The Book of Ashes

toning my body through muscle exercises 2:51AM

...unconciously, as part of the becoming, there are certain rituals I follow to further improve upon my control over the body. When walking home from work, although in my suit, I will jump up and walk along railings, improving my balance, jumping lightly from railing to railing. At home at night I will practise handstands, which once I thought were the folly of imature girls on the field, but now I value as upper body toning and balance control. When bored I may jump (bounce) on the spot to improve my jumping skills. When alone I may get out knives and practise my knife skills, jumping and stabbing at imaginary enemy's. I have never fought a real fight in my life, ignoring one or two childhood fights where I more wrestled with the person and ignoring the constant fighting with my siblings, yet still I shadow box. I would never weild a knife against another except in the direst of circumstances threatening lives, but still I wish to have the skill should I need it. Such is the perfection of the body..

Perfection of body and mind 2:51AM

Abstractions from the Impetus discussions

...all truth be told it is a hard discision indeed to side for or against the ideal of the perfection of both body and mind. One might start by thinking perfection of body and mind is a good thing but when placed in action it negates much of what we would call human. An example given by Dr Bryant of psychology was that of emotion control. He argued that perfection of body and mind would mean one must be in total control of all emotions at all stages. A being in such a state would not allow themselves to be carried away or manipulated by emotion as this leaves them vunerable to attack and reduces mental capacity. As such if they were to be hurt by a friend and this hurt may cut deep then they would then have to ignore this hurt, controlling the body so that it was not swayed and disrupted by emotion, for it is proven that emotion affects the proper functioning of the body, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. Ignoring this emotion is no easy thing. You cannot say I don't hurt and then you don't hurt. One must convience ones self that the hurt doesn't exist. This leads to re-evalutating the reason for the hurt and creating valid counter arguements to convience you that the pain shouldn't be pain and is not really that important. You might have said something like, my friend who hurt me is not that important a friend, therefore I don't care what they did to me to hurt me because they aren't important. Since they aren't important they can't hurt me so much. But in gaining control of body and mind to further its functioning, one will have lost a part of ones self that is the caring feeling person that everyone knows. The human then becomes the machine and why train ourselves to be a machine when we could just as easily build one? To further perfect themselves, this person has reduced a friendship, while in truth this may better function their mental capabilitys and reduce their vunerability to emotional manipulation or hurt, they may have lost something more vital to who they were than what they have gained. This is just one example that can be drawn from many where perfection of actions (of body and mind) leads to loses as well as supposed gains. To sumerise it must be stated that any perfection to be achieved must be analysised to determine what loses or compromises of personaility are made and whether this is worth the gain or not...

...on the other hand total control of the body, muscles is an excellent attribute to be in possesion of. You may or may not call upon this control, for example, you may be able to hide emotions on the face if shocked but at the time of shock you have the choice of showing them or not. This is of secondary concern though. More importantly is fine motor control. The body is a machine, pure and simple, and should be treated as such. The mind is a neural network which stores the information to control this machine. One must train or teach this neural network to be able to control each muscle in the body to the finest degree. Not only that but each muscle must be toned and fit, ready for any trial placed upon it. Perfection of body is a necessity for survival of an individual. The unfit man cannot run away from danger as fast as the fit such as an oncoming car, or rouge tiger escaped from the zoo...

Fish & Chips after roller hockey 10:37AM

[I wrote all this Saturday but it wouldn't submit so I'm posting it now]

Quick catch up time, I'm not too much in the mood to write today. Thursday was the usual rollerhockey with Fi & Gerry. That was real cool. We are all getting heaps better. Afterwards we decided to go get fish & chips and sit out on Oriental Bay and eat them. We hooned home, got some cups and sause and went back to the bay. I got a blasting of girly music sitting in the back seat. Once there we realised it was quite cool (cold) in the wind so we ate fast.

Phone call to dad on his birthday, ice cream with the girls 10:39AM

Back home the girls had a kahlua and icecream (that free kahlua is going down great) and I gave Dad a call. It was his birthday and he was 49, almost 50 wow. He has just brought a new stereo, 6 grand worth aparently so must be pretty good. I am going down to visit him next month which will be good. So Gerry went off to bed and I sat around and talked to Fi for a while and ate my kahlua and icecream. I managed to finish mine before she finished hers even though I'd been on the phone for 20 minutes not eating.

Physio, taking my top off and breaking my neck 10:40AM

Friday I got up and walked Fi to work. Then came home and got ready for physio. Physio is probably the only job you can ask someone to take there top off and its all natural, then you can also get quite close to the person and bend there body parts into unnatural shapes. The lady I've got is quite hard case, but made me stick my head over the edge of the bed then tried bending my neck back. I was sure it was going to break or something, its just not meant to bend that way or else I'm just not flexible in that way. Actually I'm pretty much not flexible at all. I'm still trying to touch my toes.

Buying food for Gerrys lunch 10:42AM

So after that I went to the super market and brought some food. I had promised Gerry I'd make her lunch one day at work so I made some chicken, bacon, avocardo, tomato & letuce filled rolls and brought some boston bun along as well. We sat in the sun at Queens wharf and ate this. I saw a man there with breasts, it was scary. And I'm not talking big sagy man breasts but real, perky, implant type. Arrggggh

Just heard that Fi has resigned from her work 10:43AM

The afternoon I spent in the sun, cleaning windows and reading my book. That night Fi came home and told us she had just handed in her resignation. She is going overseas to be with her boyfriend in just over a months time. I will miss her heaps.

So that night I went out and caught up with Damian and Kelly, we played a little pool then I went and caught up with Steve Web, we had a few drinks and played some more pool then he got the call from his woman so I went off with some of his friends to dock side. I wasn't much in the mood for it so came home and finished my book.

Now its Saturday and the first stink weather day this week. Everyone whos been working will be pissed off but I don't care. No plans for today except for Tammy's 21st tonight. That will be big for her. Anyway gotta do the usual wakeup routine, talk later..

Tammys 21st 11:05AM

So I had real trouble adding the above entry. I had typed in something, I know not what, which reset my connection to the internet everytime I tried to send it. Pretty cool, but a pain in the but. So now its fixed.

The rest of Saturday was boring. I went for a quick blade but it was starting to spit. I went round to Damian's place and played some chess and worked a little on the server. I came home and watched TV and read my book. I then prepared for Tammy's 21st.

We got out there around 8pm. There were the usual Hawkes Bay crew there, I have come to know them all now. I gave Tammy her present which was a small bottle of Armurula Cream and a cool shot glass then began to help out with the ritual emptying of the keg. I got stuck in the kitchen talking to Tammy's family. Man they can talk. I couldn't get a word in edgewise. Geeze! I escaped and went back to mingle with the others. Predictably we played a little mecy and I began to get a little drunk. I got a few good photos and all in all it was a good night. Everyone was starting to get a little wasted by the end of it all and I was getting tired so left around 1-1:30. A glass of water and the walk home sobered me up a bit. It started raining and I was a little wet by 2am when I got home. I tried reading my book for a while but almost fell asleep trying to. I have had interesting dreams these last two nights. Can't say what they're about though. I found a 5 cent piece on the way home and also now I remember I found one on Friday. It had been a while though.

Now its Sunday. The sun is starting to come out and I've had a support call from an uncle and auntie. There computers not working so I'm going round to have a look. Nothing much to do today though except the obvious