I live on a bike path, and I always admired the runners and joggers going by. They do it when it is cold, they come out like snails after a rain, sometimes even during a rainstorm. A month ago I looked up an 8-week training program to run a 5k. The idea is that working on your running stamina by the end of the 8th week you’ll be able to run 5 kilometers (or 3.11 miles). It was called ‘couch to 5k’ which I think is a dumb name. I don’t necessarily consider myself a couch potato. But being one who never ran, I thought it was a good program to gradually introduce my body to running. The training program includes different routines 3 times a week for 8 weeks. I was skeptical, as after running even the shortest distance I would feel like puking and like I was going to die. But what the heck, I thought, out of shape people can do this why not me? I can bicycle everyday 20 miles, why can I not run 3 miles?

I downloaded a couple of apps on my iPhone to help me track of my progress, or lack thereof. The app keeps track of the time, which is important in the beginning when you have to alternate between running and walking. I started the training in mid April. I stretched beforehand.  Week 1 Day 1 of the training program called for a 5-minute brisk walk for warm up (that was easy), and then 1 minute running and 1.5 minute walking (repeat 6 times). By the end of every 1-minute run I could hardly breathe. But I didn’t give up and I managed to complete the routine. By the end of the first week I was feeling stronger. Every training session is around 30 minutes long, including a 5-minute warm up and a 5-minute cool down.  Sometimes I had to deal with side stitches. I tried to figure out ways to phase those out. I realized that I shouldn’t eat anything for at least 4 hours before I went for a run, and I had to properly stretch my sides and torso. I also learned to avoid shallow breathing and tried for deeper breathing. Still, there were days when I would come home feeling like puking, and not be able to eat anything for hours afterwards. I generally trained on the bikepath. In the beginning my knees would hurt every time my feet would hit the pavement, but those aches wore off. I experimented with different angles of striking the ground, different angles of knee bends, different upper body posture. I tried a couple of different routes. The worst surface to run on is brick, the best dirt.

I found that overall I was doing well. Sometimes when the trainer’s voice in the app would say “start your cool down now” I would think “that was it?!”. The simple fact that some running training was easy for me and I could do more than what was required was both surprising and satisfying. It would put a smile on my face. Not every day went well. There was one day that I didn’t do well, I paused my running to walk when I shouldn’t have, I was feeling heavy and everything was difficult. The fact that it was pouring and I was dragging my rain-soaked cotton clothes was not of much help either. So I repeated that training routine the next day. The next day was dry and I managed to do it better and easier. Now I am in the 7th week, that is the penultimate week of the training. On Monday which was Day 1 of Week 7 I was supposed to jog for 25 minutes (or 2.5 miles) with no walking or stopping. I managed to do the 2.5 miles but my time was 30 minutes, so I need to improve my pace. But the fact that I jogged for 30 minutes with no walking or stopping feels awesome to me. Seven weeks ago I could hardly run for one minute straight.

That night my dreams were filled with scenes of me running. I was light on my feet, the terrain felt soft under my feet. I felt strong and happy. I could visualize new routes, turns, uphill, downhill stretches and everything was easy and possible. Back to reality, according to the training plan by the end of next week (week 8) I will be able to run 3.11 miles in 30 minutes. We shall see. But the truth is there is no possibility of failure. I will keep doing it until I get it right. I will keep doing it until I get a better time, until I do it smooth and graceful. I think I might be hooked on running.

You Don’t Fit

You don’t fit

In aisles too narrow for your hips

Should have turned sideways

Instead of bumping into things

Bruised body parts

Purple on white

Your head and torso do not fit in this

Awkwardly touching and avoiding

Exactly same polarity

I told you, you don’t fit

In clothes too tight for your tits.

The thing is that everything C says about M is wrong: he is not in the position she says he is, so he will not be affected by the meeting’s decision the way she is describing. C talks like she really knows what she’s talking about. When C goes to another office and she’s out of earshot, I tell M: “What C says is wrong. You are not in that position. Nothing of what she just said will happen.” He laughs and says he knows.  “Why didn’t you tell her”, I ask. “Oh, because she thinks she’s right”, he responds.

And this is something I don’t like. M didn’t bother to correct C. Now C will go on and tell the same thing to other people  in the same confident manner. And possibly spread the same incorrect thoughts and conclusions to others. Why does one not bother to correct someone is something I can’t understand. I can’t stand quiet when someone says something I know for a fact is wrong. I will correct them. Not because I like correcting people, but because I like people to know the true facts.

We all have opinions, we all have perceptions. Some of them are right, some of them are wrong. For instance, I always thought the singer of Beach House is a man, because it sounded like a man to me. Once in a conversation, somebody referred to the singer as a “she”, which prompted a back and forth, “it’s a she”, “no, it’s a he!”. In the end I googled and turned out I was wrong. It is nice to now know the singer is a woman and not make a full fool of myself the next time I’m talking about Beach House.

There are people, though, who do not like to be corrected. They take corrections as arguments or negativity. When something is objective (e.g. if it is 9 a.m. it is morning, it cannot be night) as opposed to subjective (e.g. mornings are great or mornings suck) there is really no argument to be made. Correcting people is not an argument. It’s continuous education, it’s continuous learning. When I say something with the wrong accent or use the wrong preposition (by the way, why is it so hard for me to use the right preposition?) I want to be corrected. Because this is the only way I will learn how to say things right. This is how I will be a better person, this is how I will not sound ignorant or stupid. I want to improve, I want to be better. All corrections are welcome.

I went to a bar that was supposedly owned by Jennifer Lopez. I ordered a beer that was on the list. The woman behind the bar was Trina of Trina’s Starlight. She entered the name of the beer in her iPhone, and said that it would take the delivery person one hour to get it to the bar.  ”One hour?”,  I asked surprised. “Yes, one hour”, she said “because they make it in Waltham. ” I was trying to understand the concept, so I asked her “So, if it was a Harpoon it would take less time, because they would bring it from South Boston?” “Yes”, she replied.

I drank another beer that they had, and I paid for it. Trina apologized for not having the beer I had ordered first, and said the next one would be on them. Unfortunately, I had to leave. I tried to find my jacket, but the place was getting very busy, so they had moved it around. I got a little anxious trying to find my jacket, but I located it on a planter. The crowd was now women and men in their 40s-50s.

I got home and a little while later the phone rang. It was Jennifer Lopez’s mother saying that Jennifer would like to talk to me. I said sure. Jennifer came to the phone and said she was sorry that they didn’t have the beer I had ordered. She sounded like she had a cold. She said that they had recently opened the bar, so she was looking for feedback from the customers. I told her that it wasn’t a big deal really, I had ordered something else and was happy with it. She asked about the staff and I told her they were all very nice and helpful. She said that I could go back to the bar sometime next weekend, and my beer would be on them, as an apology. I thanked her and hang up. I don’t think she had asked my name, so I wondered how they would know at the bar, I was the person who got to have a beer on J-Lo.  And then I realized it was bizarre that I was on the phone was J-Lo and she was asking for my feedback. I couldn’t wait to tweet about it.

The only question I have now is how did J-Lo get my number.

newly crowned, or just beheaded. King of the shady grass

and king of the dirty sheets. I sit in the middle

of the room in December

with the windows open, five pills, and a razor. My life long

secret. My killing power and my staying

power. When the erection fails, when the car almost hits

the divider, I’m king. I wave my hand over

the ants bubbling out of the sidewalk and make them all knights,

I sit at the dinner table and look into the deep

dark eyes of my television, my people. I tell them the kingdom

will be remembered in dreams of gold. I tell them

what was lost will be found. So I put on my black-white

checkered Vans, the exact pair of shoes

my older brother wore when he was still a citizen in the world,

and I go out, I go out into the street

with my map of the dead and look for him,

for the X he is,

so I can put the scepter back in his hands, take the red

cloak from my shoulders and put it around his, lift the crown

from my head and fit it just above his eyebrows,

so I can get down on one knee, on both

knees, and lower my face and whisper my lord, my master, my king.

‘Like Crazy’ is a quiet movie. What you hear is low-key dialogue, as opposed to loud explosions and cars crashing. Unfortunately, the quiet tone of the film was interrupted by the loud eating of the couple to my left. These people were eating their pop corn with remarkable vengeance. It was as if the pop corn had inflicted major pain upon them and it was revenge-time. They were attacking the paper bag like it was the last available food on earth. And do you know what happens when you attack a paper bag? It makes a loud noise. And do you know what happens when you are munching pop corn? Yes, that’s right, you are very loud and the person to your right is wishing you would choke on it.

At some point I thought my spell was successfully cast, as the guy started coughing. “Oh, wow, he is choking”, I thought to myself. But after gulping some soda down, he stopped. He resumed eating like a pig. It felt like it was the endless bag of pop corn. There was always more for these people to attack.

After an hour or so there was no more noise. They had successfully devoured everything. They stopped. I rejoiced. At last I was able to enjoy the movie with nothing to annoy me. At some point the guy from the loud couple got up to go out. In the process he managed to knock over everything in his way, as well as stomp on the pop corn paper bag he had placed on the floor. I just wanted to turn and yell at him “What the fuck is wrong with you?”. But I didn’t, I remained civil.

While the loud eater was out, the movie ended. This was a movie exploring a long distance relationship. It was a sweet and understated movie. The ending was particular emotional and touching. Not because something extraordinary happened, but because of the way it showed how the two characters had changed, and what the relationship had morphed into after a year. It was an ending fit to the overall mood, yet powerful. The boor had missed the ending, pretty much the best thing in the movie. Oh, sweet silent revenge.

Back in April of this year, a writer contacted me regarding one of my photographs. It was one I had taken during the snowstorm of January 2011, titled “SnowDay Love“. I was walking on the bike path towards Davis Square and there was this couple holding hands walking toward me. All was white with snow, the trees at Seven Hills Park forming a nice arch overhead. Everything was beautiful and I was really happy with the photograph.

The writer -Tom Weston of Boston – said they had discovered my photograph on flickr. He sent me a very nice email with a brief description of the book, as well as a draft of the conceptual design for the book cover asking for permission to use my photograph. This is how he described his book:

I can think of no one deserving of a wider audience than Lise Meitner, the protagonist of FISSION. Based on the life of the real Lise Meitner, it is the story of a woman who overcame sexism, fascism and two world wars to discover nuclear fission and spark the race for the atomic bomb. FISSION begins in 1906 Vienna, as Lise becomes the first woman to obtain a PhD in physics from the University. It follows her to Berlin where she rises to be the Director for Physics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and endures as a Jew in 1930’s Germany, before she flees the country, one step ahead of the Nazis. Exiled in Sweden, on a walk through the snow on Christmas day, Lise discovers nuclear fission. Following her discovery, she is lauded as Woman of the Year, but is ultimately betrayed and controversially denied the Nobel Prize. All of this plays out against the backdrop of the 20^th century: the fall of the Austrian Empire, two world wars and the atom bomb at Hiroshima. Lise’s story is packed with many famous people from that period: Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Adolph Hitler, Eleanor Roosevelt, President Truman and Kaiser Wilhelm II, to name a few.

Lise Meitner sounded like an exceptional woman with a very interesting story. I was intrigued. And as I mentioned Tom was very nice, he said that although they could not offer me monetary compensation (he is self-publishing), they would credit me in the copyright page and offer a complementary copy of the book once it is published.

Oh, yes, the inevitable lack of monetary compensation. Under other circumstances, I would say no. But I liked the story, Tom was very polite, and I was flattered that someone wanted to put a photograph of mine on their book cover. I replied to him granting permission to use the photograph under certain conditions: I will retain the copyright of the photograph, they will have to credit me in the copyright page, the permission is for the image to be used on the hard cover and paper back book covers only and only of those published by his publishing company, if they would like to use it for any additional material or purposes they would have to ask for permissions again, and finally I asked for three copies of his book singed by him once it is published.

Tom accepted, and offered three hard cover and three paper back copies of his book, all signed by him (there’s some compensation after all). After that he sent me a couple of quick email updates, and it was great to hear that ‘FISSION’ was published in August (it can be purchased from amazon here).  In early October I received my three copies, with a very nice thank-you note. I look forwarding to reading the book soon.

This is a photograph of the book:

And this is the original photograph:

]]> http://acidgalore.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/when-one-of-my-photos-appeared-on-a-book-cover/feed/ 0 acidgalore http://acidgalore.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/honk-festival-2011/ http://acidgalore.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/honk-festival-2011/#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:33:28 +0000 acidgalore http://acidgalore.wordpress.com/?p=1413 ]]> This past weekend HONK! invaded Somerville. It was the once-a-year crazy scene with awesome brass and marching bands flooding Davis Square. It was the time of the year when young and old glow joy. HONK! is the festival of activist street bands, and the crowd is invited to participate and show support for the message. What is the message? You can read it here, but by just looking around I could see support for democracy, peace, sharing, the environment. It’s also about participating in the fun, and that’s not really a tough one to do.

It was fun wandering around. By the end of the day Saturday the square was overcome with the smells of HONK!: sweat, multiple varieties of body odor, pot. And then Sunday was the great parade when the bands joined by various groups, march down Mass Ave from Davis Square in Somerville to Harvard Square in Cambridge. You see policemen, Mayors, cross-dressers, people on stilts, people-wheels (you know, like a hamster-wheel but with people instead of hamsters). You see weird, you see crazy, but it is all fun and it is all good. HONK! is just another thing that make me love my neighborhood.

I took some photographs, you can see the full set here.

I lingered outside the theatre until everyone went in. People were still picking up tickets from will call. Then a couple came, and a guy asked them if they needed one ticket, because he had one extra. The couple said OK, but when they asked for another ticket, the person at the booth told them it was sold out. “I don’t want to wait around 10″, the guy said. But he already had bought the other guy’s extra ticket. “I can take it off your hands”, I offered. “Oh, yeah? That’d be great”, he said, so I got my ticket.

I found a seat on the fourth row center. And nobody came to sit in front of me. No gigantic head of a seven-foot tall person in front of me. I am the woman who manages to find a ticket to a sold out movie and then watch it with unobstructed view. Sometimes.

Oh, and how was the documentary? It was good, but not great. It felt like there was something missing. It was lingering over things and situations that were already shown, like the band’s early days. I disliked the filmmaker’s presence in the documentary: the voice over in the beginning, the shot of himself doing an interview of the band for a magazine. It felt like a summary of their career –it’s been twenty years already– but the components (mainly highlights of their career) were put together in a somewhat disjointed way. The interviews come off as very polished. The shots from the live shows are great, the music is great. If you like Pearl Jam’s music, if you are a fan, you will definitely love it.

On Sunday, my last day there, I went to Staten Island. I took the Staten Island ferry from the Whitehall terminal in lower Manhattan. The ferry is free and quite big, it holds up to 4,450 passengers. It offers nice views of downtown and lower Manhattan, as well as the Statue of Liberty, all lovely. When we arrived at Staten Island, I got off the ferry and walked along the path by the water, and came to a memorial. It turned out it was Postcards, Staten Island’s 9/11 Memorial, honoring its residents who died that day. The vertical stones look like envelopes, and on the inside you could see the names of the honored. It was a bright, sunny day, the blue sky was decorated with white puffy clouds, and there was a nice breeze. The flags made nice contrast with the blue sky as they were blowing in the breeze. I kept walking until I reached the end of the path, and then decided to go back towards the terminal.

When I came to the Memorial again, I saw there were four or five people around. There are many benches around there, so I decided to sit for a little while and rest my tortured feet. I sat on one of the stone benches. I sat on one half of the bench, not exactly in the middle. All other benches were empty. A minute later a woman came and sat next to me. It was somewhat awkward, since she had to sit close to me to fit on the bench. And, of course, it was quite strange, since there were so many other benches around, empty. There was even an empty one right next to mine. I had the urge to stand up and go sit somewhere else. I kept thinking “seriously, lady, there are like 10 other empty benches around, and you come and sit right next to me? Why?”. Under normal conditions I would sigh, look at her irritated, and go sit somewhere else. But at that point, I was very tired, both emotionally and  physically, so I just sat there. I didn’t move. I tried to be less annoyed. I looked out to the water, while wishing she wouldn’t talk to me, as I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I was enjoying the silence.

The precious silence was broken, when the woman started humming. My first reaction was disbelief, “Seriously?”, I thought to myself. “What is next?” Everything was getting annoying again. Then a little bit later, I realized her humming was not irritating me. It was actually soothing. I did not recognize the tune, if any, but it was agreeable. It was like my private soundtrack for a beautiful day at the Postcards memorial on Staten Island. I went along, I was willing to accept what was happening. It was all slightly absurd, but it turned out pleasant.

A couple of minutes later a man came over, and started talking to the woman. In French. I do not know if it was Canadian French or French, I cannot tell the difference in the accent. They both looked like tourists, cameras hanging from their necks. They looked to be in their mid 50s. The man asked a question. As I do not speak French, I didn’t understand what he had asked. The woman ignored him and kept humming. A minute later the man asked something again, and the woman gave an abrupt answer, or at least that’s how it sounded. Then the man lodged himself on our bench, putting the woman in the middle between him and me. I’m sure we looked absurdly entertaining: at least ten benches around us empty, and we three people sitting on one bench, looking cramped. I was occupying one half of the bench, and they, the other half. I made a slight move, one inch to my right to give them more room. The dialogue between them consisted of short sentences, then silence. Three minutes later they left.  “Well, that was weird”, I thought to myself. I was glad I had the bench back to myself.

I looked at the path, and there was a woman pushing a stroller talking on her cellphone coming towards my direction. There was a little black poodle with a tennis ball in his mouth walking along with her. The dog came right up to me, and placed his tennis ball right next to my foot. I had my legs somewhat stretched out in front of me, so that my legs, the ground and the vertical surface of the bench were forming a triangle. The dog wedged itself in that triangle under my legs. He was moving his little body pressing against my legs, while wagging his tail. Was he asking to be petted? I didn’t pet him. I smiled. The woman called the dog, and in an instant he was gone.

I found both incidents slightly strange. A woman and a dog demonstrating something that looked like a need to be close to me, to be around me. I felt like some sort of magnet in that peculiar quiet setting. What had attracted them to me? Earlier someone had commented on my unwillingness to touch and be close. Did I look lonely? Did I send out come-close-to-me signals? I felt quite the opposite, I felt like I wanted to be on my own, alone and think. Perhaps I looked sad, because I felt sad.

There is a sense of irony in having strangers briefly cancel the alienation from people I was feeling that day. An abbreviated connection took place. For an instant it felt like a random woman and a random dog wanted to reassure me that there would always be someone around, I would not be alone. It was good to know.