A legend redefined

In the arena of sports, human achievement is the triumph of the moment, the climax of years of training, and the extreme horizon of physical endeavour. It defines the athlete through the personification of an icon. Critics heap bundles of opinions and spectators are awed at their virtually supernatural feats of strength. They rise above the common man, because while everyone is born to die, few like them are born to win.

An effortless victory feels like a fairy tale, and young minds are infatuated with talent and prodigies. The edge over competitors becomes an innate capability. It is bestowed by an individual's genetic makeup, even science has something logical to say about it. You know how Beckham's right foot works, why Tyson has an 80kg punch, what makes Jordan fly and where Schumacher gets his wheels.

For Lance Armstrong, stricken with cancer seven years ago, even the best physician could hardly have been optimistic about the cyclist competing again. The only logical resolution would be for the man to throw in the towel. It would have been easier doing that. He had already achieved an illustrious career before his illness. People would still remember him, Lance Arstrong, the former world cycling champion,but it will be a legacy whereby others would have easily emulated by now.

Fortunately, for fans of the Tour De France, 2005 would be the year the legend of Armstrong was engraved in stone. A seventh consecutive win since he first took his bike on one of the world's most ardous terrains. Seven years since he suffered from a terminal illness, when the critics never hesitated to ride him off. The young, reckless idealist who had claimed supremacy at the Tour Dupont in 1996 was no more. As he crossed the finishing line with his yellow jersey, Lance Armstrong had fought and won, undefeated by his own spirit.

No one is a legend by birth, but he has showed us how far how our wings can take us, if only we could surpass ourselves.

Gay Heterosexuals

Right, I believe I should spare you the indulgence of trying to figure out the oxymoron. Still, I am feeling sexually inspired today, and even hungry for a revolution, but before I arouse your attention to orgasmic levels, let's deal with more petty issues first, shall we?

It is strange that purist models of the 'classic gentleman' are still adopted today, even when cross-cultural acceptance can even make gays look glamorous. Women have an unconscious aversion to horny men with ravenous sex drives, nerds who show a passion for porn or even brainteasers with sexual innuendoes. The male sphere of influence has diminished, no one talks bout banging when girls are around. And when the girls talk about sex, we try to take a vicarious approach by curbing our erections.

So now you know where the SNAG part comes in right? It's sad but true, but men are not allowed to be sexually honest anymore. We are conditioned by expectations to feel more, to screw with our minds instead of our dicks. We learn that females are emotionally more complex than we are, and we have to take mental enhancement courses to learn how they're wired.

If you study evolution, it is easy to understand how species adapt to changes in the environment by developing new skills and eliminating obsolete ones. Therefore, the dawn of neo-feminist movements has turned the Beasty Bloke into Boy George. We have given the women more space than they could ever dream of, we have turned them into muses, goddesses, divas and hell yeah, politicians.

But behold, what has become of us? Gone are the days, where we adhered to the pride of the alpha-male, where we fought and devoured one another for the prize of a harem of babes. Instead, we fall in love with ourselves, shrinking our testicles and forgetting the destinies of our existence. 'Make love, not war...' I seriously believe we should have torched all the hippies and drove the communists out of Vietnam.

Fast forward to the present and you know that society is nothing but a string of stage plays. The perfect man a girl finds is a gay. Girls can ask quiet guys who have been single for ages if they are gay. Please, I implore all of you, don't give that decadent bunch too much credit. By asking straight people if they are gay is a direct insult at their efforts to be a gentle 'heterosexual' man. You will turn them into a desperate son of a bitch who may just get a girlfriend and abuse her until she dies. So please, do not swing the pendulum, do not open the pandora's box.

Fortunately, no one dares to question my orientation. I love it when the girls call me 'small horny boy'. It's affirmation, they do not even speculate where I am concerned and I still make them laugh, classic old school charmer style. No gay pretense or sissy preservatives added.

Short stuff..All man..And deviously proud of it.

"Eh, about what happened just now...."

Food, alcohol, cards and girls. Fortunately, I have not evolved into a fag addict

Nice to see my sane old self back in action, which is a paradigm shift from the house of the old sad boy. I believe a stable equilibrium is an ideal many of us hope to experience at some point in our lives. For her, I guess she wanted to quit the turbulence of all the excess emotional baggage. In this instance, its friendship over love. To a forlorn heart across the void, does it mean the ink has stopped running its course for the remaining pages?

When you stop yearning, it gets closer to you, and you taste the peculiar irony of not being turned on at all. If wisdom is found in such absence, a parody of my folly is all my memory can give to me. Getting too old to care, can this be used to label my reaction? The questions will never stop, the cradle is deprived of musings, and I hush my restless imaginantion to sleep.

School's starting soon, time to clear up my messy mind. For psychology, we are shown a rape scene and are told to do nothing. Responsibility becomes a diffusing vaccum, and bystanders always get a clear view of the siutation to infer constructive comments. There is nothing social about it, because we alienate individual perceptions while society propagates her own karma.

Unspoken well wishes

"Hey...I am sorry I haven't kept in touch with you for a long time. It seems I am too caught up with the pressures of my commitments since you came back. It was great seeing you today, though I know the words you say can never fully color the feelings you keep inside. I don't know if I will ever understand, how much the both of you have been through together and apart. The end only brought you more pain, and I wonder, if you have cried your heart out in those dark corners of isolation, places you and no one else knows.

Nevertheless, I want you to know that in love broken or made whole, it will not change the friendship we use to know. It will be hard for him, but he has to learn. It hurts so that we may grow stronger. No matter how deep the wounds are, let's hope the silence of time will take them all away.

If blood is thicker than water, these bonds have made you a sister to me. You know that no matter how far you go, how much you change, or how far we drift apart, it was a blessing to know a sister like you. Peace, out.."

Moving skies

Have you ever watched a revolution through the lenses of the sky? The clouds tumble and turn, their origin and destination fusing into a single holistic entitiy. It seems like yesterday that I saw myself facing the same people and telling the same stories, but repetition occurs at the present, and what goes away arrives at the same place again.

Round and round it goes.

I've not been thinking that much about her, even as I struggle with my own apathy towards recalcitrant emotions. Perfectionism has room for only one passion, and I think for now I have placed some issues in perspective, except for dreams. They convey the strangest meanings, masking innate, unspoken desires that melt away under the pressures of reality.

In a world far away frome home, I made a life with two copper coins of sense. It was always dark outside, and it rained most of the time I was living inside the house. She loved to sew sweaters and drink wine by the fireplace during winter. She never asked for more, and I gave her more than everything she could ever want. Only thing is, she resembled the woman in the picture on my desk. It was a faded picture, and she was always smiling.

Memories were all lies, but her smile was the only real thing I knew