A young Japanese guy from the rowing team just sent me an e-mail. He is studying hard and rapidly improving his English, but his phrasing is clumsy. In the last few lines of his e-mail, that awkwardness with the language improbably came together to form a beautiful haiku-like expression of pure truth, and something which would be a fitting epitaph carved into the tombstones of a thousand losers on rowing teams. This captures the zeitgeist of that scene better than anything I've encountered.
"I rowed 12km on a weekday and rowed 20km on a holiday.
When I was able to win in a race, I am glad.
When I row a boat, there is not time to date with a girl friend. It is sad. But I do not have a girl friend now."
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2 comments:
Sad and ironic (for possible gf): @ 12K/day he probably looks like Bruce Lee with his shirt off.
The Concept 2 erg
Sleek, blue and instrumented
Modern torture rack
Like the best of art, it is stunningly beautiful and disgusting all at once.
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