Wonder Boy
Dec. 15th, 2006 07:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
Last night I dreamed I was an eight-foot squirrel, with dreadlocks. I kept forgetting how big I was until I would go walking in the hallways of this school/mall/condominium thing and my ears would touch the ceiling, and my paws would make a lot of noise whenever I tromped through. It was...admittedly strange, but kind of nice.
This morning I can't get Tenacious D out of my head. Maybe they're connected, maybe not.
So, sports. One of the things that have been fascinating me lately about them is how...fundamentally ingrained they seem to be. No one knows why people dig sports, but people have always dug sports. The Romans, the Greeks, the Mesopotamians(!)...you can go back before written histories to ancient tribes that just learned the trick of hunting and gathering, and chances are there's some kind of sport that has been handed for generations. A crude, city-wide version of soccer is rumored to have been played in the jungles of South America, lacrosse is said to have been invented by ancient Native American tribes. Whatever our reasons for playing sports, they're fundamentally attached to who we are as people.
There's got to be an anthropologically-oriented paper or study about it somewhere, right? Perhaps a history of sport as it relates to human culture. The best reason for our attraction to sports so far (and this is pure conjecture) is it once taught us how to be in shape, how to have quick reflexes in both mind and body, how to run and jump and throw. Rabbits chase each other, wolves wrestle and practice their takedowns, we throw and kick balls around.
As we started to gather into larger communities, our sports grew larger and more complex as well. We started incorporating strategy and group mentality in our play; each person had a specific function that helped the team as a whole work as a machine. This mental state could carry over into conflicts with other tribes and city-states quite well.
So are the sports of today the last remaining marks of a vestigial need in human society? We don't need to learn how to kick and throw quite as much as we did back when it was a matter of survival, and we don't engage in very personal battle almost at all. Maybe the reason these things are blown up as much as they are today is we need to pay an homage to the time that sport was merely preparation for something useful or more noble. Or maybe sport is just something fun that's gotten way out of hand. Research continues...
I've started zazen again. Roughly 18 - 20 minutes every day, at home or work. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to sit again in the evenings just before bed; it's a good way to let go of the stresses of the day before I sleep, and hopefully it will help with the bruxing. Mostly, though, I've been missing my spiritual practice, and now that things have finally settled down after the move, it's time to pick it up again.
There's also the matter of working more closely with Rabbit. I haven't been paying much attention to the totemic side of things for a while now; there were a few things that happened with Raven that just dropped me out entirely. Things have been steadily getting better for some time, but now I'm getting the feeling that my practice needs some kind of shape. I can't quite exist in the vague any more; it's simply unsatisfying.
The problem here is I don't have a clear idea of where to even start, possibly because I'm not sure how totemism fits into my world-view. Is Rabbit some part of my subconscious given shape so that self-discipline is cuter and more fuzzy? Is it an actual spirit? Where does it come from? What does it want? How does our relationship work? I know how we tend to work, and it goes well for us, but is this 'typical'? Is there a book I should be reading for proper care and maintenance of my spirit animal?
I'm always very reluctant to talk about this to people, because most folks who are likewise into totemism are very quick to look down on people who are young and earnest, and who don't already have the "I got MY shit together" posture down. Most of the groups I've tentatively approached have this n00b-hating vibe that really rubs me raw. If you don't know, who are you supposed to ask? Most other folks will give you (at the very best) odd looks if you broach the subject. "Excuse me, I'd like to learn how to be a better friend to my invisible rabbit. Can you help me?" That type of stuff doesn't fly very well, even in a Unitarian Universalist church.
Then again, perhaps this frustration with the 'right' group is telling me I really should be pursuing this on a solitary level. Find what works for me, and develop from there. And above all, don't be so afraid of doing the 'wrong thing' that I'm paralyzed and can't experiment. The worst thing that could happen is running into a dead end, and then it's only a matter of tracking back and finding a different way to achieve the same effect.
Hmm. Research continues, here, too.
This morning I can't get Tenacious D out of my head. Maybe they're connected, maybe not.
So, sports. One of the things that have been fascinating me lately about them is how...fundamentally ingrained they seem to be. No one knows why people dig sports, but people have always dug sports. The Romans, the Greeks, the Mesopotamians(!)...you can go back before written histories to ancient tribes that just learned the trick of hunting and gathering, and chances are there's some kind of sport that has been handed for generations. A crude, city-wide version of soccer is rumored to have been played in the jungles of South America, lacrosse is said to have been invented by ancient Native American tribes. Whatever our reasons for playing sports, they're fundamentally attached to who we are as people.
There's got to be an anthropologically-oriented paper or study about it somewhere, right? Perhaps a history of sport as it relates to human culture. The best reason for our attraction to sports so far (and this is pure conjecture) is it once taught us how to be in shape, how to have quick reflexes in both mind and body, how to run and jump and throw. Rabbits chase each other, wolves wrestle and practice their takedowns, we throw and kick balls around.
As we started to gather into larger communities, our sports grew larger and more complex as well. We started incorporating strategy and group mentality in our play; each person had a specific function that helped the team as a whole work as a machine. This mental state could carry over into conflicts with other tribes and city-states quite well.
So are the sports of today the last remaining marks of a vestigial need in human society? We don't need to learn how to kick and throw quite as much as we did back when it was a matter of survival, and we don't engage in very personal battle almost at all. Maybe the reason these things are blown up as much as they are today is we need to pay an homage to the time that sport was merely preparation for something useful or more noble. Or maybe sport is just something fun that's gotten way out of hand. Research continues...
I've started zazen again. Roughly 18 - 20 minutes every day, at home or work. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to sit again in the evenings just before bed; it's a good way to let go of the stresses of the day before I sleep, and hopefully it will help with the bruxing. Mostly, though, I've been missing my spiritual practice, and now that things have finally settled down after the move, it's time to pick it up again.
There's also the matter of working more closely with Rabbit. I haven't been paying much attention to the totemic side of things for a while now; there were a few things that happened with Raven that just dropped me out entirely. Things have been steadily getting better for some time, but now I'm getting the feeling that my practice needs some kind of shape. I can't quite exist in the vague any more; it's simply unsatisfying.
The problem here is I don't have a clear idea of where to even start, possibly because I'm not sure how totemism fits into my world-view. Is Rabbit some part of my subconscious given shape so that self-discipline is cuter and more fuzzy? Is it an actual spirit? Where does it come from? What does it want? How does our relationship work? I know how we tend to work, and it goes well for us, but is this 'typical'? Is there a book I should be reading for proper care and maintenance of my spirit animal?
I'm always very reluctant to talk about this to people, because most folks who are likewise into totemism are very quick to look down on people who are young and earnest, and who don't already have the "I got MY shit together" posture down. Most of the groups I've tentatively approached have this n00b-hating vibe that really rubs me raw. If you don't know, who are you supposed to ask? Most other folks will give you (at the very best) odd looks if you broach the subject. "Excuse me, I'd like to learn how to be a better friend to my invisible rabbit. Can you help me?" That type of stuff doesn't fly very well, even in a Unitarian Universalist church.
Then again, perhaps this frustration with the 'right' group is telling me I really should be pursuing this on a solitary level. Find what works for me, and develop from there. And above all, don't be so afraid of doing the 'wrong thing' that I'm paralyzed and can't experiment. The worst thing that could happen is running into a dead end, and then it's only a matter of tracking back and finding a different way to achieve the same effect.
Hmm. Research continues, here, too.
