Post by Berlin Anderson on Sept 14, 2014 23:00:57 GMT -6
"Opportunity."
The screen fades in from black to a... lighter sort of black, foreground strangely darker, almost seeming backlit by a skyline with city lights. What we can see of the more immediate surroundings are caught in splotchy arching bits of floodlight. It's some sort of rooftop, where our speaker sits; not the shingled variety, but the flat sort with a retaining wall around the perimeter. With his head tilted downwards we can't see his face, but given all else he's still easily identifiable. Distinct silhouette.
"That's all I can think of this as. Anyone who cared to step up and say I didn't exactly earn this? I couldn't really contradict you. My win-loss record here isn't really impressive. Whether my performances are is kinda up to personal opinion, but that's usually not a standard they use to hand out title shots and main events.
"I haven't hit my personal best yet. Most anybody who's put their mind to the sort of endeavor that requires skill, athletics, creativity... probably knows this feeling. In stories you'll get the hero that's suddenly blessed with an extraordinary ability-- some kinda magic, mutant powers, blessings from a fairy godmother, something like that-- trying to deal with their sudden transformation; real life almost never works that way. You pick up the guitar and all you can do for what seems like the longest time is play hacked-up mutilations of the songs you love, that move you like that. You write and what comes out is stilted, hackneyed, reads like a book report. You get in a training ring to wrestle and you just can't jump as high as you imagined, can't hit as hard, suddenly realize how complicated the angles and placement of this submission you saw on TV a thousand times are.
"But in a way... when you feel that way... you're actually on exactly the right track."
He raises his head, though he's not looking at the camera. Tilted back slightly, light on half his face, looking at stars perhaps.
"Hang in here with me. The thing is, you recognize that you suck. That's important, that means you've cultivated taste. You know enough about your goal, about what makes a thing good, to know you're not there yet. To have a goal beyond novice ability. And you wouldn't pick up a violin and invite people over immediately and go 'hey, y'wanna hear me play?'-- no! You'd practice for years and years; then you'd call up your friends and family and say 'hey, I'm playin' at Carnegie Hall, look at me go!' You just gotta dare to suck first. You're going to put out things that aren't masterpieces for a loooong time. I mean, you should've seen me when I first started doing parkour. First couple years at parkour pretty much exist to let you bite concrete over and over. You build up scars, you lose your initial fear of falling on your face and regain a different kind of fear at falling on your face. A more useful kind of fear. Like, integrated with instincts you build up for how to protect yourself from getting hurt at it."
Sigh.
"I'm definitely beyond that level at wrestling in general, don't get me wrong. I mean, VoW management aren't dummies, they aren't gonna hand out opportunities that are critical to their business to people who belong in the dark matches or back in training camp. I'm not at my apex, but I'm on that upward slope. I'm starting this journey over from a lower cog in the machine; singles wrestling instead of tag, talking on a camera. Used to have a manager for this part of things, and I sat down after the last match and went 'damn, this... feels repetitive'. If this sounds like a video journal instead of something more standard, that'd be why.
See, I think everybody involved knows my advantages by now. And even when I feel like I know I'm gonna win, I'm not the guy who'd get on camera and gloat about how I'm gonna win. I know enough about the universe to know you never ever really know what's gonna happen with all certainty. You can't control all the variables. Your opponent could pull out something from their bag of tricks you didn't see coming. Pay off the ref. Freak injury takes you down. You get the flu. At your preshow meal some asshole waiter decides he hates your face and doses your guacamole with ipecac. Time-traveling velociraptors invade the arena and eat all the wrestlers and declare themselves Zero Gravity Champion via conquest. You never know.
"There's only one variable you can control in any given situation. Yourself. That sounds like some crazy hippie shit, but it is the truth. You can do your absolute best, whatever your best is in that moment-- and it varies moment to moment-- and then you can keep pushing without tripping on regret.
"I read something a long time ago that stuck with me. Those sort of things, those lines, that change how you look at things. You finish a book or walk out of a movie theater, and it was all a work of fiction maybe, but it showed you a different way to think? Or maybe, how to think more abstractly in general? Yeah.
"...'There are lots of things a warrior can do at a certain time which he couldn't do years before. Those things themselves did not change; what changed was his idea of himself.'..."
A silence hangs, enough that the distant sounds of traffic begin to filter through, the distant lights start to feel brighter.
"Good night, Visionaries of Wrestling. Good night."
Run.
Run until you can't hear the crackling of pursuit behind you, run until your heartbeat's so loud in your own ears that you can hardly hear the sound of your own feet in the thick leaves. Don't worry about it ceasing its pursuit-- it won't. Don't worry about turning your head to look and see if it's still back there-- it is.
Run like the old man showed you. Don't look at the ground, don't look at the trees-- don't look at anything in specific-- don't focus your eyes. Don't look. See-- and trust your instincts to find the way.
He had no time to wonder, once again, what happened elsewhere if he died in a dream. The only room in his head for words were the remembered-- Those are the twin lights of death on the gallop gaining on us, getting closer and closer. Death never stops. Sometimes it turns off its lights, that's all.
He could see the slivers of paleness between trunks of trees growing until he emerged into them with an explosive suddenness, long grasses waving in silver moonlight. Immediately the shoreline became the course, rasp of breath and harsh bite of wind in his eyes.
Feet on slick rocks, fast enough not to slip, slipping just becoming part of the motion. Into the sea, moving too fast to stop and register the embrace of icy water. It might be safer here, but safety lay ahead, in the walls of Buyan were a black edge that cut off the stars.
At least... for now.
The screen fades in from black to a... lighter sort of black, foreground strangely darker, almost seeming backlit by a skyline with city lights. What we can see of the more immediate surroundings are caught in splotchy arching bits of floodlight. It's some sort of rooftop, where our speaker sits; not the shingled variety, but the flat sort with a retaining wall around the perimeter. With his head tilted downwards we can't see his face, but given all else he's still easily identifiable. Distinct silhouette.
"That's all I can think of this as. Anyone who cared to step up and say I didn't exactly earn this? I couldn't really contradict you. My win-loss record here isn't really impressive. Whether my performances are is kinda up to personal opinion, but that's usually not a standard they use to hand out title shots and main events.
"I haven't hit my personal best yet. Most anybody who's put their mind to the sort of endeavor that requires skill, athletics, creativity... probably knows this feeling. In stories you'll get the hero that's suddenly blessed with an extraordinary ability-- some kinda magic, mutant powers, blessings from a fairy godmother, something like that-- trying to deal with their sudden transformation; real life almost never works that way. You pick up the guitar and all you can do for what seems like the longest time is play hacked-up mutilations of the songs you love, that move you like that. You write and what comes out is stilted, hackneyed, reads like a book report. You get in a training ring to wrestle and you just can't jump as high as you imagined, can't hit as hard, suddenly realize how complicated the angles and placement of this submission you saw on TV a thousand times are.
"But in a way... when you feel that way... you're actually on exactly the right track."
He raises his head, though he's not looking at the camera. Tilted back slightly, light on half his face, looking at stars perhaps.
"Hang in here with me. The thing is, you recognize that you suck. That's important, that means you've cultivated taste. You know enough about your goal, about what makes a thing good, to know you're not there yet. To have a goal beyond novice ability. And you wouldn't pick up a violin and invite people over immediately and go 'hey, y'wanna hear me play?'-- no! You'd practice for years and years; then you'd call up your friends and family and say 'hey, I'm playin' at Carnegie Hall, look at me go!' You just gotta dare to suck first. You're going to put out things that aren't masterpieces for a loooong time. I mean, you should've seen me when I first started doing parkour. First couple years at parkour pretty much exist to let you bite concrete over and over. You build up scars, you lose your initial fear of falling on your face and regain a different kind of fear at falling on your face. A more useful kind of fear. Like, integrated with instincts you build up for how to protect yourself from getting hurt at it."
Sigh.
"I'm definitely beyond that level at wrestling in general, don't get me wrong. I mean, VoW management aren't dummies, they aren't gonna hand out opportunities that are critical to their business to people who belong in the dark matches or back in training camp. I'm not at my apex, but I'm on that upward slope. I'm starting this journey over from a lower cog in the machine; singles wrestling instead of tag, talking on a camera. Used to have a manager for this part of things, and I sat down after the last match and went 'damn, this... feels repetitive'. If this sounds like a video journal instead of something more standard, that'd be why.
See, I think everybody involved knows my advantages by now. And even when I feel like I know I'm gonna win, I'm not the guy who'd get on camera and gloat about how I'm gonna win. I know enough about the universe to know you never ever really know what's gonna happen with all certainty. You can't control all the variables. Your opponent could pull out something from their bag of tricks you didn't see coming. Pay off the ref. Freak injury takes you down. You get the flu. At your preshow meal some asshole waiter decides he hates your face and doses your guacamole with ipecac. Time-traveling velociraptors invade the arena and eat all the wrestlers and declare themselves Zero Gravity Champion via conquest. You never know.
"There's only one variable you can control in any given situation. Yourself. That sounds like some crazy hippie shit, but it is the truth. You can do your absolute best, whatever your best is in that moment-- and it varies moment to moment-- and then you can keep pushing without tripping on regret.
"I read something a long time ago that stuck with me. Those sort of things, those lines, that change how you look at things. You finish a book or walk out of a movie theater, and it was all a work of fiction maybe, but it showed you a different way to think? Or maybe, how to think more abstractly in general? Yeah.
"...'There are lots of things a warrior can do at a certain time which he couldn't do years before. Those things themselves did not change; what changed was his idea of himself.'..."
A silence hangs, enough that the distant sounds of traffic begin to filter through, the distant lights start to feel brighter.
"Good night, Visionaries of Wrestling. Good night."
There's nothing under your bed. There's nothing in your closet. Nothing waits in every darkness. Nothing is the most terrifying thing of all.*
Run.
Run until you can't hear the crackling of pursuit behind you, run until your heartbeat's so loud in your own ears that you can hardly hear the sound of your own feet in the thick leaves. Don't worry about it ceasing its pursuit-- it won't. Don't worry about turning your head to look and see if it's still back there-- it is.
Run like the old man showed you. Don't look at the ground, don't look at the trees-- don't look at anything in specific-- don't focus your eyes. Don't look. See-- and trust your instincts to find the way.
He had no time to wonder, once again, what happened elsewhere if he died in a dream. The only room in his head for words were the remembered-- Those are the twin lights of death on the gallop gaining on us, getting closer and closer. Death never stops. Sometimes it turns off its lights, that's all.
He could see the slivers of paleness between trunks of trees growing until he emerged into them with an explosive suddenness, long grasses waving in silver moonlight. Immediately the shoreline became the course, rasp of breath and harsh bite of wind in his eyes.
Feet on slick rocks, fast enough not to slip, slipping just becoming part of the motion. Into the sea, moving too fast to stop and register the embrace of icy water. It might be safer here, but safety lay ahead, in the walls of Buyan were a black edge that cut off the stars.
At least... for now.
