Woe is me

Have: Sore throat.

Skipped: Ballet class in hope of not making said sore throat worse.

Will: Spend like 16 hours this weekend in a car or on a ferry.

Feel like: Not spending 16 hours in a car or ferry.

Have a favorite word: Bohoooo.

Wouldn't be surprised if cold turned out to be: Swine flu.

Also: Refrigerator makes scary sounds.

Ballet

Goddamn, time flies.

Ballet class Thursday. As with the hip hop class, it was a bit more advanced than what I'd expect from a beginner's class. Fortunately, I have enough dance experience not to be totally intimidated by an in media res intro to pliés, battements tendus, battements dégagé, rond de jambe, et cetera, but still it was a bit too much to master in 85 minutes. Or, more adequately described, I could probably spend the remaining parts of 2009 trying to get secure or even familiar with what we did...

In other words, it was a challenge, and I'm looking forward to the next time.

Noteworthy feeling of otherworldliness: Having finished the exercises à la barre, we did some diagonal runs across the floor, doing some moves I don't know the names of, sorta. Two and two we ran across the floor, while the rest of the group either waited for their turn or watched those who ran.  I felt three things doing this:

1. Courage, for being brave enough to execute the exercise even under the scrutinizing gazes of 20 or so 20-something girls with a factor 5-10 or so more flexible bodies and a factor 1-10 or so more ballet experience.

2. Relaxation. The fact that some of us kinda sucked at the exercises made it much more enjoyable. While at the bar, there was a bit of tension (oh, ballet - gotta get it right, new to the class - hope the others don't think I suck, etc, etc), but that tension melted away with the first stumbling pair of feet crossing the dance floor. I think that after this exercises, some of us were able to look at the others and say "ok, I'm not the best, but so aren't you, thank god!" and find strength and appreciation of ourselves and the others in that. Being in the same boat, and such.

3. We did an exercise in which we jumped. I.e., in which we graciously elevated our bodies from the ground, floating in the air, deerlike, as if carried by the wind, by the breeze. Or, well, I wasn't at all that gracious. I was more like disorientated, weirdly walking and struggling to understand in what direction and in what way we were going to move. Yet it all got a strange touch of being a part of an animal herd,  a herd of young girls, graciously galloping across the prairie, like gazelles. Not an altoghether familiar feeling, haha.

Medical status: Knee

For some reason, possibly but mayhaps not entirely due to a stretched thigh, I´ve had problems with my left knee the last couple of years. It's as if a sinew rubs against the bone or some other structure, causing a sense of uneasiness when I move in/to certain positions. This uneasiness, altho not too brutal, causes me to walk a bit impaired since I make corrections to my gait so as to not feel the uncomfortable sensation of sinews moving in there. Thus, more or less, I've been walking as if my left leg is stiff.

Sub par, dear diary, sub par.

For a long time, I've always thought the sinew to be too taut, and that stretching would get it back into shape. It has sort of worked, as well, the tautness coming and going over the months. However, a couple of weeks a go, I discovered some sort of lump just under the skin, clearly being an obstruction to any sinews wanting to pass.

Yes, a lump! .... omg! ...

Having ruled out cancer, mostly just for trying the non-fatal approach for a change (all of my previous cancers turned out not to be cancers), I dug the net for a diagnosis.

Top candidate so far: Baker's Cyst.

Hip hop dance class

Yaay. Went to hip hop dance class today.

Expected a room full of about 20 year-old, used-to-dancing girls and being almost the only guy.

And yes, I got that, yes.

What I did not get, tho, was a kind of slow intro to the hip hop dance thing. I expected things to go like "welcome to beginners' class! so, hip hop, huh, anyone danced before? in hip hop, we want to be heaaavy, yeah, bouuunce. okay, watch, this is called... a step. now, let's all practice taking a step 200000000 times, so we get all comfy with steps before next class."

Instead it went like: "Do this. And this. And this and this and this. Now drop and give me twenty! Okay, now let's do this and this and this. Look: Leg first, then body, then head. Okay now let's add this and this and this. And also this and this. From the top. Okay let's add some things... "

Ah well. In short: It was much more fast paced (in all sorts of ways) than I expected it to be. If this had been my first dance class ever, I would have been so lost. I think. Might be underestimating myself a tad here but probably not.

But oh yes, on the rare occasion that the beat and my movements were actually synchronized, it was quite easy to understand that this can get really fun, yay!

On contemporary writing

Boring: Stories set in the US in the sixties. Particularly those with mob/Marilyn Monroe/CIA/Woodstock/whatever pieces in them.

Consequentially boring: Joyce Carol Oates. Forrest Gump. The cold six thousand. Grateful Dead biographies.

On a side note

... I really look forward to having my iPhone delivered in the near future.

... I really look forward to my ballet and hip hop classes starting.

... I haven't quite made up my mind yet as to whether I should try to get into Lindy Hop continuation course this fall or not. Ballet + hip hop + one or two evenings in the gym + lindy as well might prove a bit taxing.

WoW or WoW?

1. There's an annual music festival in Gothenburg called Way Out West, oftentimes referenced by the abbreviation WoW (or perhaps WOW, I would imagine, coming to think of it).

2. There's a popular online game called World of Warcraft, which I and a lot of other people throughout the world happen to play. Not uncommonly, World of Warcraft goes by the shorter handle WoW.

3. There's a music site called dagensskiva.com (sorta like "todaysrecord.com") which, naturally, has been posting reports about WoW the music festival.

Me, being no stranger to jest and joke, suggested to my acquaintance Hamberg, co-founder of said music site, that among the reports from Way Out West, there should be one from World of Warcraft.

And since he is a man of brilliant genius too, it happened.