Thursday, October 27, 2005 // 2:19 AM

ella trying to talk about jumping on the trampoline on msn:

i just feel
its completely visceral
initially you have to concentrate so hard on balancing alone
and after you get that u just feel so powerful when you're up in the air
and fluid
and languid
after watching quidam i wanted to jump on the trampoline
just to feel that way again
imagine
balancing on a bike
going fast
you stand up
all the way up
you don't have to bother about pedalling
you don't have to put ur hands on the handle bars
and you don't seem to be controlling the bike
but you are
but ur whole body tenses up
the BEST part about jumping
is when you're right at the top
cos you'll be stuck there for a split second
before u fall
and when im up there i reemmber that moment
pure sensation
it makes u feel alive like NOTHING in the world

i've forgotten how good it feels to MOVE, to EXERCISE. i hadn't really forgotten how it feels like to jump on the trampoline, i re-realised it that day, trying to put it into words to marvin in that conversation on msn. i think everyone should do something completely visceral like this every once in a while.

my routine's a piece of crap, but i'm muchly grateful that i'm pretty much fearless with it, that i can just get on and flip (however shitily) even after months of not, that my body hasn't completely forgotten what to do, that it knows enough to not kill itself. i wish i were completely fearless though, to do the nutso flips that the guys do, so completely without qualms. it's not just wahh for me, when i think about how petrified i was initially with learning my houkongchuai, i can't imagine how they can just go up there and do tha kinda stuff. particularly perry, him and his bored smile, who make everything look so careless, so effortless, even the routine that took me more than a year to learn. ella is jealous.

training mates taught me how to do a frontwalk! i think i've sprained my back, but only the right side, which is giving me a strange lopsided kind of feeling. but i can do a frontwalk, sorta, if you count it a frontwalk with me landing on my knees, in a heap. i can do a right-handed cartwheel too, i discovered, loosely defining cartwheel. i had the best time, circling the track in cartwheels and frontwalks and All Things Gym. coupled with good company, coupled with gorgeous post-rain weather and a puffy purple night sky. this has been the best thing all day.

(and since today also included getting a hundred bucks richer for piano lessons, that has to be significant)

my sorry excuse for a body is aching all over, my back and my hip and my legs; even though a landslide majority of training was just sitting around bumming like we always do when no one is there to force us up onto the trampoline. i'm amazed by how utterly unfit i've come to be; i can't believe my previous state of fitness was the best i'm ever going to be. from here it's all downhill, oh no, i'm just going to keep getting fatter and unfit-ter and more and more pathetic.

pathetic, was sean, trying to do a bridge, with the sorry state of inflexibility of his back right about now. pathetic, was me, yowling in the process of trying to learn my frontwalk (with saket perry qionghui xinyi watching, who could frontwalk/backwalk/muchosmore rings around me), needing SO MUCH HELP for what was ultimately pretty much easy shit. sean called me fat, sobsobsob. but i'm. really happy hanging around with sean perry xinyi, even after the months and months of not talking. this, this is simple enough company, i suppose we've done enough Laughing At Each Other to be any sort of uncomfortable.

i'm going to be feeling the aftermath of all this tomorrow. this much my happiness, reason enough want to try for real to get fit.