d ever follow through with something so stupid, I think if I could ever answer that test in the affirmative, then it would be pretty telling. There is so much more on how I feel about all this that I haven’t breached, but I’m looking forward to chucking my casebooks and real book on the floor, and climbing into bed with a book called Sex at Dawn. Before anyone jumps to any conclusions, it’s a New York bestselling anthropological book with the subtitle that reads “How we mate, why we stray and what it means for modern relationships.”  I think the key point to be extracted from praise on the back cover is “that humans evolved to be monogamous” — a topic I’m clearly fascinated by. It seems messed up that I’ve talked about these things for years but this book actually belongs to the boy and he read it sometime recently and has since shoved it under my nose. Let’s ignore the fact that I’m three quarters through Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw and the infamous American Psycho. Those can surely wait, whilst I uncover the thread of how modern human relationships came to be, right?

Here is Master Flakey, cute as ever, always managing to find a spot of comfort in the mess of a life I lead. I’m going to miss him so soo sooooo much when I move out soon.

heavy night it was a heavy night, feels like we’ve come back from the dead

Given recent events, university starting again, and just basically everything in general, that shiny, clean-slate sheen of the new year has more than worn out for me. I have no idea what anything means any more. I’m trying to avoid the snowball-effect where one lecture’s worth of readings and notes turns into three, into thirteen, into thirty, and the next thing I know is — well I don’t know anything. There isn’t a name to describe the state I’m in, but it’s a constant state of perpetual sadness. The death of hopes, of far-fetching plans — of a part of me. Every day that I’m at uni, I fluctuate between rushing to jazz school for instructed combo rehearsal in my only hour off from law lectures, or meeting a friend for California burritos. And amidst this flurry… where the hell am I, and who am I about to be? I’ve been chilling the fuck out, but I’m still serious about the things I do. I just don’t feel like I quite fit in anywhere. I want to do well, I want to come out near the top when my law marks have been scale-graded against my peers (that’s how they’re marked, on a rough bell curve, rather than raw scores) and I want to pull off a good graduation recital later this year. I want all these things and I want more. But the rest of the jazz cats or the law kids want things that are at least going in somewhat the same direction, and the things I’m after are pulling me every which way. To top it off, I’ve been debating with myself for ages over whether or not I can realistically still play hockey this season, but I’ve decided I will go to Division 1 trials after all. My father kindly pointed out that I would regret it if I don’t, and if it all really gets too much, the worst that could happen is that I’d have to drop out for the remainder of the season. So I’m going to do it.

On Thursday night the boy and I went to see Bloc Party. I’d seen them in December in LA with my sister and they were amazing, but the crowd there was awful, and — not to be racist, merely factual — a black chick tried to get in a fight with me. By that, I mean she actually did hit me several times. Just, what the hell, it’s a concert, when you’re in the fourth or fifth row and there’s a big gap in front of you, someone is going to go and stand there! So yeah, that was an experience and a half. But the Auckland crowd was predictably much mellower, and I certainly enjoyed second-row views of Gordon Moakes. I was sad they didn’t play Sunday (see blog title), but Signs was definitely a pleasant surprise. I just have no idea why Moakes looked so sad during the whole set, like something was wrong and he didn’t want to be there, who knows?

After the show I’d managed to get my hands on a set list, but a nasty girl knocked it out of my hands and into the photo pit. Then she went bailing over the barrier head-first to retrieve it. I really wasn’t in the mood to lose any dignity over it, so gave up. Luckily for me, an old friend was in the opening act, and although they didn’t get to meet Bloc Party, he’d seen the whole fiasco from upstairs and promptly went to retrieve a set list from backstage for me. Yay. And from the bass tech, no less, so I’m going to fawn over potentially having Moakes’ handwriting sitting on my desk. I honestly don’t care that it’s from the 5th in Brisbane rather than the 7th in Auckland. Nor do I know where this bass-player-fangirl-dom has come from, because as I’ve always said, bass players don’t typically tick any boxes for me… because I am one. I shall keep collecting “what stories are made of” experiences.

Here are two photos I took at the Met in New York. Both taken on Ilford HP5 Plus 400 B/W film; Nikon F3:

these days are scraped from ceilings

It was so nice to read the handful of comments/emails that I got in the last post — and really lovely to know that I provoked some thought with regards to goals and bucket lists. I guess those things can get stagnant and we all need new perspectives to formulate motivations sometimes. Something that I am lacking right now. I really shouldn’t be blogging right now, but I enjoy it so much more than writing the essays which I have due in next to no time, ahhh!

I had spent the virtually the entire weekend camped out in the boy’s room, bashing my head with books, trying to come up with these essays in time. But all I want to do is gush gush gush because – GUESS WHO’S GOING TO SEE THE YEAH YEAH YEAHS TWICE?! And I am not joking when I say that I have been jumping, dancing, leaping around the room singing them at the top of my lungs. Driving to them. Writing, eating, loving, procrastinating, prancing around to them. You have NO IDEA how over the moon/giddy/happy/ecstatic/crazy/hyper I am about this. The boy and I decided “oh why not” when they announced their only Big Day Out side show in Sydney. So we’ve decided to fly to Sydney, then train down to Melbourne for BDO and Laneway. That’s the rough plan, at least. Nothing’s been planned nor booked except the concert tickets at this stage, but we are 100% committed to going.

Can I just say it again?! I AM GOING TO SEE THE YEAH YEAH YEAHS TWICE!!! And Animal Collective! We are seeing them in Auckland before we leave for Sydney. Essentially, we are seeing the boy’s favourite band, and my favourite band – twice. It is going to be the absolute best week of my life I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I will see the band that I’ve been listening to for half my life – twice in ONE WEEK. And if you think about it, half my life is a decade! Ten years! I remember being eleven and discovering “Miles Away”, then thinking I was so badass for getting away with listening to “Bang”. The rest is history. When I’m done with all these bloody assignments (and probably exams too), I will have to do a comprehensive post about my love for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. As if it wasn’t obvious enough already…

In the meantime, I had finally finished up a really old roll of film on my point-and-shoot and gotten it developed. It’s got lots of other good times on there that I’m going to spread out posting because I sure as hell do not get to party again any time soon. Apart from perhaps a sneaky few hours at hockey prizegiving this Saturday… So in memory of times much more carefree and deeper sleeps – all taken on Kodak UltraMax 400 film:

to live like common people, I never think I’ll do

The list of ever-looming deadlines I have are looking gloomier by the day. It’s amazing how many things I find myself doing instead of writings essays and doing my jazz research dissertation. It’s not that I’m “wasting time” per se, when I procrastinate, I am genuinely doing and reading things I find interesting – they just aren’t the things that I must do. Right now. I was saying to a friend yesterday that “assignments are like screaming children. You like to hope they’ll go away if you just leave them, but you know they MUST be dealt with”. When I shared this analogy with the boy, he added something that I think is pure gold: “and like your children, everyone is totally disinterested in hearing you talk about them”. Touche.

The Raveonette’s new album, Observator, is now streaming here (aka it has leaked anyway), and will be officially released in a handful of days. I urge anyone who has ever enjoyed my playlists or music I’ve posted to go and check them out. Reading Sune Rose Wagner’s backstory of how the album was conceived (you can find it here) has given me a deeper perspective on the album as a whole. I know that some people don’t like to find out what songs and albums are about or were inspired by, because they feel it “taints” their interpretations of it; but having already repeated the album to death last night, I definitely wasn’t at any risk of having my initial experience influenced. It’s fantastic. Really fantastic. It’s what I love them for – sincerity, noisy guitar, what some have labelled a “dream pop” sound, and relatable lyrics. Also, for this album they’ve brought in the piano on a couple of songs which really gives songs like “Observations” a deeper, sombre timbre.

Here are a couple of photos taken a couple of months ago. Anyone who knows me knows that, whilst I love wielding the camera, I rarely volunteer to be in photographs. Even less frequent is the event of me handing my own camera over – so this shows just what a good night I was having. Both taken on Kodak UltraMax 400 film:


When I bent down to pick up my pointe shoes off the floor to hang them up last night, a string of thoughts were triggered and the idea hasn’t left me since. Even though I haven’t done ballet for five or six years now, I leave my pointe shoes hanging on my bedroom door. On that same hook are a couple of really pretty dresses that I just like seeing. It’s an aesthetic thing. But also, I realised last night that I can’t put those shoes away and let them fall into dusty obscurity because I absolutely loved ballet and it was a part of half my life – which is a  decade! Even though at the time I probably came across like I hated it (it was hard work and painful and time-consuming and full of pressures and I had an old teacher that just went nag, nag, nag), I still loved it. I’m not into the more classical stuff, like if I have to ever hear music from the Nutcracker again I will snap, nor could I sit through something like Cinderella, but I love the more contemporary styles. Earlier this year mum and I went to see the Royal NZ Ballet’s performance of “NYC: Three Short Ballets From the Big Apple” and it was one of the best nights I’ve had all year. To drift back on topic – it’s scary how things can be such a big part of your life and suddenly it’s just gone. Whether by choice or not. And no matter how you felt about it at the time or afterwards, you will never be the same person again, because everything that we do in our lives shapes us in some way. Skills we learnt and a practised and polished may be deserted and given up on – but to some level we are a changed person, and we retain those skills and knowledge to some degree.

I was feeling rather down about myself last night, thinking about ballet and all the things I can’t do with my body anymore. Even more poignant were these feelings, since I had a physio appointment yesterday, because I am aching all over as we’ve taken on extra hockey trainings in preparation for this Saturday’s semi-final. But then I thought, hang on, yes there are many things I can’t do anymore, or at least not as well as I used to be able to, but because of all those years of hard work towards different directions and different goals, the me today can probably do a lot of things that normal people can’t do. I really need to make a proper list of things I can do, have done, and then all the things I’ve yet to accomplish, but really want to. The mere idea of compiling this list is daunting though. There’s definitely a reason why, unlike many blogs I read, I don’t have a “Bucket List” or a “101 in 1001” list. I don’t like setting concrete goals because I don’t like failing. My excuse is often, I’ll want different things at different times, and therefore it’s pointless setting myself up for feeling like a failure if I take things off the list because I can’t or don’t want to do them anymore. So after all this, I’m not sure if I will make a list or not. But I’ll definitely make a list of things I’ve managed to do already. Like a reverse-motivation thing: if I have already done this, then surely I can do that too.

Thoughts?

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