Happy Birthday to me!

I turn 27 today!
Birthdays always give me a bit of anguish, I think about that I'm getting older and all the things I want to do, and how fast time goes. And all those moments that I would like to freeze and keep forever.

Time is strange. I feel like quoting Marvell:

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

But it's also nice to have birthday, to be celebrated by loved ones and get special treatment. And the older I get the more happier I become, I know myself better, know what I want. I get better at not wasting time on unimportant things. Focus sharpens.

But the most important thing remains just to enjoy life.

Fight with words

There has been less update than usual on my blog. The reason is probably that I try to wring out the words on the tasks of the creative writing course. Right now I'm working on an essay on the wooden dummy. I will not be finished until the end of the week, but here is a sample, feel free to comment on it:

I invite you to come up close. Come on, step inside, and take a look at the strange figure, its heavy trunk of lacquered wood, its rigid arms without hands, still pointing finger at you, beckoning you. Let me introduce to you the Wooden Dummy, a very special kind of training equipment belonging to Kung Fu. But before you trace your fingers against its shiny surface, let me go into depth with what this piece of wood is all about.
...

Alone I enter the kwon, the Kung Fu training hall. Alone I approach the strange figure at the end of the room. This is my new enemy; this is my new best friend. I have seen him so many times before, but he looks different now, bathed in moonlight, with his dark shadow cast on the floor. It rests there like a black bridge between an abyss, or even the abyss itself. The sharp smell of chamfer that lingers in the kwon soothes my mind as it sometimes soothed my sore muscles after hard training sessions.

Actually, this room is the very temple for training, for striving, for trying, but not for perfection itself. There is nothing wrong with trying, I tell myself. But I can hear my heart beat in the thin silence, the heart that tells me otherwise. I can hear my careful footsteps; as if walking not to wake some sleeping beast, and I get the strangest feeling that I’ve done all this before.

Some Bart Cham Dao knives lies scattered on the floor by the big windows, someone has forgotten to lock them in, and now they lay there, shining in the moonlight. I’m tempted to pick them up, but the cold shine reminds me that they are way beyond my grade. I still have many years ahead of me before I can call myself master, and I’m once again reminded that Kung Fu is the Chinese word for “Hard Work”.

I stop in the middle of the kwon, past the knives, to look up at the picture of Yip Man, the founder of my particular linage of Wing Tsun. I clasp my palms in front of me and make a short bow, as is the traditional way of entering a Kwon. I paid my respect to tradition. Now I don’t feel so much like an intruder anymore, and it takes away the sour taste of sacrilege from my mouth. Why am I so nervous? Nobody can see me. It’s just him and me now. He’s cold and heartless, made of wood, and I reach out to touch him. He has three arms and one leg. My arms slide easily on the polished wooden arms but I cannot move them. In my despair I recall the soft warm skin of my training-partner, and his very negotiable body, arms that could give in, mistakes that could give me the upper hand. This is something entirely different.

Let’s knock on wood.