on running, boredom, and survival

jamie, mari, andrew, and nora at the 2011 resolution run 5k & polar bear dive

i recently told my friend nora that running was boring. when i said this, i was surrounded by runners. in fact, i myself was running. there was some serious irony dashing about.*

we were threading our way through a pack of new year's day marathoners, racing toward a chilly finish--a plunge in lake washington. the sun was shining bright, but the temp never broached the freezing mark, and so runners would periodically wave their arms in the air and cry, "ice! ice! ice!" as a warning to the surging crowd behind. there were even doughnuts. 

but i didn't mean that i was bored at that moment or even in that race. the brilliant sunshine, the excited banter of our running cadre, and the anticipation of our impending polar bearization all added up to a fine level of happy engagement. i simply meant that the motion of foot, foot, breath, foot, foot, breath, foot, foot, breath, foot, breath, foot, foot, breath, foot, foot, breath, foot, foot, breath, foot, look left, breath, foot, look right, foot, breath, look left, foot, breath, look forward, foot, foot, breath, foot, foot, breath, foot, foot, breath, foot, foot, breath, foot, breath, foot, foot, breath, lift shirt to brow, foot, wipe brow, breath, foot, foot, breath, foot, foot, breath, foot, foot, spit, foot, big breath, foot, foot is dull.**

yet it turned out that the 5k was fun, but not because the running was fun; not because i found a head-foot groove where the world slipped away and there was just me and the motion, just me and some kind of meditative trance; not because i rejoiced in the burning of calories or the achievement of a new personal best. the running that day (and in the days since) was not boring in the same way that this blog entry may not be boring. because if you got this far, you probably know me; when you read this, you can probably hear my voice or imagine me making the wacky facial expressions i inherited from my dad--the arching eye brow, the wrinkled forehead--and so it's not that you're reading a well-crafted thought piece or an explosive, jaw-dropping page-turner (this is, after all, about running), it's that we are connected.

and if i am to run, i need connection. i need something outside the self and the path and my feet. i need ice patches and obstacles. i need the promise of a mind-bending dip in the lake. if i am to run, if i am to press on, if i am to run this race where it takes me, then i need my friends and i need my family. i need you running beside me.***


xoxoxoxoxoxo



here's a youtube clip of me playing alexi murdoch's "orange sky," which expresses a similar sentiment to the one i concluded with in this post--i even adjust the final lyric to make it more personal--though murdoch sings of brothers and sisters "standing by," not running beside:
 

xoxoxoxoxoxo

* i went to a philosophy colloquium today and perhaps i should have asked our prof about irony. it's a word that, despite my english major roots, i hesitate to use. in fact, when i come upon questionable uses of the word irony in my editing career, i tend to avoid correcting writers, instead opting for something more wishy-washy like, "please confirm that this usage of irony matches your personal understanding of the word. for more reference, see the oatmeal." yet in this blog entry i use it with abandon, even combining it with a bad pun.

** the dull sentence of a thousand nouns is inspired by an essay from lorrie moore's collection birds of america, in which moore has two consecutive pages of the word "ha." i read somewhere that moore used well over one thousand has.

*** this wasn't just an excuse to write a lame, heartwarming metaphor about life being like running or to highlight my stellar ability to adapt two-chord pop songs to the piano. i've actually been running several times a week since that new year's eve marathon, and as the post suggests, i'm running with friends. surprisingly, running and chatting with friends who run at a similar pace is quite the opposite of boring.

whitney and pedro!

whitney and pedro are married!

here are the photos i took while in stockton for their wedding: http://picasaweb.google.com/the17pointscale/200908WhitPedroWedding?authkey=Gv1sRgCMfS4OCIpuDgGw&feat=directlink.

good 17 points scale news!

at the request of my reader, i have prepared a little bit more content for the 17 point scale, at least 8 posts in fact!


[photo by andrew david. "we shall be happy again!" somewhere in the cascades, wa.]

tribute to the girls of 79th

beth's house is breaking up.

after a mildly stressful rental search, mari and beth are headed east toward greenlake. they have found a beautiful new house (which i've yet to see) and fun new roommates. nora, a sometime-roommate, will be heading to california (or maybe colorado?) later this summer. and tomorrow, whitney (seen below in red socks) will be shipping her soccer skills south to california for good.

i thought i'd write a post to commemorate whitney's leaving or the disbandment of the house, but instead i'd like to share some advice from getgirls.com: "there's a rule about dating women with a roommate....this rule is that you must also make a good impression on her roommate."

this rule is general knowledge in the kingdom of men, and we don't need "the world's leading source for seducing women" to give us a head's up. still, i've heard (and seen) horror stories about guys and their girlfriends' girlfriends. for example, during the years right after college, i lived in a series of cramped, messy apartments--at one time, we squeezed three guys into a single nasty room--yet despite our ugly abodes, one of my roommates preferred to hang out with his s.o. at our place, not because it had some mystical appeal or because he loved us so much, but because of his relationship with her roommates.

in contrast, i'm a regular at beth's house on 79th; i genuinely like all of her roommates and consider them good friends.

during a recent work lunch, some friends and i chatted about dinners and executions; we pondered what we would eat for our last meal on death row--steaks & ribs, pizza & beer, exotic curries and a bottle of egon muller riesling--each listing was a more wonderful gluttony than the one before.

now, regardless of what we may think of california, it's probably a bit ridiculous (and morbid) to venture any kind of comparison between whitney's last meal as a washingtonian and the smörgåsbord of delicacies my work friends dreamed up for a final night in the joint. but forgive me, i can't resist. indeed, i find it rather interesting that we ate sadza, a simple shona food that mari imported from zimbabwe. sadza tastes great, but it's rather simple; it doesn't set the taste buds on fire or make the stomach purr, and i would be a little surprised if it were whitney's favorite food.

but sadza ignites community.

the kitchen crowds as people gather to help prepare the meal. someone grabs a great pot and dumps pound after pound of corn meal inside. the pot is large, they say, because you never make just a little sadza. and when it's ready, the main dish is a finger food, the ultimate evolution of the potluck. grubby fingers go at it, glopping the sadza in delicious tomatoey-onion sauce; everyone is united in their forklessness.***

yes, sadza is a fitting end to the era. beth, mari, nora, and whitney's decision to prepare sadza seems emblematic of their heart for community (also see this post from 2005), of their friendly openness to people like me. and this sadza approach to life worked.

indeed, it has inspired phrases that you'd see in yearbook scribblings: fun parties (which i used to consider an oxymoron), caroling, talking about guys (errrrrrr...perhaps i mean listening to talk about guys), taking trips, eating too many vegetables, performing sufjan, watching lost....

you know, getgirls.com is right: it pays to be friends with your girlfriend's roommates.

addendum

i was also hoping to say some words about whitney. i think we'll all miss whitney's honesty, her enthusiasm, her encouragement, her funny mannerisms, and her devotion to her friends, and we know she'll settle in well down in cali.

(the links are to other posts about whitney and to other posts with whitney pictures).


the s.o. "soccer skillz" seattle, wa. [PS these are very, very closely cropped pictures; thus the poor quality]

***well, almost everyone. as much as i love this metaphor, there are those that choose to wield silverware, and they don't spoil the community by doing so. some may think them stubborn or contentious, but really they're just adding their personal flare to the event.****

****in case you couldn't tell, i eat sadza with a spoon.


please comment if you have other thoughts or yearbook-like comments on the girls of 79th or whitney.

the quiescent nerd myth

as many of you know, i spent the last 3 years working as a research coordinator for the COGS, a multi-site study of schizophrenia. then, earlier this summer, a research angel came to relieve me of my COGS protocols, scheduling duties, and crashing database. i was delighted. but although i expected ms. sara goodnow to do a dynamite job in my place, i never expected her to be such a valuable asset to the 17 point scale. indeed, it turns out that sara bowls a 120, heralds from rural new york, and is dating a doctoral engineering student. these attributes make her unequivocally qualified as an informant in my latest blogging pursuit, an autobiographical biography of the other andrew (or something like that).

the felicity of sara was revealed at an off-site lunch on an otherwise gray day. seeking respite from another slice of hospital pizza, sara and i tumbled from sean's honda prelude into a philly cheesesteak dive on airport way. we made our way to the counter and pondered the menu. behind the cash register, a woman fixed me with an icy stare--apparently this wasn't the city of brotherly love. i mumbled an order. she frowned and thrust her open palm toward me. scrambling for my wallet i promptly forgot whether i had ordered the medium or large. "goose-chicken," i thought, "i really would prefer the medium," but she was already taking sean's order. "yikes." if this wasn't philly, then where was the characteristic seattle friendliness?

afraid for my food, i swallowed my curiosity. things were getting grim. in retrospect, i suppose that meant we were ripe for a miracle. after all, we tend to notice the light when it's dark not in the daylight. when our sandwiches arrived, we discussed our evening plans. a momentary burn in my throat tore my attention from the conversation. hmmmmmm, horse radish. after a swig of water, i looked up to hear sara talking of engineers, "i don't know," she drawled, "they're just really quiet...maybe it's a brainy awkwardness...."

as sara's words trailed off, my mind snapped into blog mode. yes, i thought, whether they be english profs, computer geeks, or [fill in a random intellectual stereotype, e.g., engineers], brainiacs seem to lack the natural rhythms of everyday conversation. chatting with smart folks is a bit like my morning commute. you crawl sluggishly forward, hit an open stretch after the aurora bridge, take the harbor island exit into gridlock, and then escape into the steady streets of beacon hill. start, stop, start, stop. such conversations are intriguing yet strained.

and, until recently, i would have lumped the other andrew into this category. after all, i rarely watched him interact with others, and our conversations tended to hover in a state of friendly, well-meaning awkwardness. but in the last months, i've realized that this impression of andrew is more likely an indicator of how i respond to people that i perceive as brainy than a true picture of the other andrew. perhaps it's a bit of what sociologists like to call the self-fulfilling prophecy. i think, "wow, that person is wicked smart," and then begin to waiver in my conversational confidence. i flip the censorship switch and suddenly all of my questions, all of my odd quirky perspectives, all of my conversation kindling are deemed irrelevant; they are turned to an invisible mush. perhaps then my ineptitude makes smart person uncomfortable, and, somehow sensing that i expect them to be incapable of anything but dull nerd-speak, they too stall.

if this sounds crazy, consider the following evidence from our case study: (a) over the last few months i have learned that andrew is surprisingly quite gregarious; he laughs, he quips, he speaks thoughtfully; indeed, he seems perfectly comfortable in conversation; (b) actually, my first point has so convinced me that i don't feel the need to continue with this list.

so "where do we go from here? the words are coming out all weird. where are you now when i need you...?"



andrew david. "laughing at andrew's camera skills and blogging troubles" mount pilchuck, wa.
539 to go.

i'm almost back...

[10/22 - i'm still almost back. my freelance editing is finished, the deadline for my image update blurb was extended, and i've finished 24; there's no excuse to be gone much longer....]

...but in the meantime, i'm following nora's advice and posting a goofy picture of mari. nora also suggested that i have my readers (e.g., nora) send me other unusual pictures of ms. becker to post. and don't worry, although this photo may make the 17 point scale ombuds(wo)man seem threatening, at the moment she's out of town, so you should be safe.


andrew david. "mari growl" mt pilchuck, wa

623 to go

africa [1] and/or halloweeen

while not officially recognized by the UN, the continent of africa operates a small satellite in the greenwood area of seattle. for whatever reason, you won't find this northern outpost on many maps. nonetheless, the daily heapings of sadsa, funky drum beats, and celebration of everything african should make it relatively easy to find. at one time, this african enclave (in the person of mari) even crafted a beacon in order to attract fellow (in some sense) africans (these days, however, the most visible landmark is apparently a big tree, but nevermind that):
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1. Andrew David 'Inspiration' Seattle --
2. Andrew David 'The dark continent' Seattle -- as seen in #1, this is actually a picture of a pumpkin sculpture by mari. i arrived at this title at 1am (after many Markian distractions kept me from my all-important task of posting these pictures) because of joseph conrad's 'heart of darkness.' i'm pretty certain that somewhere in that little book he uses that phrase; however, i just can't seem to remember if he's talking about africa or south america. oh, well. the major impetus for this title is the blatant paradox of a glowing dark continent. i'm writing this rather long explanation in order to dispel suscpicions that the title was born out of some subconscious racism. and also its 1am.

i could (and probably will) say much more about the odd shadow that africa manages to cast here in the puget sound, but i was actually hoping that this post could somehow segue into halloweeen. but alas, all i have left to say is, 'here are my halloweeen pictures!' #3 is my pumpkin.
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3. Andrew David 'Jack' Seattle -- this is a pic of my coolest pumpkin ever
4. Andrew David 'Symbol' Seattle -- this is a pic of mari's brother's pumpkin
5. Andrew David 'Murder Is So Dreadful, But Someone Has To Do It' Seattle

and finally, because beth might not like #5, here's a cuter, less threatening pic:
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6. Andrew David 'Beth XI' Seattle -- this is a pic of my coolest Queen Anne picture ever

pics that aren't that great but apparently conjured memories for beth...

Andrew David 'Some of us were Present on that Day' Portland


see later updated post of this picture


Andrew David 'None of us were Present that Day' Portland


Andrew David 'A bit of History without a Tripod' Boston.



*Andrew David 'Sugary Pretzel Hands' Seattle (Zoo).