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Action and Recovery
Jul. 15th, 2019 11:27 am
Like so many others, this weekend turned out to be a bit busier than I had anticipated. On Friday our good friend Ian came over for dinner and a movie -- Hatch joined us for the walk to Omee-J (our favorite local sushi spot) and a truly strange film called "Running on Karma". The actor apparently likes to work with prosthetics and body suits, and this time he had a full-body muscle suit that was squarely in the uncanny valley. It was...distracting.
"Running On Karma" won a whole bunch of awards in its native Hong Kong, but we were baffled by it. The protagonist is a monk who forsook his vows after a friend was killed near his monastery and in his rage he accidentally killed a butterfly. After meditating at the spot for days, he learned he could discern the karmic action within people to know when someone was about to die. This was represented with really confusing B/W 'flashbacks' over or underlaid with the present action. Anyway, he decided to become a bodybuilder and stripper, and during a police raid he got tangled up with a murder investigation and fell in love with the detective working that case.
A bunch of other stuff happens. We learn that the detective has her own karma to work out and has been "destined" to die, only the main character keeps saving her until he despairs of every being 'finished'. In order to work through her karma she vows to find the killer of the bodybuilder's friend and disappears in the mountains, where he finds her headless corpse and swears revenge on the man who's killed two of the people he cares for.
Only when he searches the mountain, he finds a future version of himself, consumed by hatred and revenge. He meditates his way towards equanimity, and when the killer finally comes down off the mountain he leads the man to the police. And that's the end, but this plot synopsis is a bit more coherent than the movie itself. I had to read up on it through Wikipedia and IMDB to figure out that much.
All things said, it was a really fun night. Ian works himself WAY too hard, and it's nice to be able to give him a break.
On Saturday we watched "Crawl", the latest horror movie from Alexandre Aja. The first movie I saw from him was "The Hills Have Eyes", and I was so impressed by it we've made it a point to seek out the rest of his filmography. What's really great about him is how different his movies are -- he's done everything from low-budget spring-break monster slashes like "Pirahna 3D" to slow-burn psychological thrillers like "Mirrors". But they all have a very strong visual style and a masterful way of pacing the tension.
"Crawl" is no different there. It's about a competitive swimmer trapped in a crawlspace under her childhood home with her dad during a Cat-5 hurricane. Alligators have escaped from a nearby farm into the floodwaters, and basically kill anyone they come across. There's just enough gore to sell the creatures as a really nasty threat, and I actually liked how the estrangement between father and daughter heightened the emotional stakes and anchored the characters. If you're really into creature features, this is a unique surprise addition to the canon.
Sunday I went up to San Francisco with our local 'run club' for an Across The Bay 12K. I have to admit, I didn't train nearly as well as I should have for the race but I did OK! My personal time was 1:36:49, which works out to a 12:31/mile pace. I pushed myself just enough once the first giant hill was out of the way to be happy with my time, and used a 10-minute run/5-minute walk cadence as much as I could. My ankles are SO MAD at me, and I think I won't be able to get in another run until Thursday at least.
Poor Ryan hurt his back working out at the gym yesterday, and he's in a pretty bad way. :( He called in to work today, but he's toughing it out as much as he can to work from home. So far he's taken ibuprofen, a muscle relaxant, and some old Darvocet but nothing seems to be working. I feel really bad for him, and I'm doing my best to keep him out of pain as much as possible. But he's a stubborn guy and easily bored; it's impossible for him to just sit still and give the body time for proper rest.
I noticed during meditation this morning that I had an instinctive emotional response when I heard him cry out in pain any time he tried to move or walk. The alarm triggered an equally-instinctive desire to help, but there's only so much I can do. I think this happens to me a lot -- I'm very sensitive to the "ambient" emotional temperature in a room and it always triggers a desire to improve it if things are tense, angry, or sad.
But I'm not sure how helpful acting on that impulse is, especially when it comes from a place of needing to reconcile my *own* discomfort. Being able to accept my discomfort and set it aside might help me take enough time to see the situation a bit more clearly and discern the best course of action for someone else. So often, I 'default' to an action that would comfort me in a particular situation but ends up making things worse somehow. This is especially true with Hatch, who I think is just uncomfortable with earnestness. He wants to be self-sufficient as much as possible, and he doesn't really know what to do when others are in pain. I think he's been hurt often enough when connecting to other people (and I know I've let him down more than once) that he doesn't think it's worth it most of the time. It's hard for me to accept that he kind of craves that distance, but again -- that's my own discomfort. Providing him with it might paradoxically bring us closer.
Anyway, it's about time for lunch. I'll be doing my writing, reading and study this afternoon after a bit of a break.
"Running On Karma" won a whole bunch of awards in its native Hong Kong, but we were baffled by it. The protagonist is a monk who forsook his vows after a friend was killed near his monastery and in his rage he accidentally killed a butterfly. After meditating at the spot for days, he learned he could discern the karmic action within people to know when someone was about to die. This was represented with really confusing B/W 'flashbacks' over or underlaid with the present action. Anyway, he decided to become a bodybuilder and stripper, and during a police raid he got tangled up with a murder investigation and fell in love with the detective working that case.
A bunch of other stuff happens. We learn that the detective has her own karma to work out and has been "destined" to die, only the main character keeps saving her until he despairs of every being 'finished'. In order to work through her karma she vows to find the killer of the bodybuilder's friend and disappears in the mountains, where he finds her headless corpse and swears revenge on the man who's killed two of the people he cares for.
Only when he searches the mountain, he finds a future version of himself, consumed by hatred and revenge. He meditates his way towards equanimity, and when the killer finally comes down off the mountain he leads the man to the police. And that's the end, but this plot synopsis is a bit more coherent than the movie itself. I had to read up on it through Wikipedia and IMDB to figure out that much.
All things said, it was a really fun night. Ian works himself WAY too hard, and it's nice to be able to give him a break.
On Saturday we watched "Crawl", the latest horror movie from Alexandre Aja. The first movie I saw from him was "The Hills Have Eyes", and I was so impressed by it we've made it a point to seek out the rest of his filmography. What's really great about him is how different his movies are -- he's done everything from low-budget spring-break monster slashes like "Pirahna 3D" to slow-burn psychological thrillers like "Mirrors". But they all have a very strong visual style and a masterful way of pacing the tension.
"Crawl" is no different there. It's about a competitive swimmer trapped in a crawlspace under her childhood home with her dad during a Cat-5 hurricane. Alligators have escaped from a nearby farm into the floodwaters, and basically kill anyone they come across. There's just enough gore to sell the creatures as a really nasty threat, and I actually liked how the estrangement between father and daughter heightened the emotional stakes and anchored the characters. If you're really into creature features, this is a unique surprise addition to the canon.
Sunday I went up to San Francisco with our local 'run club' for an Across The Bay 12K. I have to admit, I didn't train nearly as well as I should have for the race but I did OK! My personal time was 1:36:49, which works out to a 12:31/mile pace. I pushed myself just enough once the first giant hill was out of the way to be happy with my time, and used a 10-minute run/5-minute walk cadence as much as I could. My ankles are SO MAD at me, and I think I won't be able to get in another run until Thursday at least.
Poor Ryan hurt his back working out at the gym yesterday, and he's in a pretty bad way. :( He called in to work today, but he's toughing it out as much as he can to work from home. So far he's taken ibuprofen, a muscle relaxant, and some old Darvocet but nothing seems to be working. I feel really bad for him, and I'm doing my best to keep him out of pain as much as possible. But he's a stubborn guy and easily bored; it's impossible for him to just sit still and give the body time for proper rest.
I noticed during meditation this morning that I had an instinctive emotional response when I heard him cry out in pain any time he tried to move or walk. The alarm triggered an equally-instinctive desire to help, but there's only so much I can do. I think this happens to me a lot -- I'm very sensitive to the "ambient" emotional temperature in a room and it always triggers a desire to improve it if things are tense, angry, or sad.
But I'm not sure how helpful acting on that impulse is, especially when it comes from a place of needing to reconcile my *own* discomfort. Being able to accept my discomfort and set it aside might help me take enough time to see the situation a bit more clearly and discern the best course of action for someone else. So often, I 'default' to an action that would comfort me in a particular situation but ends up making things worse somehow. This is especially true with Hatch, who I think is just uncomfortable with earnestness. He wants to be self-sufficient as much as possible, and he doesn't really know what to do when others are in pain. I think he's been hurt often enough when connecting to other people (and I know I've let him down more than once) that he doesn't think it's worth it most of the time. It's hard for me to accept that he kind of craves that distance, but again -- that's my own discomfort. Providing him with it might paradoxically bring us closer.
Anyway, it's about time for lunch. I'll be doing my writing, reading and study this afternoon after a bit of a break.
