preferences

i exercise anything between 7 and 14 hours a week  - on average i would say maybe 9 or 10. even though this is not that big of an amount i have been called, on various occasions and by several people, obsessive - something i, even if i were to agree with it, don´t really see as a negative. which i guess rather proves the point.

however moving and using my body is an inseparable part of what i consider to be my personality. it sometimes puzzles me why people don´t, generally speaking, do it more - i´m quite convinced the world would as a whole be a much better place if everybody would just get out there a bit more. but then again, who am i to judge or tell others what to do - just as i don´t necessarily appreciate being questioned whether i should get a life instead of cutting a boring evening out short because i want to get up early in the morning to do something i consider dear.

sometimes, of course, this very strong need i have to exercise daily (preferably twice a day) poses problems. more of those maybe on another occasion.

i realized i picked  a very unfavorable time of the year to start this blog. the mornings are really dark, and as fantastic as the iphone otherwise is, the camera doesn´t always deliver when faced with a serious lack of light. 

eventually, when the snow and ice kick in, i may be forced to take pictures of the treadmill i´ll be spending my mornings on.

Clarity

A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be. 


George Falconer, A Single Man (Tom Ford, 2009)

basic instinct

small children, especially those who have quite recently mastered the art of moving vertically, seldom walk. they run. i don't know exactly when or why the shift to walking as the main means of transport happens, but i think it's quite interesting that we abandon running - perhaps at least partly because we are told to do so. how many times have you heard a parent telling their kid to stop running? 


i suppose that after certain age running should - in our society at least - be reserved for games, exercise and other such activities and removed from the everyday context to a place and time more specific. thus when we grow up we lose the freedom to run - very much like we lose the freedom to speak our mind frankly and honestly, asking questions the answers to which seem obvious but are everything but, taking naps at random hours and eating when we´re hungry and not because is lunch hour.


however, there are places still left in this world where running remains to be the normal thing to do. in a wildly popular (at least among certain groups) book called 'born to run' christopher macdougall writes about the tarahumara, a tribe living in mexico who are able to run hundreds of miles without rest; for them, running has remained as the primary pace of movement, like it in some point of our lives was to all of us. obviously the modern man is quite far from this kind of approach, and i don´t suggest we should all start running everywhere - i just find it fascinating that this tribe has remained in that phase of movement.


i do think running is something very fundamental. but that is not why i do it day after day like i have for the past 10 years - i'm not trying to get back in touch with something that might have been lost a long time ago. i just don't know anymore how not to run. granted, for me it is time and place specific, but yet it  is something i do without questioning.


plus it's just so damn enjoyable.

PS i admit it, this photo is not taken at 6am.  more like 8 am. it was saturday.

last week

i listen to odd music when i run. or not odd per se but music i otherwise don´t listen to. and vice versa - the music i listen to otherwise i don´t listen to when running.

i wonder if it means i am a different person when i run?

and if so, is there a way to be that person outside running?

a few older images

here are a few images taken during this year - just to give an idea what this blog will be about.