Time

I have found that the state of mind you're in, can damage your perception of time and place, luring you into more of an idea or a dream that can take complete control of your perception of reality.  The hands on your watch haven't ticked in years, in fact, they have fallen off all together.  Your once moving watch has been replaced with moving bars that now direct your day.  I can't seem to remember where the time went, from when my non-callused hands touched the bar to now.  Memories flash as I chalk, and feelings hit when lifting.  Lost in translation as we feign for PR's like heroin addicts to heroin. What time is it? Who is the President? Where the bloody hell am I?  Questioning the program is not allowed in this lifestyle of sport, just like how clocks don't exist in a Las Vegas Casino.  Just bet, time doesn't matter.  Just lift, nothing else matters. What matters is how many chips that proudly stand guard in front of you. Like a weightlifter with our medals, we immerse ourselves into a sea of blood and sacrifice, only to come up for air when real life calls out.  But calling out is a rare privilege, and at times unheard of.  Just before you ask yourself why your watch does not have hands, shades of black ripple like water from coach looking down upon you, pushing your head back into the bloody sea of red.  A cold chill rushes through the gym, gliding over your sweaty skin and leaving you peering out the gym door for I guess some sort of hope, or maybe some sort of new excitement, or even something that my watch nor myself can answer. We are saddened by a dark shadow facing our direction, with little evidence on where or what the shadow is looking at, hit in the face with the cold hard truth that we the weightlifters were born for lifting, breaking chains, and crushing rocks, one hit at a time.

Why are the walls in my gym black?  And why is USADA circling my house?  Coffee mixed with Day Quil leaves me behind my front door with a pair of weightlifting shoes and my straps, ready to defend this perception of whatever the fuck is going on.  Teammates come and go, but I am still here.  New gyms replace old gyms, new shoes hang up old shoes, and all the while I haven't moved from my resting seat.  I write to you tonight to try to figure out our mind set, our reality that we have created for ourselves to live in with our own rules, patterns, guidelines, and language.  It's fascinating, but at the same time when woken from this different perception, I find myself lost in the outer world, and confused on what time really means to regular mother fuckers. Am I the white sheep, or are they?  Is USADA after me, or just doing their job? I will be in the same place tomorrow lifting the same 20 kilo bar while drinking the same coffee on my same resting seat.  It's almost as if I am writing you from the future, even though I'm really in the present.  If I see you tomorrow in my gym, that means we both traveled to a place we knew existed from our knowledge right now. Right? I can predict tomorrow by drinking tea tonight. I have seen tomorrow tonight, and by writing you tonight......right now......or whatever right now means.....if you read this while I am in my resting seat tomorrow, that means I am actually living in the future while you have been taken back to the past.

I am lost in translation.  But I am not lost in life, nor weightlifting.  I have, we have, created our own time, own structure that guides us to happiness and to our goals. Our time is a much different meaning than a librarian's time, or any other lifestyle or career chosen by a particular person.  Our watch is the bar, our calendar is meets and competitions.  Coach is nothing more than a shadow of a metaphor that screams train hard without screaming at all. I have no idea what time or day it is, all I know is that tomorrow I will be sitting in my resting chair drinking coffee.  See you in the future my friend.  Goodnight.

Bar Clocks 2016