Two rabbits, one horse, one slip and one fall

I like to run.  I like running on trails the most.  If I had to pick between a road or a dirt road next to the road, I pick the dirt road.  When I was in high school, I tried out for cross country and track; I didn't care much for track.  I liked running outdoors and not in a circle (ellipsis).  I loved running on trails or fire roads just as long as nature was around.  I saw my first owl in high school while running on a trail next to the high school.  Those are some scary birds, by the way.  For me, trails are an escape.  They may begin one block away from busy intersections but can make the city fall away and be forgotten in no time.

I started running because my sister ran.  My oldest sister got a C in PE and it was unacceptable.  The only non A in her high school report card. So she tried out for track and field and found out that she was a good 800 meter race. I was in middle school during all this so when I got to high school myself I also went out for x-country and loved it.

Now I run around the Rose Bowl. At the Rose Bowl you can run around the perimerter and its adjoining golf course. But this is chaotic. People don't know that there is a running ettiquette so running around the perimeter is a dodging exercise through human obstacle courses. But there are trails around the Rose Bowl and north of the Rose Bowl, and south of the Rose Bowl. Yes, there are some running clubs that need to enforce the running rules a bit better but for the most part these trails are not as trafficked. And you get a sense that you are communing with nature; I've seen squirrels, rabbits, deer, crows (after the station fire), ducks, a variety of other birds, and a small mountain lion.  I can't truly confirmed the mountain lion since it was a quick view, back out, and run the other way ordeal.

Anyway, I recently started running again and have resolved to run on trails. I had worked myself to a nine mile long run this past Saturday, and thought about doing loops but decide to go for it and headed towards Brown Mountain in the Angeles National Forest. There are two ways to get to the top of the mountain, throught the mountain face or the El Prieto Trail. I seldom run the EP trail because it feels never ending eventhough it is not as challenging as the Brown Mt. fire road, which is longer and slightly more challenging.

About the EP trail, it is a single track trail, through a canyon, it's slightly flatter, and it is shadier than the BMt. trail. So I go on the trial and I'm rhapsodizing in my head about the beauty of nature and what I'm going to write in this blog.  How I'm bummed out that I'm not seeing any rabbits but glad that I'm not encountering less desirable animals.  I'm stopping to take in the scenery and catch my breath, and drink some water.  I also start panicking a little because I'm starting to get that claustraphobic feeling I get when I run this trail. I hit 4 miles on my GPS watch, about a mile into the trail, which by the way, is hillier and sunnier than I remembered it, and I stop. I listen. I can hear the wind. I'm loving mother nature, I'm congratulating myself for doing this, I'm contemplating my blog entry, and after taking it all in I start to head back.

A mile up hill is a challenge. A mile down hill is not; you think. But I get to this point where it's a sharp turn plus a steep downhill.  And the downhill is not solid dirt but more like loose dirt/dust. I start to slide, and I think that's fine because I know what I'm doing except that I lose my footing and land on my butt. My right butt.

I am okay physically, but my ego just gorged itself on humble pie. I bounce up because the fall is not that bad and more than anything, I want to make sure that I was out of sight from the hikers I had just passed. I was. And I'm ashamed.  I tried to console myself with Confucius quote, "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." Yes, Confucius was consoling me, must I add the straight faced emoticon?

I kind of took it in stride, because I'm thinking runners high was involved. It is my belief that sometimes, you just got to get your butt kicked. Saturday was as good as day as any. On the way back I saw two rabitts and a horse which made the outing a success since I measure success by the wilderness experience.

Oh, one final thing, when you fall in the forrest, and no one is there to see it, you still fall, it still hurts (your pride), and you do make a sound. Mine was, "ahh."

Why this again?

My favorite Woody Allen movie, I'm a huge fan and if you want to complain about him go ahead but don't do it here, I don't care about how you feel, is Another Woman. I get it. I mean, it speaks to me in ways no other movie has ever spoken to me. If you don't want to watch the movie because of your feelings for Woody Allen then watch Wild Strawberries by Ingmar Bergman. In the Allen movie, the main character mentions that feelings make her uncomfortable. Yeah, well that's my sentiment about people letting their feelings be know. Writing this is borderline uncomfortable but I'm getting by. Anyway, blogs are the equivalent of over-sharing, specially when blogs are really an excuse for a journal that you want to make public. I've tried to blog in the past but felt so uncomfortable with the self-censoring and the questioning of whether I was over-sharing of over-skirting that I did three entries and posted one. But I'm giving it another shot. And brace yourself because I'm going to give away the ending of those two movies. Life should not be about regrets and shutting down, it should be about possibilities and starting fresh no matter where you are in life. That is why it is my favorite movie. It is about hope and conversion (change).

I'm not giving blogging another shot because of the movie. Don't get me wrong, I love the movie. It's my favorite movie ever. No. I'm doing it because I've been reading a blog and I really like it, and I want to do something similar. The writer of the blog is inconsequential. But the arc of the blogger is not. The blog has evolved to be a more perfect description of the blogger in spite of the fact that it went from a "this is what i did today" type of blog to a "let me share my short story fiction with you" type of blog. The fiction and non-fiction of the blog are a bit pedestrian, at least for my taste, but the blogger itself is very intelligent and it shows. And the more they write, the more it shows. I want to see if this blog will track my growth, my change, my hope, even if I'm writing about something that does not relate to hope, change, or growth. Even if I'm writing about running.

So, I've been thinking about what I want to write and what I already write. So I want to write about Mr. Woody Allen's movies, plays, short stories, and music. I want to write about running; me running and other people running, and elite runners. And I want to write about work.

Allow me to explain what I mean about work. I work for a non-partisan political organization. That means that we encourage political participation but we can't tell people who they should participate on behalf of. I've drank the cool aid. I believe in the higher principles of democracy, one person, one vote, to be cast without coercion or intimidation. And I'm not going to tell people who to vote for. Don't get me wrong, I've picked sides. I am someone's loyal bases and someone else's loyal opposition. At the voting booth. In my professional life, and in my political theory life, people (including me) should make the decision and pick sides that best represents those decisions. If I wanted to sway people to my way of thinking, I would work for a party, a candidate, a partisan organization, but I don't, because I can't fully commit to one side, even if I consistently support them with my vote. So what I mean about writing about work, I mean the every day. The small crisis that happen, like when the coffee ran out and our executive director sent out a email in a panic even though he was on a plane, far from our crisis and had coffee available to him. Or like the time that one of our organizational partners said that they don't understand technology, don't know what Chrome or Firefox are, and they use Explorer as their web browser. I find this discovery fascinating for two reasons, one, we are trying to figure out how old our partner is (she's ambigiously young looking), and two, the grant that funds us to work collaboratively has a technology deliverable. Is this irony? No, but it's amusing to me.

Aside for having an outlet for all my musingly mundane observations, I really want to cultivate my voice. No, not this voice. My carefree, email voice. At work, I write pretty formal emails or very matter of fact emails. It is a lot of, dear colon and sincerely or please and thank you. And then there are my, let's do happy hour and join our running group. That's the type of voice I want to plant, cultivate, grow, reap, sow, harvest, etc. Here is a snipet:

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011

Hola Gente,

On Friday, April 1st we'll be having a happy hour to celebrate [name removed for anonymity purposes] birthday. Like stereotypical Latinos, we'll be celebrating loudly and late (her birthday is actually on the 27th if you want to wish her well on the actual date).

We haven't figured out a place yet so if you have any suggestions, please send them my way. I'm suppose to coordinate with one of [same anonymous coworker] non-work friends to figure out what works best, especially for us who are no longer in our 20s and have given up pretending that we are, and of course, for those of us who are still in denial.

I'll send you more details next week.

Gracias.


On Tue, Mar 29, 2011

Hola Everybody,

After much discussion about ghetto-meters, too Mexican versus SUPER Mexican, and I'm-not-Mexican-at-all-so-please-translate-to-Pan-Latino-Spanish-please, we finally deliberated and picked a place. [And then it descends into a ridiculous yet informative invite that I don't care to share.]

I dream of a blog written in that voice. So there you have it, I want to blog because I was inspired. I want to blog about things I like without telling you what to think, and I want to blog using the voice I write when it's not related to work. Let me know what you think, unless the comments you leave are derisive of Woody Allen, because I'm not PBS, I'm not making a documentary with some sad subsidy from the government and viewers like you about the man, and again, I don't care, I still think he's a genius filmmaker.