originalguajiraboy-blog

[originalguajiraboy-blog]

Opening Scene From a Film

Secret Nights on the Fifth of July

An evening

Redness overtakes the blue sky at evening A yellow ribbon of sun threads  its way through the fading horizon A flock of birds crosses in uneasy unison

Pan left

Wide shot of

A lake reflecting the light of the sky

Zoom in Slow

A dark speck becomes a single boat There is no land in site A further two specks become men There is no land in site

They cast their nets into the water

This can be seen from a distance

Suddenly

Close up

We are in the boat with them They haul in rough spun nets of heavy rope There is a great splashing as they take the fish in at dark

We are at their feet

The camera catches the eyes of

A great fish

They are wide, searching, unblinking The spray of ocean water hits its face Its mouth moves languidly As if unsure Unsure of what comes next

Jump to

The men in the boat Early forties Scrawny but not gaunt Both faces are stern But the man to the

Right of Camera

His grimace belies a certain mischievousness A knowing He is a friend

They haul in their nets

[originalguajiraboy-blog]

5/05/17 Pavel Fighter Pull Up Program

9 x BW + 6kg

8 x BW + 6kg

7 x BW + 6kg

6 x BW + 6kg

6 x BW + 6kg

Bicep Curl Concrete Weights 4x10

I have never felt so drained before. The Chirst I felt so sure in knowing has now gone. And I am left with systems, and this black taste of what I thought that I knew.

I tell a second hand story of redemption, told to me by someone who once lived it themselves and there are sparks yet left in me that rouse and burn slowly on telling but most everywhere else is dark

I have missed him somewhere i have misplaced the creator of the universe like a dress sock

[originalguajiraboy-blog]

5/04/17 Light Day

Leg Press

5x10 @ BW

Dips 4x14 @ BW

Face Pulls 5x5 @ BW low angle

Handstand Pushups 3x5 partials @ BW

Park Bench Tricep Extension 5x5 @ BW

I miss Him but I do not miss Him

because when He was too close i was blinded from myself and could not see the work yet to do

but now He is distant and i am colder than cold

[originalguajiraboy-blog]

4/26/17 Pavel Fighter Pull Up Program

8 x BW + 6kg 7 x BW + 6kg 6 x BW + 6kg 6 x BW + 6kg 5 x BW + 6kg

Growing those reps, boy. My goal is to get 12, 11, 10, and then add more weight (maybe another 6kg?) and then build back up from there. 

This is fairly consistent back work, but it works well as I have had to eradicate my pulls from the floor on Heavy days due to lack of time.

I’m not even lifting anything worth writing home about. My bench has certainly increased, but slowly, with the introduction of a scaled and measured appreciation of hypertrophy volume. My weighted chins are growing by the day. So my upper body looks good, and, more importantly, I’m stronger than I’ve ever been before.

But my lower body… 290 for a single is a joke. Not that I don’t understand how two nights of little sleep will affect a rep, but I need to at least be hitting 3 wheels on that squat.

I have a feeling that if I could at least get five reps next week, and the week after, I could progress triples up to 315.

I’m thinking that I can continue to grow my conventional beltless DL. I pulled about 305 for a beltless single on Saturday before I had to bolt for Tomarrazon. But I think I’m going to continue with single progression on Saturday, and go for a max of 345 beltless, take 30 pounds off, and build up 315 for reps.

Whether or not I’ll cycle intensity for deadlifts remains to be seen. My progression in the US was 3,2,1 over a three week period with jumps of 15lbs between each, and a 10 pound increased at the reset to 3, but now I’m thinking maybe tha ’s too low? My intensity is already lagging on Heavy day for squat, so maybe I should consider pulling 8(7),5,3 belles to accumulate more work.

I don’t expect this to affect my Heavy day squatting, as I’ll keep the relative intensity low, and only increase the volume.

(My brother back home has a dedicated deadlift day, replete with multiple sets. I could never figure out how he recovered for squats. But my brother is a savant. Without any programming back ground, he’s running a mutant RPE/intensity cycling program He intuitively makes programming choices that I would never have guessed at, to great effect)

Im very sure I could hit 315 for a triple, if not too pretty, so I might drop down to 275/285 and see what pulling for an ocho looks like. Or Ill just throw 285 on the bar and go until I can’t go anymore.

Its a humbling experience. Before I left, I pulled a belted 420 at a mock meet a week from staging.

I squatted 345, but honestly I haven’t been in control of my squat for almost six months after abandoning everything I’d built for the fragrant aroma of the low bar lifestyle.

Bench has always been shite, (my max is 285, but thats from when I used to workout at the Y. I was pushing heavy belted singles at 265 within the four months before I left). But I have a feeling that, if I don’t give myself an overuse injury first, I could easily find my way into the sub 225 area for reps.

[originalguajiraboy-blog]

4/25/17 Heavy Day

4/25/17 Heavy Day

Squat 2x5 45 lbs 1x3 155 lbs 1x2 225 lbs 1x1 290 lbs 2x3 265 lbs

Curse the brown bar. This hunk of metal has caused me more problems than any other piece of machinery on the two continents I have lived on.

Didn’t make up for my poor sleep the past two nights.

Also, the plates weight differently. I probably would have gotten more reps If I had been squatting 290, instead of one side holding 135 and the other 155.

Bench 2x5 45lbs 1x3 95 lbs 1x2 155 lbs 3x7 185 lbs

These actually were really quick. I found something akin to a cross fit, which fortunately, was balanced.

It rained in Riohacha today.

I had to leave the gym early. I have heard that they stop the colectivos to Tomarrazon during downpours. The roads are too dangerous. They’re like the ones that killed Martin Elias.

I have never looked up at a rain storm before. To see the clouds swirling, over taking the horizon in lurid strokes, something so soft now foreboding, a power buried in the fibers of each tendril silencing the light of the sun.

I wondered in some distant time, there was not some gym in Jerusalem, and there was Isaiah, looking up at the sky. Winding his way through the oaken gardens, the scent of charred flesh and incense in his nose, was this not a part of his vision? These skies so powerful they throttle the earth?  

[originalguajiraboy-blog]

4/24/17 Pavel Fighter Pull Up Program

8 x BW + 6kg

7 x BW + 6kg

6 x BW + 6kg

5 x BW + 6kg

5 x BW + 6kg

I was exercising with small children, and it was difficult to explain to them that they needed to rest in between their sets, or else they would be too tired to lift themselves.

Actually it was not difficult to explain.

This is fairly basic Spanish, and I am in a position of relative authority, in which my lack of subjunctive control is taken less as being completely incompetent linguistically and more as being lovably stern, like a sort of Chris Matthews with biceps.

But they did not listen. They missed their reps. They became frustrated, they hit their friend in the face . And there was wailing and suddenly I was the parent of 20 small children.

I see these kids at school each day, but only in passing, because they're in primaria.

I can’t work with primaria.

Not that there’s anything stopping me physically (or legally).

But I’m still waiting on someone to explain the Tetris like schedule the school has tasked its students with following. Everything fits just right. But it looks completely insane on paper. 

I certainly don’t understand it. And the primaria teachers who do understand it are playing a strange game with me. Im figuring-or hoping- they do it with all new teachers.

The rules consist of inviting me to plan a lesson at a later date, and when that later date comes, moving the planning date again.

It’s easy to start taking these things personally.

But then I realize how it inane it is to care. What wasted energy.

And this isn’t just a platitude. 

Its just that as much as people try to explain Colombian culture to me, as much as they dress it up with bows of “you’re just going to have to get used to it” and “cogela suave”, and then smile that strange Colombian smile that alternately suggests friendship and visions of villages burning on the horizon...

It doesn’t make sense.

There is a fascination here with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

(It is somewhat surprising, too, since I have yet to meet a Colombian, outside of the priest in my town, who has actually read any of his work. In this sense, he’s kind of like Kim Kardashian. He is literally famous just for being famous.)

The more poetic volunteers, those whimsically positioned near the metropolises of Barranquilla and Santa Marta, sing praises to his magical realism. “Oh,” they say, “you live on the coast, and you know that magical realism only could’ve been born here. The shifting time, the inexplicability, the supernatural beauty.” But these are people whose idea of magic is waiting an extra 2 hours for a city bus. Time is so fluid here, they think, as they sip moscow mules from chilled copper mugs and stare out across the street into the displays of department stores.

But then you leave the city.

And you descend down roads like blackened arteries into the dense mesh of brush and rancherias. You somehow escape the Colombia you thought you knew, and you run right into the nets of the State.

Its a state manipulated by an almost mechanical selfishness. Money comes in, is sucked up by the officials. Children starve in rancherias, and the busses don’t run, and the school’s aren’t in session, and the police drive tanks up and down the roads, waiting for the next militia group to barrel down the mountains in jeeps, and there is no medical care and ambulances wail feebly through deserts to reach people who died hours ago, and you are planning and trying and planning but time keeps moving just beyond your fingertips and every time you touch it it keeps slinking away from you like some kind of wounded beast into the corners of eternity. 

And I think, Colombian isn’t a Gabo novel. 

It’s a Kafka novel. 

It’s a kind of homegrown existential frustration that we Westerners must just pass off as local color.

But when I am sent away by a teacher once again to wait, I cannot help but feel like Gregor Samsa, hiding under a bed as the world I thought I knew seems to turn and twist against me.

Or the children waiting for an answer from the state, as to if they will have school the next month. They’ve lost three already. They’re  like the penitents waiting outside of the Gates of the Law in The Trial, small participants in a vast and cold system whose name is efficiency and has never seen love. 

Colombia- the Colombia I have seen- is very much the realization of western modernity’s anxiety of the individual. Though capable of profound emotional expression, he is nothing compared to the mechanized culture that subsumes him in a barbed womb, offering efficiency at the expense of laughter, love, life. 

This is where the individual goes to die.

And it sucks, it really does.

But it also makes the promises of Jesus that much sweeter.

Because without him, the state would really be the end of all us.

He is the one that rips us still born from the womb, bloody and mangled, and breathes new life through our nostrils, awakening us to the vibrant world beating outside the fragile bounds of regulation.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

And so I do not care. Because if I cared, I “would be condemned already, because I had not believed in the name of the Son of God.”

If I put my faith completely into the system around me, the culture, the shrieks of the state booming in Riohacha, I would end up, lost, worse than dead, in a futile attempt to make myself known in a voice too quiet to protest.

But knowing that he speaks for me, that he is the literal Word, the word that nature has spoken since the dawn of creation, that has wound its way into the fabric of every moment that now even the state finds itself in, I can be confident.

I can play games. I can say Thank you, and come back. Again and again and again. In the face of frustration, of failure.

Because I am not speaking my words.

He is speaking His.

[originalguajiraboy-blog]

Jesu Cristos

I’m playing GZA’s “4th Chamber” from Liquid Swords.

 I’m working out with 10 twelve year-old boys at Tomarrazón’s plaza. We’re doing chin ups, or actually Jesu Cristos, where we bring the back of our necks up to the rafters of the awning, as if we’ve been hung for treason by unseen Centurions.

 They’re fascinated by this particular exercise, say the name with a certain pleasure and assume the cross position so readily, that I think that self-sacrifice and pain most be buried in these boys. Or maybe they just like the imagery.

 The cultural iceberg runs deep                                                

They can’t understand the lyrics.

Profe, ¿qué dice él? 

 I have to be honest and say that I don’t even know.

 I just listen for the beat. 

 I’m trying to describe what a “ninja” is, I am trying to explain the concept of “Judas ratting the Romans while Jesus slept.” 

 These are boys that work in the fields. They don’t even go to my school; they go to some school that's sequestered on the caliche road leading into the mountains. Depending on who you ask, its five minutes away walking, or an hour by burro. It only meets on Saturdays.

 They want me come to the school, but I can’t because I have a meeting with Matt in Riohacha on Saturday, and even though it’s been only a week since I’ve seen him, I need to talk to him. 

 The first weekend at site had been a sort of revelation in a sinister way. It was one of those strange moments in which the literature you're reading is informing your world, breaking it down. I was scared.

 I had asked Matt what his favorite book was two months prior during a cultural field trip, as we circled Barranquilla in a taxi that was irredeemably lost. The driver continued to drive, unconcerned as to what to do next. We didn’t know much Spanish then, and not that much has changed since. We were speaking loudly in English, and Shira was with us.

 Her presence is such that you immediately take her seriously. Even her jokes have a kind of weight to them, like they’re not just humor, but deep-seated facts that have been hidden in the corners of your life until she spoke them.

 We were circling the same block. Shira was singing “Despacito” off key. I was periodically looking out the car window and wondering if the people outside could see us. If they knew we were gringos just by how we looked, how we opened our mouths. The staff kept telling me that Americans walk in a certain way. They said this and I immediately became conscious of the way that I walked.

 Mixie would later tell me in Riohacha during site visit that I walk on the balls of my feet, that I kind of bounce along. And I remember my father sitting at home watching the Big Bang Theory in southern Texas. It was the height of summer. It was evening: the sugar cane had come in late that season. Far off in the distance, ten tractor-mounted flamethrowers doused fields in jets of blue fire, sending ash spiraling into the sky.

 Even though it was dark, I could see the ash from our living room couch, falling on the windows like black snow. Suddenly, Sheldon walked onscreen, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet.

 He looks stupid, my father said.

 I was ashamed to walk this way, and would try many times to change it when I returned to Tomarrazón. I would enter a classroom, and consciously drive my heels into the floor, as if planting them into lunar soil. I began to wonder if all Americans walked around on the balls of their feet. Maybe, I thought, we don’t look like demigods from a blue-eyed nation of golden streets.

 Maybe we look like nerds.

 Shira stopped singing. The subject came to books, and I found out that Matt loved science fiction. I love science fiction. Immediately I wanted to be this boy’s best friend. Training had brought us close, yet there was still so much we didn’t know about each other. For all I knew, his hobby was sitting on his terraza in Palmar, tearing off the limbs of grasshoppers and feeding them to Mike, the family dog with a strangely human name. (I had asked Matt’s mother why she named the dog Mike. She responded that she just liked the name, as if that explained why a dog in Colombia had the same name as a cubicle worker from my job back in Texas.)

 But Matt is actually quite nice. Without hesitation, he recommended the book Ubik.

 Though we did not realize it then, this recommendation would be a huge mistake.

[originalguajiraboy-blog]

First Post

First of all, this blog is not for you.

I’m going to be honest before things get too serious.

I have clue what I am doing.

I am teaching English with the Peace Corps in a small town outside of Riohacha, about an hour from anywhere and an eternity away from everything I have ever known.

I feel way over my head. 

This blog will document my time here.

It will also document my time powerlifting (hereafter referred to as getting “getting jacked”), the circle jerk that is my writing, and, most importantly, my walk with Jesus Christ.

I’m making no pretenses to the fact that I am a good person. I am not. I might be here serving, but if there is any work that is done that is good, it will not be done in my name, but in His. 

Isaiah 64:6

“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”

Yeah, even in my best days, when I am not being a mess and selfish and vindictive and cowardly and quarrelsome, that is, when I am “perfect,” I still fall short.

And I find my only redemption in Him. 

Not astounding exegesis, but just so you know the general theme of where things are headed. 

In that sense, this is a blog about what I will see Him working in La Guajira. 

But also, teaching English. 

But also, getting jacked. 

See, you might not like this blog.