Long day. So tired. No napping in the bathroom. Left later than I should have. Slight drama at work where two coworkers argued over something that somehow dragged me into it. It's normal.
I notice more and more when my peace is broken. Like my little sister, I am more of an angry person. A lot of people don't know that. Anger not necessarily in the explosive way, though sometimes I do. Anger as in easily be bothered by something to an exaggerated level.
I notice this more since I started kungfu last Saturday. I went again last night.
I am sure it's a path for me to find peace, shed the anger. I hope I will go through it. I no longer wake up angry. But these few days, something opened up and I find myself angry more often than before. Maybe it has nothing to do with kungfu opening anything up, maybe it's just my ups-and-downs. Nothing happened. No drama. But perhaps just feeling lonely, and when I do I think about the people who have left me, who have disappointed me with their rejections.
But being there, on the rough wooden floor of the kungfu studio (I haven't figured out what the proper name is, as they call it "dojo" for aikido studios), I feel different. I feel I have a purpose. And so much about kungfu sync's with me. The idea of respect, the idea of rules, the idea of honor, being part of something, discipline. Ah, discipline. For as long as I have been a programmer, in terms of work schedule and work ethics, there was little external discipline. Programming itself is full of discipline and rules, but the work itself, especially the last year or two at Yale.
And when I am challenged to stay in the painful position with my muscles burning, I feel a purpose. A purpose that is about myself only. When I think I can't do another pushup I feel a purpose: purpose to overcome my own weakness and do one more.
One of the instructors told me to relax, that it was my first day (really second if you don't count the trial day last Saturday). He's right, but he doesn't understand that I am an overachiever, that I am lazy in ways I should not, that I have grown up believing that strength can only come from hard work and suffering and yet now I have a comfortable life in which I seek drama and other kinds of suffering in a very useless way.
And this connection with myself, with the other person (supposedly my attacker), so precious. I think it was good that I have studied tango; it started my path of connecting to myself and to another person, to understand my own space and that person's space. My body isn't just a bunch of limbs attached to a rigid torso. I learned a long time ago from a tango teacher and a friend that I have so many possible movements in my body I didn't know was possible. A key to tango, and a key to martial art, or any thing artistic with the body, is to unlocking those movements. That's why we stretch so much in kungfu. To allow these possibilities to surface.
I got my first kungfu uniform. Made me giggle. I thought about when I was really young in China, watching this same movie over and over again about an orphan who got adopted by the famous Shaolin temple where the oldest recorded form of Kungfu still lives on today. I remember trying to imitate the movements. I remember being inspired that it's possible to be that good. I remember the dimple formed on the floor from the boy's relentless practice with his right foot. Of course, now that I look at it, it was a very silly theme in another Chinese movie good at being cheesy and obvious. But still, I remember being inspired by the idea that if you're patient and persistent, you will succeed. Somehow I lost that. I am impatient and my persistence only lasts for a little while.
After kungfu I felt good, and I went to meet my guy friends at the tranny bar. They weren't there, but I did see two transvestites, tall, skinny, fake boobs, and talking like women. I have never been so close to transvestites. But I wasn't too bothered. I realized the men weren't there so I went over to the bar where they said they would be before going. I found them and they said the bar was closed tonight. Too bad, no tranny lap dancing for our bachelor. How funny would that have been.
I found myself behaving very normal, or my normal self among these men. They ranged from very manly and bad-boy like, to very effeminate but far from gay (including the bachelor himself). There was something almost magical about being with them. I felt more free to say what I wanted, and even more bizarre, to gesticulate the way I wanted. Maybe because I didn't know them. But with my female friends, I always felt I had to behave in a certain way, even with my best friends. I had to make sure I wasn't too effeminate, wasn't too rude, was gentle and considerate. Perhaps I am too used to being the man that women want just in case one of them actually wants to date me.
Then the night became wild and strange. But all in a good way. I won't go on further here because a bachelor's party needs to be sealed in secrecy. I do want to say that I felt somewhat bonded to these guys. Like when one got slightly drunk and declared his eternal love for this girl that they have been on and off with for since the first time I saw them together many years ago. Or when we all congratulated the bachelor and just being simple men. Meaning, nothing complicated, very primitive, slap and smile and roaring like animals.
I am glad to know that talking to men isn't boring and that I could connect to them in some way or another. And that I didn't feel I was in some competition, which is usually the case when there were pretty women present. And I felt I was liked. It wasn't the point, of course. But I noticed that they liked talking to me. There was no effort by anyone, but that it just happened. My art friend, who stayed over the weekend, told me that men liked me too. I could see she was probably right.
My house is still giving me troubles. Roof is still leaking, supposedly. Insurance will go up once I confess that I am no longer living there but making it just a business. I want to let that go. Make my life simpler. I wonder if that will change, this hunger for simplicity, as I progressed on my path, accompanied by kungfu, by more men, and who knows what else I will be doing. I wonder if I will soon let go, without effort, the desire to be holding a woman in my arms, and let that happen to me instead of me dreaming about it. I didn't go to my Sunday milonga for the first time since I moved to New York. I spent the evening watching a mellow movie with my art friend, instead. I was tired, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't chained to tango like it was a mere routine. I want it to remain special by not making it a routine. Tonight I will go out to practice at the practica. I want to get better. I want that goal, be the best amateur dancer in the city.
Now a little nap in this local train back to the city.
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