Posts Tagged ‘marv

26
Mar
14

A Thousand Promises Of Pain To Come

MarvI never forgot that line, the one from Sin City after Marv snaps the cuffs on that weird little freak and knocks him the fuck out. They cut to this epic shot of Marv having a smoke, covered in blood.

He says: “I try to slow my heart down and breathe the fire out of my lungs. My muscles make me a thousand promises of pain to come”. For some reason I never forgot that line.

Especially the part about the promises of pain to come. I finally trained again yesterday, it was a giant pile of dogshit session, I was weak as a kitten and running on fumes before I was even half done.

But I did it. And tomorrow morning I’ll do it again and I’ll keep doing it until it gets easier and I get fitter and stronger and back to my same old self.

That’s the path you choose if you want to live a certain life. I walk that path because it keeps me sharp, it keeps me focussed and disciplined.

If I had to give up training entirely I think I would very quickly unravel and countless other things in my life would start to slide as well.

 

 

I call it the “fuck it” theory. When I’m not training and am faced with a minor obstacle in my every day life, like washing the dishes for example, I often end up thinking “fuck it, I’ll do it later”, while slowly but surely more and more shit starts piling up in my life.

When I’m training and I’m faced with an every day obstacle, that thinking switches from “fuck it, I’ll do it later” to “fuck it, lemme just handle this now quickly…” and as a result, my life feels less cluttered and more manageable.

With that I’d better call it. You’ll only be reading this tomorrow but here in the past it’s creeping ever-closer to 12am and I need some rest if I’m gonna eat some weights for breakfast tomorrow.

Later charnas!

-ST

30
Jan
14

Short Story: Dementia Pugilistica

flat,550x550,075,fI wrote this one back when I was doing that creative writing course at about this time last year. The assignment was to write a character in action and make him or her compelling enough to make the reader want to read more.

The big catch was you had to show and not tell who your character was through their actions and their surroundings. So I wrote this short piece and it’s one of the few that, reading back over it now, I still like.

That’s the problem with writing, you end up hating at least 90% of your own work, if not more, which makes it difficult to stay motivated.

But anyway, here’s the piece:

His bedside radio alarm jolted him awake, triggering a Pavlovian memory of smelling salts and the cloying taste of ammonia. His mouth agape in silent horror, he blinked hard, his watery blue eyes struggling to adjust to the morning light while he tried to make sense of his surroundings.

Familiar shapes slowly emerged from the fog. The floral curtains Miriam had so loved, the glass-framed poster of him and Jake “The Haymaker” Hagler above his dresser, his ratty red silk gown hanging behind the bedroom door under which he’d neatly laid his trusty brown stoukies.

His heart slowed. Home. He was home.

He lifted his duvet and swung his tree-trunk legs slowly from under the covers, planting them squarely on the creaking yellow wood floors. He rose slowly but steadily, his spine stooped under the weight of his meaty shoulders from which slab-thick arms hung, their swollen knuckles practically dragging on the floor as he lumbered toward the bathroom.

He ran the warm water tap and splashed his grey, grizzled face. His calloused hands scraped over the hard ridges of cuts opened and sewn shut countless times. He mopped his face with a towel and stared unflinchingly at the haphazard wreckage that stared back.

“Whadda mug,” he chuckled.

-ST