Jump Rope, Being a Jock, Being a Clown, Bread
The other day on this T.V. channel that streams continuous fail army comps there was a rupture- where all of the sudden instead of fails there was footage of these excellent jump ropers, my grandma (who sees me jump rope through the window) is like -“hey sierra look at this.” Watching them my eyes legit turned into *stars* with desire- I have been aspiring to the same video of Muhammad Ali since summertime, but these people would do things like 2- 3 people at a time, backflips, multiple ropes, forming these alive weavings of lacey footwork and neon plastic and rope and people. “woah” I said glancing up from my phone- “that’s pretty cool.” I can get kind of out of control excited about the fail army channel sometimes, so I try to real it back. The beginning of quarantine correlated with a systemic four minutes of jump rope time per day for me, and I’ve made some major breakthroughs. Something excites me almost quasi-spiritually about my body’s ability to learn things like movements out of pure desire, that I didn’t know how to teach it.
This week I started online school to become a personal trainer. I like the way they teach it- really broken down so all the pieces really sink down into somewhere. I have plunged myself into a thick murkiness of body thinking, coming to terms with my, and everyone’s ultra isolation when it comes to thinking about their body. Each person’s idealization of it brushing up against other ideas and with more rigid limitations. Theres a lot of cliches in all directions. Theres also a lot of awkwardness and silence. I have these fucked up fears that I’m going to become some kind of fitness asshole. Or a “lunk” as planet fitness calls them, they set off an alarm whenever anyone slams the weights too hard- delightful. But what if I could be a sweet lunk, what if I was the lunk who went back in time and taught 12 year old me how to grow huge muscles like she wanted? When I looked at the message board of my peers its kind of a lot of people who are really into thinking about their emotions and where they meet their body, like me. Its funny how textbook language dips a fingertip into this, the list of symptoms of overtraining includes: disrupted sleep, hormonal imbalance, fatigue, chronic injury, emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion is a fertile field in the terrain of fitness. Once in an application to be a trainer I wrote: “When I graduated from college I realized something was missing from my life, I felt lethargic and like something was missing from my life.”
Today when I was boxing outside the neighbors saw me and laughed. I realize it’s an intense thing to see, and I would laugh too most likely if I saw someone punching on their back porch holding beer cans. And It oddly stung, sometimes even with five years of clowning under my belt things still hit different, like this is the thing I’m supposed to be doing thats the cool thing that I do. Which is definitely what makes it the funniest. My 12 year old cousin told me a similar story this week, that she walked in on her dad doing tai chi on zoom and laughed, and that he told her to fuck off. One time I had to get an EEG done and they had to make all these scratches in my scalp and attach this electrical cap type thing with all these wires, it was painted red blue yellow and green, in the pattern of a circus tent. I still remember the feeling I had when I saw it, like are you guys serious right now?
I made bread. I got some sourdough starter from my aunt and I feed it every day. It’s kind of like my new pet, I worry about it, and check on it, and look at it with delight. I really understand the hype. I see how one could potentially get very involved in this sort of thing, with many bowls of bubbly goo, I love the way the starter smells, sometimes I just dip my head into it. I want to give it all away, it’s the sort of thing that has value and love inside of it, a really good gift. Big old bread loaf tied with a pink satin bow, when I was kneading it I got this insane urge to spank it, I did lightly when my grandma wasn’t looking.
