saturn return to sender

Today I ran about half as far as I normally do when I run at work. Cruised along at a more leisurely pace. I tend to think I have to pound pretty hard to get the runner’s high to which I’ve become slightly addicted. Or at least to feel like I’ve accomplished something. But my back is recovering from an injury and I’ve hardly exercised in the past week, so I allowed myself to take it easy.

On the way back, I settled into a nice long-stride pace and focused on relaxing. I imagined that the run was a continuous, controlled fall. I noticed the rhythmic pressure on the heels and balls of my feet, felt each impact compress my foot, ankle, and leg, and allowed the fall to carry my weight forward into the next compression. I tried to fall with an open chest and noble spine.

Off and on, focusing on the feeling of it all, the run dissolved into a sense of floating forward and a gentle pressure—the pressure of the exertion required to maintain everything. That was it. It was not at all unpleasant. It was not a concept in my mind, but a feeling in which I was immersed, like a pool of warm water, or the weight of a lover’s body, and there wasn’t room for much else. All the little discomforts and pains were still around, somewhere. But they weren’t very important. The exertion’s breathing was a wave, and I was what the wave felt like. I was nothing other than that.

During an IM chat inspired by Clarissa’s post on non-attachment, Orwell, and Gandhi last week, I told Enjelani that I don’t usually find running to be very meditative. Maybe I try too hard, maybe I’m too worried about improving my time. Later, Jet and I talked about choosing a direction in life, rather than a specific goal. A goal is too restrictive; liable to anchor your identity to something imaginary. If it never comes to be, what then are you? If it does come to be … what, then, are you?

I do think that, somehow, the feeling of gently losing yourself to the exertion of something—anything—is part of the answer to non-attachment. How can you love someone and still practice non-attachment? I’m not sure, but maybe a paradoxical commitment to both is the exertion itself, is the thing to which you must surrender. It makes no sense, but in the floating-fall of my little run today, there was no need for thought. There was only the exertion. Somehow, that was enough.

I tested for shodan in aikido a few months ago. That’s first-degree (lowest-ranked) black belt. The first aikido class I ever went to was in Spartanburg, South Carolina. 1994, I think. (Thanks, Dad!) There were a couple of years around 2000 where I wasn’t really training, but still, that’s about 12 years of fairly consistent aikido for me. It’s been non-stop since 2002, and I’ve been with Boulder Aikikai since 2003.

That’s not me in the photo, by the way. That’s Karl and Tracy, both of whom are bad ass, and quite senior to me. They’re in front of Mt Sopris, at Boulder Aikikai’s Annual Summer Camp in the Rockies, which was two weeks ago. I’ll post a few more photos here as soon as I get Lightroom working on my laptop again.

So the black belt feels a little overdue in some ways, but not so much in others. I am glad for the recognition, and I do feel qualified to, say, teach beginners the basic open-hand stuff and ukemi. But I was chatting with a friend in the dojo today about how aikido is an apparently bottomless rabbit hole. You think you’re making progress and that you know a thing or two, then you run into someone with whom your little tricks and techniques utterly fail. “OK,” you think to yourself. “I know nothing.”

Or, you train with people who work with levels of effortlessness, grace, and power you know are possible, but still beyond your own practice.

Either way, new expanses of unexplored terrain open before you. That happens a lot. It’s why we keep coming back. It keeps raising questions about body/mind/awareness/relationship/spirit/etc/etc. Also, it’s a lot of fun. And you meet some of the best people: beautiful, funny, strong, caring, flawed. And so on …

Anyway, I think I’ll be doing this thing for a while. Here’s to another 12, 24, 30, or 40 years of training …*

I had kind of an awesome time at the wedding. Who knew Iowa could be so much fun?

I’ve spent a little time trying to decide how to organize the 900+ photos for web-based review by the newlyweds and others. I wanted to categorize the photos by event type—rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, ceremony, reception, and general portraits. I wanted to provide edited versions of those sets—my personal picks—while making sure everything was available for review somehow, in case someone likes a shot that I didn’t think was better than mediocre.

Lightroom offers some built-in gallery templates, but as far as I could tell they didn’t provide as much hierarchy as I wanted. I decided to give Flickr a shot. Currently I’ve got almost everything uploaded to my account, and have basically achieved the organization I wanted with Flickr’s collections and sets.

Two big downsides to this are:

• My photostream is now 900+ photos bigger, and only about 100 of them are shots I’d actually want to keep in there.
• I set everything to the “friends and family” privacy level, since I figured not everyone would want their likeness posted publicly online. Obviously I can’t require everyone who wants to see the photos to sign up for Flickr, but Flickr does offer a “guest pass,” where you send out a secret URL that gives the viewer access to otherwise restricted photos. However, this works for only for Sets and for an entire photostream, not for a Collection. If it worked for a Collection (which can contain Sets), I’d be set. As it is, I’m going to have to send out two URLs: one to sign in as a guest for my whole photostream, and then a second for the actual Collection. Less than ideal.

I’ve never done this kind of mass shooting for “a client” before. Suggestions are welcome.

There may be a real name for this style of image, but I’m calling it Boards-of-Canada-esque. The style involves one or more of the following:

• children
• bokeh
• sunlight
• distressed/discolored edges
• accidental framing and focus

They’re forgotten polaroids of you and your sister in the park, torn 8mm stills of your youthful mother smiling mid-blink. They’re warm and innocent and out of focus, like the memories they evoke.

Of course, in this case, they’re all digital and purposely vignetted and you took them yesterday. Kind of like using digital plugins instead of old analog synths. They’re fun to make, though!