tyre punchek

Today I found out that I might have punctured my tyre. My bicycle’s. The tyre’s flattened. The rear one. Out of air. Stupid. I’m not anguished as I thought I would be. (I am dramatic in certain ways.) Heaven knows how long it’s been out. Looks so fucking silly. Embarassing—but only for a minute. I shall allow myself to be embarrassed for only a minute. Approximately-ish. When a minute is up, I will suffocate the arising of embarrassment. It can be done. I’ve had about three bursts of maybe ten seconds of embarrassment since this afternoon when I found out. I would like to be exact about the minute but I’m not George Michael Bluth. I’m wondering now if I should summon embarrassment now and be done with it. 30 seconds. Then never again. I still allow myself to be embarrassment-adjacent space—analysing why I am embarrassed about X. In this headspace I am just close enough to embarrassment to almost have fun with it? laugh at it?, not enough to feel bad. It’s simply sooo silly. Nothing truly warrants embarrassment. I have never failed in my attempts to rationalise it away.

mercy

The biggest challenge in my life is treating a person who has injured me with compassion. To be clear, nobody has hurt me. (Yet.) (Nobody ever might.) I’m speaking of an imagined enemy. In my fiction I am always vengeful. I think it’s smart to think about things in advance. Mercy requires mental preparation. I shall be merciful when I need to be.

It might be a good time for me to get into Marcus Aurelius. I attempted Meditations once upon a time, but thought it boring. And also actually really cute! A compilation of pep talks Aurelius wrote for himself.

I once read a tweet claiming that Aurelius murdered the man his wife was having an affair with, and made her bathe in his blood. They revealed this as a criticism of Meditations; like, do you really want to take advice from THAT guy??

Well, in fact, yes, I do!

I want advice from the guy who’s battled inner demons as ferocious as mine. If I had a good reason, I would murder. Give me a just cause and I will raze cities to the ground. I want revenge. I need to get even. I am unhinged.

I don’t want advice from some guy who was born gifted with an even temper! What’s he gonna teach me? Stay calm? Simply “let go”? Hell NO.

This is a pro hominem situation. A person’s tendency for wickedness is a credential, not a disqualifier.

How do you cultivate equanimity in a beast? I want the tricks, the rationalisations—to convince, deceive (I don’t care), my stupid, evil self into virtue.

(Of course, I’m just saying this for fun, I don’t actually believe it. Perfect Jesus was particularly persuasive, wasn’t he? I should probably get into scripture, too.)

haze

Fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan are blowing haze into Singapore. It was noticeable when I swam yesterday. Don’t care. Eight laps in about thirty minutes. Visibility is lower than usual. It’s quite romantic actually, like having the Kenko black mist filter on my eyes. I don’t blame Indonesia for the haze. I thank them quite frequently for the fresh air that gets sent here. I made it a point to do so after hearing this in 2015:

For 11 months, they enjoyed nice air from Indonesia and they never thanked us

— Jusuf Kalla, former Vice President of Indonesia, in response to complaints of the haze 😂

We should have air purifier towers. Dyson’s headquarters are here afterall.

Looks right to me.