Winter Awakenings

_HRB4979, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Each morning, when I wake up, I reach for my phone to check the time. It’s simply part of my daily habit, a routine that is seldom challenged, changed, or modified. Last night, I went to bed early, having had the day off due to Christmas, two hours before my routine departure from consciousness. I awoke this morning, as usual, and checked my phone. It was dead. I have unwittingly exhausted its power supply and failed to recharge overnight. I searched for my wristwatch. Nothing.  I didn't have the data for which to base my placement in the day with.

You know that sinking feeling of strangeness and confusion inherent in some mornings when you are unsure whether the present is an exceptionally lucid dream, wherein reality is just moments away from bursting in through the door? This was one such occasion. I parted the curtains open, and I viewed the world as a luminous haze, a frozen photograph, a blanket of white, a silence where time was a conjecture devoid of a continuum.  The morning was clock-less, and nothing defined the area upon which the moment was in existence. I usually rise from sleep at 9:45 a.m., my body seems to favor it. But here, I didn't know what time it was.  Sometimes, one can know judging from the varying angles of sunbeams as they streak across the Douglas firs.  It's winter. Anything goes.

Dear Creationists

Dear Creationists, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Happy birthday, Sir Isaac Newton!

Bainbridge Island

_HRB4886, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

December, 2013

Had a fun day trip to Bainbridge with Chatty, and Dyan. We ate lunch at Poulsbo where we pretty much spent the rest of the day in. Laughter, and merriment were scattered throughout.

Honolulu Marathon 2013

I apologize, Marathonfoto Corporation, but I really can't afford spending $75 to purchase these photos of me you took.  

December 8, 2013

4:15 am: I wake up, attach running gear to my personage, eat a bowl of broccoli I prepared the night before, and aunt Becky readies the car for start-line transport.  

4:50 am: Start Line.  Holy shit, this is a ton of people.  (26,000, roughly).  

5:00 am:  Bang!  Fireworks!  Go!

5:21 am:  5k checkpoint.  Everything's going pretty well.  Stopped at two aid-stations for water, and maintained a sub-7 minute mile pace.  Okay, this is sustainable…

6:00 am:  Just crossed the seventh mile mark.  Oh, god, I'm bonking.  My shirt drenched with water generated by me, and a few cups of cold water tossed upon my head.  Watch says "74˚F," too fucking hot.

6:46 am:  Half-marathon checkpoint.  Shit.  Losing it.  There's still a lot of space around, which means I'm doing kind of ok.  Might still finish in 3:45'00.

7:00 am:  Sun rises.  FUCK!  I'm stopping, I'm stopping.  Knee is giving out.  It's a stab of fire on each foot strike.  Watch says 78˚F.  Real estate, gone! 

8:00 am:  Mile 17.  Walking every five minutes, "running" every ten; this is not part of the plan.

8:30 am:  Mile 20.  Damn it, that Diamond Head Hill will be brutal.  Soldier zooms past toward the incline and his calf-muscles contract.  He falls off his knees and I ask whether he's okay.  Out of earshot before hearing a response.

9:00 am:  Mile 24.  Thinking; PBR. PBR. PBR.  Power-walking now.  Still uphill.  

9:15 am:  <1 km to go!  Running again.  Ahh, homestretch, finally!  

9:18 am:  Finish Line.  I'm on motherfucking Kapiolani Park - wahoo! 

9:30 am:  Walking to Rainbow Cafe to have aunt Becky pick me up.  Shit is like a mile away.  Fuck me!

9:45 am:  At Rainbow Cafe, I'm pretty sure this is no longer Waikiki.  Aunt Becky isn't arriving for another half-hour, therefore, on the grass I pass out.

10:15 am:  Aunt Becky pulls in, hands me a change of clothes and we head to Big City Diner.

10:30 am:  PBR! PBR! PBR!  I'm tired as shit but here I am, having a beer.  Honolulu Marathon, 

nailed!

For the record, on what little training I was able to apply leading up to the marathon, the weather had always been below freezing.  Viz. 12˚f when I left Seattle.  86˚f when I arrived on Honolulu.  Failure, justified!

5 Years Time

Untitled, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Five years ago, today, Clay died. I didn't know him very long, but his passing had a staggering impact. It wasn't really the idea of his death that struck me the hardest, although it was very devastating, but the reminder of how fleeting life really is; I suppose that's probably synonymous with dying, but to me, it isn't.  I had a conversation with Dyan and Chatty today about not remembering anything from my year as a 19 year old.  Not a particle of memory left from that year.

I stared out the window.  I could see clouds raking the pinnacles of the tall pine trees and the placidly noiseless bay.  Chatty tinkered with her phone, and Dyan sipped her chai latte.  I'm 26 now.  My cup wafted with espresso, and this was a metaphor.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Had a strange dream about Hirsi Ali last night. I woke up wrapped in a voracious desire to create art. Above is the product.

Pioneer Square

_HRB4775, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Aside from the minor detail of a deranged woman's fleeting presence who told us that the coffee we held were the cause of AIDS, Ciara's senior pictures session was majorly successful.

Honolulu

, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Flew in to Oahu this weekend to run the Honolulu Marathon. I bought the ukulele shown above at Dan's and relaxed quite a bit. Will do a race overview a bit later this week.

North Shore

North Shore, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

This beach wasn't actually on the North Shore of Oahu. It was somewhere en route, sort of an accidental discovery kind'a thing. Entrance bore no sign, and the driveway seemed like private property. Nobody was around and I felt like the world belonged to me when I stood there.

I Kid You Not

_HRB3407, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Last night, I had a dream about pig latin. A very lucid, very real dream that when I arose this morning, I suddenly felt the knowledge and skill tuck safely within my mental file cabinet, as if learning a language was like buying a pound of tomatoes at the market. Just to make sure, I checked online to self-test and consequently discovered that I am officially a speaker of the dialect, albeit amateurishly. The years will provide the proficiency for which I heretofore await. ife-lay is-ay ood-gay!

Misty

_HRB3402, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Went out for a walk around Pike Place Market the other day. Alki, which is usually seen from off the distance over the water was ensconced in fog. It felt like a different landscape, like some foreign city I've never been, and the experience was new and not easily forgettable. A bit of nostalgia, I suppose, but autumn/winter tides always bring such emotions to all/most of us.

Danke

_HRB3405, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Thanksgiving at the Greens', and then a quick stroll through the Philosophical Promenade.

 Did volunteer work for Survive the Streets.

Had coffee with Abby at Seattle Coffee Works.

Food

_HRB2746, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Cardamom, curry, and chanterelles for a winning sauté. Add leek for further embellishment, but the symmetry will be lost. Still delicious, though.

Photos with the Bensons

_HRB2237, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Jack, at 1 year.

Self-Awareness IX

Trail run, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Happiness is in finding your way after having been lost for an hour, or so.

Leaves

, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Foliage is still collecting en masse on the sidewalk. Skiing to work sounds nice, but I'm enjoying the semi-temperate weather, thus far.

Training

Training, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

This screen is a bit like an altar of trophies. A gallery of my recent accomplishments, big and small.

Oil Whidbey

Untitled, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

This painting of a landscape on Whidbey Island around the city of Greenbank is three years old now. It still calms me. I think I'm inspired to do more island hopping.  Maybe a trip to Bainbridge will set foot.

KT's Birthday

, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Dinner at Hi-Life and everything else at Ballard Station.

Hipster Collie

Hipster Collie, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Tess is Oliver Twist for Halloween!

Jerome on Vashon

Jerome, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Lou Reed, at 71 years, died today.

Herding a Wiener Dog

Herding wiener dogs, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Tess, Snooper-Weenie (not pictured), and I were at the dog park a couple of days ago. Tess got tired before the wiener dog did.

The picture above feels like a marriage between a Rothko and Corot.  I still don't understand the philosophy behind many of Rothko's art.

Favorite Things

these are a few of my favorite things, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

On my second cup of coffee and I'm not motivated to do anything, yet. I promised the dogs about going to the dog park and it wouldn't feel right to betray them. I'll brew another cup.

Yesterday, Charles, the labrador, stood up against the wall to reach for the light switch and turned it on.  I didn't teach him to do that.

Foggy

, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Been running after work, well past midnight. On Friday, it was foggy and the lights from street lamps were domed by the mist. They didn't illuminate anything that was more than a few steps radius from their own peripheries. It was magical!

Must It Be? It Must Be!

Unbearable Lightness of Being

Lights dim, curtains pull open, then close, string quartet begins and then this:
Muß es seine? Es muß sein!  The epithet for this lovely book

Fall. Foliage. Etc.

Fall 2013 Haiku

A lazy morning,

Foliage scattered everywhere,

Orange memories.

Gossamer

image, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

Awoke early morning to let the dogs out. It was foggy, or misty, and it was cold. Off on the other end of the backyard was something glossy, and as I got close for examination I noticed it was a spiral. A gossamer, a home for a living thing who wasn't there.

Appreciate

_HRB9092, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

One of the best things you can do for the photographer is to print his work right away. I've just recently dealt with several people who forsook their cd copies to the point at which their pictures could no longer be located. This makes me feel under-appreciated and enormously shitty.

Bjork

If I get in trouble, there's no god to sort me out.  I deal with it myself.

Individuality II

HRB_1327, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

"No, I'm not going to change who I am because the people who love me, love me for that. And the people who hate me, hate me for that." Joe, from This American Life

Individuality

_HRB8975, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

It's always our decision who we are.

Apple Tree

Apple Tree, a photo by herb.purganan on Flickr.

An accidental act of festive harvest by picking the lot this tree has made.

Went to Oktoberfest today and drank numerous spiced ales. It rained and it shone. The trees were shedding their leaves and the scent of cool arctic air began to invade the atmosphere.

Ushering in the season of fall always feels like enacting someone else's memory and playing a role in their dreams.  You feel so there, but you're detached, and not in control; it's a wonderful detachment.

Armchair Musings VI

Musset:

"How glorious it is, and also how painful, to be an exception."

Dogs!

from left-right:  Charles Terwilliger Pupdog-Brown, Snooper Weenie Junior, Tess the Panda.

Here are a few basic fundamental truths about them:

Charles loves to growl but never growls.  Snooper is addicted to the act of evacuating her urine when excited.  Tess forgets the entire world when a tennis ball is being hurled.

Dreams I

A few nights ago, I dreamt of this:

A quiet, sleepy afternoon, basking in the sun with my cousin Harryette.  My DSLR materializes in my hands and I take her picture.  A polaroid immediately pops up from the wind and my hand catches it.  The image isn't exactly her, but a hologram of a child whose eyes showed something that was vaguely eerie.

I awoke from the sleep after hearing Tess' paws pounding at my door, wanting to be let in.  I immediately thought "why is my amygdala doing this?"

Later that morning, I read of mass shootings in Washington D.C.

Fresh Air

Just read on the Huffington Post that happy, exuberant people spend a lot of time outdoors.  If happiness can be scaled, how well does 79 miles of being outdoors score on that scale?  #ifeelgood

Pale Fire

Another attempt at surmounting a Nabokovian work.  This passage struck me, though I don't know why.

During one winter every afternoon

I'd sink into that momentary swoon.

And then it ceased.  Its memory grew dim.

My health improved.  I even learned to swim.

With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench,

I was corrupted, terrified, allured,

And though old doctor Colt pronounced me cured

Of what, he said, were mainly growing pains,

The wonder lingers and the shame remains

Self-Awareness VIII

I enjoy participating in races as a volunteer.  I love running but on these events, I have more fun spectating.

This was at the Dash Point Trail Run Half-Marathon and 10k.  I manned the split-turn between half and 10kers and snuck in my camera to take shots.  I wasn't the event photographer but that wasn't going to stop me.

Armchair Musings V

The enormity of the universe, and here we are.

Armchair Musings IV

Five senses and a consciousness to weave them together.  What are we doing?

Life's a Beach, Then You Dive (Sort Of)

Stream of Consciousness alert:

Tonight, I almost lost my marbles listening to a bunch of people in the lab go off about their upcoming vacations next month.

"Yeah, I'm so glad to finally be able to take a week off to see Crater Lake next month."
"No way, I've got a few days to camp out at Okanogan."
"Blah, blah, ad infinitum."

All their vacation fetishes sound so utterly futile.  My friends at work tend to forego the thought of a more valid idea that their vacations would end the way it began; work.  Here's the thing, you burnout and then you recharge.  Then you'll burn out again, only to find yourself recharging.  It's so depressing, see?  Why blabber on like it's the greatest thing that's happened ever?  They need to recognize PTO as a form of human right to which their entitlement should not be one of rarity.  I'm happy to see them delighted at the upcoming wisp of bright light from their penumbra of pragmatic discontents, but that shouldn't be their raison d'être - which I'm sure it isn't, but here it's sounding like it.

Re: All the things our teachers taught us are things that their teachers taught them.  We are designed to perpetuate a trajectory toward some vague notion of progress we lack the sophistication to understand yet are totally committed to, but secretly hate, and compensate for behind the pretense of vacations.  Higher dimensions of control tell us what we want and we dutifully obey.

For the record, I'm not anti-vacation/work.  What I am against is the way we've adopted the idea that vacations are a privilege.  That the need to seek new places and enrich lives require a ritualistic blood sacrifice of who we are and a total surrender of the things we truly value and love.

Gun Nuts

I find it interesting that in spite of the ill-informed mass of gun toting nut-cases, by the loud and rabidly irritating ad baculum which they all too often exploit, their venomous crusade to be heard outside the civil discourse snakes into the legislature.  It's very disconcerting how personally close these people are to me. Very disappointing.

Wild Blackberries

I made the mistake of overindulging in them yesterday.  Their glistening dark ornaments were too irresistible to not eat in excess.  To my chagrin, I had less than a mile to run home before I began to notice my intestines protesting violently.

____

Interesting:  Jesus did not commit the greatest sacrifice; he knew he would be resurrected anyway.

Armchair Musings III

On growing blinded by delusions.  Sometimes the belief is that life today is the embodiment of all our failed ambitions and dreams; we simply cannot grasp all the other dimensions of life that follow the opposite.  It's unceasing.  The thought that being something else, something better, could have been possible had we gone about life a different way.

I think it's fair to have sentiments like that, and I think we all do it, but taking things for granted is simply no cure.  Even learning how to appreciate the mundanity of our daily walkabouts into reality, the embarrassingly few occasions of virtue, and counting every miniscule thing worthy of gratitude (to whom, I'm not sure) is tough and can elude real ideas about what avenues to happiness are truly the best.  I do ponder, however, why there are so many misfortunes that befall all of us due simply to the miraculous accidents of birth.

With all the great tragedies and grievances of existence, I cannot proceed into each day by asking "why me" all of the time, because something good might still come.  I may not know that for sure but it seems to happen to everyone else.  So ask, "why not me?"   I've learned a lot in my 26 years of being alive, and I'm glad for it.

Animal Trail

I noticed a small path just off the paved trail.  It lead to a pond that bore no sign of human foot traffic.  I believe it's a haven for wild animals.

Tess jumps in on any pond as soon as she sees one.

A Quarter Century

This is me at 25, totally aware that each moment coming to pass brings my transit to oblivion a little shorter in length.  Even though I feel like I have more distance left to travel in the world than I ever did.

"We all got older at break-neck speed.  Slow it down, go easy on me."

GMO

I bought the apple below a year ago.  I had the intent to eat it, until it sat at the windowsill too long and I had inadvertently forgotten of its existence.  Amid a throng of books, mason jars filled with pencils, and other things wont to reside on every windowsill, it simply sat camouflaged.  I don't know whether the fact that I used to eat this pretty compulsively is severely worrying or not.  I guess the new knowledge that organic, which the object below isn't, is the apple that will likely cause me the least puzzlement can only be a blessing, right?

Setback

Was involved in a rear-end collision yesterday.  My body is in pain, and I'm not sure yet what's broken.  Noticed that I'm walking kind of funny and that could implicate a negative shift in marathon training.  The event is in two weeks.  I hope this is nothing.

Why me?
Why not me?

Less is More

"Why do we have to look at a beautiful garden without wondering, or believing that there are fairies at the bottom; why can it not be just a beautiful garden?"

Talk Religion

Got into a pretty nasty verbal exchange with someone at work who kept pressing me to believe and accept her specific religious dogma.  Was asked how I can differentiate what's right from wrong without the aid of a divine being and replied that it's a pity that someone would need a deity to distinguish between choosing to harm others and not.  While I generally turn aside from discussing religion and beliefs with anyone, gaining solitude from the topic has become too difficult a task.  I especially cannot resist it when the motivation from the other person is flagrantly spiteful.

Disconnect

I can't seem to make sense out of justice.

The thing that's bothering me the most right now about the Zimmerman acquittal, among a staggering number of others, is that a woman (an African-American, surprise!) who fired warning shots against an abusive man is sentenced to 20 years in prison.  She is not protected by the "Stand Your Ground Law."  George Zimmerman, on the other hand, kills Trayvon Martin and gets to go home.

Am I being naive?

Book Review: Blue Nights

A heartbreaking account of loss and grief, freighted with heavy musings of her own mortality.  Joan Didion, at 74, has the appropriate voice to illustrate the meaninglessness of life and the meaningfulness of being alive. A great, great read!

"The fear of what is still to be lost."

Armchair Musings II

What if one day the whole world just gets sick of violence and stops?

Hike

The hike down to Havasu Falls has to be among the most physically taxing thing I had ever done, but was absolutely well worth it!  More on that later.  Here's a view:

Fortuitous Awakening

After allocating 45 minutes of sleep overnight prior to the descent down the Grand Canyon, I crashed at 6 pm, just a couple of hours after arriving at the campsite.  For some odd miraculous turn of events, I emerged out of my tent at 10:30 pm to behold at the stars like shattered crystals hurled up in the sky.

A billion stars go spinning through the night,

blazing high above your head,

but in you is a presence that will be,

when all the stars are dead.