Running

I like to run. It was only about three years ago that I decided to stop using the treadmills at the gym and actually go outside, mostly along the lakefront path. I started going from the Argyle underpass the totem pole (in Lakeview) and then back. Eventually, I went to Belmont later all the way to Fullerton and back. Sometimes I will go to the overpass near North Avenue if I want to round out my mileage to 10.

On one particular night about a year or so ago, I ran all the way past Navy Pier and back. I think that was a total of 14 to 17 miles. I lost track. The upside is the sense of accomplishment. The downside is the hallucinating that goes on. Well, maybe hallucinating is too strong of a word. I was running past the long stretch of beaches just south of North Avenue and I was so zone out, tired really, that I start imagining things, as if the beach and was the desert and I was crossing it. For my tired and aching feet, it may as well have been.

My main run that I do twice a week (sometimes three) is from Argyle underpass to Theatre On The Lake (North Avenue).

Running outdoors have given me more motivation to get out of the house and be with nature. Of course, running through the Argyle District to reach the lakefront. People usually don't give me trouble, but it does surprise me how many homeless people will ask for change as I am running past them with only shoes, shorts and a t-shirt on. Sometimes there are more obstacles then I prefer. The smell of piss and pools of spilled beer and rotting fish in the dumpsters can be enough, but despite that, it makes reaching the lakefront path all the more rewarding. I am greeted by towering trees and a nice gravel path.

The path from Argyle to the golf course (between Montrose & Diversey) is not too exciting, but when it gets busy (as it usually does) around the Belmonth area, I really look forward to it on the return leg of my runs.

Animals sightings are always fun--the brown, red, black and brown squirrels are common, but it's when I see a coyote that it gets exciting. They usually stop, look, decide I am not tasty enough, and then trot along looking for, say, rabbits or other delectibles.

There are a few "avenues" of straight and wide path that is pleasing, but I think entering the part that resembles a winding grove with a canopy of trees just before south Belmont Harbor is the best.

Belmont Harbor itself can be lovely. Last winter, thousands of small pieces of broken ice sounded like wooden wind chimes. It was extraordinarily beautiful to hear.

The run between Belmont and Theatre On The Lake (Fullerton) varies. Sometimes it is crowded, other times not. The grade can be challenging depending on my energy level and some of the runners can get competitive with each other.

The only danger with running are the bikers with their touring bikes. And I will be say it bluntly, they act as if they own the path. They lack courtesy, often fail to slow down at points that are clearly marked for the safety of others. They will snarl and yell if you do anything that threatens their slowing down (they ride very fast). In other words, yes, they can be a bit of a nuisance. And like the Canadian Geese pooping on the path, they only seem to increase in numbers. That's the downside of running along the lakefront.

One of my favorite things about the lakefront is the lake itself. I like to study the color difference between the sky and water. It's never quite the same on any given day. The cloud formations and colors can be quite wonderful. I am a painter and I've learned more about light and color from my observations with running (I think) than I had in art school.

Physically, it's helped me a lot. If I resist Oreos (not easy to do!), I can shed wait fairly quickly after only a few runs. I try to challenge my pace and keep my heartrate up for good solid cardio workouts. I also enjoy slowing it down to concentrate on my form and familiarizing myself with the ground and the way my feet negotiate its contours. A good stretch before, at Theatre On The Leg (half way point) and when I get home, I am good about, although sometimes I am prone to underdo it or overdo it, depending on my mood and/or energy.

Lastly, there is a thing called bilateral stimulation, in which both hemispheres of the brain are activated and engaged by the left/right movements of walking or running, and often creative thoughts will spontaneously occur and/or a good (or better) mood will come on during bad days. But overall, it has a remarkable effect -- like a happy drug?

But yeah, running. I'm glad I took it up. I find very rewarding and I enjoy the time.

On Chik-Fil-A and gay marriage

There's a new Chik-Fil-A fast food chain operation opening on State and Lake streets in the Loop. Last Thursday I was walking through Daley Plaza and there was a line of people. They pass out a lot of free samples around the Loop, so I had a look. It was Chik-Fil-A passing out free chicken sandwiches. I walked on. But I crossed the street and had to admit to myself that as much as I hate Chik-Fil-A because of their hate politics, I wanted to try one of their sandwiches. I was told they were not very good sandwiches and, well, I just had to find out for myself.

I found Chik-Fil-A sandwiches pretty consistent with their hostility towards gays: too salty and served inexplicably with a pickle.

The sandwich tasted like the cafeteria food they use to feed us in our college dorm or something you'd get at a 7-11. The bun was squishy and tasted a little doughy and undercooked (or maybe that was from moisture in the foil bag the sandwich came in. The sandwich had way too much salt--sure to make even a strapping young lad's blood pressure blow through the roof! The sandwich was pretty tasteless, but in a way, I don't mind it.

How such mediocre and bland tasting ever became so successful is beyond me! Here's my theory of  why I believe Chik-Fil-A makes such a public stink about how much they hate gays:

The don't have to pay for their advertising and because the package it as controversy and attach themselves to the flow of media--like a leech onto a fish. The media goes along with it because the they use the controversy of their anti-gay message as a news item. Moreso, both parties hide behind the pretense of religious beliefs. Our country has such fervent passion about religious rights, that it becomes an enabler.

Will I ever walk into a Chik-Fil-A? No, not if I can help it. Then again, I am surprised I even bother to try the damn sandwich. I believe they are a shameful and pathetic business worth avoiding.

Tryin' To Hear The Roar

"Listen to the roar!! ... can you hear the roar??" There's this Oklahoma weather guy on a YouTube video who keeps sayiing this over and over. He's driving me crazy because, no, I can't hear the roar because he won't shut up or turn down the car radio. It's a little frustrating.

So what do you do when you want to be a Storm Chaser, in your car with the video recorder on your dashboard, and then you realize you've come across an uber-deadly and violent F5 tornado. You can't turn around. You have to drive into Joplin and enter Hades On Earth. Look what happened to this Jeff Piotrowski and his wife Kathryn...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfdK6H9d6J0

 

A few weeks later he is interviewed. Clearly the guy is forever changed and traumatized from the experience.

 

* * *

I have been spending too much time on YouTube watching tornado videos. There is one of the father driving toward the Moore, OK elemtary school where his son attends. He is a block away from the tornado. It is extraordinary footage, not because of what natural phenomenon going on around him, but that he seems to be capturing an image mirrored back to him of his own helplessness, heart-sickness and grief. There are other videos of people getting that close to a tornado.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iuGipbmneY

The Tornado Storm Chasers are an obnoxious lot in pursuit of recording these storms. The videotaping is made from simple, shakey cameras--not the high-end gear you'd might expect from so-called professionals. The throw around jargon like "vortices" as a pretense of some kind of scietific knowledge. One storm chaser even groaned because the funnel cloud never made it "on the ground". What person would be thrilled by such an unfortune?

Some of the Storm Chasers seem to use emotionaless, blanket expressions they throw in along with their jargon. Expressions like "God be with the victims" sometimes comes across as an excuse for the vague voyeurism. But while some of these deadly twisters are destroyed many homes and the lives of adults and schoolchildren, yet the Storm Chasers are thrilled by the event to turn back. It is strange. The videos feel exploitative.

Undoubtly, the best storm chasers are a different kind of storm chaser. They are ones who were up close simple because they were at home and caught a tornado roaring through their neighborhood.  [Watch this in high defnition and plug in your headphones!]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iuGipbmneY

The Oak Lawn Tornado Of 1967

[Above: a photo from the 1967 Oak Lawn tornado which touched down 3 blocks from my childhood home]

April 21, 1967 around 5 pm, my father came home for his dinner break (he was an Oak Lawn police officer on 2nd shift). The skies turned a glowing, putrid green color and perhaps not unincoincidentally, like the skin of the Wicked Witch of Oz. My mother started banging on the bathroom door for my father to let me, my mother and two siblings in and climb in the tub. Not a lot bothered my father, not even tornado sirens. So we climbed in the tub and held on. My mother said it sounded like a freight train. I roared through town only about 3 blocks away. Now I was only 2 years old, so I really don't remember much of it, but each spring we'd get storms like this--the thunderstorm, the sudden stillness, gray-green colored sky, and hail. And my mother would get very worried, upset and anxious.

It was a monster--an F4. Very destructive, but skipped around alot, so it didn't spend a lot of time on the ground doing the kind of damage it could. The tornado nicked the corner of the high school pool where I would even devote 4 years of my life to being in so I could swim competitively.

I was one of those kids that was both in awe and terrified (in a real and also amusement kind of way) of big thunderstorms.

* * *

Watching the tornado videos and interviews, often people will speak of them as if they are some hellish monster with a conscious and evil will. They will yell out, "In God's name, be gone!". I am somewhat amused by this. When I watch the tornado videos, I do not see dark creatures tearing up the landscape. No, not at all.

Actually, I see them as a kind of machine or engine--true to the freight train sound they make, and not at all anykind of attributable characteristic of something like, say, good or evil. It's a vertical wind tunnel. Even hearing the term "monster tornado" when describing a huge F5 tornado, sounds a little too much like projecting some highly-charged emotionally-based human characteristic on, well, a basic natural phenomemon.

What I do find interesting is that scientists are still not 100% sure of how they are formed.

Over the past week I've watch enough YouTube videos now. Tornado videos get boring. When I came across the ones of first Storm Chasers arriving into Joplin, I had had enough.

When I Was Tex

 

This is a photo of where I once worked in Houston, Tx. The incredibly large 230,000 sq. ft. space once housed the 'hypermarket' French-based retailer Auchan.

What is a hypermarket, you ask? Well, a hypermarket is like a very large and well-stocked Target. It has everything (or at least in theory) everything you could possibly need and find in place. Sort of like "one stop shopping" on steroids. You could buy things such as fresh shrimp, a roaster chicken, a bag of Oreos, a VCR, some new clothes, fresh sod, fresh baked bread, a box of motor oil, a ready-to-assemble coffee table or lawn edging. For some, the concept was wonderful. For others it was just too much or bizarre even.

I will be frank and say working there (the Houston location) was largely unpleasant. You could probably tell from my saying that that is also largely an understatement. It was hell, more or less. For many reasons other than an utter lack of interest, the store's upper management couldn't have assigned me a worse position. I wonder what would've happened if I was able to have articulate a more convincing plea. I had just picked up my life and my high hopes and within two weeks, I was stuck with it. There was no option for my returning to Chicago either.

I spent the little free time I had in the Montrose area (the cultural area), stocked up on art supplies and began putting together a graphic design portfolio. I had interviewed with Schlumberger (a dream come true) and started putting a new plan together. I went for sweaty mountain bike rides a lot (the humidity!)  and saw a lot of armadillos and ice houses. I improved my guitar playing. I enjoy having an inground swimming pool. I met Andrea there.
Needless to say, within a year I (along with nearly the rest of the exhausted and bitter Chicago management team) returned to the Illinois and re-settled ourselves. Incredibly, three of my car's gears (1st, 3rd, and Reverse) went out just before I left and I drove--and made it all the way back-- to Chicago driving on only 2nd and 4th. I never quite appreciated "reverse" until I no longer had it. Maybe that sums up my Houston experience: No Reverse.

Here is what Auchan looks like today. It's a good enough photo essay on how Auchan's bad managerial karma caught up with it.



For those hot summer early evening bike rides, here is what I had for my mixes that I listened to on my cassette walkman (remember, this was 1991). I still listen to these records and still love them:

The Replacements - Don't Tell A Soul
Happy Mondays - Thrills, Pills And Bellyaches
The Charltans UK - Some Friendly
Ride - Nowhere
Deacon Blue - Fellow Hoodlums

I really don't feel the future unfolding in real time, but when I look back (as when I'm looking at this photo) it really does seem to have the feel of a hurricane force and just blows the past away. I see the halcyon highlights of sunlight around the building and it reminds me that tommorrow always promises something better. I took awhile to see evidence of it, but Chicago definitely had that waiting for me when I returned.

Life Beyond Sports And Music

I google'd JB's old online moniker and came across a blog he was keeping. It was after awhile that I realized he wrote it believing nobody would ever read it. It was like a non-so private journal or diary, a non-private private slice of cyber world to place thoughts, much like I'm doing here. The melonoma that JB had (in 1996) when he was 21, came back full force when he was 31. He was dead at 34. The time when I knew him best when I myself was 34, which I believe to be the (or a) peak year of life. I don't know his family or partner, and I imagine they are unaware of his blog. It's strange that it's still up and may up for a long time with perhaps my being the only person aware of it.

Someone had streamed the complete new Daft Punk 'Random Access Memories' album online  There are a couple of great tunes on it. Basically, Nile Rodgers old Chic-style guitar playing is all over the record, and it sounds very much like an updated Chic album

Speaking of music:

My family gave everyone in it two choices: music or sports. It's strange because anything else just wasn't on the map at all, as if supporting something they had no idea about, was way too uncomfortable for them. My mother was always pushing music and my father was always pushing sports.  I only pursued music because a) I could do it and had natural talent for it and b) I thought they would finally give me admiration and approval. But m family could say: we want you to climb Mt. Everest and then we'll approve of you and admire you. And then I go out and climb Mt. Everest and come home having done just that and they would say, "oh, that's nice. Pass the butter please...". Or maybe they would just throw the butter at you because they hated when I enjoyed myself and my life and being young.

If I had said, gee, I'd like to become a lab researcher, a rocket scientist, or a civic engineer, they would have absolutely no idea how to support that or give encouragement even if they really didn't understand what that was. Entertainment is easier for them--which is, music and sports. You learn how to do something and you perform what you learned in some sort of get up or uniform. It's not... uhm, a rocket science.

The Briggs-Meyer test repeatedly tells me that I should be in the field(s) that I already am in: art and psychology. Well, I've read enough psychology and understand it a fair amount that I have probably in some way earned a bachelor's degree in it. Another area they recommend is literature. I've read enough literature to have earned a masters degree. So there.

I am a better athelete than I am a musician. With that said, I think I will go for my 10 mile run soon as I sign off here. More to come...

Time (backwards and forwards)

I'm turning 48 next week. That's all fine, but in my mind I'm still, er, 'forever 21', as if every late halycon afternoon were eternal and I could go recline under a tree and read Bronte or Emerson and never worried about the future. And the future arrived like slow moving clouds. A quarter of a century later and I go to the mirror and I see late adulthood coming on. It's a little depressing. I look to some friends in their 70's and note how good and healthy for themselves. They are still engaged and interested in life. Mitch, the 92-year old man near my house, spends much of his time carving wooden birds and gardening. Maybe his halycon afternoons when he was a young man were filled of that.

I was listening to Modern English's 'After The Snow'. Besides the single "I Melt With You", which is now inseparable from the 1980s in pop culture, but the rest of the moody, austere record does it for me. Right now I am listening to Tycho's playlist online. Great stuff. Would I have listened to music like this when I was young and discovering Modern English for the first time? Yes, I believe so.
I started a painting last night and was thrilled with the idea of it. I continued working on it today but something was lost. I think I felt more excited that I was able to let go of my usual, more predictable way of painting. Maybe it was too much. It evolved faster than I could get there. I removed as much paint as I could (an interesting image from removing the paint) and put two fresh coats of gesso over it and will start again.

It's hard to believe, but it's been 10 years since my trip to Paris. It was the first time I ever ventured outside of the United States. I had no idea what I was doing, but that unknown sense of adventure and risk made it seem even more thrilling. I taught myself as much colloquial French as I could. Sadly, when I got there, it was easier to navigate than I ever dreamed. In ways, it was like the USA in an alternate universe--enough similiar and enough different.

By the 4th or 5th day I was bored and ready to leave. I happened upon St. Germain (across from Deux Maggots) during Holy Saturday services. I took communion, but I was not Catholic. I looked up and on the ceiling was a fresco of St. John the Baptist. It seemed to me that was when I decided that I would to become Roman Catholic, but it would take three more years before it actually happened.

I finally got to hear some of the new Daft Punk record (Random Access Memories) that they have been promoting to death for the past two months. It sounds like Chic-meets-robots.

Illuminated Manuscripts and Two Gears Back From Houston

In 1977 our family took our one (and only) family vacation. We went to Norfolk, Virginia and then southward to Florida. The second moment on the trip was when we pulled up to a Fort Lauderdale motel and my mother cried out, "you've been here before! You have a girl friend!" My father was angry, not because she had started an argument with us kids in the car, but because she was right. It took about 3 or 4 years later before that truth became more evident. They say that the chances are about 90% that a second marriage will also end in divorce if it began as adultery. Well not my father and step-mothers, but their misery is undeniable. My father: "Divorcing your mother was the biggest mistake I ever made". I told him that years ago back before he even got a lawyer, but who's gonna listen to a 15 year old, right? He was destroying a family system. My mother did not want a divorce.

The divorce left a terrible mark on my psyche. I think of all the hard times in my life and how much harder they are without a family system that can see me through whatever crisis.

And I still remember that argument in the car, in the parking lot of Happy Holidays motel in Fort Lauderdale. It was sweltering heat and I wanted out and into the wonderfully air conditioned rooms, the fat fluffed-up pillows, the freshly cleaned sheets and blankets, and beds so nicely made, and all the neat toiletries wrapped in plastic thoughtfully placed, like gifts.

A few days later we'd cross Alligator Alley at night. It seemed fraught of danger driving through all that blackness and the roar of insects and night creatures. If the car broke down, what would we do? Would an alligator eat us??

At the end of Alligator Alley is the wealthy town of Naples. We drove up the coast to Silver Springs. My father's girlfriend had a condo just outside Naples and her mother's home (where he now lives) just outside of Silver Springs. So he was scoping out his new life and scheming.

I can't imagine what my mother went through, spending her mother's inheritance to buy the family vacation at my father's urging, only to discover he had an secret agenda. I don't think she was on to his whole scheme then, but thank God for that. Really.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I was just looking at an old book I purchased at a miserable job I had in Houston (1991). It's a book on Illuminated Manuscripts. I was fired from that job and drove all the way back to Chicago in a car that only had two gears: 2nd and 4th. 1st, 3rd, 5th and Reverse did not work. Incredible as it seems, I made it back, although somehow I knew I would. I was determined and I was careful. I keep the book not because it's interesting but because it's physical evidence the whole nightmare of those 6 months were real and me, and my car, had survived it.