the photos of martine fougeron

I’ve been really really bored at work lately, and so I have been using my google reader to surreptitiously find more blogs to read. I feel guilty about that (I do read up on work related stuff as well, but for 9 hours…suffice to say there is not enough caffeine in the world to counteract this kind of boredom), but I do it anyway. Some of those are photo blogs of course, and through those photo blogs I’ve stumbled across some really really amazing sites.

One that sticks in my mind is the photos of Martine Fougeron. She took pics of her two sons over the course of what must be a few years, from early adolescence until mid or late teens.

The New Yorker says:

Like Tina Barney, whose work haunts this show, Fougeron photographs her extended family in domestic and leisure settings that suggest a kind of privileged comfort. Like Nan Goldin, another key influence, Fougeron is alert to the erotic possibility of every encounter—all the more intriguing when her subjects are her two handsome teen-age sons and their circle of friends. Fougeron’s pictures of Adrian and Nicolas sleeping or lounging about in Greenwich Village and the South of France have a lovely looseness and spontaneity, but they never feel like snapshots. Color energizes the work and adds to its sensual undertow.

And while I can definitely see in her pictures what they have to say about them, my description would be much simpler. Captivating. Wonderful. Inspiring. Intimate.

It is sort of like wine - I know if I like it or not, I don’t have the words to explain exactly why.

Check it out, and see what you think. (And despite the use of the word “erotic” in the new yorker’s description, there is nothing that isn’t safe for work.) The funny thing is that I’m learning that I’m really drawn to artists who capture pictures of people in this amazing way. Because of or despite that I avoid having people in my own pictures? I think because of. I would love to have the talent to capture people like this.

maybe hobbies should remain hobbies…

I stumbled on a post today, which basically said the best way to retain a love of photography is to keep it as a hobby. That making it your job sucks the joy out…that making average images to satisfy average viewers makes it not fun.

And while it is likely that my best is still only average, what the poster was saying really resonated with me.

I recently took on a project to supply some pictures for something that an acquaintance is doing. I was happy to pitch in…happy, that is, until I had spent 20 hours going through and processing pictures for very little progress made. He has really really specific things in his head, and today I saw some of what he’s gathered together.

And quite honestly, I wonder why he contacted me to begin with.

He wants Disneyworld, I do realism. Sometimes that realism is pretty darn cute, but it still isn’t Disney.

I’ve never even been to Disneyworld.

He would have been better off with stock photography.

If this is a glimmer of what it would be like to make a living from photography, that post I read today is absolutely right. It would suck the joy right out of me!

Some great advice for writers

My friend, Mary, who you might remember from my Florida visit and fantabulous coconut ginger macadamia nut carrot cake, started a blog on writing a few months ago. She’s been making a living from her writing for a long time, and a nice living at that. She decided to start a blog to share what she has learned about writing, about the industry, about all kinds of topics.

I have never (almost never) thought about writing a book, but her blog makes me want to want to write a book. And the information is so practical, so useful, that if I really had it in me to write a book, I’d feel like I had great information to start out with.

I know the blogosphere is filled with people who have dreams and aspirations for writing, for getting published. I highly recommend Mary’s blog (she’s giving information for free that most charge for)…and even if you’re not a writer, you might just enjoy her blog anyway!

intelligence versus effort

I had an interesting conversation with my therapist today. It is funny, as a note to myself I suppose, that I really do feel like they are conversations now, rather than “sessions” as I thought of them before. Before? When I was so deep in depression that I didn’t really even see how deep I was.

I’ve felt consistently good for quite a while now, a few months. I feel stable with it, like this is my new baseline. I can’t express what a difference it has made.

But the conversation today was about confidence, about expectations of a sort, about why I feel like I have a “deficiency” if I need to take a class in something. This isn’t true for every subject, it isn’t true when I want to learn something that is far afield from what I already know.

“There have been a lot of studies in the news lately,” my therapist said, “that tell us what a disservice we’ve been doing by praising kids for being intelligent.”

She explained that praising intelligence sends a message to kids that they should get things right away. The secondary effect of this is that as soon as the task becomes challenging, those kids give up. Instead we should be praising them for their effort.

And oh my god, did that ever ring some bells! Still rings bells. This is me, now, and apparently what I have to get over.

You know when we’d always hear, “there’s no such thing as a stupid question?” I never believed that. Did you?

Chi Running

I remember the moment I found the Chi Running book. In the odd way memory works, I can remember a million things about that moment, the quality of the light, the height of the bookshelves, the pain in my IT Band, but I can’t remember what city I was in.

I’m not one to read books on sports very often, so browsing through the running books was unusual for me. As influential as the first time I browsed in the cookbook section (which is now an addiction of mine), in retrospect. I found Chi Running. I looked at it closer, as much because I thought it sounded like some weird woo-woo crap as anything else. In looking at it closer, I wanted to believe.

Here was a guy who said that you could do pain-free running. Knee problems, ankle problems, whatever it was, he was claiming that if you ran the way he ran you could avoid the pain. Even as skeptical as I am, it made me take a closer look, as I shifted uncomfortably, trying to ease the dull throbbing pain of another round of IT Band pain.

He didn’t talk about ITBS, but he did talk about physics, and the physics of the posture he was talking about made so much sense.

I bought the book.

It was another year before I read it. A year in which I suffered yet again from IT pain that prevented me from running. A year in which I went to the PT, got ultrasounds, a foam roller, and three new pairs of shoes, all looking for a way past the pain, past the IT problems.

In desperation, feeling like I was going to have to give up on running, I looked again at my Chi Running book. I found a chi running instructor through their website. I emailed her, and said “I don’t know if Chi Running could help, but I have ITBS and it has been preventing me from running…” Her response was an immediate confirmation that chi running could and would solve this problem. Hype? I wondered, but her confidence was solid and unwavering. I signed up for a series of lessons.

The week before I had called her, I’d tried again to run. Within 5 steps I was in pain, within 10 I had to turn around. I told my chi running instructor that I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to run in our lessons (4 sessions of one hour each), because my IT band was inflamed. Again, she didn’t seem worried. Her confidence gave me hope.

The first lesson was mostly learning the basics of the posture and doing some drills to teach my mind and body the new way of running. My IT band gave a few throbs, but didn’t complain much.

The next lessons had me running for parts of the lesson. Within two weeks I went from someone who couldn’t run an eight of a mile (and hadn’t been able to run a mile in a year without IT pain) to someone who was able to run a mile with only a few minor twinges of the IT band. It only got better, and in another two weeks I was up to 3 miles. Victory!

And then of course it got worse, until I was hardly able to run a mile.

I emailed my instructor. We met for a tune-up, and I learned that I had started doing something not quite right, and my IT band was letting me know. Once Kelly tuned up my posture, poof, the IT band pain went away. And again, the result was immediate, and I was running on an inflamed IT band with no pain!

This cycle has repeated itself many times. I’m essentially the poster child for proof that Chi Running works. It doesn’t matter how long it has been since I’ve had IT pain, if I slip out of the chi running posture, I’ll feel it. If I can’t fix it myself, I go to an instructor and they point out something and work with me on it, and I’m immediately able to run again.

So, I’m a believer. I get no money from anyone involved in Chi Running (a valid question to wonder), this is just my story. I love to run, and the only way my body will let me run is with Chi Running. I honestly believe, based on my own experience and the stories I’ve heard from others, that anyone who wants to run but ends up with some kind of pain (any kind!) from running, will be helped by Chi Running. Well, there are logical limits to this - don’t, for instance, go running at all in any form if you have broken bones!

The chi running instructors have a certification process that they can go through, and thus through the main chi running website (yes, it is a brand now) you can find certified instructors. I’ve used this twice - once in Denver, and once in DC - and I’ve been very happy with the people I’ve taken lessons from.

It does cost money, but I’ve spent far less on the initial course and the tune-ups I’ve had since then than I spent on the shoes and inserts and Physical Therapist visits that I tried before that! I tried Chi Running out of desperation, but I’d have saved myself a lot of time, money, and frustration if I’d tried Chi Running first!

If you’re curious who I’ve taken lessons from, first it was Kelly Ryan (who now lives in Hawaii), and more recently it was Lloyd Henry in the DC area. Lloyd travels a fair amount teaching seminars, and so it is worth checking out his site to see if he’ll be in your area at some point.

Happy running! Oh and happy earth day. I might be a day late, but this quote is perfect for any day of the year.

perspective

I work in “Nova”, Northern Virginia, not far from DC. Technically it is in the south, though I don’t know anyone who thinks of it as “The South”. There are transplants, however. Transplants from all over, but definitely some who are from places much more southern than nova, places that are indisputably “The South”. Places where extra syllables find their way into words, unexpectedly.

And so I learned at work this week that with a certain kind of southern accent, “gentle” will sound like “genital”.

quiet among crowds

It had been a long day by the time I got to the tidal basin area. The cherry blossoms were beautiful, circling the water. Throngs of people filled the walkway, but it was mostly a gentle energy, people there to enjoy, not to go anywhere. I looked at the many people on the steps of the memorial and couldn’t muster the energy to walk there. I’d halfway intended to circle the tidal basin and take it all in, but once I was there, I was less interested in seeing it from every angle, from looking for a picture. It seemed like everywhere around me there were pictures waiting for my camera, and classical monument pictures aren’t of such a huge interest for me anyway.

I walked towards the Washington Monument instead, towards the metro to go home.

And I somehow found myself walking through what felt like a magical grove, where the cherry blossoms hushed the world around me and made the green grass glow.

And standing there, amazed that the crowds of people were no where to be seen in this quiet grove, I happened to look above my head, and saw two little fabric hearts, intertwined, resting among the blossoms.

Two kinds of peace

My Saturday was busy, but filled with visions of peace.

First was the peace that I find at the sanctuary.

Sassafras snoozing.

And then was simply basking in the beauty of the cherry blossoms, which last for only a few weeks, and which require the braving of gigantic crowds in order to see them. But it was worth it, and one lesson life has taught me well is that no matter the crowds, we can always find that peace and solitude, if that is what we seek.

Global Day of Goofiness

Yeah, I’m making that up, but that’s what today has been for me - pure goofiness!

I had to kill some time today between two appointments, so I stopped at Trader Joe’s and picked up: shampoo, conditioner, cat treats and wine. Those are the only things that I really get at TJ’s, since I can get better (and usually cheaper) produce at my organic market. As I put my basket down for the cashier, I thought about what an odd assortment of stuff it was, and that there was no food at all. But whatever, I did try to find seitan there, but they don’t stock it. They don’t seem to have tofu either, or any variety of things that I typically use. If they’d had them, I could have actually gotten food there to stock up on staples. But they have none of it, so shampoo, conditioner, cat treats, and wine it was.

The guy behind me just couldn’t get over it. He started talking about how I could have a shampoo and wine party tonight, that it must be what my plans were, and I mentioned the cat treats as well. He thought it was very clever, because I could serve mini “crackers and cheese” h’ours d’ouvres using the cat treats. This went on the entire time I was checking out! Finally I was out of there.

Then I went to the bookstore. I had a title I was looking for, except I couldn’t remember the exact title. No worries, they have handy computers where customers can look up books. So I approached one, and an employee immediately asked if she could help me find a book. But since it is a title I think I’ll recognize when I see it, but can’t remember the exact title, it only made sense for me to do the search myself. She watched me. A minute later, when she was helping someone else, another employee asked if he could help me find the book.

Geez! What are these computers for if not for the customers to use! Granted, I am weird in that I’d rather not have to talk to people. If I can go through the self-serve checkout lines, I much prefer it. This is probably a sign of an unhealthy society, but whatever.

I finally escaped to the stacks of books to do some low-tech title searches.

And then a few minutes ago my phone rings.

“Oh my god, I don’t believe you actually answered your phone!” said the woman from the unfamiliar number. Erm, that’s true enough, so I thought for sure I must know her. Wracking my brain for someone in the 214 area code…wracking my brain for where the hell 214 is - california?

“What’s the dress code for tonight?” she continued. At that point I realized that it was a wrong number! lol.

So I told her that I thought she had the wrong number. We laughed about it, and she thanked me for being so nice about it. I told her I hoped she had a nice time tonight, wherever she was going!

Goofy, the entire day!

yoga with cats

When I practice yoga at home, I have gotten into the habit of grabbing Tempest’s sparkly wand toy and having it at the front of the mat, where I can easily grab it in certain poses.

This isn’t actually a good habit, when considered from the pure yogi point of view, but I don’t regret it from the entertaining-Tempest point of view. She loves it. She comes wandering into the living room when she hears the yoga video start, and we end up with several intense periods of play.

Sometimes when I’m going the “boat” posture, I grab Tempest if she happens to be nearby and put her on my “lap”, which means she’s really sitting on my stomach, sort of, and leaning on my legs. She really loves this. She purrs and purrs, and I get an even bigger ab workout.

It works for us. I get more traditional and meditative yoga sessions when I go to class, after all. I think my at-home yoga practice should be realistic to my life, to my home environment. And since that includes a cat who loves almost constant attention, well, yoga has to include the cat!

I keep waiting for a video that is designed for this purpose. “Yoga for Cats and their Humans” or something!

This week at yoga we did the Wheel. I have a hinky shoulder that comes out of joint, so I’m always hyperaware of how it feels. Ironically downward facing dog, one of the sort of cornerstone yoga poses (unless you stick to bikhram), gives me the most trouble. I can feel that my shoulder is often only partially in joint, which is not a good thing! Anything handstandy makes me pay close attention. The Wheel fits into that category, as my shoulder defines it. And sure enough it was feeling sort of hinky. The yoga teacher had me try it with blocks, so that my hands were on the blocks. This compensated for the fact that I’m not quite strong enough, or maybe not quite flexible enough, to come all that way up into Wheel with fully extended arms. And it made it easier to pull the elbows in (they have a tendency to splay out, for all of us, in postures like this), and when everything was pretty much as it should be, the shoulder was no longer feeling hinky!

This actually is true of downdog as well - when my shoulder feels hinky, it is because I’m not doing something right, it just isn’t always clear what.

I love yoga, clearly.

But I miss running. I used to be a runner, and I still think of myself as one, though I haven’t run in a long time. Almost a year, I think. In the past three years I’ve suffered from chronic ITBS, and it grounds me from running when I have flare ups. I hear people say “oh, I just run through it” and I tend to think that they aren’t talking about the same thing at all. They’re talking about the kind of pain that is the equivalent of a strained muscle, and I’m talking about the kind of pain and fascia malfunction that makes you fall flat on your face.

Literally. (I know from experience.)

And I have a high pain tolerance! So. ITBS = The Enemy.

I discovered in Denver that Chi-Running allows me to run, IT be damned. I took a class from a local instructor out of desperation. I’d tried the weeks and weeks of anti-inflammatories and physical therapy and the icing and the massaging and the ultrasound and the special shoes (three pairs, no good), and the inserts and the foam roller. My IT band is so freaking stretched out that a personal trainer trying to stretch it just…couldn’t. It is clearly not a problem of a tight IT band, and the foam roller just feels vaguely ticklish by now, so I’m pretty sure there is just no more scar tissue to be broken up by a foam roller.

My point is that I’d tried everything, aside from surgery, and I looked to Chi Running in desperation, having read something that made me think it might work. And to my amazement, it did.

It is a completely different biomechanics from the “power running” that is essentially the way every person (aside from more natural runners in maybe Kenya or somewhere else far from our typical track or gym coaches) runs, and so I have a hard time sticking to it because my body forgets and falls back into old habits. And I know when I fall out of it, even a little, because I promptly have IT issues again.

I moved from Denver, and my Chi Running coach moved to Hawaii in any case. It took me a year and a half to contact a chi running person here, but I finally did. I have a group tune-up on Sunday, and I’m really hoping that it gets me running again.

I miss it! I love yoga, but there’s something about running…