Wednesday, September 23, 2009

rogue 5 standing by


good god.

i received my cone a few hours ago, and i am... underway.

the box was small and apparently insignificant, but i really wasn't prepared for its contents. i'd told myself 'oh sure. i'll play cotton for a year.' upon ripping open the box and hefting the spool however, it became immediately obvious that this is A LOT of string... and twisting it is going to be ENORMOUSLY inconvenient.

bear in mind, i'm not saying the latter with a sad, burdened heart. i want to be inconvenienced. i signed up for it. my whole life (and probably yours, too) is built around convenience. it's become a god of sorts, and we're all idolaters. between our cars and dishwashers and our pills and our cheeseburgers... every aspect of our lives is dominated by the theme of convenience.

what do we do for ourselves anymore?

you might say that twisting my own cotton string isn't a big way to shrug off that mantle, but i'm a yo-yo player. string is a necessity, and the more you play, the more you consume. i wouldn't say that i'm overly wasteful, but this project isn't so much about waste as it is appreciation. am i really too busy to twist my own string? there's a lot of fat i can trim from my days when i look at it honestly. yo-yoing is important to me; it's worth a few extra minutes here and there. during those minutes, every day, my pledge (or intention, anyway) is to remind myself that playing yo-yo is the reward. it's worth it.

i've twisted two strings so far. i actually videoed the first one. the process took me 03:53. the string i ended up with was a little short, but certainly playable. the texture of this string (when twisted) is divine. far stiffer and thicker than the pre-twisted cotton you get from the online stores, it feels similar to the string that comes on the tom kuhn yo-yo's i've bought. managing tension is going to be one of the main travails. i'm pretty sure i can refine my technique to get strings twisted pretty quickly.

i think i'll be especially concerned with making the strings last. every throw is one step closer to the string's demise, and that's brought into staggering relief when you have to measure, twist, cut, tie, adjust, etc. the hope is that by the end (or at this rate by the beginning), we'll have a deeper appreciation for the throws to which we commit.

this string is not easy to play. it will NOT respond like highlights or your favorite 'boutique' type 6 poly or even pre-twisted cotton. nailing the tricks i love to nail is going to be a challenge, but again, all the more rewarding for that. if i were really concerned with 'progressing' along the extrinsic lines of learning faster, longer, harder tricks... this project would constitute an egregious error. anyone who knows me though knows that's not really what i'm about. i think this project is going to drive my yo-yoing deeper 'inside'. i think (or hope) it'll make me less concerned with what tricks i can do, and more concerned with what the tricks i do mean to me.

enough typing. i'm gonna go play, otherwise this thing'll last for damn ever.

No comments:

Post a Comment