This Week's Laughter #19
An archive of something like happiness
During my teenage years I was convinced that I would die by the age of 31.
Yesterday, I played Sunday Soccer as I tend to do with a slightly tender ankle still sore from having minorly injured it two weeks prior with a team of individuals most of whom were younger than me. I let slip that I had turned 31 recently and death was not on my mind — I haven’t had the thought of dying young in my mind in some time, in fact I have come to understand that thought as more of an ideative function of my youthful depression rather than a prophetic incursion — instead, the response, by a notably 23-year old individual was, “Wow, you don’t look that old, you look like, 25 at most!”
I don’t really care much about age, these days, so long as my body functions how I desire it to. Do not get me wrong: I desire it to do much, as is my nature, always, to desire more and more until, inevitably, I am faced with the inability to define a more yet to desire. When I was younger, for a Summer, I practiced cartwheels and kicks for hours everyday trying to teach myself how to do a full aerial. An aerial, for those not in the know, is effectively a cartwheel where you do not touch the ground with your hands, instead propelling your body up and over itself by the sheer force of your shoulders and kick. Much online research adequated me into understanding the aerial as a maneuver for much leaner individuals, more aerodynamic individuals. Much online research offered similar alternatives — a full aerial being that you keep your legs straight for the most of the journey, and you land gracefully on the sole of your foot; however, others include keeping yourself bent in half and doing effectively a hip-roll. I feel like I write about this training often because I think about it often. Desire and memory, in this way, like a cartwheel, foot-hand-hand-foot-foot.
Joints and bones make all types of noises now as I prostrate myself to my gods daily, stretching in the mornings and before I go to sleep. I have before I sleep for years and years now, as I developed something of a restless leg syndrome early on, and simply cannot keep my mind off if my quads are not entertained. The mornings have been a new addition recently as I find myself increasingly slower to start moving, more rust-filled.
My mother lived a large portion of her life in a moderate amount of constant pain due to ample arthritis all about her body. I do not believe arthritis is genetic, but sadly, the easiest way for me to conjure the image of her now — she has been dead for going on five years — is to think of the times of her standing over a counter rolling and massaging her wrists, sitting on the couch playing candy crush and every few minutes stretching her wrists as her face tightens in pain. She wasn’t particularly unhealthy from a physical perspective — or at least any more or less unhealthy than the average white American — but somehow her body kept itself wound so tightly that she had three interweaving plagues on her being: the constant pain of arthritis, the constant stress of high blood pressure, and the inability for reprieve in insomnia.
When I look at the individuals younger than me, running around on soccer fields, seemingly unable to be hurt as easily as I, Cody, they-who-have-minimal-calcium-intake-and-forsook-meat, the most burning desire that comes to my mind is to simply keep on doing this for as long as I can. I would love to be in my 60s and able to do flips with relative ease. I love being able to squat to the floor. I love being able to dance in five-to-seven hour blocks. I love the physical body and what nonviolence it is capable of in this world stricken with such immense competitive need.
Recently, I saw a video of someone animatedly and extremely passionately claiming that Slovenian cyclist Tadej Pogačar is the greatest athlete in the world right now due to winning nearly every major championship in cycling this year. I think it is fascinating that language is so full and capable of nuance and yet discursive techniques devolve further and further into superlatives. I admire being able to cycle quickly, safely, and over great distances. I struggle with cycling uphill, and more often than not will succumb to walking myself and my bike up the most steep. But how can this be compared to someone like Naomi Girma, to someone like Portia Woodman, to someone like Amy Gubser. Why does one need to contend for a body’s superlative over another? Sometimes I eat a particularly filling meal and tell myself afterwards I am the greatest athlete in the world.
This last week I went on an utter tear of research for women’s pajamas for my darling fiance Heather (I will confess, I always spell pajamas p-y-j-a-m-a-s, and I have no idea where that comes from other than it sounds like it should be spelled with a y). So many materials! And so many slightly unique blends of polyester or synthetic fibers designed for marginally more or less breathable pajamas. It was utterly fascinating to me. How complicated one has made the search for something of a basic clothing.
Ally and I held our second Other People’s Poems reading with brilliant featured readers Yanyi, Jane Wong, and Quenton Baker — all of whom exuded such warmth and camaraderie. What was astounding to me was that we had some 70+people who showed up to the event. The entire room of Open Books’ storefront was full, and the hallway outside of it was full of individuals too — there were people standing adjacent to windows listening in for the entirety of the reading. I’ve worked poetry readings for over a decade now — I started with organizing events as an undergraduate with my 5-person ‘English Club' — and the only time I’ve seen events with even more than 30 people are for large-ticketed authors, recent impressive award winners, or who just exude an overwhelming charisma of soul that one wants to be in their presence. I could probably count the number of these 30+ events on one hand. After the reading, I had all number of individuals approach me and thank me for offering the space to make friends within the Seattle poetry community. Laud us with praise over this event being the most fun, joyful they’ve been to. Laughter doesn’t quite describe the paramount ecstasy I face from these affirmations. I have so much horror laced into the fabric of my being from the state of the world we live, and somehow this adds stitches of hope.
As I am writing this a sudden and intense overheard comment has me gasping internally that I must share: “Dudes abroad love American girls. I mean some hate us, of course, but most of them absolutely love us and they give us free shit and they’re all so hot, it’s so cool.” I hope this individual maintains this peace of mind, this joy, this celebration. I hope we all can find our own version of dudes abroad to love us so (un)conditionally.
Heather and I watch The Holiday frequently enough but especially as the holiday time of year begins. This year’s watch included incredible commentary such as:
Heather: I realized Kate Winslet has no attraction to Jack Black and couldn’t fucking hide it
After Kate Winslet dumped Rufus Sewell in an ending exchange of ‘What’s come over you?’ ‘I guess you could say … gumption!’: Get gumped.
There’ve been a surplus of extraordinarily small and extraordinarily rotund dogs walking around our neighborhood and each sighting gives me another pocket of glee. And sure, of course, I know that many of those small breeds have horrible stories of the histories of their genetics and the tragedies of their bodies, and there is something so instinctual to me about looking at a small, round creature with an utmost happiness.
I’ve been playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard fervently the last few weeks and am approaching the end of my first playthrough. I love the way the franchise of Dragon Age re-invents itself with each game. The first is a staple and origin of the RPG genre; the second is almost a rogue-lite in its combat-forward-optimization; the third was a massive exploration of open-world, story-driven games; and this really returned to prioritizing the story of its characters. I love two characters especially in this playthrough — Taash and Lucanis — and think they are extraordinarily written characters to portray difficult and complicated subjects with the turbulence of acceptance. Taash being a character discovering their nonbinary-ness as an individual, the drive to find acceptance of this identity both within and externally, is a touching subject for me. But what I think is so wonderful about Taash’s character is a singular dialogue-trend: the ability to ask direct questions of indirect answers. They portray this wonderful meld of younger-gen individuals (gen z, gen alpha) and their collusion toward definitive binary-style conversational/argumentative tactics (either this or that, either yes or no), with the response that oftentimes you can find both your requisite, hard-defined ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ alongside a more expansive and tolerant complication of the idea. Lucanis as a character seems to have been written as a character overcoming PTSD and vast amounts of trauma, contending with who one is after trauma has shaded theirself into something incongruent to their self-conscious understanding of who they are. After all, when we think about who we are, the first thing that comes to mind is rarely ‘I am a survivor of vast amounts of pain.’ There’s a wonderfully healing scene in which your character traverses Lucanis’ psychic landscape and is confronted with all of these figures from Lucanis life that are, in fact, just representations of Lucanis’ trauma — what he thinks and expects and fears these people think of him. Immensely on the nose, and yet continuing in this trend of being able to gently provide alternatives to hard-defined definitive conversations, Lucanis’ character eventually settles into an understanding that yes, I am traumatized and yes, I am capable of love and being loved. These notes are less of an exegesis on laughter, and more of a warmth that I feel when I see good writing trying to give a crowd of individuals who likely are suffering psychically with equipage to deal with these sufferings.
And, finally, again, not a hearty laugh but indeed something of a warmth, Heather and I hosted her birthday party recently — a slumber party for us and our 30+ year old friends — where the dress code was pajamas (justifying my first note on pajamas), and the house was turned into a massive and immersive blanket fort. Notably, I always write house even though we live in an apartment. My warmth here, on top of the whole evening seeming to be exactly what Heather wished for and made her feeling immensely loved, I will narrow into a particular slice for your digestion and for the privacy of all involved with the evening: I made two dinners for individuals to feast on throughout the evening, and there was not a scrap of food left by the time the evening came to a close. There’s something miraculous, to me, about making exactly enough and having it be devoured in-turn.
I hope you are treating all of yourselves with gentleness and heartship.
As always, please feel free to share and like and support my writing as you can. I look forward to what joys you may share with me in response.
Some links to new or recently released things I enjoy:
