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Category Archives: Musings
One from the archives
I am horrible at archiving.
I’ve neglected it over the past year, or two-ish. So, with time on my hands I am reorganizing the archives and updating them. I found this photo just now and still love it. Sometimes photos need to grow on me and other times I like them right away, but later I don’t care much for them. However, there are the occasional photographs that stick.
This is a screen used to print T-shirts. I guess I like it so much because I find dark humor in something so dirty yet it is for the Ministerio de Salud de La Nación (Argentina Health Ministry). This photo was taken in 2008 at the Comedor Los Pibes. They would often produce T-shirts for national government organizations and for their own group to wear during political rallies.
BA Marathon 2011
I didn’t run the Buenos Aires marathon this year. I feel kind of sad about that actually. Watching the runners go by me at kilometer 37, some struggling, others trotting by tall and confident. I can’t explain the energy that comes from being in a herd of runners. It is energy all aimed at the same goal. The Finish. Time is rather inconsequential for most. The goal is the finish. It is simply amazing because I know of no other ‘thing’ that focuses so much energy on one collective goal. I wish I knew how to keep that feeling present in my daily work. It is too easy to get lost on the course then. I need to be surrounded by marathon runners, right.
Getting to 42k is different for each person. My little sister, for example, can cruise most of the course, but I can’t imagine what it takes her to finish as fast as she does (she smokes it). What mind games she plays. I know my own though. I was trying to figure out one day how to explain what it feels like toward the end of a marathon. When you’re close enough, but still far enough and there is nothing but a head game left. So today when I was out waiting for the lead woman to pass us at kilometer 37, I shot the photo below. This is what kilometer 37 feels like: lots of road. Still 5k to go, 37k down. A race in a race and the only race that matter is the one between your feet and your head.
Hmmmm, Chicago 2012? Sounds good. And my respect and congratulations to all of the runners.
The Long Road
POV: Five minutes in the life of a street
Five minutes in the life of a street in Bancalari, Partido de Tigre, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina
on the strangeness of running
Racing the Bolder Boulder 2010
I’ve had this in my head for quite a long time. Years I could argue. So, perhaps it is time to get it out. If I can. I choose to write as I think. In unfinished bits and phrases. In grammatically incorrect sentence structure. Jumbles of words. No real editing to speak of.
Of-course this would be better if I could actually write while running. You see, that is the point. I think clear. Crystal. I solve world problems. I can even do math (inside joke for those of you that have watched me divide a dinner check. Painful. Very painful).
Any distance runner will tell you once they get over the insanity of running. Pain. Distance. There is a high. Adrenaline kicks in. Mind wanders. I feel a hum. It is when the atoms, ions and bits that make up my body start to vibrate at the pace of the world around me. Not the city, not the cars, not the other people. I’m talking about the world. The planet. I feel the planet hum. No drug could ever get me there. Running does. Not all the time. That is part of the problem. Got to keep running to get to the hum. If not today, tomorrow.
Once I strike. Once the hum takes over, my mind is clear. My body is running. My body is propelled. Synapses in my brain have taken over the movements. I’m left largely out of it now. The rest of the gray matter has room to move. Room to think. Did I eat too much today. Should I have called my contact again. Would that be too pushy. Am I happy. What can I do to be happier. Am I any good.
I didn’t say they were all good thoughts. Just thoughts. But the strangeness of running is the ability to propel your body over a distance. Your body is unwilling at first. Then complacent. Then eager. Negativity enters the brain. It is filtered through the heart. Pounded out by the feet.
It is a washing cycle. Cleaning is important. I can only deal with so much clutter. Running pounds it out. The extra crap. The crap in general.
And what is left? Clean space. Clean board. I can write whatever I want on it. My body knows what my mind does not always accept. If I can run a 10k at over 5,200 feet and feel strong. Like it even. Look forward to doing it again next year. Then I can get through tomorrow. If I can accept, that at mile 18 in a marathon, I am a bitch. I hurt. I’m tired. But I’m not going to stop. I will finish no matter how slow I run, then it doesn’t matter how long it takes me to reach my goals. I will.
My feet. Eager and nervous to race.
If I can accept that some days I run fast and other days I run slow, but the only constant in that phrase are the words ‘I run’… well, I don’t know what that means yet. But I run. I’ll be starting the training for a marathon shortly, so maybe I’ll even figure it out soon.
That is the strangeness of running. Turn off the brain and go. Then let it wander. Pound out the crap. Leave space for something else. Run.
Feliz Año Nuevo
A new year, new possibilities, new beginnings, new experiences…
Celebrating on the terrace of a friend’s apartment in Buenos Aires, we kicked off the new year with an old ritual. Each person wrote three things they’d like to accomplish, see come to pass, or just their wishes, on a piece of paper. Under a full moon, we took the papers and lit them on fire to release those three things to the universe.
Then, we went back to enjoying the fireworks exploding in every direction over Buenos Aires.
Feliz 2010. Que tengan un año de paz y amor.
Photo by Beatrice Murch
Ode to Christmas
Merry Christmas and many Winter Solstice Blessings.
Just a small bit of holiday spirit to share.
"Taxi," she yells across the plaza
A police officer guards the area and diverts traffic after an overheating taxi burst into flames on Pueyrredon and Mitre in the Plaza de Miserere yesterday. The flames also caught nearby advertising sign on fire, before the fire department arrived. The car was totally destroyed.
You know it is starting to get hot in Buenos Aires when the taxis start bursting into flames. Temperatures were around 32 degrees C, or about 90 degrees F.
After having lived in Southern California and photographed the Badwater Ultramarathon through Death Valley in July (temps. 125-130 degrees F), 90 as a number does not sound too bad. However, take that number and multiply it by the amount of sweaty people on the subte or bus, add in a tad more humidity and you arrive at one hot city.
But that’s okay. It is gets worse in January.
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